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# Alternatives to singletons for data manager?

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I want to add a central data manager to my project, so that different classes can share data. It will also act as a map to avoid doubling up on resources.

[attachment=15516:layout1.png]

I figure that there are 3 ways I can do this:

• create the manager as a global (EVIL)
• pass the manager to each class as it is created (UGLY)
• create the manager as a singleton

Every post I see says to avoid singletons, but is this a situation that breaks the rule, or is there a better solution?

Also, the graphic data above is just one type of data; realistically there will be many data types. To avoid having a whole mess of singletons, I would create a central data manager that has a factory class for each type:

[attachment=15517:layout2.png]

Oh yeah, I'm doing this in C++, but the concepts should apply to most languages

Edited by methinks

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Singletons are globals, just implemented really badly.

I think the real question is: what does centralized "data management" actually entail? What does it mean for a resource to be managed? Try to have resources know how to manage themselves, e.g. using factory methods and smart pointers, instead of centralized resource managers.

In other words: "managers" are a code smell.

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Ok, so a more generic version of the question: what is the best way to share the data between different classes that are completely un-related?

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Ok, so a more generic version of the question: what is the best way to share the data between different classes that are completely un-related?

Factory methods and smart pointers.  Sometimes you cannot get away from it, so managers-as-factories (like a general purpose caching resource loader) need to exist.

A singleton is something altogether different.  It says "There can only be one of these.  Ever.  So let it be written."  That is nearly always (but not universally) a bad thing.

Don't use singletons.

The preferred way to do things is that when an object needs data you will either pass the data as a parameter when you need it, or set it using a mutator/accessor pair (get/set method) at some time during the object's lifetime.

In practice you can get very nearly all the data to objects using this method.  A programmer ought to be able to go for many months without touching anything other than direct parameters to their game objects.

Almost everything should fit this usage pattern.

Sadly, large programs have some objects that need certain bits to be accessible on a read-only basis to other parts of the system.  It is not ideal, but in the real world there are occasionally good reasons to create a very minimal, tiny, global object that points to the canonical versions of certain factory methods.  These may include links to things like the game clock, a handle to the main simulator, or a handle to the resource manager.  These should be used sparingly.  On the rare occasion that these must be used, keep the Law of Demeter in mind.

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I have a "CSingleObjects" class that has those global objects as static members. Their constructor is private but CSingleObjects is declared as friend to them so only that can instantiate them. In another header I have defines like

#define gl_printer              CSingleObjects::gl_printer
#define mouse                   CSingleObjects::mouse
#define keys                    CSingleObjects::keys

...so when I need them I can write gl_printer instead of CSingleObjects::gl_printer.

Not the best solution but it worked perfectly so far.

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Personally, I believe there is a widespread misconception that everything must be wrapped in a class when programming in C++. I try to stick to the keep it simple philosophy which is to simply keep things as simple as possible, but not any simpler. Singletons are a completely over-engineered version of a global variable. I avoid the use of singletons by creating a file-scope variable that is accessed via a method. It is a clean and simple solution. As for your dilemma, I recommend this approach in order for you to get a reference to the manager (although I prefer to pass references as parameters to the methods that need them whenever possible).

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Number 2 isn't ugly; it makes the dependencies between your classes explicit and obvious.
If when constructing a ModelLoader, it requires a DataCache as an argument, then it's clear that this dependency exists, and it's easy to follow the layering of the different parts of your architecture.
On the other hand, if the ModelLoader internally acquires a DataCache via a global/singleton, then this is a magical, hidden dependency. This obfuscates the architecture, makes initialization ordering non-obvious, and makes the code much more brittle (harder to maintain) in the long run, due to all the hidden interactions.

Just playing devils advocate here, but couldn't you make the argument that that's a good thing? i.e. I need a to load a model, so I create a ModelLoader; I don't actually care how it internally loads models. And if someone one day decides to change how ModelLoader loads models, I don't want my code to suddenly break.

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Just playing devils advocate here, but couldn't you make the argument that that's a good thing? i.e. I need a to load a model, so I create a ModelLoader; I don't actually care how it internally loads models. And if someone one day decides to change how ModelLoader loads models, I don't want my code to suddenly break.

I think the point is more that they're both rather ugly but the uglyness of passing dependencies is a major improvement over the problems globals or singletons present for the situation. It's a balance of "more code to write and text to visually process" against "making it clear what a class does without requiring you to look inside it."

