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  • OpenGL 3.x Assimp trouble implementing phong shading (normals?)

    - by Defcronyke
    I'm having trouble getting phong shading to look right. I'm pretty sure there's something wrong with either my OpenGL calls, or the way I'm loading my normals, but I guess it could be something else since 3D graphics and Assimp are both still very new to me. When trying to load .obj/.mtl files, the problems I'm seeing are: The models seem to be lit too intensely (less phong-style and more completely washed out, too bright). Faces that are lit seem to be lit equally all over (with the exception of a specular highlight showing only when the light source position is moved to be practically right on top of the model) Because of problems 1 and 2, spheres look very wrong: picture of sphere And things with larger faces look (less-noticeably) wrong too: picture of cube I could be wrong, but to me this doesn't look like proper phong shading. Here's the code that I think might be relevant (I can post more if necessary): file: assimpRenderer.cpp #include "assimpRenderer.hpp" namespace def { assimpRenderer::assimpRenderer(std::string modelFilename, float modelScale) { initSFML(); initOpenGL(); if (assImport(modelFilename)) // if modelFile loaded successfully { initScene(); mainLoop(modelScale); shutdownScene(); } shutdownOpenGL(); shutdownSFML(); } assimpRenderer::~assimpRenderer() { } void assimpRenderer::initSFML() { windowWidth = 800; windowHeight = 600; settings.majorVersion = 3; settings.minorVersion = 3; app = NULL; shader = NULL; app = new sf::Window(sf::VideoMode(windowWidth,windowHeight,32), "OpenGL 3.x Window", sf::Style::Default, settings); app->setFramerateLimit(240); app->setActive(); return; } void assimpRenderer::shutdownSFML() { delete app; return; } void assimpRenderer::initOpenGL() { GLenum err = glewInit(); if (GLEW_OK != err) { /* Problem: glewInit failed, something is seriously wrong. */ std::cerr << "Error: " << glewGetErrorString(err) << std::endl; } // check the OpenGL context version that's currently in use int glVersion[2] = {-1, -1}; glGetIntegerv(GL_MAJOR_VERSION, &glVersion[0]); // get the OpenGL Major version glGetIntegerv(GL_MINOR_VERSION, &glVersion[1]); // get the OpenGL Minor version std::cout << "Using OpenGL Version: " << glVersion[0] << "." << glVersion[1] << std::endl; return; } void assimpRenderer::shutdownOpenGL() { return; } void assimpRenderer::initScene() { // allocate heap space for VAOs, VBOs, and IBOs vaoID = new GLuint[scene->mNumMeshes]; vboID = new GLuint[scene->mNumMeshes*2]; iboID = new GLuint[scene->mNumMeshes]; glClearColor(0.4f, 0.6f, 0.9f, 0.0f); glEnable(GL_DEPTH_TEST); glDepthFunc(GL_LEQUAL); glEnable(GL_CULL_FACE); shader = new Shader("shader.vert", "shader.frag"); projectionMatrix = glm::perspective(60.0f, (float)windowWidth / (float)windowHeight, 0.1f, 100.0f); rot = 0.0f; rotSpeed = 50.0f; faceIndex = 0; colorArrayA = NULL; colorArrayD = NULL; colorArrayS = NULL; normalArray = NULL; genVAOs(); return; } void assimpRenderer::shutdownScene() { delete [] iboID; delete [] vboID; delete [] vaoID; delete shader; } void assimpRenderer::renderScene(float modelScale) { sf::Time elapsedTime = clock.getElapsedTime(); clock.restart(); if (rot > 360.0f) rot = 0.0f; rot += rotSpeed * elapsedTime.asSeconds(); glClear(GL_COLOR_BUFFER_BIT | GL_DEPTH_BUFFER_BIT | GL_STENCIL_BUFFER_BIT); viewMatrix = glm::translate(glm::mat4(1.0f), glm::vec3(0.0f, -3.0f, -10.0f)); // move back a bit modelMatrix = glm::scale(glm::mat4(1.0f), glm::vec3(modelScale)); // scale model modelMatrix = glm::rotate(modelMatrix, rot, glm::vec3(0, 1, 0)); //modelMatrix = glm::rotate(modelMatrix, 25.0f, glm::vec3(0, 1, 0)); glm::vec3 lightPosition( 0.0f, -100.0f, 0.0f ); float lightPositionArray[3]; lightPositionArray[0] = lightPosition[0]; lightPositionArray[1] = lightPosition[1]; lightPositionArray[2] = lightPosition[2]; shader->bind(); int projectionMatrixLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "projectionMatrix"); int viewMatrixLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "viewMatrix"); int modelMatrixLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "modelMatrix"); int ambientLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "ambientColor"); int diffuseLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "diffuseColor"); int specularLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "specularColor"); int lightPositionLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "lightPosition"); int normalMatrixLocation = glGetUniformLocation(shader->id(), "normalMatrix"); glUniformMatrix4fv(projectionMatrixLocation, 1, GL_FALSE, &projectionMatrix[0][0]); glUniformMatrix4fv(viewMatrixLocation, 1, GL_FALSE, &viewMatrix[0][0]); glUniformMatrix4fv(modelMatrixLocation, 1, GL_FALSE, &modelMatrix[0][0]); glUniform3fv(lightPositionLocation, 1, lightPositionArray); for (unsigned int i = 0; i < scene->mNumMeshes; i++) { colorArrayA = new float[3]; colorArrayD = new float[3]; colorArrayS = new float[3]; material = scene->mMaterials[scene->mNumMaterials-1]; normalArray = new float[scene->mMeshes[i]->mNumVertices * 3]; unsigned int normalIndex = 0; for (unsigned int j = 0; j < scene->mMeshes[i]->mNumVertices * 3; j+=3, normalIndex++) { normalArray[j] = scene->mMeshes[i]->mNormals[normalIndex].x; // x normalArray[j+1] = scene->mMeshes[i]->mNormals[normalIndex].y; // y normalArray[j+2] = scene->mMeshes[i]->mNormals[normalIndex].z; // z } normalIndex = 0; glUniformMatrix3fv(normalMatrixLocation, 1, GL_FALSE, normalArray); aiColor3D ambient(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); material->Get(AI_MATKEY_COLOR_AMBIENT, ambient); aiColor3D diffuse(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); material->Get(AI_MATKEY_COLOR_DIFFUSE, diffuse); aiColor3D specular(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f); material->Get(AI_MATKEY_COLOR_SPECULAR, specular); colorArrayA[0] = ambient.r; colorArrayA[1] = ambient.g; colorArrayA[2] = ambient.b; colorArrayD[0] = diffuse.r; colorArrayD[1] = diffuse.g; colorArrayD[2] = diffuse.b; colorArrayS[0] = specular.r; colorArrayS[1] = specular.g; colorArrayS[2] = specular.b; // bind color for each mesh glUniform3fv(ambientLocation, 1, colorArrayA); glUniform3fv(diffuseLocation, 1, colorArrayD); glUniform3fv(specularLocation, 1, colorArrayS); // render all meshes glBindVertexArray(vaoID[i]); // bind our VAO glDrawElements(GL_TRIANGLES, scene->mMeshes[i]->mNumFaces*3, GL_UNSIGNED_INT, 0); glBindVertexArray(0); // unbind our VAO delete [] normalArray; delete [] colorArrayA; delete [] colorArrayD; delete [] colorArrayS; } shader->unbind(); app->display(); return; } void assimpRenderer::handleEvents() { sf::Event event; while (app->pollEvent(event)) { if (event.type == sf::Event::Closed) { app->close(); } if ((event.type == sf::Event::KeyPressed) && (event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::Escape)) { app->close(); } if (event.type == sf::Event::Resized) { glViewport(0, 0, event.size.width, event.size.height); } } return; } void assimpRenderer::mainLoop(float modelScale) { while (app->isOpen()) { renderScene(modelScale); handleEvents(); } } bool assimpRenderer::assImport(const std::string& pFile) { // read the file with some example postprocessing scene = importer.ReadFile(pFile, aiProcess_CalcTangentSpace | aiProcess_Triangulate | aiProcess_JoinIdenticalVertices | aiProcess_SortByPType); // if the import failed, report it if (!scene) { std::cerr << "Error: " << importer.GetErrorString() << std::endl; return false; } return true; } void assimpRenderer::genVAOs() { int vboIndex = 0; for (unsigned int i = 0; i < scene->mNumMeshes; i++, vboIndex+=2) { mesh = scene->mMeshes[i]; indexArray = new unsigned int[mesh->mNumFaces * sizeof(unsigned int) * 3]; // convert assimp faces format to array faceIndex = 0; for (unsigned int t = 0; t < mesh->mNumFaces; ++t) { const struct aiFace* face = &mesh->mFaces[t]; std::memcpy(&indexArray[faceIndex], face->mIndices, sizeof(float) * 3); faceIndex += 3; } // generate VAO glGenVertexArrays(1, &vaoID[i]); glBindVertexArray(vaoID[i]); // generate IBO for faces glGenBuffers(1, &iboID[i]); glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, iboID[i]); glBufferData(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(GLuint) * mesh->mNumFaces * 3, indexArray, GL_STATIC_DRAW); // generate VBO for vertices if (mesh->HasPositions()) { glGenBuffers(1, &vboID[vboIndex]); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vboID[vboIndex]); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, mesh->mNumVertices * sizeof(GLfloat) * 3, mesh->mVertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW); glEnableVertexAttribArray((GLuint)0); glVertexAttribPointer((GLuint)0, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0); } // generate VBO for normals if (mesh->HasNormals()) { normalArray = new float[scene->mMeshes[i]->mNumVertices * 3]; unsigned int normalIndex = 0; for (unsigned int j = 0; j < scene->mMeshes[i]->mNumVertices * 3; j+=3, normalIndex++) { normalArray[j] = scene->mMeshes[i]->mNormals[normalIndex].x; // x normalArray[j+1] = scene->mMeshes[i]->mNormals[normalIndex].y; // y normalArray[j+2] = scene->mMeshes[i]->mNormals[normalIndex].z; // z } normalIndex = 0; glGenBuffers(1, &vboID[vboIndex+1]); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, vboID[vboIndex+1]); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, mesh->mNumVertices * sizeof(GLfloat) * 3, normalArray, GL_STATIC_DRAW); glEnableVertexAttribArray((GLuint)1); glVertexAttribPointer((GLuint)1, 3, GL_FLOAT, GL_FALSE, 0, 0); delete [] normalArray; } // tex coord stuff goes here // unbind buffers glBindVertexArray(0); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); glBindBuffer(GL_ELEMENT_ARRAY_BUFFER, 0); delete [] indexArray; } vboIndex = 0; return; } } file: shader.vert #version 150 core in vec3 in_Position; in vec3 in_Normal; uniform mat4 projectionMatrix; uniform mat4 viewMatrix; uniform mat4 modelMatrix; uniform vec3 lightPosition; uniform mat3 normalMatrix; smooth out vec3 vVaryingNormal; smooth out vec3 vVaryingLightDir; void main() { // derive MVP and MV matrices mat4 modelViewProjectionMatrix = projectionMatrix * viewMatrix * modelMatrix; mat4 modelViewMatrix = viewMatrix * modelMatrix; // get surface normal in eye coordinates vVaryingNormal = normalMatrix * in_Normal; // get vertex position in eye coordinates vec4 vPosition4 = modelViewMatrix * vec4(in_Position, 1.0); vec3 vPosition3 = vPosition4.xyz / vPosition4.w; // get vector to light source vVaryingLightDir = normalize(lightPosition - vPosition3); // Set the position of the current vertex gl_Position = modelViewProjectionMatrix * vec4(in_Position, 1.0); } file: shader.frag #version 150 core out vec4 out_Color; uniform vec3 ambientColor; uniform vec3 diffuseColor; uniform vec3 specularColor; smooth in vec3 vVaryingNormal; smooth in vec3 vVaryingLightDir; void main() { // dot product gives us diffuse intensity float diff = max(0.0, dot(normalize(vVaryingNormal), normalize(vVaryingLightDir))); // multiply intensity by diffuse color, force alpha to 1.0 out_Color = vec4(diff * diffuseColor, 1.0); // add in ambient light out_Color += vec4(ambientColor, 1.0); // specular light vec3 vReflection = normalize(reflect(-normalize(vVaryingLightDir), normalize(vVaryingNormal))); float spec = max(0.0, dot(normalize(vVaryingNormal), vReflection)); if (diff != 0) { float fSpec = pow(spec, 128.0); // Set the output color of our current pixel out_Color.rgb += vec3(fSpec, fSpec, fSpec); } } I know it's a lot to look through, but I'm putting most of the code up so as not to assume where the problem is. Thanks in advance to anyone who has some time to help me pinpoint the problem(s)! I've been trying to sort it out for two days now and I'm not getting anywhere on my own.

