What is C#?

30 Jul

C# (C Sharp)

This is the name of (apparently the best) coding language. It looks a bit like this:

class LINQQueryExpressions
{
    static void Main()
    {

        // Specify the data source.
        int[] scores = new int[] { 97, 92, 81, 60 };

        // Define the query expression.
        IEnumerable<int> scoreQuery =
            from score in scores
            where score > 80
            select score;

        // Execute the query.
        foreach (int i in scoreQuery)
        {
            Console.Write(i + " ");
        }           
    }
}
// Output: 97 92 81

…and communicates all the way between the Web Layer and Data Access Layer. Developers use programmes like Microsoft Visual Studio to write their code.

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What is ASP.NET?

30 Jul

ASP.NET

This is a Microsoft framework that is used for building websites. Some developers prefer to use other frameworks like Linux.  If a developer uses Linux, they usually cannot work in ASP.NET too. Unless they are complete geniuses of course.

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What’s a .aspx page?

30 Jul

.aspx page

This stands for an Active Server Page (not sure what the x is for?) and these pages exist in the Web Layer. It is a page that can be viewed in a browser. For example http://www.lovemoney.com/news/get-the-best-deal/insurance/revealed-the-top-10-burglary-hotspots-5208.aspx

If you are funky and use URL rewriting with MVC, you don’t need to use .aspx on the end of URLS!

http://www.lovemoney.com/feedback/onlinebanking

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What’s a .ascx page?

30 Jul

.ascx page

This is a page that exists in the Web layer. It is called by a .ascx page because it is a control which is an instruction for how that bit of code should look and act. These pages aren’t viewable in a browser unlike .aspx pages.

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MVC: a brief overview for non-technical product managers

8 Jul

Our tech team have been using a new architecture – MVC our website, so for other non-tecchie product  managers who might be involved in using this, I thought I’d try and explain my take on it and give an example of what our team has built.

Apparently one of the benefits of using MVC is that development is quicker because there’s less code to write and code can easily be reused, more easily than when using N-Tier.

So what is MVC? I’m no expert but Colin (our in-house pro) has explained it, (and he has written some really useful tips on his blog  including how to upgrade your system to use MVC) so I’ll try and write it down as best I can.

So, MVC stands for model view controller, which represents the 3 different parts of the architecture.

Model

First of all is the model. This contains the entities, which are like templates for how the tables in the database should look. In the N-Tier process, a whole load of stored procedures would need to be written to tell the Data Access Layer what to pull from the database.  However, we’ve used Entity Framework which simplifies access to the tables because it ‘understands’ how they are structured, so negates the need to write bulky stored procedures and mapping.

View

Then there’s the view, which shows how the page will render using HTML. This is the part that the designer will style.

Controller

The controller gets requests from the user and gets the relevant data from the view and the model to display on the screen.

The diagram from Wikipedia is a handy way to visualise the flow of information in MVC

“Model-View-Controller concept. The solid line represents a direct association, the dashed an indirect association via an observer (for example).”


Colin’s built our new feedback forum for the online banking part of our website. It works really quickly.

This is the main landing page for feedback for online banking. As you can see, there’s a distinction between public and private threads.

Users, if logged in, can start a discussion (pictured above) and reply to threads (pictured below), tagging them as ‘Helpful’ if they found them so.

In terms of breaking down and estimating the work, it seems like it got broken down a lot more that when using N-Tier.

Here’s a sample of the kind of tasks the work was broken into:

As you can see, most of the work is 1 or 2 hour chunks, instead of hefty ‘stored procs’ work for example.

The great thing about using MVC means that if any other areas would like their own feedback forum, it’s now a pretty simple job, a case of changing a few headers instead of writing and testing lots of new code.

Nice!

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Rework – read it!

30 Mar

Enjoyed reading Rework over the weekend.

The idea of taking blog posts to create a book meant that it was easy to read, visual and the ideas seemed to stick in my head.  It’s useful for anyone whether they are working in a day job, thinking of starting their own business or anywhere in between – it’s a ‘life skills’ type of book.

I found it refreshing the way they encourage creative thinking and efficiency instead of stress and slog to help you get where you need to be.

There’s one chapter called ‘Planning is Guessing’ and, as someone whose main role is supposed to be  ‘planning’, I was curious to know more about this particular viewpoint!

The arguement here was that long term plans can give a sense of control, but if are rigidly observed can end up being restrictive. Whilst I agree that it’s impossible to know what’s going to happen, I think there needs to be some kind of direction in the short term – even if a guess is the best anyone can do. On that note, Colin has taken to sending me ‘guesses’ instead of ‘estimates’!

So I don’t think the issue is the idea of  planning itself, but rather the the way we adapt and incorporate the present into our future plans.

Time to go and get some ‘guessing’ done!

Mortgage engine update

12 Mar

We’ve been busy making a few tweaks here and there to our mortgage engine over the last few iterations so I thought it was about time for an update. Here’s how it looks:

The landing page

Karen has styled the engine so that it uses the ‘secure’ look and feel of the site, which was first of all used by our Online Banking tool. Ben designed a lovely clean new landing page with a nice big orange button that signposts where to click. Great job!

You can now login to save your searches. Handy if you want to try and then search again in a bit – without having to fill out loads of fields. Nice work Colin!

Initial questions

 

We’ve added instant chat too, so that people can quickly ask our advisors something – handy if they don’t think their question merits a phonecall and it’s discreet too.

Eligibility

This section asks eligibility questions to make sure that the results produced are mortgages that the user could actually get.

The results are therefore pretty different from a normal best buy table in this respect. Usually these tables feature links for the products with the best rates. Often these products have criteria that need to be met and you only learn whether or not you fit the criteria by applying for the product. So doing it this way saves the user lots of time and form filling.

Refine your results

More filters – here the user can specify which features they’re looking for, like offset mortgages for example , and allows them to select up to 4 mortgages to compare.

Select your product

 

Once the user has compared mortgages, it’s easy to select and find out how to apply.

What next…

So it’s nice and easy for our users to find a mortgage :)

The other thing I really like is our case management tool. If someone takes out a mortgage with us, our advisors keep them up to date by posting updates and useful docs on the user’s personal mortgage homepage. I’ll do a post on this soon…

Great work, Team A Star!

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