Personally I can kinda see where it comes from, I tend to use "manager" classes in my code a lot still just because I find them convenient and easier to follow in many cases, but I pass them around as dependencies. Having tried the singleton approach I can honestly say that it removes the clarity of code in what an object needs access to in order to function. When you have to pass it some kind of rendermanager then you know it is going to draw something, when you pass it an audio manager you know it needs to play sound. That kind of thing.

Using globals causes dependencies that you don't even know are actually there, you may remove some object that is a dependency without even knowing it is one, suddenly your happy and encapsulated little class is breaking and you have to poke around it's innards to find out why. Edited by Satharis

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It's a balance of "more code to write and text to visually process" against "making it clear what a class does without requiring you to look inside it."

Talking about that, sorry to "take over" the thread, but I just wanted to ask a question related to that, and so I don't have to open another thread.

I'm actually ending up with a whole lot of (data) managers I need to pass around. That gets really ugly at times, like here:

MainMenuState(gfx::Resources<Texture>& textures, gfx::Resources<Material>& materials, gfx::Resources<Mesh>& meshes, gfx::Resources<Effect>& effects, ecs::EntityManager& entityManager, ecs::SystemManager& systemManager, ecs::MessageManager& messageManager);

Especially for my game states, since every game state might create another game state that needs some other of those "managers", I basically have to pass and store them into each one of them. Are there any good strategies to handle this sort of (growing) complexity? Talking generally for situations where I have to pass many references around that are not directly related, but could theoretically be grouped...

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Ok, so a more generic version of the question: what is the best way to share the data between different classes that are completely un-related?

If the classes share data, they are actually related.

Generally, the proper way to share data is figuring out which object should be the "owner" (maybe a third class, and maybe created for this purpose) and arrange for the dependent classes or methods to have a reference to the appropriate object, maybe with the help of other classes.

For example: a wargame or the like, with many little Units which move independently and need information about other Units in the current game state when they choose an action, can have a sophisticated Map data structure which owns all Unit instances, offers queries to get sets of Units by location, type, status etc., and gets passed to the "ai update" method of each Unit instance.

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Especially for my game states, since every game state might create another game state that needs some other of those "managers", I basically have to pass and store them into each one of them. Are there any good strategies to handle this sort of (growing) complexity? Talking generally for situations where I have to pass many references around that are not directly related, but could theoretically be grouped...

What Hodgman said is a good strategy if you have that many references. Personally I try to look at the rough "tree" structure of my dependancy passing and try to "bundle" references in higher constructs. E.g. If I have some general manager classes like rendering I declare them as member variables of my top level engine class that maintains the game loop, then pass them down to the game states in a big bunch.

The game states are kind of the "higher level" constructs so if a smaller thing like an NPC or something needs access to only a few of the managers(maybe rendering, audio or something) then they have an easy to location to grab them from. I try to make use of owning objects to hold references, I.e. a map can hold a lot of references and then when units are created it may only pass a few references to them. Usually as you move farther down the tree you'll find yourself passing less dependencies, so the context structure might not be as needed.

It seems kind of messy at first but I try to keep the thought process behind it at "if something that belongs to a larger class needs a dependency then surely that parent class would want the references to give to it's 'children.'" So passing a bunch of things like rendering and sound to a game state seems more sensible in that context.

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The 'context pattern' is often used to address this. If all of your game states requires that long list of arguments, then you can put them into a context structure:

Ah yeah, that seems to be just what I'm look for, sweet. So simple, and still making code much simpler. At least for the top level gamestates, I definately need to pass all those around. Would it be bad if I passed those context structs on to objects that didn't need all of those classes, for example only the entity and message, but not the system manager? I don't see any unnecessary dependency created through that, and since I'm using forward declaration compile times shouldn't suffer from that to much, too. But I'd gladely hear a second opinion, what do you say?

What Hodgman said is a good strategy if you have that many references. Personally I try to look at the rough "tree" structure of my dependancy passing and try to "bundle" references in higher constructs. E.g. If I have some general manager classes like rendering I declare them as member variables of my top level engine class that maintains the game loop, then pass them down to the game states in a big bunch.

