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• Mathematics - Why is Differential Calculus (MVP) in PHP a tabu?

  - by Email

  Hi I want to do a Mean-Variance-Optimization (Markowitz) but i never found anything written in php that does this. MVP needs differential calculus. Can it be done in php and why arent there any classes/works from universities? For a webapplication (regarding performance) would another language be the better choice to handle heavy calculations? Thanks so much for any help/answer on this

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• How Microsoft listens

  - by Stacy Vicknair

  This being my freshman year as an MVP, I had a realization that I perhaps should be embarrassed hasn’t happened sooner. The realization comes much like the iconic M&Ms commercial where the M&Ms run into Santa and exclaim, “He does exist!” My personal realization arguably has a greater implication: Microsoft does listen. This is the most important lesson that I received this year attending the MVP Summit. My hope is that I can convince you that we are empowered to make a difference. Instead of using “Man I hate how this works / doesn’t work!” as cooler conversation, we can use it as true interaction with Microsoft. We as customers to Microsoft need to stop asking the question “Will this work for me?” and instead ask “How can this work for me?” There are three quick resources that the average developer has access to today that they can use to be heard by the product teams, and by no means should you think twice if you have a concern that you’d like a real response on. MVPs MVPs are members of your community who have a deep relationship with Microsoft and will have connections to their associated product group. Don’t think of them as just a resource for answers, but also as your ambassador for getting your experiences heard. You can find your local MVPs by browsing the directory at: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/communities/mvp.aspx Evangelists Evangelists are employees of Microsoft who work to foster and grow communities in their assigned region. They are first-class citizens of Microsoft and are often deeply involved with the product groups. As a result, they will be more than glad to direct your questions or concerns to those who can answer them most expertly. With that said, evangelists are also very busy people (who do amazing things for the community) and might not be able to get you that conversation as quickly as a local MVP. You can find your local evangelist at the following website: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/bb905078.aspx Microsoft Connect This is one of the resources that I haven’t used enough, but it cannot be understated. Connect is the starting point of the social conversation that happens between Microsoft and the community daily. Connect acts as a portal where you can provide new feedback as well as comment and rate the feedback provided by others. Power is in numbers when it comes to Connect, so the exposure that your feedback can get not only lets you know that you aren’t the only one who wants change, but also lets Microsoft know the same. https://connect.microsoft.com   Technorati Tags: Microsoft,MVP,Feedback,Connect

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• TechEd Israel 2010 may only accept speakers from sponsors

  - by RoyOsherove

  A month or so ago, Microsoft Israel started sending out emails to its partners and registered event users to “Save the date!” – Micraoft Teched Israel is coming, and it’s going to be this november! “Great news” I thought to myself. I’d been to a couple of the MS teched events, as a speaker and as an attendee, and it was lovely and professionally done. Israel is an amazing place for technology and development and TechEd hosted some big names in the world of MS software. A couple of weeks ago, I was shocked to hear from a couple of people that Microsoft Israel plans to only accept non-MS teched speakers, only from sponsors of the event. That means that according to the amount that you have paid, you get to insert one or more of your own selected speakers as part of teched. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks trying to gather more evidence of this, and have gotten some input from within MS about this information. It looks like that is indeed the case, though no MS rep. was prepared to answer any email I had publicly. If they approach me now I’d be happy to print their response. What does this mean? If this is true, it means that Microsoft Israel is making a grave mistake – They are diluting the quality of the speakers for pure money factors. That means, that as a teched attendee, who paid good money, you might be sitting down to watch nothing more that a bunch of infomercials, or sub-standard speakers – since speakers are no longer selected on quality or interest in their topic. They are turning the conference from a learning event to a commercial driven event They are closing off the stage to the community of speakers who may not be associated with any organization  willing to be a sponsor They are losing speakers (such as myself) who will not want to be part of such an event. (yes – even if my company ends up sponsoring the event, I will not take part in it, Sorry Eli!) They are saying “F&$K you” to the community of MVPs who should be the people to be approached first about technical talks (my guess is many MVPs wouldn’t want to talk at an event driven that way anyway ) I do hope this ends up not being true, but it looks like it is. MS Israel had already done such a thing with the Developer Days event previouly held in Israel – only sponsors were allowed to insert speakers into the event. If this turns out to be true I would urge the MS community in Israel to NOT TAKE PART AT THIS EVENT in any form (attendee, speaker, sponsor or otherwise). by taking part, you will be telling MS Israel it’s OK to piss all over the community that they are quietly suffocating anyway. The MVP case MS Israel has managed to screw the MVP program as well. MS MVPs (I’m one) have had a tough time here in Israel the past couple of years. ever since yosi taguri left the blue badge ranks, there was not real community leader left. Whoever runs things right now has their eyes and minds set elsewhere, with the software MVP community far from mind and heart. No special MVP events (except a couple of small ones this year). No real MVP leadership happens here, with the MVP MEA lead (Ruari) being on a remote line, is not really what’s needed. “MVP? What’s that?” I’m sure many MS Israel employees would say. Exactly my point. Last word I’ve been disappointed by the MS machine for a while now, but their slowness to realize what real community means in the past couple of years really turns me off. Maybe it’s time to move on. Maybe I shouldn’t be chasing people at MS Israel begging for a room to host the Agile Israel user group. Maybe it’s time to say a big bye bye and start looking at a life a bit more disconnected.