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  • Texture will not apply to my 3d Cube directX

    - by numerical25
    I am trying to apply a texture onto my 3d cube but it is not showing up correctly. I believe that it might some what be working because the cube is all brown which is almost the same complexion as the texture. And I did not originally make the cube brown. These are the steps I've done to add the texture I first declared 2 new varibles ID3D10EffectShaderResourceVariable* pTextureSR; ID3D10ShaderResourceView* textureSRV; I also added a variable and a struct to my shader .fx file Texture2D tex2D; SamplerState linearSampler { Filter = MIN_MAG_MIP_LINEAR; AddressU = Wrap; AddressV = Wrap; }; I then grabbed the image from my local hard drive from within the .cpp file. I believe this was successful, I checked all varibles for errors, everything has a memory address. Plus I pulled resources before and never had a problem. D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromFile(mpD3DDevice,L"crate.jpg",NULL,NULL,&textureSRV,NULL); I grabbed the tex2d varible from my fx file and placed into my resource varible pTextureSR = modelObject.pEffect->GetVariableByName("tex2D")->AsShaderResource(); And added the resource to the varible pTextureSR->SetResource(textureSRV); I also added the extra property to my vertex layout D3D10_INPUT_ELEMENT_DESC layout[] = { {"POSITION",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32_FLOAT, 0 , 0, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"COLOR",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 12, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"NORMAL",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 24, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"TEXCOORD",0, DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32_FLOAT, 0 , 36, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0} }; as well as my struct struct VertexPos { D3DXVECTOR3 pos; D3DXVECTOR4 color; D3DXVECTOR3 normal; D3DXVECTOR2 texCoord; }; Then I created a new pixel shader that adds the texture to it. Below is the code in its entirety matrix Projection; matrix WorldMatrix; Texture2D tex2D; float3 lightSource; float4 lightColor = {0.5, 0.5, 0.5, 0.5}; // PS_INPUT - input variables to the pixel shader // This struct is created and fill in by the // vertex shader struct PS_INPUT { float4 Pos : SV_POSITION; float4 Color : COLOR0; float4 Normal : NORMAL; float2 Tex : TEXCOORD; }; SamplerState linearSampler { Filter = MIN_MAG_MIP_LINEAR; AddressU = Wrap; AddressV = Wrap; }; //////////////////////////////////////////////// // Vertex Shader - Main Function /////////////////////////////////////////////// PS_INPUT VS(float4 Pos : POSITION, float4 Color : COLOR, float4 Normal : NORMAL, float2 Tex : TEXCOORD) { PS_INPUT psInput; // Pass through both the position and the color psInput.Pos = mul( Pos, Projection ); psInput.Normal = Normal; psInput.Tex = Tex; return psInput; } /////////////////////////////////////////////// // Pixel Shader /////////////////////////////////////////////// float4 PS(PS_INPUT psInput) : SV_Target { float4 finalColor = 0; finalColor = saturate(dot(lightSource, psInput.Normal) * lightColor); return finalColor; } float4 textured( PS_INPUT psInput ) : SV_Target { return tex2D.Sample( linearSampler, psInput.Tex ); } // Define the technique technique10 Render { pass P0 { SetVertexShader( CompileShader( vs_4_0, VS() ) ); SetGeometryShader( NULL ); SetPixelShader( CompileShader( ps_4_0, textured() ) ); } } Below is my CPU code. It maybe a little sloppy. But I am just adding code anywhere cause I am just experimenting and playing around. You should find most of the texture code at the bottom createObject #include "MyGame.h" #include "OneColorCube.h" /* This code sets a projection and shows a turning cube. What has been added is the project, rotation and a rasterizer to change the rasterization of the cube. The issue that was going on was something with the effect file which was causing the vertices not to be rendered correctly.*/ typedef struct { ID3D10Effect* pEffect; ID3D10EffectTechnique* pTechnique; //vertex information ID3D10Buffer* pVertexBuffer; ID3D10Buffer* pIndicesBuffer; ID3D10InputLayout* pVertexLayout; UINT numVertices; UINT numIndices; }ModelObject; ModelObject modelObject; // World Matrix D3DXMATRIX WorldMatrix; // View Matrix D3DXMATRIX ViewMatrix; // Projection Matrix D3DXMATRIX ProjectionMatrix; ID3D10EffectMatrixVariable* pProjectionMatrixVariable = NULL; ID3D10EffectMatrixVariable* pWorldMatrixVarible = NULL; ID3D10EffectVectorVariable* pLightVarible = NULL; ID3D10EffectShaderResourceVariable* pTextureSR; bool MyGame::InitDirect3D() { if(!DX3dApp::InitDirect3D()) { return false; } D3D10_RASTERIZER_DESC rastDesc; rastDesc.FillMode = D3D10_FILL_WIREFRAME; rastDesc.CullMode = D3D10_CULL_FRONT; rastDesc.FrontCounterClockwise = true; rastDesc.DepthBias = false; rastDesc.DepthBiasClamp = 0; rastDesc.SlopeScaledDepthBias = 0; rastDesc.DepthClipEnable = false; rastDesc.ScissorEnable = false; rastDesc.MultisampleEnable = false; rastDesc.AntialiasedLineEnable = false; ID3D10RasterizerState *g_pRasterizerState; mpD3DDevice->CreateRasterizerState(&rastDesc, &g_pRasterizerState); //mpD3DDevice->RSSetState(g_pRasterizerState); // Set up the World Matrix D3DXMatrixIdentity(&WorldMatrix); D3DXMatrixLookAtLH(&ViewMatrix, new D3DXVECTOR3(0.0f, 10.0f, -20.0f), new D3DXVECTOR3(0.0f, 0.0f, 0.0f), new D3DXVECTOR3(0.0f, 1.0f, 0.0f)); // Set up the projection matrix D3DXMatrixPerspectiveFovLH(&ProjectionMatrix, (float)D3DX_PI * 0.5f, (float)mWidth/(float)mHeight, 0.1f, 100.0f); if(!CreateObject()) { return false; } return true; } //These are actions that take place after the clearing of the buffer and before the present void MyGame::GameDraw() { static float rotationAngleY = 15.0f; static float rotationAngleX = 0.0f; static D3DXMATRIX rotationXMatrix; static D3DXMATRIX rotationYMatrix; D3DXMatrixIdentity(&rotationXMatrix); D3DXMatrixIdentity(&rotationYMatrix); // create the rotation matrix using the rotation angle D3DXMatrixRotationY(&rotationYMatrix, rotationAngleY); D3DXMatrixRotationX(&rotationXMatrix, rotationAngleX); rotationAngleY += (float)D3DX_PI * 0.0008f; rotationAngleX += (float)D3DX_PI * 0.0005f; WorldMatrix = rotationYMatrix * rotationXMatrix; // Set the input layout mpD3DDevice->IASetInputLayout(modelObject.pVertexLayout); pWorldMatrixVarible->SetMatrix((float*)&WorldMatrix); // Set vertex buffer UINT stride = sizeof(VertexPos); UINT offset = 0; mpD3DDevice->IASetVertexBuffers(0, 1, &modelObject.pVertexBuffer, &stride, &offset); // Set primitive topology mpD3DDevice->IASetPrimitiveTopology(D3D10_PRIMITIVE_TOPOLOGY_TRIANGLELIST); //ViewMatrix._43 += 0.005f; // Combine and send the final matrix to the shader D3DXMATRIX finalMatrix = (WorldMatrix * ViewMatrix * ProjectionMatrix); pProjectionMatrixVariable->SetMatrix((float*)&finalMatrix); // make sure modelObject is valid // Render a model object D3D10_TECHNIQUE_DESC techniqueDescription; modelObject.pTechnique->GetDesc(&techniqueDescription); // Loop through the technique passes for(UINT p=0; p < techniqueDescription.Passes; ++p) { modelObject.pTechnique->GetPassByIndex(p)->Apply(0); // draw the cube using all 36 vertices and 12 triangles mpD3DDevice->Draw(36,0); } } //Render actually incapsulates Gamedraw, so you can call data before you actually clear the buffer or after you //present data void MyGame::Render() { DX3dApp::Render(); } bool MyGame::CreateObject() { //Create Layout D3D10_INPUT_ELEMENT_DESC layout[] = { {"POSITION",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32_FLOAT, 0 , 0, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"COLOR",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 12, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"NORMAL",0,DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32B32A32_FLOAT, 0 , 24, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0}, {"TEXCOORD",0, DXGI_FORMAT_R32G32_FLOAT, 0 , 36, D3D10_INPUT_PER_VERTEX_DATA, 0} }; UINT numElements = (sizeof(layout)/sizeof(layout[0])); modelObject.numVertices = sizeof(vertices)/sizeof(VertexPos); for(int i = 0; i < modelObject.numVertices; i += 3) { D3DXVECTOR3 out; D3DXVECTOR3 v1 = vertices[0 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 v2 = vertices[1 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 v3 = vertices[2 + i].pos; D3DXVECTOR3 u = v2 - v1; D3DXVECTOR3 v = v3 - v1; D3DXVec3Cross(&out, &u, &v); D3DXVec3Normalize(&out, &out); vertices[0 + i].normal = out; vertices[1 + i].normal = out; vertices[2 + i].normal = out; } //Create buffer desc D3D10_BUFFER_DESC bufferDesc; bufferDesc.Usage = D3D10_USAGE_DEFAULT; bufferDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(VertexPos) * modelObject.numVertices; bufferDesc.BindFlags = D3D10_BIND_VERTEX_BUFFER; bufferDesc.CPUAccessFlags = 0; bufferDesc.MiscFlags = 0; D3D10_SUBRESOURCE_DATA initData; initData.pSysMem = vertices; //Create the buffer HRESULT hr = mpD3DDevice->CreateBuffer(&bufferDesc, &initData, &modelObject.pVertexBuffer); if(FAILED(hr)) return false; /* //Create indices DWORD indices[] = { 0,1,3, 1,2,3 }; ModelObject.numIndices = sizeof(indices)/sizeof(DWORD); bufferDesc.ByteWidth = sizeof(DWORD) * ModelObject.numIndices; bufferDesc.BindFlags = D3D10_BIND_INDEX_BUFFER; initData.pSysMem = indices; hr = mpD3DDevice->CreateBuffer(&bufferDesc, &initData, &ModelObject.pIndicesBuffer); if(FAILED(hr)) return false;*/ ///////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////// //Set up fx files LPCWSTR effectFilename = L"effect.fx"; modelObject.pEffect = NULL; hr = D3DX10CreateEffectFromFile(effectFilename, NULL, NULL, "fx_4_0", D3D10_SHADER_ENABLE_STRICTNESS, 0, mpD3DDevice, NULL, NULL, &modelObject.pEffect, NULL, NULL); if(FAILED(hr)) return false; pProjectionMatrixVariable = modelObject.pEffect->GetVariableByName("Projection")->AsMatrix(); pWorldMatrixVarible = modelObject.pEffect->GetVariableByName("WorldMatrix")->AsMatrix(); pTextureSR = modelObject.pEffect->GetVariableByName("tex2D")->AsShaderResource(); ID3D10ShaderResourceView* textureSRV; D3DX10CreateShaderResourceViewFromFile(mpD3DDevice,L"crate.jpg",NULL,NULL,&textureSRV,NULL); pLightVarible = modelObject.pEffect->GetVariableByName("lightSource")->AsVector(); //Dont sweat the technique. Get it! LPCSTR effectTechniqueName = "Render"; D3DXVECTOR3 vLight(1.0f, 1.0f, 1.0f); pLightVarible->SetFloatVector(vLight); modelObject.pTechnique = modelObject.pEffect->GetTechniqueByName(effectTechniqueName); if(modelObject.pTechnique == NULL) return false; pTextureSR->SetResource(textureSRV); //Create Vertex layout D3D10_PASS_DESC passDesc; modelObject.pTechnique->GetPassByIndex(0)->GetDesc(&passDesc); hr = mpD3DDevice->CreateInputLayout(layout, numElements, passDesc.pIAInputSignature, passDesc.IAInputSignatureSize, &modelObject.pVertexLayout); if(FAILED(hr)) return false; return true; } And here is my cube coordinates. I actually only added coordinates to one side. And that is the front side. To double check I flipped the cube in all directions just to make sure i didnt accidentally place the text on the incorrect side //Create vectors and put in vertices // Create vertex buffer VertexPos vertices[] = { // BACK SIDES { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(1.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,1.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, // 2 FRONT SIDE { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(2.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,2.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,2.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f) , D3DXVECTOR2(2.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(2.0,2.0)}, // 3 { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, // 4 { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(1.0f,0.5f,0.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, // 5 { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, { D3DXVECTOR3(5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.0f,1.0f,0.5f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, // 6 {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, 5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, -5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, {D3DXVECTOR3(-5.0f, -5.0f, 5.0f), D3DXVECTOR4(0.5f,0.0f,1.0f,0.0f), D3DXVECTOR2(0.0,0.0)}, };