That sounds quite familiar, I also store all that managers and resource modules in the top-level engine class. But still, passing directly is getting quite anoxious, if I have to pass 8-9 different references around,  which is hardly avoidable, since everything bundles in my game state classes. I'm using the MVC-pattern to handle things from there on, but the game state initializes those other classes, so it needs to have everything that any entity system, high-level graphics handler etc.. might need.

The game states are kind of the "higher level" constructs so if a smaller thing like an NPC or something needs access to only a few of the managers(maybe rendering, audio or something) then they have an easy to location to grab them from. I try to make use of owning objects to hold references, I.e. a map can hold a lot of references and then when units are created it may only pass a few references to them. Usually as you move farther down the tree you'll find yourself passing less dependencies, so the context structure might not be as needed.

Yeah, thats for sure, the further down I go, the less things I have to pass around. Still, seing things as in the "context structure", I notice a lot of classes that might be grouped together because they really are passed on together a whole lot. I a classes needs only one of them, I can still pass only that one it needs, though.

It seems kind of messy at first but I try to keep the thought process behind it at "if something that belongs to a larger class needs a dependency then surely that parent class would want the references to give to it's 'children.'" So passing a bunch of things like rendering and sound to a game state seems more sensible in that context.

Didn't even have audio, physics, ai etc.. implemente yet and already I'm passing a train wreak of classes to the game states :/ You are right that context structures aren't totally needed, but still, thinking about extending the game/engine and probably starting a new game from the same code base after I've finished this, I feel like giving context structures a try. I can revert it easily anyway, if it for some reason becomes unnecessary or adds some sort of complexity that outnumbers the hundered references I'd have to pass anyway^^

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2. If you are the only coder on the project, do not over-engineer for the sake of some higher principle / book / pattern / <insert random bullsh*t reason>. Refactor, so that you, as a coder, have to spend minimum (preferably zero) time on that class you wrote 18 months ago.

3. Prefer "Ugly" code [that works] to a "Beautiful" code that hides/obfuscates dependencies [and suddenly stops working].

There's a reason that good programmers advocate the use of 'best practices', it's because worse practices cause actual, real life problems. KISS, and YAGNI matter of course, but "just slap it together" cannot be universally employed to produce quality software. Refactoring is important, but cannot be your only route to good design.

There needs to be a balance, and doing some simple things like not using singletons in your design will make the code significantly better and save you time - regardless of how many developers are on the project.

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There's a reason that good programmers advocate the use of 'best practices', it's because worse practices cause actual, real life problems. KISS, and YAGNI matter of course, but "just slap it together" cannot be universally employed to produce quality software. Refactoring is important, but cannot be your only route to good design.

There needs to be a balance, and doing some simple things like not using singletons in your design will make the code significantly better and save you time - regardless of how many developers are on the project.

Second that! Up until before a couple of months, I've been used to writing code that just fulfilled on purpose - to work. The outcome was obvious: Most of the time the code didn't work, and it mosten ended at the point where it was too complicated even for myself to work with, even without a break of a few months. The only means of refactoring would have been to rewrite everything from scrath. Since I'm actually caring about "good design", and am not even afraid of a little over-engeneering, things are working out way way better for me. Its really better to simpliefy utterly sofisticated code if it turns out too complicated, than to improve horribly bad code because it turned out too unflexible and restricting to work with.

Edited by Juliean

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2. If you are the only coder on the project, do not over-engineer for the sake of some higher principle / book / pattern / <insert random bullsh*t reason>. Refactor, so that you, as a coder, have to spend minimum (preferably zero) time on that class you wrote 18 months ago.

3. Prefer "Ugly" code [that works] to a "Beautiful" code that hides/obfuscates dependencies [and suddenly stops working].

There's a reason that good programmers advocate the use of 'best practices', it's because worse practices cause actual, real life problems. KISS, and YAGNI matter of course, but "just slap it together" cannot be universally employed to produce quality software. Refactoring is important, but cannot be your only route to good design.

There needs to be a balance, and doing some simple things like not using singletons in your design will make the code significantly better and save you time - regardless of how many developers are on the project.

Yes, best practices become best practices for a reason.  I don't think that's the point VladR was trying to make though.  I think his point was that you should use the best practices that are appropriate for your code and that are appropriate for solving the problem you're trying to solve.  If you're going through a design patterns book and thinking "OH GOD I'm not using the Abstract Functional Delegator Aggregate Factory pattern anywhere in my code, I must find a place to use it" you're doing it wrong.