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• XHTML fix solution republished

  - by TATWORTH

  As a post VS2010 SP1 installation activity, I am recompiling all my open source projects. The first is XHTMLFIX at http://xhtmlfix.codeplex.com/ This LGPL project has simple fixes to ASP.NET 2.0/4.0 to achieve XHTML compliance as measured by the W3C tests at http://validator.w3.org/ The XHTML project shows as untrue the commonly held belief that MVP or MVC are necessary for producing XHTML compliant web pages. Incidentally the other supposed advantage of MVP and MVC over web forms of easier testing is also very dubious as web forms can be tested by systems such as Selenium or WaTiN. I have used NUnitASP (alas sadly discontinued) with web forms and found it be more effective than unit testing MVP. Now if you prefer the MVP and / or MVC approach over Web forms then fine, that is your preferance. Now if you can find an example where ASP.NET 4.0 Web forms properly written do not produce XHTML compliant markup, I would be glad of your example and will look at ways of modifying the markup to be XHTML compliant.

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• Pixel Shader Issues :

  - by Morphex

  I have issues with a pixel shader, my issue is mostly that I get nothing draw on the screen. float4x4 MVP; // TODO: add effect parameters here. struct VertexShaderInput { float4 Position : POSITION; float4 normal : NORMAL; float2 TEXCOORD : TEXCOORD; }; struct VertexShaderOutput { float4 Position : POSITION; }; VertexShaderOutput VertexShaderFunction(VertexShaderInput input) { input.Position.w = 0; VertexShaderOutput output; output.Position = mul(input.Position, MVP); // TODO: add your vertex shader code here. return output; } float4 PixelShaderFunction(VertexShaderOutput input) : SV_TARGET { return float4(1, 0, 0, 1); } technique { pass { Profile = 11.0; VertexShader = VertexShaderFunction; PixelShader = PixelShaderFunction; } } My matrix is calculated like this : Matrix MVP = Matrix.Multiply(Matrix.Multiply(Matrix.Identity, Matrix.LookAtLH(new Vector3(-10, 10, -10), new Vector3(0), new Vector3(0, 1, -0))), Camera.Projection); VoxelEffect.Parameters["MVP"].SetValue(MVP); Visual Studio Graphics Debug shows me that my vertex shader is actually working, but not the PixelShader. I striped the Shader to the bare minimums so that I was sure the shader was correct. But why is my screen still black?

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• Perspective Is Everything

  - by juanlarios

  Sitting on a window seat on my way back from Seattle I looked out the window and saw the large body of water. I was reminded of childhood memories of running as hard as I could through burning hot sand with the anticipation of the splash of the ocean. Looking out the window the water appeared like a sheet draped over land. I couldn’t help but ponder how perspective changes everything.  Over the last several days I had a chance to attend the MVP Summit in Redmond. I had a great time with fellow MVP’s and the SharePoint Product Group. Although I can’t say much about what was discussed and what is coming in the future, I want to share some realizations I had while experiencing the MVP summit.  The SharePoint Product is ever-improving, full of innovation but also a reactionary embodiment of MVP, client and market feedback. There are several features that come to mind that clients complain about where I have felt helpless in informing them that the features are not as mature as they would like it. Together, we figure out a way to make it work and deal with the limitations. It became clear that there are features that have taken a different purpose in the market place from the original vision. The SP Product group is working hard to react to these changes in vision and make SharePoint better for real life implementations.  It is easy to think that SharePoint should be all things to all people. In reality there are products that are very detailed in specific composites, they do this one thing well but severely lack in other areas.  Its easy sometimes to say, “What was Microsoft thinking with this feature?” the Product group is doing all they can to make the moving pieces better and dealing with challenges with having all of them work together.  Sometimes the features don’t fully embody the vision because of the many challenges, but trust me when I say the product group is really focused on delivery and innovation.  As I was speaking with a fellow MVP throughout the session, we spoke about the iPad 2(ironically announced this past week during the MVP summit) and Microsoft’s possible product answer; I realized the days of reactionary products from MS is over. There are many users that will remember Vista and the painful execution in that product, but there has been a lot of success in Windows 7. There was no rush for a reactionary answer to the Nintendo Wii, as a result a ground breaking and game changing product was brought to market, the XBOX –Kinect! I can’t say much here, but it’s safe to say, expect innovation, and execution of products and technology that will change the market instead of react to them!       There are many things I learned and I would love to share that have to do with perspective, technology, etc… but this is far as I can go in details. This might not be new to you or specifically the message that was shared during the summit. These are just my impressions of the event and the spirit of future vision. Great things ahead!