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  • Ask How-To Geek: Learning the Office Ribbon, Booting to USB with an Old BIOS, and Snapping Windows

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    You’ve got questions and we’ve got answers. Today we highlight how to master the new Office interface, USB boot a computer with outdated BIOS, and snap windows to preset locations. Learning the New Office Ribbon Dear How-To Geek, I feel silly asking this (in light of how long the new Office interface has been out) but my company finally got around to upgrading from Windows XP and Office 2000 so the new interface it totally new to me. Can you recommend any resources for quickly learning the Office ribbon and the new changes? I feel completely lost after two decades of the old Office interface. Help! Sincerely, Where the Hell is Everything? Dear Where the Hell, We think most people were with you at some point in the last few years. “Where the hell is…” could possibly be the slogan for the new ribbon interface. You could browse through some of the dry tutorials online or even get a weighty book on the topic but the best way to learn something new is to get hands on. Ribbon Hero turns learning the new Office features and ribbon layout into a game. It’s no vigorous round of Team Fortress mind you, but it’s significantly more fun than reading a training document. Check out how to install and configure Ribbon Hero here. You’ll be teaching your coworkers new tricks in no time. Boot via USB with an Old BIOS Dear How-To Geek, I’m trying to repurpose some old computers by updating them with lightweight Linux distros but the BIOS on most of the machines is ancient and creaky. How ancient? It doesn’t even support booting from a USB device! I have a large flash drive that I’ve turned into a master installation tool for jobs like this but I can’t use it. The computers in question have USB ports; they just aren’t recognized during the boot process. What can I do? USB Bootin’ in Boise Dear USB Bootin’, It’s great you’re working to breathe life into old hardware! You’ve run into one of the limitations of older BIOSes, USB was around but nobody was thinking about booting off of it. Fortunately if you have a computer old enough to have that kind of BIOS it’s likely to also has a floppy drive or a CDROM drive. While you could make a bootable CDROM for your application we understand that you want to keep using the master USB installer you’ve made. In light of that we recommend PLoP Boot Manager. Think of it like a boot manager for your boot manager. Using it you can create a bootable floppy or CDROM that will enable USB booting of your master USB drive. Make a CD and a floppy version and you’ll have everything in your toolkit you need for future computer refurbishing projects. Read up on creating bootable media with PLoP Boot Manager here. Snapping Windows to Preset Coordinates Dear How-To Geek, Once upon a time I had a company laptop that came with a little utility that snapped windows to preset areas of the screen. This was long before the snap-to-side features in Windows 7. You could essentially configure your screen into a grid pattern of your choosing and then windows would neatly snap into those grids. I have no idea what it was called or if was anymore than a gimmick from the computer manufacturer, but I’d really like to have it on my new computer! Bend and Snap in San Francisco, Dear Bend and Snap, If we had to guess, we’d guess your company must have had a set of laptops from Acer as the program you’re describing sounds exactly like Acer GridVista. Fortunately for you the application was extremely popular and Acer released it independently of their hardware. If, by chance, you’ve since upgraded to a multiple monitor setup the app even supports multiple monitors—many of the configurations are handy for arranging IM windows and other auxiliary communication tools. Check out our guide to installing and configuring Acer GridVista here for more information. Have a question you want to put before the How-To Geek staff? Shoot us an email at [email protected] and then keep an eye out for a solution in the Ask How-To Geek column. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Download the New Year in Japan Windows 7 Theme from Microsoft Once More Unto the Breach – Facebook Apps Can Now Access Your Address and Phone Number Dial Zero Speeds You Through Annoying Customer Service Menus Complete Dropquest 2011 and Receive Free Dropbox Storage Desktop Computer versus Laptop Wallpaper The Kids Have No Idea What Old Tech Is [Video]

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  • Programação paralela no .NET Framework 4 – Parte II

    - by anobre
    Olá pessoal, tudo bem? Este post é uma continuação da série iniciada neste outro post, sobre programação paralela. Meu objetivo hoje é apresentar o PLINQ, algo que poderá ser utilizado imediatamente nos projetos de vocês. Parallel LINQ (PLINQ) PLINQ nada mais é que uma implementação de programação paralela ao nosso famoso LINQ, através de métodos de extensão. O LINQ foi lançado com a versão 3.0 na plataforma .NET, apresentando uma maneira muito mais fácil e segura de manipular coleções IEnumerable ou IEnumerable<T>. O que veremos hoje é a “alteração” do LINQ to Objects, que é direcionado a coleções de objetos em memória. A principal diferença entre o LINQ to Objects “normal” e o paralelo é que na segunda opção o processamento é realizado tentando utilizar todos os recursos disponíveis para tal, obtendo uma melhora significante de performance. CUIDADO: Nem todas as operações ficam mais rápidas utilizando recursos de paralelismo. Não deixe de ler a seção “Performance” abaixo. ParallelEnumerable Tudo que a gente precisa para este post está organizado na classe ParallelEnumerable. Esta classe contém os métodos que iremos utilizar neste post, e muito mais: AsParallel AsSequential AsOrdered AsUnordered WithCancellation WithDegreeOfParallelism WithMergeOptions WithExecutionMode ForAll … O exemplo mais básico de como executar um código PLINQ é utilizando o métodos AsParallel, como o exemplo: var source = Enumerable.Range(1, 10000); var evenNums = from num in source.AsParallel() where Compute(num) > 0 select num; Algo tão interessante quanto esta facilidade é que o PLINQ não executa sempre de forma paralela. Dependendo da situação e da análise de alguns itens no cenário de execução, talvez seja mais adequado executar o código de forma sequencial – e nativamente o próprio PLINQ faz esta escolha.  É possível forçar a execução para sempre utilizar o paralelismo, caso seja necessário. Utilize o método WithExecutionMode no seu código PLINQ. Um teste muito simples onde podemos visualizar a diferença é demonstrado abaixo: static void Main(string[] args) { IEnumerable<int> numbers = Enumerable.Range(1, 1000); IEnumerable<int> results = from n in numbers.AsParallel() where IsDivisibleByFive(n) select n; Stopwatch sw = Stopwatch.StartNew(); IList<int> resultsList = results.ToList(); Console.WriteLine("{0} itens", resultsList.Count()); sw.Stop(); Console.WriteLine("Tempo de execução: {0} ms", sw.ElapsedMilliseconds); Console.WriteLine("Fim..."); Console.ReadKey(true); } static bool IsDivisibleByFive(int i) { Thread.SpinWait(2000000); return i % 5 == 0; }   Basta remover o AsParallel da instrução LINQ que você terá uma noção prática da diferença de performance. 1. Instrução utilizando AsParallel   2. Instrução sem utilizar paralelismo Performance Apesar de todos os benefícios, não podemos utilizar PLINQ sem conhecer todos os seus detalhes. Lembre-se de fazer as perguntas básicas: Eu tenho trabalho suficiente que justifique utilizar paralelismo? Mesmo com o overhead do PLINQ, vamos ter algum benefício? Por este motivo, visite este link e conheça todos os aspectos, antes de utilizar os recursos disponíveis. Conclusão Utilizar recursos de paralelismo é ótimo, aumenta a performance, utiliza o investimento realizado em hardware – tudo isso sem custo de produtividade. Porém, não podemos usufruir de qualquer tipo de tecnologia sem conhece-la a fundo antes. Portanto, faça bom uso, mas não esqueça de manter o conhecimento a frente da empolgação. Abraços.

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  • Computer Networks UNISA - Chap 12 &ndash; Networking Security

    - by MarkPearl
    After reading this section you should be able to Identify security risks in LANs and WANs and design security policies that minimize risks Explain how physical security contributes to network security Discuss hardware and design based security techniques Understand methods of encryption such as SSL and IPSec, that can secure data in storage and in transit Describe how popular authentication protocols such as RADIUS< TACACS,Kerberos, PAP, CHAP, and MS-CHAP function Use network operating system techniques to provide basic security Understand wireless security protocols such as WEP, WPA and 802.11i Security Audits Before spending time and money on network security, examine your networks security risks – rate and prioritize risks. Different organizations have different levels of network security requirements. Security Risks Not all security breaches result from a manipulation of network technology – there are human factors that can play a role as well. The following categories are areas of considerations… Risks associated with People Risks associated with Transmission and Hardware Risks associated with Protocols and Software Risks associated with Internet Access An effective security policy A security policy identifies your security goals, risks, levels of authority, designated security coordinator and team members, responsibilities for each team member, and responsibilities for each employee. In addition it specifies how to address security breaches. It should not state exactly which hardware, software, architecture, or protocols will be used to ensure security, nor how hardware or software will be installed and configured. A security policy must address an organizations specific risks. to understand your risks, you should conduct a security audit that identifies vulnerabilities and rates both the severity of each threat and its likelihood of occurring. Security Policy Content Security policy content should… Policies for each category of security Explain to users what they can and cannot do and how these measures protect the networks security Should define what confidential means to the organization Response Policy A security policy should provide for a planned response in the event of a security breach. The response policy should identify the members of a response team, all of whom should clearly understand the the security policy, risks, and measures in place. Some of the roles concerned could include… Dispatcher – the person on call who first notices the breach Manager – the person who coordinates the resources necessary to solve the problem Technical Support Specialist – the person who focuses on solving the problem Public relations specialist – the person who acts as the official spokesperson for the organization Physical Security An important element in network security is restricting physical access to its components. There are various techniques for this including locking doors, security people at access points etc. You should identify the following… Which rooms contain critical systems or data and must be secured Through what means might intruders gain access to these rooms How and to what extent are authorized personnel granted access to these rooms Are authentication methods such as ID cards easy to forge etc. Security in Network Design The optimal way to prevent external security breaches from affecting you LAN is not to connect your LAN to the outside world at all. The next best protection is to restrict access at every point where your LAN connects to the rest of the world. Router Access List – can be used to filter or decline access to a portion of a network for certain devices. Intrusion Detection and Prevention While denying someone access to a section of the network is good, it is better to be able to detect when an attempt has been made and notify security personnel. This can be done using IDS (intrusion detection system) software. One drawback of IDS software is it can detect false positives – i.e. an authorized person who has forgotten his password attempts to logon. Firewalls A firewall is a specialized device, or a computer installed with specialized software, that selectively filters or blocks traffic between networks. A firewall typically involves a combination of hardware and software and may reside between two interconnected private networks. The simplest form of a firewall is a packet filtering firewall, which is a router that examines the header of every packet of data it receives to determine whether that type of packet is authorized to continue to its destination or not. Firewalls can block traffic in and out of a LAN. NOS (Network Operating System) Security Regardless of the operating system, generally every network administrator can implement basic security by restricting what users are authorized to do on a network. Some of the restrictions include things related to Logons – place, time of day, total time logged in, etc Passwords – length, characters used, etc Encryption Encryption is the use of an algorithm to scramble data into a format that can be read only by reversing the algorithm. The purpose of encryption is to keep information private. Many forms of encryption exist and new ways of cracking encryption are continually being invented. The following are some categories of encryption… Key Encryption PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) SSH (Secure Shell) SCP (Secure CoPy) SFTP (Secure File Transfer Protocol) IPSec (Internet Protocol Security) For a detailed explanation on each section refer to pages 596 to 604 of textbook Authentication Protocols Authentication protocols are the rules that computers follow to accomplish authentication. Several types exist and the following are some of the common authentication protocols… RADIUS and TACACS PAP (Password Authentication Protocol) CHAP and MS-CHAP EAP (Extensible Authentication Protocol) 802.1x (EAPoL) Kerberos Wireless Network Security Wireless transmissions are particularly susceptible to eavesdropping. The following are two wireless network security protocols WEP WPA

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  • The Incremental Architect&rsquo;s Napkin - #5 - Design functions for extensibility and readability