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Yes, best practices become best practices for a reason.  I don't think that's the point VladR was trying to make though.  I think his point was that you should use the best practices that are appropriate for your code and that are appropriate for solving the problem you're trying to solve.  If you're going through a design patterns book and thinking "OH GOD I'm not using the Abstract Functional Delegator Aggregate Factory pattern anywhere in my code, I must find a place to use it" you're doing it wrong.

I would agree with this pretty much.

To me the trick is to balance trying to make simple improvements and trying new ideas with getting your finished product done. While learning especially(e.g. making a bunch of games or something to build skills) it's important to set yourself a goal you think you can manage, and try and think up a quick way to get the parts together. But once you start working on it and see areas where you can bundle code together or use a design pattern to help you, it's worth trying it and reading up on the subject.

Personally I would say I almost always learn the most by trying something and failing, then refactoring it until it works. That gives you insight on both ways to tackle a problem and the pros and cons of the solutions you try.

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+1 for refactoring, it is a little dishearthening to know you are writing code you know you are probably gonna refactor soon but it's impossible to get it right on the first attempt. Gets your brain working though and that's important, I do it all the time in my hobby projects. It is also pleasing mentally to clean up old code. There's a good book called "The pragmatic programmer" (http://www.amazon.com/Pragmatic-Programmer-Journeyman-Master/dp/020161622X) I highly recommend.

A little bit harder to convince people at work, especially non-programmers, the value of spending some time and go back refactoring old code instead of adding new features though...

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I USED TO use a lot of global variables and singletons in my code until I started expanding my functionality and noticed that many things that I thought that I had only needed one of, I actually needed more. Even some "managers" and "systems" worked better and was more intuitive with more than one instance. Sometimes this was because of resource or system lifetimes and some other reasons that I can't think of. (I'm typing this on my phone while eating dinner. ) I found that passing references to managers and factories, as well as having some resources keep a pointer to their managers made things much nicer. Globals and singletons looked nice at first but in the end it made things more difficult. Later when I'm on my computer, I may post some examples. (If I remember)

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One of the clever, but more contraversial alternatives I've found for sharing data between classes is to use inheritance/static fields. Let's say you're programming a 3D editor of some sort, and a list of vertexes in your model has to be shared between many classes. The options in this thread include simply passing the list as a parameter, setting up a singleton, or setting up a container class that gets passed at runtime.

With my inheritance method, you set up an abstract class that contains protected static fields for shared information - such as the list of vertexes that has to be shared. Any class that needs access to those vertexes would inherit the abstract class.

This can be extended into a tree of inheritance to allow different child classes to have different read/write permissions on the abstract class' fields, but I would restrain myself from doing this too much at risk of ending up with 3-4 depth inheritance trees.

The most significant issue with this model is that without the proper visualization tools, maintaining code that runs under this system can be very complicated, especially if you have poor docs.  In addition, if someone else was to read your code without knowing what you're doing - it's likely they would get very confused very fast. If you use this system extensively, I suggest writing an addon/macro for your development environment that lets you inspect what kind of inherited fields each class has without actually opening up the abstract class.

Edited by zalzane

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One of the clever, but more contraversial alternatives I've found for sharing data between classes is to use inheritance/static fields. Let's say you're programming a 3D editor of some sort, and a list of vertexes in your model has to be shared between many classes. The options in this thread include simply passing the list as a parameter, setting up a singleton, or setting up a container class that gets passed at runtime.

With my inheritance method, you set up an abstract class that contains protected static fields for shared information - such as the list of vertexes that has to be shared. Any class that needs access to those vertexes would inherit the abstract class.

This can be extended into a tree of inheritance to allow different child classes to have different read/write permissions on the abstract class' fields, but I would restrain myself from doing this too much at risk of ending up with 3-4 depth inheritance trees.

The most significant issue with this model is that without the proper visualization tools, maintaining code that runs under this system can be very complicated, especially if you have poor docs.  In addition, if someone else was to read your code without knowing what you're doing - it's likely they would get very confused very fast. If you use this system extensively, I suggest writing an addon/macro for your development environment that lets you inspect what kind of inherited fields each class has without actually opening up the abstract class.

I'd really recommend against doing that.

You're abusing all kinds of mechanisms there.