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• Spring Speaking Rollup 2010: Recent Talks and Upcoming Talks at Microsoft WebCamps

  - by Latest Microsoft Blogs

  I've been travelling some, and I have a few more trips at Microsoft WebCamps before I take a much needed break and stop travelling until 2011. I went to Munich, Cairo, and Egypt a few weeks back and presented on ASP.NET MVC (both Beginner and Advanced Read More......(read more)

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• Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional

  - by Robz / Fervent Coder

  Recently I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Visual C#. For those that don’t know it’s an annual award based on nominations from peers and Microsoft. Although there are just over 4,000 MVPs worldwide from all kinds of specializations, there are less than 100 C# MVPs in the US. There is more information at the site: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively share their high quality, real world expertise with users and Microsoft. With fewer than 5,000 awardees worldwide, Microsoft MVPs represent a highly select group of experts. MVPs share a deep commitment to community and a willingness to help others. To recognize the contributions they make, MVPs from around the world have the opportunity to meet Microsoft executives, network with peers, and position themselves as technical community leaders. Here is my profile: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com/default.aspx/profile/rob.reynolds I want to thank those that nominated me, without nominations this would never have happened. Thanks to Microsoft for liking me and finding my achievements and contributions to the community to be worth something. It’s good to know when you put in a lot of hard work that you get rewarded! I also want to thank many of the people I have worked with over the last 7 years. You guys have been great and I’m definitely standing on the shoulders of giants! Thanks to KDOT for giving me that first shot into professional programming and the experience and all of the training! A special thanks to @drusellers for kick starting me when I went stale in my learning back in 2007 and for always pushing me and bouncing ideas off of me. Without you I don’t think I would have made it this far. Thanks Alt.NET for keeping it fresh and funky! A very special thank you goes out to my wife for supporting me and locking me in the basement to work on all of my initiatives!

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• Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension is localized and introduced to Japan

  - by Jialiang

  http://blogs.msdn.com/b/codefx/archive/2012/10/14/sample-browser-visual-studio-extension-is-localized-and-introduced-to-japan.aspx  ??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????From: Japan MVP   "The Sample Browser is very easy to use thanks to the refined interface.  The categorized menu enables faster search. Highly acclaimed.  But it need localization. It may not be a problem for those who can understand English, but I think localizing Sample Browser into Japanese will promote its use in Japan further." This is a prominent feedback collected from the Japan MVP community since we released the last version of Sample Browser, which was only available in English.  Japan developers like the Sample Browser, but they want localized code samples, localized Sample Browser UI, and the localized search experience.  The Japan MVP lead, Satoru Kitabata, observed these needs and expectations.  He started to engage with all local developer MVPs to translate the UI elements in the Sample Browser.  Lots of MVPs signed up to participate in this work.  They had roundtables and newsletters to track the progress.  In short three weeks, every control, every tooltip, every font on every label, was beautifully tuned for Japanese.  The sample search experience was also optimized for Japan developers - they can directly type Japanese query to search for code samples.  Together with Microsoft Japan MVPs, the sample use experience is localized and improved to a new level!    The Japan MVP Lead, Satoru Kitabata, further worked with MSDN Japan site manager and Japan DPE to introduce the good news of localized Sample Browser to Japan Sample Browser  http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/jj730399 Sample Browser?????? http://msdn.microsoft.com/ja-jp/jj730398     Thanks to the joint effort and Japan MVPs’ feedback and contributions, the Sample Browser gets the chance to benefit the broader Japan developer audience.

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• How are bullets simulated in video games?