    - by Ralf Westphal
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/24/the-incremental-architectrsquos-napkin---5---design-functions-for.aspx The functionality of programs is entered via Entry Points. So what we´re talking about when designing software is a bunch of functions handling the requests represented by and flowing in through those Entry Points. Designing software thus consists of at least three phases: Analyzing the requirements to find the Entry Points and their signatures Designing the functionality to be executed when those Entry Points get triggered Implementing the functionality according to the design aka coding I presume, you´re familiar with phase 1 in some way. And I guess you´re proficient in implementing functionality in some programming language. But in my experience developers in general are not experienced in going through an explicit phase 2. “Designing functionality? What´s that supposed to mean?” you might already have thought. Here´s my definition: To design functionality (or functional design for short) means thinking about… well, functions. You find a solution for what´s supposed to happen when an Entry Point gets triggered in terms of functions. A conceptual solution that is, because those functions only exist in your head (or on paper) during this phase. But you may have guess that, because it´s “design” not “coding”. And here is, what functional design is not: It´s not about logic. Logic is expressions (e.g. +, -, && etc.) and control statements (e.g. if, switch, for, while etc.). Also I consider calling external APIs as logic. It´s equally basic. It´s what code needs to do in order to deliver some functionality or quality. Logic is what´s doing that needs to be done by software. Transformations are either done through expressions or API-calls. And then there is alternative control flow depending on the result of some expression. Basically it´s just jumps in Assembler, sometimes to go forward (if, switch), sometimes to go backward (for, while, do). But calling your own function is not logic. It´s not necessary to produce any outcome. Functionality is not enhanced by adding functions (subroutine calls) to your code. Nor is quality increased by adding functions. No performance gain, no higher scalability etc. through functions. Functions are not relevant to functionality. Strange, isn´t it. What they are important for is security of investment. By introducing functions into our code we can become more productive (re-use) and can increase evolvability (higher unterstandability, easier to keep code consistent). That´s no small feat, however. Evolvable code can hardly be overestimated. That´s why to me functional design is so important. It´s at the core of software development. To sum this up: Functional design is on a level of abstraction above (!) logical design or algorithmic design. Functional design is only done until you get to a point where each function is so simple you are very confident you can easily code it. Functional design an logical design (which mostly is coding, but can also be done using pseudo code or flow charts) are complementary. Software needs both. If you start coding right away you end up in a tangled mess very quickly. Then you need back out through refactoring. Functional design on the other hand is bloodless without actual code. It´s just a theory with no experiments to prove it. But how to do functional design? An example of functional design Let´s assume a program to de-duplicate strings. The user enters a number of strings separated by commas, e.g. a, b, a, c, d, b, e, c, a. And the program is supposed to clear this list of all doubles, e.g. a, b, c, d, e. There is only one Entry Point to this program: the user triggers the de-duplication by starting the program with the string list on the command line C:\>deduplicate "a, b, a, c, d, b, e, c, a" a, b, c, d, e …or by clicking on a GUI button. This leads to the Entry Point function to get called. It´s the program´s main function in case of the batch version or a button click event handler in the GUI version. That´s the physical Entry Point so to speak. It´s inevitable. What then happens is a three step process: Transform the input data from the user into a request. Call the request handler. Transform the output of the request handler into a tangible result for the user. Or to phrase it a bit more generally: Accept input. Transform input into output. Present output. This does not mean any of these steps requires a lot of effort. Maybe it´s just one line of code to accomplish it. Nevertheless it´s a distinct step in doing the processing behind an Entry Point. Call it an aspect or a responsibility - and you will realize it most likely deserves a function of its own to satisfy the Single Responsibility Principle (SRP). Interestingly the above list of steps is already functional design. There is no logic, but nevertheless the solution is described - albeit on a higher level of abstraction than you might have done yourself. But it´s still on a meta-level. The application to the domain at hand is easy, though: Accept string list from command line De-duplicate Present de-duplicated strings on standard output And this concrete list of processing steps can easily be transformed into code:static void Main(string[] args) { var input = Accept_string_list(args); var output = Deduplicate(input); Present_deduplicated_string_list(output); } Instead of a big problem there are three much smaller problems now. If you think each of those is trivial to implement, then go for it. You can stop the functional design at this point. But maybe, just maybe, you´re not so sure how to go about with the de-duplication for example. Then just implement what´s easy right now, e.g.private static string Accept_string_list(string[] args) { return args[0]; } private static void Present_deduplicated_string_list( string[] output) { var line = string.Join(", ", output); Console.WriteLine(line); } Accept_string_list() contains logic in the form of an API-call. Present_deduplicated_string_list() contains logic in the form of an expression and an API-call. And then repeat the functional design for the remaining processing step. What´s left is the domain logic: de-duplicating a list of strings. How should that be done? Without any logic at our disposal during functional design you´re left with just functions. So which functions could make up the de-duplication? Here´s a suggestion: De-duplicate Parse the input string into a true list of strings. Register each string in a dictionary/map/set. That way duplicates get cast away. Transform the data structure into a list of unique strings. Processing step 2 obviously was the core of the solution. That´s where real creativity was needed. That´s the core of the domain. But now after this refinement the implementation of each step is easy again:private static string[] Parse_string_list(string input) { return input.Split(',') .Select(s => s.Trim()) .ToArray(); } private static Dictionary<string,object> Compile_unique_strings(string[] strings) { return strings.Aggregate( new Dictionary<string, object>(), (agg, s) => { agg[s] = null; return agg; }); } private static string[] Serialize_unique_strings( Dictionary<string,object> dict) { return dict.Keys.ToArray(); } With these three additional functions Main() now looks like this:static void Main(string[] args) { var input = Accept_string_list(args); var strings = Parse_string_list(input); var dict = Compile_unique_strings(strings); var output = Serialize_unique_strings(dict); Present_deduplicated_string_list(output); } I think that´s very understandable code: just read it from top to bottom and you know how the solution to the problem works. It´s a mirror image of the initial design: Accept string list from command line Parse the input string into a true list of strings. Register each string in a dictionary/map/set. That way duplicates get cast away. Transform the data structure into a list of unique strings. Present de-duplicated strings on standard output You can even re-generate the design by just looking at the code. Code and functional design thus are always in sync - if you follow some simple rules. But about that later. And as a bonus: all the functions making up the process are small - which means easy to understand, too. So much for an initial concrete example. Now it´s time for some theory. Because there is method to this madness ;-) The above has only scratched the surface. Introducing Flow Design Functional design starts with a given function, the Entry Point. Its goal is to describe the behavior of the program when the Entry Point is triggered using a process, not an algorithm. An algorithm consists of logic, a process on the other hand consists just of steps or stages. Each processing step transforms input into output or a side effect. Also it might access resources, e.g. a printer, a database, or just memory. Processing steps thus can rely on state of some sort. This is different from Functional Programming, where functions are supposed to not be stateful and not cause side effects.[1] In its simplest form a process can be written as a bullet point list of steps, e.g. Get data from user Output result to user Transform data Parse data Map result for output Such a compilation of steps - possibly on different levels of abstraction - often is the first artifact of functional design. It can be generated by a team in an initial design brainstorming. Next comes ordering the steps. What should happen first, what next etc.? Get data from user Parse data Transform data Map result for output Output result to user That´s great for a start into functional design. It´s better than starting to code right away on a given function using TDD. Please get me right: TDD is a valuable practice. But it can be unnecessarily hard if the scope of a functionn is too large. But how do you know beforehand without investing some thinking? And how to do this thinking in a systematic fashion? My recommendation: For any given function you´re supposed to implement first do a functional design. Then, once you´re confident you know the processing steps - which are pretty small - refine and code them using TDD. You´ll see that´s much, much easier - and leads to cleaner code right away. For more information on this approach I call “Informed TDD” read my book of the same title. Thinking before coding is smart. And writing down the solution as a bunch of functions possibly is the simplest thing you can do, I´d say. It´s more according to the KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid) principle than returning constants or other trivial stuff TDD development often is started with. So far so good. A simple ordered list of processing steps will do to start with functional design. As shown in the above example such steps can easily be translated into functions. Moving from design to coding thus is simple. However, such a list does not scale. Processing is not always that simple to be captured in a list. And then the list is just text. Again. Like code. That means the design is lacking visuality. Textual representations need more parsing by your brain than visual representations. Plus they are limited in their “dimensionality”: text just has one dimension, it´s sequential. Alternatives and parallelism are hard to encode in text. In addition the functional design using numbered lists lacks data. It´s not visible what´s the input, output, and state of the processing steps. That´s why functional design should be done using a lightweight visual notation. No tool is necessary to draw such designs. Use pen and paper; a flipchart, a whiteboard, or even a napkin is sufficient. Visualizing processes The building block of the functional design notation is a functional unit. I mostly draw it like this: Something is done, it´s clear what goes in, it´s clear what comes out, and it´s clear what the processing step requires in terms of state or hardware. Whenever input flows into a functional unit it gets processed and output is produced and/or a side effect occurs. Flowing data is the driver of something happening. That´s why I call this approach to functional design Flow Design. It´s about data flow instead of control flow. Control flow like in algorithms is of no concern to functional design. Thinking about control flow simply is too low level. Once you start with control flow you easily get bogged down by tons of details. That´s what you want to avoid during design. Design is supposed to be quick, broad brush, abstract. It should give overview. But what about all the details? As Robert C. Martin rightly said: “Programming is abot detail”. Detail is a matter of code. Once you start coding the processing steps you designed you can worry about all the detail you want. Functional design does not eliminate all the nitty gritty. It just postpones tackling them. To me that´s also an example of the SRP. Function design has the responsibility to come up with a solution to a problem posed by a single function (Entry Point). And later coding has the responsibility to implement the solution down to the last detail (i.e. statement, API-call). TDD unfortunately mixes both responsibilities. It´s just coding - and thereby trying to find detailed implementations (green phase) plus getting the design right (refactoring). To me that´s one reason why TDD has failed to deliver on its promise for many developers. Using functional units as building blocks of functional design processes can be depicted very easily. Here´s the initial process for the example problem: For each processing step draw a functional unit and label it. Choose a verb or an “action phrase” as a label, not a noun. Functional design is about activities, not state or structure. Then make the output of an upstream step the input of a downstream step. Finally think about the data that should flow between the functional units. Write the data above the arrows connecting the functional units in the direction of the data flow. Enclose the data description in brackets. That way you can clearly see if all flows have already been specified. Empty brackets mean “no data is flowing”, but nevertheless a signal is sent. A name like “list” or “strings” in brackets describes the data content. Use lower case labels for that purpose. A name starting with an upper case letter like “String” or “Customer” on the other hand signifies a data type. If you like, you also can combine descriptions with data types by separating them with a colon, e.g. (list:string) or (strings:string[]). But these are just suggestions from my practice with Flow Design. You can do it differently, if you like. Just be sure to be consistent. Flows wired-up in this manner I call one-dimensional (1D). Each functional unit just has one input and/or one output. A functional unit without an output is possible. It´s like a black hole sucking up input without producing any output. Instead it produces side effects. A functional unit without an input, though, does make much sense. When should it start to work? What´s the trigger? That´s why in the above process even the first processing step has an input. If you like, view such 1D-flows as pipelines. Data is flowing through them from left to right. But as you can see, it´s not always the same data. It get´s transformed along its passage: (args) becomes a (list) which is turned into (strings). The Principle of Mutual Oblivion A very characteristic trait of flows put together from function units is: no functional units knows another one. They are all completely independent of each other. Functional units don´t know where their input is coming from (or even when it´s gonna arrive). They just specify a range of values they can process. And they promise a certain behavior upon input arriving. Also they don´t know where their output is going. They just produce it in their own time independent of other functional units. That means at least conceptually all functional units work in parallel. Functional units don´t know their “deployment context”. They now nothing about the overall flow they are place in. They are just consuming input from some upstream, and producing output for some downstream. That makes functional units very easy to test. At least as long as they don´t depend on state or resources. I call this the Principle of Mutual Oblivion (PoMO). Functional units are oblivious of others as well as an overall context/purpose. They are just parts of a whole focused on a single responsibility. How the whole is built, how a larger goal is achieved, is of no concern to the single functional units. By building software in such a manner, functional design interestingly follows nature. Nature´s building blocks for organisms also follow the PoMO. The cells forming your body do not know each other. Take a nerve cell “controlling” a muscle cell for example:[2] The nerve cell does not know anything about muscle cells, let alone the specific muscel cell it is “attached to”. Likewise the muscle cell does not know anything about nerve cells, let a lone a specific nerve cell “attached to” it. Saying “the nerve cell is controlling the muscle cell” thus only makes sense when viewing both from the outside. “Control” is a concept of the whole, not of its parts. Control is created by wiring-up parts in a certain way. Both cells are mutually oblivious. Both just follow a contract. One produces Acetylcholine (ACh) as output, the other consumes ACh as input. Where the ACh is going, where it´s coming from neither cell cares about. Million years of evolution have led to this kind of division of labor. And million years of evolution have produced organism designs (DNA) which lead to the production of these different cell types (and many others) and also to their co-location. The result: the overall behavior of an organism. How and why this happened in nature is a mystery. For our software, though, it´s clear: functional and quality requirements needs to be fulfilled. So we as developers have to become “intelligent designers” of “software cells” which we put together to form a “software organism” which responds in satisfying ways to triggers from it´s environment. My bet is: If nature gets complex organisms working by following the PoMO, who are we to not apply this recipe for success to our much simpler “machines”? So my rule is: Wherever there is functionality to be delivered, because there is a clear Entry Point into software, design the functionality like nature would do it. Build it from mutually oblivious functional units. That´s what Flow Design is about. In that way it´s even universal, I´d say. Its notation can also be applied to biology: Never mind labeling the functional units with nouns. That´s ok in Flow Design. You´ll do that occassionally for functional units on a higher level of abstraction or when their purpose is close to hardware. Getting a cockroach to roam your bedroom takes 1,000,000 nerve cells (neurons). Getting the de-duplication program to do its job just takes 5 “software cells” (functional units). Both, though, follow the same basic principle. Translating functional units into code Moving from functional design to code is no rocket science. In fact it´s straightforward. There are two simple rules: Translate an input port to a function. Translate an output port either to a return statement in that function or to a function pointer visible to that function. The simplest translation of a functional unit is a function. That´s what you saw in the above example. Functions are mutually oblivious. That why Functional Programming likes them so much. It makes them composable. Which is the reason, nature works according to the PoMO. Let´s be clear about one thing: There is no dependency injection in nature. For all of an organism´s complexity no DI container is used. Behavior is the result of smooth cooperation between mutually oblivious building blocks. Functions will often be the adequate translation for the functional units in your designs. But not always. Take for example the case, where a processing step should not always produce an output. Maybe the purpose is to filter input. Here the functional unit consumes words and produces words. But it does not pass along every word flowing in. Some words are swallowed. Think of a spell checker. It probably should not check acronyms for correctness. There are too many of them. Or words with no more than two letters. Such words are called “stop words”. In the above picture the optionality of the output is signified by the astrisk outside the brackets. It means: Any number of (word) data items can flow from the functional unit for each input data item. It might be none or one or even more. This I call a stream of data. Such behavior cannot be translated into a function where output is generated with return. Because a function always needs to return a value. So the output port is translated into a function pointer or continuation which gets passed to the subroutine when called:[3]void filter_stop_words( string word, Action<string> onNoStopWord) { if (...check if not a stop word...) onNoStopWord(word); } If you want to be nitpicky you might call such a function pointer parameter an injection. And technically you´re right. Conceptually, though, it´s not an injection. Because the subroutine is not functionally dependent on the continuation. Firstly continuations are procedures, i.e. subroutines without a return type. Remember: Flow Design is about unidirectional data flow. Secondly the name of the formal parameter is chosen in a way as to not assume anything about downstream processing steps. onNoStopWord describes a situation (or event) within the functional unit only. Translating output ports into function pointers helps keeping functional units mutually oblivious in cases where output is optional or produced asynchronically. Either pass the function pointer to the function upon call. Or make it global by putting it on the encompassing class. Then it´s called an event. In C# that´s even an explicit feature.class Filter { public void filter_stop_words( string word) { if (...check if not a stop word...) onNoStopWord(word); } public event Action<string> onNoStopWord; } When to use a continuation and when to use an event dependens on how a functional unit is used in flows and how it´s packed together with others into classes. You´ll see examples further down the Flow Design road. Another example of 1D functional design Let´s see Flow Design once more in action using the visual notation. How about the famous word wrap kata? Robert C. Martin has posted a much cited solution including an extensive reasoning behind his TDD approach. So maybe you want to compare it to Flow Design. The function signature given is:string WordWrap(string text, int maxLineLength) {...} That´s not an Entry Point since we don´t see an application with an environment and users. Nevertheless it´s a function which is supposed to provide a certain functionality. The text passed in has to be reformatted. The input is a single line of arbitrary length consisting of words separated by spaces. The output should consist of one or more lines of a maximum length specified. If a word is longer than a the maximum line length it can be split in multiple parts each fitting in a line. Flow Design Let´s start by brainstorming the process to accomplish the feat of reformatting the text. What´s needed? Words need to be assembled into lines Words need to be extracted from the input text The resulting lines need to be assembled into the output text Words too long to fit in a line need to be split Does sound about right? I guess so. And it shows a kind of priority. Long words are a special case. So maybe there is a hint for an incremental design here. First let´s tackle “average words” (words not longer than a line). Here´s the Flow Design for this increment: The the first three bullet points turned into functional units with explicit data added. As the signature requires a text is transformed into another text. See the input of the first functional unit and the output of the last functional unit. In between no text flows, but words and lines. That´s good to see because thereby the domain is clearly represented in the design. The requirements are talking about words and lines and here they are. But note the asterisk! It´s not outside the brackets but inside. That means it´s not a stream of words or lines, but lists or sequences. For each text a sequence of words is output. For each sequence of words a sequence of lines is produced. The asterisk is used to abstract from the concrete implementation. Like with streams. Whether the list of words gets implemented as an array or an IEnumerable is not important during design. It´s an implementation detail. Does any processing step require further refinement? I don´t think so. They all look pretty “atomic” to me. And if not… I can always backtrack and refine a process step using functional design later once I´ve gained more insight into a sub-problem. Implementation The implementation is straightforward as you can imagine. The processing steps can all be translated into functions. Each can be tested easily and separately. Each has a focused responsibility. And the process flow becomes just a sequence of function calls: Easy to understand. It clearly states how word wrapping works - on a high level of abstraction. And it´s easy to evolve as you´ll see. Flow Design - Increment 2 So far only texts consisting of “average words” are wrapped correctly. Words not fitting in a line will result in lines too long. Wrapping long words is a feature of the requested functionality. Whether it´s there or not makes a difference to the user. To quickly get feedback I decided to first implement a solution without this feature. But now it´s time to add it to deliver the full scope. Fortunately Flow Design automatically leads to code following the Open Closed Principle (OCP). It´s easy to extend it - instead of changing well tested code. How´s that possible? Flow Design allows for extension of functionality by inserting functional units into the flow. That way existing functional units need not be changed. The data flow arrow between functional units is a natural extension point. No need to resort to the Strategy Pattern. No need to think ahead where extions might need to be made in the future. I just “phase in” the remaining processing step: Since neither Extract words nor Reformat know of their environment neither needs to be touched due to the “detour”. The new processing step accepts the output of the existing upstream step and produces data compatible with the existing downstream step. Implementation - Increment 2 A trivial implementation checking the assumption if this works does not do anything to split long words. The input is just passed on: Note how clean WordWrap() stays. The solution is easy to understand. A developer looking at this code sometime in the future, when a new feature needs to be build in, quickly sees how long words are dealt with. Compare this to Robert C. Martin´s solution:[4] How does this solution handle long words? Long words are not even part of the domain language present in the code. At least I need considerable time to understand the approach. Admittedly the Flow Design solution with the full implementation of long word splitting is longer than Robert C. Martin´s. At least it seems. Because his solution does not cover all the “word wrap situations” the Flow Design solution handles. Some lines would need to be added to be on par, I guess. But even then… Is a difference in LOC that important as long as it´s in the same ball park? I value understandability and openness for extension higher than saving on the last line of code. Simplicity is not just less code, it´s also clarity in design. But don´t take my word for it. Try Flow Design on larger problems and compare for yourself. What´s the easier, more straightforward way to clean code? And keep in mind: You ain´t seen all yet ;-) There´s more to Flow Design than described in this chapter. In closing I hope I was able to give you a impression of functional design that makes you hungry for more. To me it´s an inevitable step in software development. Jumping from requirements to code does not scale. And it leads to dirty code all to quickly. Some thought should be invested first. Where there is a clear Entry Point visible, it´s functionality should be designed using data flows. Because with data flows abstraction is possible. For more background on why that´s necessary read my blog article here. For now let me point out to you - if you haven´t already noticed - that Flow Design is a general purpose declarative language. It´s “programming by intention” (Shalloway et al.). Just write down how you think the solution should work on a high level of abstraction. This breaks down a large problem in smaller problems. And by following the PoMO the solutions to those smaller problems are independent of each other. So they are easy to test. Or you could even think about getting them implemented in parallel by different team members. Flow Design not only increases evolvability, but also helps becoming more productive. All team members can participate in functional design. This goes beyon collective code ownership. We´re talking collective design/architecture ownership. Because with Flow Design there is a common visual language to talk about functional design - which is the foundation for all other design activities.   PS: If you like what you read, consider getting my ebook “The Incremental Architekt´s Napkin”. It´s where I compile all the articles in this series for easier reading. I like the strictness of Function Programming - but I also find it quite hard to live by. And it certainly is not what millions of programmers are used to. Also to me it seems, the real world is full of state and side effects. So why give them such a bad image? That´s why functional design takes a more pragmatic approach. State and side effects are ok for processing steps - but be sure to follow the SRP. Don´t put too much of it into a single processing step. ? Image taken from www.physioweb.org ? My code samples are written in C#. C# sports typed function pointers called delegates. Action is such a function pointer type matching functions with signature void someName(T t). Other languages provide similar ways to work with functions as first class citizens - even Java now in version 8. I trust you find a way to map this detail of my translation to your favorite programming language. I know it works for Java, C++, Ruby, JavaScript, Python, Go. And if you´re using a Functional Programming language it´s of course a no brainer. ? Taken from his blog post “The Craftsman 62, The Dark Path”. ?

