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I'm looking for a good in depth documentation/how-to for DataContractSerializer. Google turns up a number of related articles but nothing jumped out at me. (I'm not looking for the MSDN link)
A little clarification: I have never use serialization in .NET but have a working app that does that I need to update/modify. I have a fairly good Idea how I would do what I need to do if I had designed the serialization system but I'd rather not hunt trough a pile of MSDN class documentation looking for how they expect me to do it. The MSDN stuff works well for figuring out how something works (as does Google because at that point you have a specific term to Google) What I would like is a well done "here is how it works and this is all the details" document targeted at showing me how to fit the pieces together rather than figuring out how they work. I'm afraid what I'm looking for is a bit of an "I'll know it when I see it" thing, and I have never had good luck Googeling for that sort of thing.
I'm particularly interested in specific pages that people have used and personally found very useful. If you are thinking of something particular right now (before going to Google) that is what I'm looking for. If not...
Try this MSDN link instead, http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms733127.aspx
but I'd rather not hunt trough a pile
of MSDN class documentation looking
for how they expect me to do it.
It's Microsoft, what do you expect??? You ARE expected to use it the way they want it. :)
This article is very helpful because it shows the benefits of DataContractSerializer in contrast to XmlSerializer. This was the first article I used when learning about WCF and DataContractSerializer.
Not to be disparaging but isn't a Google search the best way to get this kind of information? The most helpful and informative links will be on the first page as those will be the most linked and visited.
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I learned how to find out which version of ClojureScript I'm using with lein-cljsbuild. Where can I find API documentation for cljs.core?
I had to find out about js-obj from a blog post.
I can look at the source code, but it's a large file and it's mostly clojure.core stuff.
Not exactly thorough documentation, but this cheat sheet is really quite helpful when starting out (and better than nothing!):
http://appletree.or.kr/quick_reference_cards/Others/ClojureScript%20Cheat%20Sheet.pdf
ClojureScript definitely has a documentation problem. You're actually not too bad off looking at the source; it's verbose but not too bad once you get used to it.
That said, one of the reasons nobody has produced a definitive ClojureScript API reference is that the core functions all mirror Clojure, so it would be quite a lot of redundant effort. If a function exists in both languages and doesn't work the same way, it's highly unusual and quite possibly a bug.
In practice, I find that using the Clojure API docs (or something like clojuredocs.org) coupled with very occasional forays into the source code work pretty well for 99% of my cljs work.
ClojureScript API Documentation is being worked on here:
http://cljs.github.io/api
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What tools exist for developing platform indepedent API Documentation?
I'm in the process of designing a proposed API, and want to write documentation in a structured and easily editable way. A lot of the answers I've seen have basically been "Use built in language specific documentation tools", but since I'm designing the API from a 'top-level', rather than implementing it, this isn't so useful. I'm looking for a CMS for API Documentation
I've seen a few suggestions to use PBWiki or Confluence, but I'm not convinced that a plain wiki is the best option, though the version control aspects are nice.
In theory, a Drupal build with CCK for API calls and Views for reading the API, but that's a bit of heavy lifting for what I'm looking for.
Is there a API Documentation Management System out there? What are the best options for writing and managing platform-independent documentation for APIs?
I've seen the related questions for this, but there has yet to be a satisfactory answer.
Any structured text language will do. I'd use latex, and troff is old school.
But you may have missed the point of the suggestion to use doxygen or whatever. If you do that, then writing the documentation is also laying down the scaffold for the eventual implementation. Better still, the example documentation will be in the same format as the eventual real documentation and, you will--of course---use source control on it, won't you? So you'll have a potted history of changes to the spec.
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I am a student, with decent knowledge of SQL, but have had very little to do with triggers in the past. I've looked at a few sites for guidance, but comprehensive explanation on all commonly used statements seems fairly sparse.
Is there a 'definitive' site for this kind of thing? Perhaps like a w3chools for advanced SQL?
Once you know a little SQL, try to check out Joe Celko's books. Advanced SQL Programming has a short section on triggers. Since you're a student, you can probably get a copy at the library. If you think you're going to be doing deeper SQL dev work, you'll be glad to score your own personal copy of the book. You can get the relational DB engine to do a significant amount of work in a small amount of code - thinking that way will make you a much more efficient programmer. Most book stores (my local Borders always has a couple copies) will have a copy on the shelf, so browse before you buy.
Also, check out the online manuals for the database you're using as itsmatt suggests.