  - by mahen23

  I have been playing games like MW2 recently and, as a programmer, I tend to ask myself how do they make the game so immersive. For example, how to they simulate bullet speed. When an NPC fires a bullet from his gun, does the bullet really travel from his gun to the given target or do they they completely ignore this part and just put a bullet hole on the target? If the bullet is really travelling from the gun to the target, at what speed is it actually travelling?

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• Orlando .NET Code Camp 2012 - total success..

  - by mrad

  Their site is www.orlandocodecamp.comThis year's camp was held at Seminole State College.It was well worth it.. Took a chance at going.. by getting up at 5am and driving from Jax to Sanford for 2+hr..Run into some old friends and bunch of new ones. Coders are not really good at networking.. but they sure did show up.. attendance was solid 500+ geeks and some sessions were standing room only. MVP John Papa had the room packed out on his every session. Really enjoyed great and inspiring WP7 presentations by MVP Atley Hunter from Canada.. And of course the MVP legend Joe Healy was everywhere encouraging and promoting cool stuff, hopefully we'll get him back to present at JaxDUG and/or bring back Microsoft workshops to Jax area.

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• Microsoft C# Most Valuable Professional

  Recently I was awarded the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) for Visual C#. For those that dont know its an annual award based on nominations from peers and Microsoft. Although there are just over 4,000 MVPs worldwide from all kinds of specializations, there are less than 100 C# MVPs in the US. There is more information at the site: https://mvp.support.microsoft.com The Microsoft MVP Award is an annual award that recognizes exceptional technology community leaders worldwide who actively...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Basic procedural generated content works, but how could I do the same in reverse?

  - by andrew

  My 2D world is made up of blocks. At the moment, I create a block and assign it a number between 1 and 4. The number assigned to the nth block is always the same (i.e if the player walks backwards or restarts the game.) and is generated in the function below. As shown here by this animation, the colours represent the number. function generate_data(n) math.randomseed(n) -- resets the random so that the 'random' number for n is always the same math.random() -- fixes lua random bug local no = math.random(4) --print(no, n) return no end Now I want to limit the next block's number - a block of 1 will always have a block 2 after it, while block 2 will either have a block 1,2 or 3 after it, etc. Before, all the blocks data was randomly generated, initially, and then saved. This data was then loaded and used instead of being randomly called. While working this way, I could specify what the next block would be easily and it would be saved for consistency. I have now removed this saving/loading in favour of procedural generation as I realised that save whiles would get very big after travelling. Back to the present. While travelling forward (to the right), it is easy to limit what the next blocks number will be. I can generate it at the same time as the other data. The problem is when travelling backwards (to the left) I can not think of a way to load the previous block so that it is always the same. Does anyone have any ideas on how I could sort this out?

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• Explained: EF 6 and “Could not determine storage version; a valid storage connection or a version hint is required.”

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  I have a legacy ASP.NET 3.5 web site that I’ve upgraded to a .NET 4 web application. At the same time, I upgraded to Entity Framework 6. Suddenly one of the pages returned the following error: [ArgumentException: Could not determine storage version; a valid storage connection or a version hint is required.]    System.Data.SqlClient.SqlVersionUtils.GetSqlVersion(String versionHint) +11372412    System.Data.SqlClient.SqlProviderServices.GetDbProviderManifest(String versionHint) +91    System.Data.Common.DbProviderServices.GetProviderManifest(String manifestToken) +92 [ProviderIncompatibleException: The provider did not return a ProviderManifest instance.]    System.Data.Common.DbProviderServices.GetProviderManifest(String manifestToken) +11431433    System.Data.Metadata.Edm.Loader.InitializeProviderManifest(Action`3 addError) +11370982    System.Data.EntityModel.SchemaObjectModel.Schema.HandleAttribute(XmlReader reader) +216 A search of the error message didn’t turn up anything helpful except that someone mentioned that the error messages was bogus in his case. The page in question uses the ASP.NET EntityDataSource control, consumed by a Telerik RadGrid. This is a fabulous combination for putting a huge amount of functionality on a page in a very short time. Unfortunately, the 6.0.1 release of EF6 doesn’t support EntityDataSource. According to the people in charge, support is planned but there’s no timeline for an EntityDataSource build that works with EF6.  I’m not sure what to do in the meantime. Should I back out EF6 or manually wire up the RadGrid? The upshot is that you might want to rethink plans to upgrade to Entity Framework 6 for Web forms projects if they rely on that handy control. It might also help to spend a User voice vote here:  http://data.uservoice.com/forums/72025-entity-framework-feature-suggestions/suggestions/3702890-support-for-asp-net-entitydatasource-and-dynamicda

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• Fix: Orchard Error ‘The controller for path '/OrchardLocal/' was not found or does not implement IController.