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  • GPGPU

    WhatGPU obviously stands for Graphics Processing Unit (the silicon powering the display you are using to read this blog post). The extra GP in front of that stands for General Purpose computing.So, altogether GPGPU refers to computing we can perform on GPU for purposes beyond just drawing on the screen. In effect, we can use a GPGPU a bit like we already use a CPU: to perform some calculation (that doesn’t have to have any visual element to it). The attraction is that a GPGPU can be orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.WhyWhen I was at the SuperComputing conference in Portland last November, GPGPUs were all the rage. A quick online search reveals many articles introducing the GPGPU topic. I'll just share 3 here: pcper (ignoring all pages except the first, it is a good consumer perspective), gizmodo (nice take using mostly layman terms) and vizworld (answering the question on "what's the big deal").The GPGPU programming paradigm (from a high level) is simple: in your CPU program you define functions (aka kernels) that take some input, can perform the costly operation and return the output. The kernels are the things that execute on the GPGPU leveraging its power (and hence execute faster than what they could on the CPU) while the host CPU program waits for the results or asynchronously performs other tasks.However, GPGPUs have different characteristics to CPUs which means they are suitable only for certain classes of problem (i.e. data parallel algorithms) and not for others (e.g. algorithms with branching or recursion or other complex flow control). You also pay a high cost for transferring the input data from the CPU to the GPU (and vice versa the results back to the CPU), so the computation itself has to be long enough to justify the overhead transfer costs. If your problem space fits the criteria then you probably want to check out this technology.HowSo where can you get a graphics card to start playing with all this? At the time of writing, the two main vendors ATI (owned by AMD) and NVIDIA are the obvious players in this industry. You can read about GPGPU on this AMD page and also on this NVIDIA page. NVIDIA's website also has a free chapter on the topic from the "GPU Gems" book: A Toolkit for Computation on GPUs.If you followed the links above, then you've already come across some of the choices of programming models that are available today. Essentially, AMD is offering their ATI Stream technology accessible via a language they call Brook+; NVIDIA offers their CUDA platform which is accessible from CUDA C. Choosing either of those locks you into the GPU vendor and hence your code cannot run on systems with cards from the other vendor (e.g. imagine if your CPU code would run on Intel chips but not AMD chips). Having said that, both vendors plan to support a new emerging standard called OpenCL, which theoretically means your kernels can execute on any GPU that supports it. To learn more about all of these there is a website: gpgpu.org. The caveat about that site is that (currently) it completely ignores the Microsoft approach, which I touch on next.On Windows, there is already a cross-GPU-vendor way of programming GPUs and that is the DirectX API. Specifically, on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the DirectX 11 API offers a dedicated subset of the API for GPGPU programming: DirectCompute. You use this API on the CPU side, to set up and execute the kernels that run on the GPU. The kernels are written in a language called HLSL (High Level Shader Language). You can use DirectCompute with HLSL to write a "compute shader", which is the term DirectX uses for what I've been referring to in this post as a "kernel". For a comprehensive collection of links about this (including tutorials, videos and samples) please see my blog post: DirectCompute.Note that there are many efforts to build even higher level languages on top of DirectX that aim to expose GPGPU programming to a wider audience by making it as easy as today's mainstream programming models. I'll mention here just two of those efforts: Accelerator from MSR and Brahma by Ananth. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • JustMock and Moles – A short overview for TDD alpha geeks