I've always thought that the SQL Server Books Online (installed with SQL Server) were a good source of info.
This sounds a bit like an "old shoe or glass bottle" question.
Triggers are one of those things that you should really stay away from unless you really really know what you're doing and have a very good reason for doing what you're doing. So naturally, one of the prerequisites to ever using a trigger is that you should have a thorough understanding of how they work and their implications. Thus, you can see how the idea of an "Intro to Triggers" text may sound like a very dangerous thing to some people.
So my advice, cruel as it may sound, is this: If you're the sort of person who needs an intro text on this particular topic, then you might be better served in the long run by simply avoiding Triggers for the time being.
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At the moment I am using Visual Source Safe (yeah yeah!) to store my Technical Specification documentation.
The actual docs are written in MS word.
If find that having the spec written in word format to be a big burden, for specs to be truly used there shouldn't be any barrier to usage and more importantly access.
If I can't quickly scan a document, hyperlink to other dependant documents or sections, what use is all this anyway?
So with that as a background:
what software exists to create truly accessable documentation? i.e. hyperlinks to other pages/sections etc? Or even queryable so I can view all documents that are dependant on module 4.5.3
Is it basically just a Wiki? Anything else?
Wikis are great for creating and maintaining specs. However, it is difficult to generate a big ol' paper document that makes a satisfying "thud" when you drop it on peoples' desks.
I've gotten by with Word. Just learn to take advantage of all the automation it has for cross-referencing, indexes, tables, pagination, etc.
I think of specs as having two audiences: decision-makers and developers. The Word documents are for the decision makers. The developers will come up with something useful later when it is time to implement the specs.
I believe Word supports the idea of sub-documents (links to other documents), however I'm not sure how well it works without VSS, much less with VSS. But it's something to look into.
A wiki is, however, pretty much what you are looking for.
Java has API docs generated by javadoc, Python has API docs generated by tools like epydoc.
What language are you working in? Have you looked for tools like javadoc or epydoc for your language?
We just started using Confluence for technical docs and notes: http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/
It's a full-featured browser-based wiki that just works out-of-the-box, though you can tweak it to your heart's content. It features everything you'd expect from a professional wiki, including security, rich text, hyperlinks, and attachemts; and it's intuitive enough that even our non-technical people (with 3-letter titles starting with 'C') use it.
If you visit Atlassian's web site (see link above), you can play with their online demo ... and they eat their own dogfood to provide community support.
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Perhaps if I make the my documentation better I could spend less time supporting developers and more time developing myself:
I develop a critical platform used by 10 other developers and 50 end users. The developers are of mixed ability ranging from domain-experts to relative beginners. Since I'm one of the people who know how the core platform works support requests from other developers usually go via me.
Our documentation is the usual sort of descriptive stuff any mature project will have: We have a large wiki containing details of all the usual operating procedures plus extensive API documentation.
Unfortunately it does not cater well for "how do I fix " type questions:
Would it be possible to make some interactive fault diagnostic documentation that puts users through a standardized fault-finding routine. The documentation would ask users a series of questions, and depending on the user's input would tell them what to do... it would be a very simple expert system, or possibly a documentation state-machine.
The idea would be to help newbies think more methodically about diagnosing faults in this complex system.
My question:
Are there any free tools intended to implement this kind of user-experience? I'd rather not hand-roll this. There must be some kind of framework for interactive help & documentation.
Has anybody implemented this kind of system before?
If you just wanted to have a flowchart/stat-machine thing where the user moves from the start point to a set of possible solutions by answering questions, then you could probably implement this as a set of wiki pages, where the possible responses to questions on one page are links to other pages.
This solution relies on being able to represent the answers to questions as links, which isn't going to work if the information is more form-like. For example, suppose one question is "What brand of graphics card do you have?" where the answer is one of 300 possible options. In this case it's going to be tiresome to create the links :)
If the developers are asking too many questions then I would suggest making them research the question themselves and come up with an answer, then double-check with you instead of encouraging them to ask you every time. It's much easier to ask somebody else than to find the answer yourself, but they're never going to learn if they don't look for themselves.
If the users are asking a lot of questions then you may need some user interface improvements. Try putting hints in the application itself at the top or bottom of the screen maybe.
For both groups of users a wiki can help.
a FAQ in your wiki
if an error happens too often, try preventing it or output a more useful error message (like "if this happens, the likely cause is that...)