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  Suddenly, in a local Orchard 1.6 project, I started getting this error in ShellRoute.cs: The controller for path '/OrchardLocal/' was not found or does not implement IController. Obviously I had changed something, but the error wasn’t helping much.  After losing far too much time, I copied over the original Orchard source code and was back in business. Shortly thereafter, I further flattened my forehead by applying a sudden, solid blow with the lower portion of my palm! You see, in testing the importing of comments via blogML, I had set the added blog as the Orchard site’s Start page. Then, I deleted the blog so I could test another import batch. The upshot was that by deleting the blog, Orchard no longer had a default (home) page at the root of the site. The site’s default content was missing. The fix was to go to the Admin subdirectory (http://localhost:30320/OrchardLocal/admin) . add a new page, and check Set as homepage. Once again, the problem was between the keyboard and the chair. I hope this helps someone else. Ken

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• Fix: Windows Live Mail Error ID 0x8004108D

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  Over the last few days Windows Live Mail stopped fetching my Hotmail. I assumed it was a problem with Microsoft’s NNTP Web service, so I went back to using the browser to check my Hotmail. Well, it didn’t right itself, so I started probing and discovered the fix… no default connection. To repair it: From the Tools menu, click Accounts. On the Accounts screen select Hotmail and then click Properties. On the Connection tab select Local Area Network and check the Always Connect to This Account Using...(read more)

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• Display ‘–Select–’ in an ASP.NET DropDownList

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  A purchaser of my book writes: “I would like a drop down list to display the text: "-Select-" initially instead of the first value of the data it is bound to.” Here you go…   <%@ Page Language="VB" %> <script runat="server">     Protected Sub Page_Load(ByVal sender As Object, _                            ...(read more)

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• Help A Hacker: Give ‘Em The Windows Source Code

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  The announcement of another Windows megapatch reminded me of a WikiLeaks story about Microsoft Windows that hasn’t attracted much attention. Alarmingly, we learn that the hackers have the Windows source code to study and test for vulnerabilities. Chinese hackers used the knowledge to breach Google’s accounts and servers: “In 2003, the CNITSEC signed a Government Security Program (GSP) international agreement with Microsoft that allowed select companies such as TOPSEC access to Microsoft source code in order to secure the Windows platform” “CNITSEC enterprises has recruited Chinese hackers in support of nationally-funded "network attack scientific research projects." From June 2002 to March 2003, TOPSEC employed a known Chinese hacker, Lin Yong (a.k.a. Lion and owner of the Honker Union of China), as senior security service engineer…” Windows is widely seen as unsecurable. It doesn’t help that Chinese government-funded hackers are probing the source code for vulnerabilities. It seems odd that people who didn’t write the code can find vulnerabilities faster than the owners of the code. Perhaps the U.S. government should hire its own hackers to go over the same Windows source code and then tell Microsoft how to secure its product?

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• ASP.NET and Visual Studio 2010 – Service Pack 1

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  Want to have a say in what goes into the ASP.NET bits of service pack 1 for VS 2010? Well, spend a few minutes filling out the online survey posted by the ASP.NET team: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/MLCDPN7 If your most urgent fix doesn’t make it into service pack 1, it might be because you didn’t speak up and provide details at the right time – like now!   Ken...(read more)

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• Cloud Based Load Testing Using TF Service &amp; VS 2013

  - by Tarun Arora [Microsoft MVP]