    - by RoyOsherove
    People have been lurking near my house, asking me to write something about Moles and JustMock, so I’ll try to be as objective as possible, taking in the fact that I work at Typemock. If I were NOT working at Typemock I’d write: JustMock JustMock tries to be Typemock at so many levels it’s not even funny. Technically they work the same and the API almost looks like it’s a search and replace work based on the Isolator API (awesome compliment!), but JustMock still has too many growing pains and bugs to be usable. Also, JustMock is missing alot of the legacy abilities such as Non public faking, faking all types and various other things that are really needed in real legacy code. Biggest thing (in terms of isolation integration) is that it does not integrate with other profilers such as coverage, NCover etc.) When JustMock comes out of beta, I feel that it should cost about half as Isolator costs, as it currently provides about half the abilities. Moles Moles is an addon of Pex and was originally only intended to work within the Pex environment. It started as a research project and now it’s a power-tool for VS (so it’s a separate install) Now it’s it’s own little stubbing framework. It’s not really an Isolation framework in the classic sense, because it does not provide any kind of API built in to verify object interactions. You have to use manual flags all on your own to do that. It generates two types of classes per assembly: Manual Stubs(just like you’d hand code them) and Mole classes. Each Mole class is a special API to change and break the behavior that the corresponding type. so MDateTime is how you change behavior for DateTime. In that sense the API is al over the place, and it can become highly unreadable and unmentionable over time in your test. Also, the Moles API isn’t really designed to deal with real Legacy code. It only deals with public types and methods. anything internal or private is ignored and you can’t change its behavior. You also can’t control static constructors. That takes about 95% of legacy scenarios out of the picture if that’s what you’re trying to use it for. Personally, I found it hard to get used to the idea of two parallel APIs for different abilities, and when to choose which. and I know this stuff. I would expect more usability from the API to make it more widely used. I don’t think that Moles in planning to go that route. Publishing it as an Isolation framework is really an afterthought of a tool that was design with a specific task in mind, and generic Isolation isn’t it. it’s only hope is DEQ – a simple code example that shows a simple Isolation API built on the Moles generic engine. Moles can and should be used for very simple cases of detouring functionality such a simple static methods or interfaces and virtual functions (like rhinomock and MOQ do).   Oh, Wait. Ah, good thing I work at Typemock. I won’t write all that. I’ll just write: JustMock and Moles are great tools that enlarge the market space for isolation related technologies, and they prove that the idea of productivity and unit testing can go hand in hand and get people hooked. I look forward to compete with them at this growing market.

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  • Introducing .NET 4.0 with Visual Studio 2010 by Alex Mackey - Book review

    - by Malisa L. Ncube
    Alex (http://simpleisbest.co.uk/) does a very good job in covering the new features of .NET 4.0 and Visual Studio 2010. His focus is on the developers that have experience in development using previous versions of Visual Studio, more specifically Visual Studio 2008.     The following are my views towards his book. 1. Scope / Coverage Even as the book is labeled as introduction, it is covers a broad spectrum of technologies, features and references that are focused into helping a developer quickly decide what to use in the new .NET framework. a. Content The content included covers as much as possible the new additions that are included in the new .NET version 4.0. He shows the Visual Studio 2010 new features and quickly shows how to extend it using Managed Extensibility Framework. Some of my favorites are parallel debugging enhancements. The author delves into JQuery, which Microsoft has decided to support. Some of the very interesting content is on the out-of-band releases including ASP.NET MVC, Windows Azure Silverlight 3 and WCF Data Services. b. What is not included? Windows Phone 7 Series. This was only talked about in the MIX10. The data may not have been available at the time of writing. Microsoft Pinpoint (Microsoft code name "Dallas") Windows Embedded development. c. Table of Contents Chapter 1: Introduction Chapter 2: Visual Studio IDE and MEF Chapter 3: Language and Dynamic Changes Chapter 4: CLR and BCL Changes Chapter 5: Parallelization and Threading Enhancements Chapter 6: Windows Workflow Foundation 4 Chapter 7: Windows Communication Foundation Chapter 8: Entity Framework Chapter 9: WCF Data Services Chapter 10: ASPNET Chapter 11: Microsoft AJAX Library Chapter 12: jQuery Chapter 13: ASPNET MVC Chapter 14: Silverlight Introduction Chapter 15: WPF 4.0 and Silverlight 3.0 Chapter 16: Windows Azure 2. Depth Avoids getting into depth on the topics presented, to present the new concepts in assumption of the developer’s existing knowledge. Code samples are on book and exist mostly as snippets and very easy to follow. There are no downloadable examples. 3. Complexity The book is written in a very simple way and easy to follow. There are no irrelevant intimidating details. So it’s a book that you can grab and never put down until you’ve finished reading the entire book. 4. References The author includes reference links to blogs, Wikis and a lot of online resources including the MSDN documentation, which is a very convenient strategy to avoid flooding the reader with details which may not be of interest to them. Most sites do not use url routing and that is really not nice. There are notes from interviews between the author and people behind the new technologies, in which they explain what some specific areas that need clarifications and what their future views are in relation to the features they are working on. 5. Target The author targets experts that want to make a transition from .NET 3.5 to 4.0. Some obvious 3.5 features have been purposely excluded from the text 6. Overrall It is evident that the author has made extensive research into the breadth of what MS is working on, in relation to .NET and Visual Studio and has also been watching the online community. What I would like to see in the next edition are some details on OData protocol, Expression Blend 4 and Embedded development and Windows Phone development. I should say I’m one of the beneficiaries of this book. Excellent work Alex.   Technorati Tags: .NET,Book-Review,Visual Studio

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  • Software development stack 2012

    A couple of months ago, I posted on Google+ about my evaluation period for a new software development stack in general. "Analysing existing 'jungle' of multiple applications and tools in various languages for clarification and future design decisions. Great fun and lots of headaches... #DevelopersLife" Surprisingly, there was response... ;-) - And this series of articles is initiated by this post. Thanks Olaf. The past few years... Well, after all my first choice of software development in the past was Microsoft Visual FoxPro 6.0 - 9.0 in combination with Microsoft SQL Server 2000 - 2008 and Crystal Reports 9.x - XI. Honestly, it is my main working environment due to exisiting maintenance and support plans with my customers, but also for new project requests. And... hands on, it is still my first choice for data manipulation and migration options. But the earth is spinning, and as a software craftsman one has to be flexible with the choice of tools. In parallel to my knowledge and expertise in the above mentioned tools, I already started very early to get my hands dirty with the Microsoft .NET Framework. If I remember correctly, I started back in 2002/2003 with the first version ever. But this was more out of curiousity. During the years this kind of development got more serious and demanding, and I focused myself on interop and integrational libraries and applications. Mainly, to expose exisitng features of the .NET Framework to Visual FoxPro - I even had a session about that at the German Developer's Conference in Frankfurt. Observation of recent developments With the recent hype on Javascript and HTML5, especially for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 development, I had several 'Deja vu' events... Back in early 2006 (roughly) I had a conversation on the future of Web and Desktop development with my former colleagues Golo Roden and Thomas Wilting about the underestimation of Javascript and its root as a prototype-based, dynamic, full-featured programming language. During this talk with them I took the Mozilla applications, namely Firefox and Thunderbird, as a reference which are mainly based on XML, CSS, Javascript and images - besides the core rendering engine. And that it is very simple to write your own extensions for the Gecko rendering engine. Looking at the Windows Vista Sidebar widgets, just underlines this kind of usage. So, yes the 'Modern UI' of Windows 8 based on HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript didn't come as any surprise to me. Just allow me to ask why did it take so long for Microsoft to come up with this step? A new set of tools Ok, coming from web development in HTML 4, CSS and Javascript prior to Visual FoxPro, I am partly going back to that combination of technologies. What is the other part of the software development stack here at IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd? Frankly, it is easy and straight forward to describe: Microsoft Visual FoxPro 9.0 SP 2 - still going strong! Visual Studio 2012 (C# on latest .NET Framework) MonoDevelop Telerik DevCraft Suite WPF ASP.NET MVC Windows 8 Kendo UI OpenAccess ORM Reporting JustCode CODE Framework by EPS Software MonoTouch and Mono for Android Subversion and additional tools for the daily routine: Notepad++, JustCode, SQL Compare, DiffMerge, VMware, etc. Following the principles of Clean Code Developer and the Agile Manifesto Actually, nothing special about this combination but rather a solid fundament to work with and create line of business applications for customers.Honestly, I am really interested in your choice of 'weapons' for software development, and hopefully there might be some nice conversations in the comment section. Over the next coming days/weeks I'm going to describe a little bit more in detail about the reasons for my decision. Articles will be added bit by bit here as reference, too. Please bear with me... Regards, JoKi

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  • Adding Fake Build Information in TFS 2010

    - by Jakob Ehn
    We have been using TFS 2010 build for distributing a build in parallel on several agents, but where the actual compilation is done by a bunch of external tools and compilers, e.g. no MSBuild involved. We are using the ParallelTemplate.xaml template that Jim Lamb blogged about previously, which distributes each configuration to a different agent. We developed custom activities for running these external compilers and collecting the information and errors by reading standard out/error and pushing it back to the build log. But since we aren’t using MSBuild we don’t the get nice configuration summary section on the build summary page that we are used to. We would like to show the result of each configuration with any errors/warnings as usual, together with a link to the log file. TFS 2010 API to the rescue! What we need to do is adding information to the InformationNode structure that is associated with every TFS build. The log that you normally see in the Log view is built up as a tree structure of IBuildInformationNode objects. This structure can we accessed by using the InformationNodeConverters class. This class also contain some helper methods for creating BuildProjectNode, which contain the information about each project that was build, for example which configuration, number of errors and warnings and link to the log file. Here is a code snippet that first creates a “fake” build from scratch and the add two BuildProjectNodes, one for Debug|x86 and one for Release|x86 with some release information:   TfsTeamProjectCollection collection = TfsTeamProjectCollectionFactory.GetTeamProjectCollection(new Uri("http://lt-jakob2010:8080/tfs")); IBuildServer buildServer = collection.GetService<IBuildServer>(); var buildDef = buildServer.GetBuildDefinition("TeamProject", "BuildDefinition"); //Create fake build with random build number var detail = buildDef.CreateManualBuild(new Random().Next().ToString()); // Create Debug|x86 project summary IBuildProjectNode buildProjectNode = detail.Information.AddBuildProjectNode(DateTime.Now, "Debug", "MySolution.sln", "x86", "$/project/MySolution.sln", DateTime.Now, "Default"); buildProjectNode.CompilationErrors = 1; buildProjectNode.CompilationWarnings = 1; buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddBuildError("Compilation", "File1.cs", 12, 5, "", "Syntax error", DateTime.Now); buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddBuildWarning("File2.cs", 3, 1, "", "Some warning", DateTime.Now, "Compilation"); buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddExternalLink("Log File", new Uri(@"\\server\share\logfiledebug.txt")); buildProjectNode.Save(); // Create Releaes|x86 project summary buildProjectNode = detail.Information.AddBuildProjectNode(DateTime.Now, "Release", "MySolution.sln", "x86", "$/project/MySolution.sln", DateTime.Now, "Default"); buildProjectNode.CompilationErrors = 0; buildProjectNode.CompilationWarnings = 0; buildProjectNode.Node.Children.AddExternalLink("Log File", new Uri(@"\\server\share\logfilerelease.txt")); buildProjectNode.Save(); detail.Information.Save(); detail.FinalizeStatus(BuildStatus.Failed); When running this code, it will a create a build that looks like this: As you can see, it created two configurations with error and warning information and a link to a log file. Just like a regular MSBuild would have done. This is very useful when using TFS 2010 Build in heterogeneous environments. It would also be possible to do this when running compilations completely outside TFS build, but then push the results of the into TFS for easy access. You can push all information, including the compilation summary, drop location, test results etc using the API.