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I USED TO use a lot of global variables and singletons in my code until I started expanding my functionality and noticed that many things that I thought that I had only needed on of, I actually needed more. Even some "managers" and "systems" worked better and was more intuitive with more than one instance. Sometimes this was because of resource or system lifetimes and some other reasons that I can't think of. (I'm typing this on my phone while eating dinner. ) I found that passing references to managers and factories, as well as having some resources keep a pointer to their managers made the could much nicer. Globals and singletons looked nice at first but in the end it made things more difficult. Later when I'm on my computer, I may post some examples. (If I remember)

This, basically.  If you need one of something there's a chance that at some stage you're going to need more than one - even if you think you don't.  Why constrain yourself?  Just make it a regular class now and only instantiate once if one is all you need right now - that way if (when!) the time comes when you need more than one you'll be able to have more than one without major hassle.

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I'd really recommend against doing that.

You're abusing all kinds of mechanisms there.

I'd have to agree here. At the very least you're doing exactly what was pointed out to be a major negative of globals, you don't know what dependencies an object has. Using a base class like that could appear to the child classes to be not much better than a global or a singleton. There's a lot of little problems with it.


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[SOLVED][solved] Laplace transform of 1 (MATLAB)

Alexmahone

Active member
How do I find the Laplace transform of 1 using MATLAB?

>> laplace(1)
gives the error ??? Undefined function or method 'laplace' for input arguments of type 'double'.

Last edited by a moderator:

Alexmahone

Active member
Re: Laplace transform of 1 (MATLAB)

I got it.

>> laplace(sym(1))

dwsmith

Well-known member
Re: Laplace transform of 1 (MATLAB)

How are you marking your threads as solved? When I go to thread tools, I don't have that option.

Alexmahone

Active member
Re: Laplace transform of 1 (MATLAB)

How are you marking your threads as solved? When I go to thread tools, I don't have that option.
I didn't; I suppose a mod did it.

dwsmith

Well-known member
Re: Laplace transform of 1 (MATLAB)

I didn't; I suppose a mod did it.
Ok.

CaptainBlack

Well-known member
Re: Laplace transform of 1 (MATLAB)

I didn't; I suppose a mod did it.
That would be me.

CB

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# Formalisation and Analysis of Component Dependencies

 Title: Formalisation and Analysis of Component Dependencies Author: Maria Spichkova (maria /dot/ spichkova /at/ rmit /dot/ edu /dot/ au) Submission date: 2014-04-28 Abstract: This set of theories presents a formalisation in Isabelle/HOL of data dependencies between components. The approach allows to analyse system structure oriented towards efficient checking of system: it aims at elaborating for a concrete system, which parts of the system are necessary to check a given property. BibTeX: @article{ComponentDependencies-AFP, author = {Maria Spichkova}, title = {Formalisation and Analysis of Component Dependencies}, journal = {Archive of Formal Proofs}, month = apr, year = 2014, note = {\url{https://isa-afp.org/entries/ComponentDependencies.html}, Formal proof development}, ISSN = {2150-914x}, } License: BSD License


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# Math Help - Calculating Margin of Error Probability

1. ## Calculating Margin of Error Probability

Here is the question:

The monthly expenditures on food by single adults in Missoula are normally distributed with a mean of $410 and a SD of$70. What is the probability that the margin of error made in estimating the mean monthly expenditure of all single adults in that city by the mean of a random sample of 90 such adults will be at most $10? What I did: I tried using this equation, E=Z(a/2)SD/SQRT(N) => and get Z(a/2)=1.3553 which gives me a 91.15%. This seems really high though and I'm not sure what to do from here. Thanks! 2. Originally Posted by crabchef Here is the question: The monthly expenditures on food by single adults in Missoula are normally distributed with a mean of$410 and a SD of $70. What is the probability that the margin of error made in estimating the mean monthly expenditure of all single adults in that city by the mean of a random sample of 90 such adults will be at most$10?

What I did:

I tried using this equation, E=Z(a/2)SD/SQRT(N) => and get Z(a/2)=1.3553 which gives me a 91.15%. This seems really high though and I'm not sure what to do from here.

Thanks!
Solve $z_{\alpha/2} \frac{70}{\sqrt{90}} = 10$ for $z_{\alpha/2}$ (since it's two-sided) and hence for $\alpha$:

$z_{\alpha/2} = 1.3553 \Rightarrow \alpha = 2 (0.087667) = 0.18$.

So the required probability is $1 - \alpha = 0.82$.