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/06/30/cloud-based-load-testing-using-tf-service-amp-vs-2013.aspx One of the new features announced as part of the Visual Studio 2013 Ultimate Preview is ‘Cloud Based Load Testing’. In this blog post I’ll walk you through, What is Cloud Based Load Testing? How have I been using this feature? – Success story! Where can you find more resources on this feature? What is Cloud Based Load Testing? It goes without saying that performance testing your application not only gives you the confidence that the application will work under heavy levels of stress but also gives you the ability to test how scalable the architecture of your application is. It is important to know how much is too much for your application! Working with various clients in the industry I have realized that the biggest barriers in Load Testing & Performance Testing adoption are, High infrastructure and administration cost that comes with this phase of testing Time taken to procure & set up the test infrastructure Finding use for this infrastructure investment after completion of testing Is cloud the answer? 100% Visual Studio Compatible Scalable and Realistic Start testing in < 2 minutes Intuitive Pay only for what you need Use existing on premise tests on cloud There are a lot of vendors out there offering Cloud Based Load Testing, to name a few, Load Storm Soasta Blaze Meter Blitz And others… The question you may want to ask is, why should you go with Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test offering. If you are a Microsoft shop or already have investments in Microsoft technologies, you’ll see great benefit in the natural integration this offers with existing Microsoft products such as Visual Studio and Windows Azure. For example, your existing Web tests authored in Visual Studio 2010 or Visual Studio 2012 will run on the cloud without requiring any modifications what so ever. Microsoft’s cloud test rig also supports API based testing, for example, if you are building a WPF application which consumes WCF services, you can write unit tests to invoke the WCF service, these tests can be run on the cloud test rig and loaded with ‘N’ concurrent users for performance testing. If you have your assets already hosted in the Azure and possibly in the same data centre as the Cloud test rig, your Azure app will not incur a usage cost because of the generated traffic since the traffic is coming from the same data centre. The licensing or pricing information on Microsoft’s cloud based Load test service is yet to be announced, but I would expect this to be priced attractively to match the market competition.   The only additional configuration required for running load tests on Microsoft Cloud based Load Tests service is to select the Test run location as Run tests using Visual Studio Team Foundation Service, How have I been using Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test Service? I have been part of the Microsoft Cloud Based Load Test Service advisory council for the last 7 months. This gave the opportunity to see the product shape up from concept to working solution. I was also the first person outside of Microsoft to try this offering out. This gave me the opportunity to test real world application at various clients using the Microsoft Load Test Service and provide real world feedback to the Microsoft product team. One of the most recent systems I tested using the Load Test Service has been an insurance quote generation engine. This insurance quote generation engine is,   hosted in Windows Azure expected to get quote requests from across the globe expected to handle 5 Million quote requests in a day (not clear how this load will be distributed across the day) There was no way, I could simulate such kind of load from on premise without standing up additional hardware. But Microsoft’s Cloud based Load Test service allowed me to test my key performance testing scenarios, i.e. Simulate expected Load, Endurance Testing, Threshold Testing and Testing for Latency. Simulating expected load: approach to devising a load pattern My approach to devising a load test pattern has been to run the test scenario with 1 user to figure out the response time. Then work out how many users are required to reach the target load. So, for example, to invoke 1 quote from the quote engine software takes 0.5 seconds. Now if you do the math,   1 quote request by 1 user = 0.5 seconds   quotes generated by 1 user in 24 hour = 1 * (((2 * 60) * 60) * 24) = 172,800   quotes generated by 30 users in 24 hours = 172,800 * 30 =  5,184,000 This was a very simple example, if your application requires more concurrent users to test scenario’s such as caching, etc then you can devise your own load pattern, some examples of load test patterns can be found here.  Endurance Testing To test for endurance, I loaded the quote generation engine with an expected fixed user load and ran the test for very long duration such as over 48 hours and observed the affect of the long running test on the Azure infrastructure. Currently Microsoft Load Test service does not support metrics from the machine under test. I used Azure diagnostics to begin with, but later started using Cerebrata Azure Diagnostics Manager to capture the metrics of the machine under test. Threshold Testing To figure out how much user load the application could cope with before falling on its belly, I opted to step load the quote generation engine by incrementing user load with different variations of incremental user load per minute till the application crashed out and forced an IIS reset. Testing for Latency Currently the Microsoft Load Test service does not support generating geographically distributed load, I however, deployed the insurance quote generation engine in different Azure data centres and ran the same set of performance tests to measure for latency. Because I could compare load test results from different runs by exporting the results to excel (this feature is provided out of the box right from Visual Studio 2010) I could see the different in response times. More resources on Microsoft Cloud based Load Test Service A few important links to get you started, Download Visual Studio Ultimate 2013 Preview Getting started guide for load testing using Team Foundation Service Troubleshooting guide for FAQs and known issues Team Foundation Service forum for questions and support Detailed demo and presentation (link to Tech-Ed session recording) Detailed demo and presentation (link to Build session recording) There a few limits on the usage of Microsoft Cloud based Load Test service that you can read about here. If you have any feedback on Microsoft Cloud based Load Test service, feel free to share it with the product team via the Visual Studio User Voice forum. I hope you found this useful. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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• EF 4’s PluralizationService Class: A Singularly Impossible Plurality