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  • SQL SERVER – CXPACKET – Parallelism – Advanced Solution – Wait Type – Day 7 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier we discussed about the what is the common solution to solve the issue with CXPACKET wait time. Today I am going to talk about few of the other suggestions which can help to reduce the CXPACKET wait. If you are going to suggest that I should focus on MAXDOP and COST THRESHOLD – I totally agree. I have covered them in details in yesterday’s blog post. Today we are going to discuss few other way CXPACKET can be reduced. Potential Reasons: If data is heavily skewed, there are chances that query optimizer may estimate the correct amount of the data leading to assign fewer thread to query. This can easily lead to uneven workload on threads and may create CXPAKCET wait. While retrieving the data one of the thread face IO, Memory or CPU bottleneck and have to wait to get those resources to execute its tasks, may create CXPACKET wait as well. Data which is retrieved is on different speed IO Subsystem. (This is not common and hardly possible but there are chances). Higher fragmentations in some area of the table can lead less data per page. This may lead to CXPACKET wait. As I said the reasons here mentioned are not the major cause of the CXPACKET wait but any kind of scenario can create the probable wait time. Best Practices to Reduce CXPACKET wait: Refer earlier article regarding MAXDOP and Cost Threshold. De-fragmentation of Index can help as more data can be obtained per page. (Assuming close to 100 fill-factor) If data is on multiple files which are on multiple similar speed physical drive, the CXPACKET wait may reduce. Keep the statistics updated, as this will give better estimate to query optimizer when assigning threads and dividing the data among available threads. Updating statistics can significantly improve the strength of the query optimizer to render proper execution plan. This may overall affect the parallelism process in positive way. Bad Practice: In one of the recent consultancy project, when I was called in I noticed that one of the ‘experienced’ DBA noticed higher CXPACKET wait and to reduce them, he has increased the worker threads. The reality was increasing worker thread has lead to many other issues. With more number of the threads, more amount of memory was used leading memory pressure. As there were more threads CPU scheduler faced higher ‘Context Switching’ leading further degrading performance. When I explained all these to ‘experienced’ DBA he suggested that now we should reduce the number of threads. Not really! Lower number of the threads may create heavy stalling for parallel queries. I suggest NOT to touch the setting of number of the threads when dealing with CXPACKET wait. Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and I no way claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading book on-line for further clarification. All the discussion of Wait Stats over here is generic and it varies by system to system. You are recommended to test this on development server before implementing to production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: DMV, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Geocaching - World wide treasure hunt

    I'm not quite sure how I came across this topic but actually I find it absolutely interesting, challenging and most of all a great fun for the family and friends. The interesting part is for sure that you can follow other peoples treasures and their preferred locations where a cache might be hidden. Of course, it wont be easy to find a cache after all. Sometimes there are even 'mystery caches' which have either riddles, further instructions or little brain games for you in order to find the actual cache - that's the challenge. And last but not least, those caches are hidden outdoor. A great experience to explore nature either on your own, or your family especially with children, or as a treasure hunting pack with a couple of friends. What is geocaching? It's a high-tech outdoor treasure hunting game that's a great way to explore the world with friends, family or on your own. Participants use GPS-enabled devices to locate hidden containers called geocaches. There are over one million geocaches hidden around the world today, waiting for you to find them. Visit Geocaching.com to search for geocaches near you.(Source: Referral Email of geocaching.com) Checkout the Geocaching 101 for further details and information. They also provide a video channel on YouTube. Which equipment do I need? Any GPS-enabled device is sufficient to go onto the hunt. I'm going to start our geocaching experience equipped with my Samsung Galaxy Tab. Additionally, I installed a geocaching.com client called c:geo that hopefully assists me soon. Combined with a map app like Google Maps and a nice Compass app you should be fully equipped and ready to go. I guess, that even a car navigation system is perfect for that task. Later on, with more experience and demand for technology (or precision) it might be interesting to opt-in for a pure GPS device, like a Garmin or any other brand on the market. {loadposition content_adsense} What is a geocache and what does it contain? In its simplest form, a cache always contains a logbook or logsheet for you to log your find. Larger caches may contain a logbook and any number of items. These items turn the adventure into a true treasure hunt. You never know what the cache owner or visitors to the cache may have left for you to enjoy. Remember, if you take something, leave something of equal or greater value in return. It is recommended that items in a cache be individually packaged in a clear, zipped plastic bag to protect them from the elements. Finding your first geocache Well, first you have to have interest to pick up the challenge. Then you have to check out the Geocache directory on geocaching.com. They have recommendations for beginner's caches but you are free to choose any. Actually, we have a Mystery Cache very close to our base, and I guess that we are going for that one on our first trip. Anyway, there is a very informative guide on the website which should answer all your questions about starting your new outdoor adventure. For sure, it's going to be rewarding. Team up with friends and family Especially as a beginner there might be misunderstandings in handling the GPS coordinates, the compass, or the map, and even finding the container at the documented position isn't easy in the first place. Luckily, there are logbook reports online from other hunters, and most of the time there are even 'spoiler' images available. But also bear in mind, that a geocache might have been removed or is lost due to unconscious people or whatever other reasons. Don't be disappointed in case that you can't find anything... There be nothing anymore. A general recommendation in this case would be to replace the missing container with a new one, and give feedback to the original owner about the state of that particular location. After all, it's about fun and active participation in a world-wide community. Geocaches in Mauritius? Yes, there are currently about 45 geocaches spread all over the island, and even a single in Rodriguez - that's gonna be a tough one. Hopefully, we will get increasing numbers as Geocaching.com allows, no better, even encourages you to hide new containers at your locations of choice. I think this is going to be real fun for us during the upcoming weeks and months. Especially, when we are travelling to other countries and transfer so-called trackable items between geocaches. On my first impression, Geocaching.com seems to be very mature, open and community-oriented. There are literally hundreds of thousands geocache 'hunters' all over the world. And usually finding a container remote from your home is very rewarding. I'll keep you updated in these matters during the next months to come...

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  • A temporary disagreement

    - by Tony Davis
    Last month, Phil Factor caused a furore amongst some MVPs with an article that attempted to offer simple advice to developers regarding the use of table variables, versus local and global temporary tables, in their code. Phil makes clear that the table variables do come with some fairly major limitations.no distribution statistics, no parallel query plans for queries that modify table variables.but goes on to suggest that for reasonably small-scale strategic uses, and with a bit of due care and testing, table variables are a "good thing". Not everyone shares his opinion; in fact, I imagine he was rather aghast to learn that there were those felt his article was akin to pulling the pin out of a grenade and tossing it into the database; table variables should be avoided in almost all cases, according to their advice, in favour of temp tables. In other words, a fairly major feature of SQL Server should be more-or-less 'off limits' to developers. The problem with temp tables is that, because they are scoped either in the procedure or the connection, it is easy to allow them to hang around for too long, eating up precious memory and bulking up the shared tempdb database. Unless they are explicitly dropped, global temporary tables, and local temporary tables created within a connection rather than within a stored procedure, will persist until the connection is closed or, with connection pooling, until the connection is reused. It's also quite common with ASP.NET applications to have connection leaks, as Bill Vaughn explains in his chapter in the "SQL Server Deep Dives" book, meaning that the web page exits without closing the connection object, maybe due to an error condition. This will then hang around in the heap for what might be hours before picked up by the garbage collector. Table variables are much safer in this regard, since they are batch-scoped and so are cleaned up automatically once the batch is complete, which also means that they are intuitive to use for the developer because they conform to scoping rules that are closer to those in procedural code. On the surface then, an ideal way to deal with issues related to tempdb memory hogging. So why did Phil qualify his recommendation to use Table Variables? This is another of those cases where, like scalar UDFs and table-valued multi-statement UDFs, developers can sometimes get into trouble with a relatively benign-looking feature, due to way it's been implemented in SQL Server. Once again the biggest problem is how they are handled internally, by the SQL Server query optimizer, which can make very poor choices for JOIN orders and so on, in the absence of statistics, especially when joining to tables with highly-skewed data. The resulting execution plans can be horrible, as will be the resulting performance. If the JOIN is to a large table, that will hurt. Ideally, Microsoft would simply fix this issue so that developers can't get burned in this way; they've been around since SQL Server 2000, so Microsoft has had a bit of time to get it right. As I commented in regard to UDFs, when developers discover issues like with such standard features, the database becomes an alien planet to them, where death lurks around each corner, and they continue to avoid these "killer" features years after the problems have been eventually resolved. In the meantime, what is the right approach? Is it to say "hammers can kill, don't ever use hammers", or is it to try to explain, as Phil's article and follow-up blog post have tried to do, what the feature was intended for, why care must be applied in its use, and so enable developers to make properly-informed decisions, without requiring them to delve deep into the inner workings of SQL Server? Cheers, Tony.

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  • SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Glenn Berry – Wait Type – Day 26 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    Glenn Berry works as a Database Architect at NewsGator Technologies in Denver, CO. He is a SQL Server MVP, and has a whole collection of Microsoft certifications, including MCITP, MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD, MCAD, and MCTS. He is also an Adjunct Faculty member at University College – University of Denver, where he has been teaching since 2000. He is one wonderful blogger and often blogs at here. I am big fan of the Dynamic Management Views (DMV) scripts of Glenn. His script are extremely popular and the reality is that he has inspired me to start this series with his famous DMV which I have mentioned in very first  wait stats blog post (I had forgot to request his permission to re-use the script but when asked later on his whole hearty approved it). Here is is his excellent blog post on this subject of wait stats: Analyzing cumulative wait stats in SQL Server 2005 and above has become a popular and effective technique for diagnosing performance issues and further focusing your troubleshooting and diagnostic  efforts.  Rather than just guessing about what resource(s) that SQL Server is waiting on, you can actually find out by running a relatively simple DMV query. Once you know what resources that SQL Server is spending the most time waiting on, you can run more specific queries that focus on that resource to get a better idea what is causing the problem. I do want to throw out a few caveats about using wait stats as a diagnostic tool. First, they are most useful when your SQL Server instance is experiencing performance problems. If your instance is running well, with no indication of any resource pressure from other sources, then you should not worry that much about what the top wait types are. SQL Server will always be waiting on some resource, but many wait types are quite benign, and can be safely ignored. In spite of this, I quite often see experienced DBAs obsessing over the top wait type, even when their SQL Server instance is running extremely well. Second, I often see DBAs jump to the wrong conclusion based on seeing a particular well-known wait type. A good example is CXPACKET waits. People typically jump to the conclusion that high CXPACKET waits means that they should immediately change their instance-level MADOP setting to 1. This is not always the best solution. You need to consider your workload type, and look carefully for any important “missing” indexes that might be causing the query optimizer to use a parallel plan to compensate for the missing index. In this case, correcting the index problem is usually a better solution than changing MAXDOP, since you are curing the disease rather than just treating the symptom. Finally, you should get in the habit of clearing out your cumulative wait stats with the  DBCC SQLPERF(‘sys.dm_os_wait_stats’, CLEAR); command. This is especially important if you have made an configuration or index changes, or if your workload has changed recently. Otherwise, your cumulative wait stats will be polluted with the old stats from weeks or months ago (since the last time SQL Server was started or the stats were cleared).  If you make a change to your SQL Server instance, or add an index, you should clear out your wait stats, and then wait a while to see what your new top wait stats are. At any rate, enjoy Pinal Dave’s series on Wait Stats. This blog post has been written by Glenn Berry (Twitter | Blog) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • Speed up SQL Server queries with PREFETCH

