Stories from 2016

Oracle MERGE: Elegantly updating KVP lookups in a database

Storing key-value-pair (KVP) look-up information in a database is pretty routine stuff. There's normally a simple table with a key and a value, as ...Read more

In excess of 96% compound purity/Code test coverage

The Chemistry Bit I recently attended a lecture where a commercial organisation proffered their nous in designing and developing lead-compound kinase libraries. It was ...Read more

(String) letter frequency in LINQ

How would you determine the frequency of letters in a string using C#? If your mind naturally wandered down some abstruse solution involving loops ...Read more

1NF and preservation of database result-set ordering through a database driver

According to the basics of relational theory, and specifically First Normal Form (1NF), a relation is unordered. Put another way, in theory there ...Read more

ANSI SQL/Foundation

I have believed for some time that the SQL FROM clause is optional, that is optional from the standpoint of ANSI/IEC/ISO standards, not from ...Read more

Database table column aliasing, and coding standards

Here's a question I posed to myself recently, during a database code maintenance/upgrade cycle. Can adding a column to the underlying database table break ...Read more

Flattening a Dictionary of Lists with LINQ

I am quite fortunate in that being a Freelance Contractor, I can pursue only work that interests me. It is always a bonus when ...Read more

SGM+ DNA Profile Test Data Generation

Some years ago I needed to create a few hundred million SGM+ DNA profiles as dummy/test data. Although the DNA profile file/input format ...Read more

.Net/C# objects are immutable! Repeat after me, it’s a lie!

Being a Contract Developer, or Freelancer should you prefer, you find yourself constantly going to interviews, proffering your skills, and undergoing an obligatory technical interview quiz. ...Read more

‘SELECT’ing a distinct set of values from CSV :- LINQ and Regex

Over the past couple of years, I have found myself refactoring a lot of code written by others, spaghetti code, and often written ...Read more