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  Entity Framework’s new 4.0 designer does its best to generate correct plural and singular forms of object names. This magic is done through the PluralizationService Class found in the System.Data.Entity.Design.PluralizationServices namespace and in the System.Data.Entity.Design.dll assembly. [Before you ask… Yes, I’ll post my example page, the service, and the project source code as soon as my ISP makes ASP.NET 4 RTM available. Stay tuned.] Anyone who speaks English is brutally aware of the ridiculous...(read more)

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• Upgrading VSIX extensions from VS2012 to VS2013

  - by Tarun Arora [Microsoft MVP]

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TarunArora/archive/2013/06/27/upgrading-vsix-extensions-from-vs2012-to-vs2013.aspx  As consumers of your Visual Studio extensions start to move over to VS 2013, you will have to upgrade the Visual Studio extensions you build for Visual Studio 2012 to Visual Studio 2013 and republish to the Visual Studio extension gallery. Failing which, it will not be possible for your consumers to install and use your extensions on Visual Studio 2013.   Objective In this blog post, I’ll show you how simple it is to upgrade your Visual Studio 2012 extension to Visual Studio 2013. There aren’t any reported breaking changes between VS 2012 SDK and VS 2013 SDK, the upgrade usually involves, rebuilding the extension against VS 2013 SDK and updating the vsix manifest file.              Walkthrough Download the Visual Studio 2013 SDK - You will need to download the Visual Studio 2013 SDK in order to open up the Visual Studio extension project in Visual Studio 2013. The SDK can be downloaded from here. Install the SDK before you proceed.                2. Once the VS 2013 SDK has been installed, open up your package project. For the purposes of this blog post, I’ll open up the Avanade Extension – Software Inventory in Visual Studio 2013. You will notice that Visual Studio doesn’t load the project but let’s you know that the project needs to be Migrated.                  3. Right click the project and choose the option ‘Reload Project’ from the Context Menu.                  4. Choosing the Reload Project option brings up an upgrade window, telling you that the upgrade is a one way only upgrade i.e. the project will be changed to work with Visual Studio 2013 and you will not be able to open the project up in Visual Studio 2012. My recommendation would be to create a Visual Studio 2013 branch and upgrading the project in that branch only, so if you need to go back to Visual Studio 2012 project at some point, you have a handy reference in a separate branch.             5. Upon clicking Ok, the project is updated. See below, the following changes are made at the time of upgrade,           - The runtime version is updated in the Resources.Designer.cs file                      - The Minimum version of Visual Studio in the package project file is changed from 11.0 to 12.0                    6. Reference VS 2013 dll’s rather than VS 2012 dll’s. So reference Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.dll and Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Controls.dll from C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v2.0 and C:\Program Files (x86)\Microsoft Visual Studio 12.0\Common7\IDE\ReferenceAssemblies\v4.5. If you have any other API references, then change the references to point to VS 2013 instead of VS 2012.                          7. Rebuild your solution to ensure there are no breaking changes. Success!                8. Update VSIX Manifest file (the file source.extnsion.vsixmanifest contains the meta data for your VSIX).          - Update the Install Targets from 11.0 to 12.0. This basically enforces that the extension can be installed on Visual Studio 2013 version of Visual Studio.                         - Update the Dependencies from Visual Studio MPF 11.0 to Visual Studio MPF 12.0              9. Rebuild the solution and open up the bin folder for the Package project and look for the file *.vsix file [Microsoft Visual Studio Extension].         - This is basically the installer for your extension.                 - Double click the installer to launch the installer wizard. Viola! You can see the package installation wizard opens up and gives you the option to install the extension for Visual Studio 2013.                    - Click Install to Continue                    - Note – If you run into the exception “23/06/2013 10:42:18 - Install Error : Microsoft.VisualStudio.ExtensionManager.InstallByMsiException: The InstalledByMSI element in extension Avanade Extensions cannot be 'true' when installing an extension through the Extensions and Updates Installer.  The element can only be 'true' when an MSI lays down the extension manifest file.” Ensure you have the option “This VSIX is installed by Windows Installer” unchecked in the Install Targets tab.        10. Verifying that the extension has installed correctly.           - Open Extension Manager and verify that the installed extension shows up in the extension manager “list of installed VSIX”.                      11. First Look at the updated Extension                         - The links have now been moved to the context menu, so to see the navigation links, you’ll have to right click on the icon and select the option from the context menu.                                        Note – The Avanade Extension being used in the demo has been developed by Utkarsh and Tarun. The Software Inventory Extension for Visual Studio 2012…  allows you to see the list of Software installed on the hosted build server right from with in Visual Studio,  the extension also allows you to export this list to excel. More details on how this has been implemented can be found here.   I hope you found this useful. In case you have any questions or feedback, feel free to reach out on Visual Studio extensibility MSDN forums or via Microsoft Visual Studio feedback forum. Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Stay tuned!

