Category Archives: Software Test Automation

Creating a Simple SQL Server Database

Posted on April 26, 2015 by jamesdmccaffrey

Most of the programming I do is written in a procedural language like C# or Python. Whenever I have to work with Microsoft SQL Server, I always have to spend an hour or two reviewing SQL syntax to remind myself … Continue reading →

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Is Software Testing for Losers?

Posted on February 14, 2014 by jamesdmccaffrey

Are software testers the losers of the software world? Well, in my opinion, yes and no. Let me explain. Very early in my career I was strictly a software developer, coding mostly using the C language. Then I started working … Continue reading →

Posted in Software Test Automation | 6 Comments

.NET Gadgeteer Serial Port Communication

Posted on January 8, 2014 by jamesdmccaffrey

The .NET Gadgeteer system allows you to create small standalone devices that run the so-called .NET Micro Framework. In an unusual scenario, I wanted to be able to send messages from a laptop, which is connected to a Gadgeteer device … Continue reading →

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Converting a Big Endian Integer to Low Endian using C#

Posted on December 29, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

I ran into a mildly interesting problem recently. I use C# as my primary programming language. I was reading a binary file where integer values were stored in Big Endian (non-Intel) form, and because I use standard PC machines, I … Continue reading →

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Reading the MNIST Data Set with C#

Posted on November 23, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

Update: Thanks to Michal Wilczynski who pointed out that in order to read header information you need to deal with endian formatting. See bottom of this post. The MNIST data set is a well-known collection of image data of handwritten … Continue reading →

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Getting Data into Memory with Excel Add-In Interop

Posted on November 11, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

To extend the functionality of Excel (for example, adding a machine learning operation such as data clustering), you can write an Excel add-in. The basic add-in typically does the UI but to do anything meaningful you usually need to use … Continue reading →

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Introduction to the Managed Extensibility Framework

Posted on September 30, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

The Managed Extensibility Framework (MEF) allows developers to create applications that have a well-defined and standardized plug-in architecture. The functionality of an MEF application can be extended without recompiling the application. MEF was released as part of the .NET Framework … Continue reading →

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Converting Numeric Data to Categorical Data

Posted on August 2, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

In the August 2013 issue of MSDN Magazine, I explain how to convert numeric data into categorical data. See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/dn342876.aspx. Machine learning often deals with two kinds of data: numeric data such as a person’s height in inches, and categorical … Continue reading →

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Generating Distinct, Random Array Indices

Posted on July 22, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

I wrote an article titled “Generating Distinct, Random Array Indices” that was published in the July 2013 issue of Visual Studio Magazine. See http://visualstudiomagazine.com/articles/2013/07/01/generating-distinct-random-array-indices.aspx. This isn’t an earth-shattering topic, but it is a common task that I hadn’t seen explained … Continue reading →

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Generating Exponentially Distributed Data in a Given Range (Min to Max)

Posted on July 17, 2013 by jamesdmccaffrey

I ran into a problem that, although I think I solved it, I’m not sure. The problem was to generate data between some min value and some max value in such a way that the data roughly follows an exponential … Continue reading →

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