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• Extracting the Date from a DateTime in Entity Framework 4 and LINQ

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  In my current ASP.NET 4 project, I’m displaying dates in a GridDateTimeColumn of Telerik’s ASP.NET Radgrid control. I don’t care about the time stuff, so my DataFormatString shows only the date bits: <telerik:GridDateTimeColumn FilterControlWidth="100px"   DataField="DateCreated" HeaderText="Created"    SortExpression="DateCreated" ReadOnly="True"    UniqueName="DateCreated" PickerType="DatePicker"    DataFormatString="{0:dd MMM yy}"> My problem was that I couldn’t get the built-in column filtering (it uses Telerik’s DatePicker control) to behave.  The DatePicker assumes that the time is 00:00:00 but the data would have times like 09:22:21. So, when you select a date and apply the EqualTo filter, you get no results. You would get results if all the time portions were 00:00:00. In essence, I wanted my Entity Framework query to give the DatePicker what it wanted… a Date without the Time portion. Fortunately, EF4 provides the TruncateTime  function. After you include Imports System.Data.Objects.EntityFunctions You’ll find that your EF queries will accept the TruncateTime function. Here’s my routine: Protected Sub RadGrid1_NeedDataSource _     (ByVal source As Object, _      ByVal e As Telerik.Web.UI.GridNeedDataSourceEventArgs) _     Handles RadGrid1.NeedDataSource     Dim ent As New OfficeBookDBEntities1     Dim TopBOMs = From t In ent.TopBom, i In ent.Items _                   Where t.BusActivityID = busActivityID _       And i.BusActivityID And t.ItemID = i.RecordID _       Order By t.DateUpdated Descending _       Select New With {.TopBomID = t.TopBomID, .ItemID = t.ItemID, _                        .PartNumber = i.PartNumber, _                        .Description = i.Description, .Notes = t.Notes, _                        .DateCreated = TruncateTime(t.DateCreated), _                        .DateUpdated = TruncateTime(t.DateUpdated)}     RadGrid1.DataSource = TopBOMs End Sub Now when I select March 14, 2011 on the DatePicker, the filter doesn’t stumble on time values that don’t make sense. Full Disclosure: Telerik gives me (and other developer MVPs) free copies of their suite.

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• VSTO is Free But Aspose is Speed

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  I’ve taken over the completion, deployment, and maintenance of an ASP.NET Web site that generates Office documents using VSTO. VSTO’s a decent concept and works fine for small-scale scenarios like a desktop app or small intranet. However, with multiple simultaneous requests via ASP.NET, we found the Web server performance suffered badly. To spread out the server’s workload, I implemented MSMQ task queuing via a WCF Windows service.  That helped a lot. IIS didn’t drag with only one VSTO/Office instance running. But I  still found it taking too long to produce a single report. A nicely formatted VSTO Excel document was taking 45 minutes.  (The client  didn’t know any better and therefore considered 45 minutes tolerable.) On my own time, I pulled out an old copy of Aspose.Total for .NET. Within an hour, I had converted the VSTO Excel C# code to Aspose Cells code. The improvement was astonishing: Instead of the 45-minutes, the report took under a minute! I’ve pasted the client’s exact chat response after he tried the speedy Aspose version: “WWWWWOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!” Microsoft’s VSTO is a free product while the Aspose components cost $$$.  Certainly, it can be a tough call when budgets are tight. If you’re trying to convince the client to shell out for something more suitable for the application, get an eval version of Aspose.Total and offer a direct comparison demo. Ken Full Disclosure: Aspose (like several other component vendors) gives free copies of their suite to MVPs and other .NET influencers.

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• Fix: WCF - The type provided as the Service attribute value in the ServiceHost directive could not

  - by Ken Cox [MVP]

  I wanted to expose some raw data to users in my current ASP.NET 3.5 web site project. I created a subdirectory called ‘datafeeds’ and added a WCF Data Service. I wired the dataservice up to the Entity Framework class and, on running the ItemDataService.svc file, was greeted with: The type  <> provided as the Service attribute value in the ServiceHost directive could not be found So why couldn’t it find the class? It was right there in the… oops! Instead of putting the ItemDataService.vb...(read more)

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