    - by Akshay Deep Lamba
    Problem The SAN data volume has a throughput capacity of 400MB/sec; however my query is still running slow and it is waiting on I/O (PAGEIOLATCH_SH). Windows Performance Monitor shows data volume speed of 4MB/sec. Where is the problem and how can I find the problem? Solution This is another summary of a great article published by R. Meyyappan at www.sqlworkshops.com.  In my opinion, this is the first article that highlights and explains with working examples how PREFETCH determines the performance of a Nested Loop join.  First of all, I just want to recall that Prefetch is a mechanism with which SQL Server can fire up many I/O requests in parallel for a Nested Loop join. When SQL Server executes a Nested Loop join, it may or may not enable Prefetch accordingly to the number of rows in the outer table. If the number of rows in the outer table is greater than 25 then SQL will enable and use Prefetch to speed up query performance, but it will not if it is less than 25 rows. In this section we are going to see different scenarios where prefetch is automatically enabled or disabled. These examples only use two tables RegionalOrder and Orders.  If you want to create the sample tables and sample data, please visit this site www.sqlworkshops.com. The breakdown of the data in the RegionalOrders table is shown below and the Orders table contains about 6 million rows. In this first example, I am creating a stored procedure against two tables and then execute the stored procedure.  Before running the stored proceudre, I am going to include the actual execution plan. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Create procedure that pulls orders based on City --Do not forget to include the actual execution plan CREATE PROC RegionalOrdersProc @City CHAR(20) AS BEGIN DECLARE @OrderID INT, @OrderDetails CHAR(200) SELECT @OrderID = o.OrderID, @OrderDetails = o.OrderDetails       FROM RegionalOrders ao INNER JOIN Orders o ON (o.OrderID = ao.OrderID)       WHERE City = @City END GO SET STATISTICS time ON GO --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute the procedure with parameter SmallCity1 EXEC RegionalOrdersProc 'SmallCity1' GO After running the stored procedure, if we right click on the Clustered Index Scan and click Properties we can see the Estimated Numbers of Rows is 24.    If we right click on Nested Loops and click Properties we do not see Prefetch, because it is disabled. This behavior was expected, because the number of rows containing the value ‘SmallCity1’ in the outer table is less than 25.   Now, if I run the same procedure with parameter ‘BigCity’ will Prefetch be enabled? --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute the procedure with parameter BigCity --We are using cached plan EXEC RegionalOrdersProc 'BigCity' GO As we can see from the below screenshot, prefetch is not enabled and the query takes around 7 seconds to execute. This is because the query used the cached plan from ‘SmallCity1’ that had prefetch disabled. Please note that even if we have 999 rows for ‘BigCity’ the Estimated Numbers of Rows is still 24.   Finally, let’s clear the procedure cache to trigger a new optimization and execute the procedure again. DBCC freeproccache GO EXEC RegionalOrdersProc 'BigCity' GO This time, our procedure runs under a second, Prefetch is enabled and the Estimated Number of Rows is 999.   The RegionalOrdersProc can be optimized by using the below example where we are using an optimizer hint. I have also shown some other hints that could be used as well. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --You can fix the issue by using any of the following --hints --Create procedure that pulls orders based on City DROP PROC RegionalOrdersProc GO CREATE PROC RegionalOrdersProc @City CHAR(20) AS BEGIN DECLARE @OrderID INT, @OrderDetails CHAR(200) SELECT @OrderID = o.OrderID, @OrderDetails = o.OrderDetails       FROM RegionalOrders ao INNER JOIN Orders o ON (o.OrderID = ao.OrderID)       WHERE City = @City       --Hinting optimizer to use SmallCity2 for estimation       OPTION (optimize FOR (@City = 'SmallCity2'))       --Hinting optimizer to estimate for the currnet parameters       --option (recompile)       --Hinting optimize not to use histogram rather       --density for estimation (average of all 3 cities)       --option (optimize for (@City UNKNOWN))       --option (optimize for UNKNOWN) END GO Conclusion, this tip was mainly aimed at illustrating how Prefetch can speed up query execution and how the different number of rows can trigger this.

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  • Having fun with Reflection

    - by Nick Harrison
    I was once asked in a technical interview what I could tell them about Reflection.   My response, while a little tongue in cheek was that "I can tell you it is one of my favorite topics to talk about" I did get a laugh out of that and it was a great ice breaker.    Reflection may not be the answer for everything, but it often can be, or maybe even should be.     I have posted in the past about my favorite CopyTo method.   It can come in several forms and is often very useful.   I explain it further and expand on the basic idea here  The basic idea is to allow reflection to loop through the properties of two objects and synchronize the ones that are in common.   I love this approach for data binding and passing data across the layers in an application. Recently I have been working on a project leveraging Data Transfer Objects to pass data through WCF calls.   We won't go into how the architecture got this way, but in essence there is a partial duplicate inheritance hierarchy where there is a related Domain Object for each Data Transfer Object.     The matching objects do not share a common ancestor or common interface but they will have the same properties in common.    By passing the problems with this approach, let's talk about how Reflection and our friendly CopyTo could make the most of this bad situation without having to change too much. One of the problems is keeping the two sets of objects in synch.   For this particular project, the DO has all of the functionality and the DTO is used to simply transfer data back and forth.    Both sets of object have parallel hierarchies with the same properties being defined at the corresponding levels.   So we end with BaseDO,  BaseDTO, GenericDO, GenericDTO, ProcessAreaDO,  ProcessAreaDTO, SpecializedProcessAreaDO, SpecializedProcessAreaDTO, TableDo, TableDto. and so on. Without using Reflection and a CopyTo function, tremendous care and effort must be made to keep the corresponding objects in synch.    New properties can be added at any level in the inheritance and must be kept in synch at all subsequent layers.    For this project we have come up with a clever approach of calling a base GetDo or UpdateDto making sure that the same method at each level of inheritance is called.    Each level is responsible for updating the properties at that level. This is a lot of work and not keeping it in synch can create all manner of problems some of which are very difficult to track down.    The other problem is the type of code that this methods tend to wind up with. You end up with code like this: Transferable dto = new Transferable(); base.GetDto(dto); dto.OfficeCode = GetDtoNullSafe(officeCode); dto.AccessIndicator = GetDtoNullSafe(accessIndicator); dto.CaseStatus = GetDtoNullSafe(caseStatus); dto.CaseStatusReason = GetDtoNullSafe(caseStatusReason); dto.LevelOfService = GetDtoNullSafe(levelOfService); dto.ReferralComments = referralComments; dto.Designation = GetDtoNullSafe(designation); dto.IsGoodCauseClaimed = GetDtoNullSafe(isGoodCauseClaimed); dto.GoodCauseClaimDate = goodCauseClaimDate;       One obvious problem is that this is tedious code.   It is error prone code.    Adding helper functions like GetDtoNullSafe help out immensely, but there is still an easier way. We can bypass the tedious code, by pass the complex inheritance tricks, and reduce all of this to a single method in the base class. TransferObject dto = new TransferObject(); CopyTo (this, dto); return dto; In the case of this one project, such a change eliminated the need for 20% of the total code base and a whole class of unit test cases that made sure that all of the properties were in synch. The impact of such a change also needs to include the on going time savings and the improvements in quality that can arise from them.    Developers who are not worried about keeping the properties in synch across mirrored object hierarchies are freed to worry about more important things like implementing business requirements.

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

    - by mseika
    I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

    - by mseika
    I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations.   Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

    - by mseika
    I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations.   Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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  • PARTNER WEBCAST- ORACLE COMPETENCE - PROGRAM (COMPETENCE VIRTUAL)

    - by mseika
    I am pleased to invite you to join the second (Competence Virtual). In Competence - program we will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Competencewill be presented on 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Competence is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A Document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. What are the Benefits for Partners? Find out how Competence helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customer’s solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleagues alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Applications portfolio – for your and your Customer’s benefit.   Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions:- Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy- Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review- Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution- Oracle Transportation Management- Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management- Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences- EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview- Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 For more details please visit and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery FormatCompetence- program (Competence Virtual) is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Competence consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available two weeks after the webcast. You can also see Competence afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months.The next Competence web casts will be presented as follows: June the 4th  2012 September the 3rd  2012 December the 3rd  2012 March the 4th  2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. DurationMaximum 1 hour For further information please contact me at [email protected]. Best regards Markku RouhiainenDirector, Applications Partner EnablementWestern Europe

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  • jtreg update, March 2012

    - by jjg
    There is a new update for jtreg 4.1, b04, available. The primary changes have been to support faster and more reliable test runs, especially for tests in the jdk/ repository. [ For users inside Oracle, there is preliminary direct support for gathering code coverage data using jcov while running tests, and for generating a coverage report when all the tests have been run. ] -- jtreg can be downloaded from the OpenJDK jtreg page: http://openjdk.java.net/jtreg/. Scratch directories On platforms like Windows, if a test leaves a file open when the test is over, that can cause a problem for downstream tests, because the scratch directory cannot be emptied beforehand. This is addressed in agentvm mode by discarding any agents using that scratch directory and starting new agents using a new empty scratch directory. Successive directives use suffices _1, _2, etc. If you see such directories appearing in the work directory, that is an indication that files were left open in the preceding directory in the series. Locking support Some tests use shared system resources such as fixed port numbers. This causes a problem when running tests concurrently. So, you can now mark a directory such that all the tests within all such directories will be run sequentially, even if you use -concurrency:N on the command line to run the rest of the tests in parallel. This is seen as a short term solution: it is recommended that tests not use shared system resources whenever possible. If you are running multiple instances of jtreg on the same machine at the same time, you can use a new option -lock:file to specify a file to be used for file locking; otherwise, the locking will just be within the JVM used to run jtreg. "autovm mode" By default, if no options to the contrary are given on the command line, tests will be run in othervm mode. Now, a test suite can be marked so that the default execution mode is "agentvm" mode. In conjunction with this, you can now mark a directory such that all the tests within that directory will be run in "othervm" mode. Conceptually, this is equivalent to putting /othervm on every appropriate action on every test in that directory and any subdirectories. This is seen as a short term solution: it is recommended tests be adapted to use agentvm mode, or use "@run main/othervm" explicitly. Info in test result files The user name and jtreg version info are now stored in the properties near the beginning of the .jtr file. Build The makefiles used to build and test jtreg have been reorganized and simplified. jtreg is now using JT Harness version 4.4. Other jtreg provides access to GNOME_DESKTOP_SESSION_ID when set. jtreg ensures that shell tests are given an absolute path for the JDK under test. jtreg now honors the "first sentence rule" for the description given by @summary. jtreg saves the default locale before executing a test in samevm or agentvm mode, and restores it afterwards. Bug fixes jtreg tried to execute a test even if the compilation failed in agentvm mode because of a JVM crash. jtreg did not correctly handle the -compilejdk option. Acknowledgements Thanks to Alan, Amy, Andrey, Brad, Christine, Dima, Max, Mike, Sherman, Steve and others for their help, suggestions, bug reports and for testing this latest version.

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  • Partner Webcast: Innovation in Products - October 1st, 2012 at 04:00 PM CET (03:00 PM GMT) Program

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    I am pleased to invite you to join the Innovations in Products – webcast. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Innovations in Products will be presented on the 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Innovations in Products is open for other system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle's product portfolio – for your and your customer's benefit. Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall product portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Product breakout sessions available on October 1st:   Topics Speaker To Register Fusion HCM Social Capabilities, Enterprise social capabilities embedded in how you run your business Anca Dumitru, HCM Presales Consultant, EMEA Presales Center CLICK HERE Oracle Fusion Applications Security Concepts, Overview Alexandra Dan, Applications Technology Presales Consultant, EMEA Presales Centre CLICK HERE Fusion Financials Overview - Focus on Fusion Payables, Meeting the Payables' Challenges Elena Nita, Senior ERP Sales Consultant, EMEA Presales Center CLICK HERE Introduction to Oracle RightNow CX, Empowering companies to engage directly with their customers through great Social, Web, Chat and Contact Center experiences. Cais Champsi, Presales Consultant, EMEA Presales Centre CLICK HERE Oracle Endeca Information Discovery, Product Overview Emma Palii, BI Sales Consultant, EMEA Presales Center CLICK HERE To access previously presented 23 Applications Products presentations and 6 Public Sector Value Proposition presentations, please click here. You might want to bookmark the overall registration page Innovations in Products October 1st and the global event calendar page events.oracle.com. Delivery Format Innovations in Products – program is a series of FREE prerecorded Oracle product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you'll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months. The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: October 1st 2012 January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. Duration: Maximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Best regards Markku Rouhiainen Director, Applications Partner Enablement EMEA

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  • My Take on Hadoop World 2011

    - by Jean-Pierre Dijcks
    I’m sure some of you have read pieces about Hadoop World and I did see some headlines which were somewhat, shall we say, interesting? I thought the keynote by Larry Feinsmith of JP Morgan Chase & Co was one of the highlights of the conference for me. The reason was very simple, he addressed some real use cases outside of internet and ad platforms. The following are my notes, since the keynote was recorded I presume you can go and look at Hadoopworld.com at some point… On the use cases that were mentioned: ETL – how can I do complex data transformation at scale Doing Basel III liquidity analysis Private banking – transaction filtering to feed [relational] data marts Common Data Platform – a place to keep data that is (or will be) valuable some day, to someone, somewhere 360 Degree view of customers – become pro-active and look at events across lines of business. For example make sure the mortgage folks know about direct deposits being stopped into an account and ensure the bank is pro-active to service the customer Treasury and Security – Global Payment Hub [I think this is really consolidation of data to cross reference activity across business and geographies] Data Mining Bypass data engineering [I interpret this as running a lot of a large data set rather than on samples] Fraud prevention – work on event triggers, say a number of failed log-ins to the website. When they occur grab web logs, firewall logs and rules and start to figure out who is trying to log in. Is this me, who forget his password, or is it someone in some other country trying to guess passwords Trade quality analysis – do a batch analysis or all trades done and run them through an analysis or comparison pipeline One of the key requests – if you can say it like that – was for vendors and entrepreneurs to make sure that new tools work with existing tools. JPMC has a large footprint of BI Tools and Big Data reporting and tools should work with those tools, rather than be separate. Security and Entitlement – how to protect data within a large cluster from unwanted snooping was another topic that came up. I thought his Elephant ears graph was interesting (couldn’t actually read the points on it, but the concept certainly made some sense) and it was interesting – when asked to show hands – how the audience did not (!) think that RDBMS and Hadoop technology would overlap completely within a few years. Another interesting session was the session from Disney discussing how Disney is building a DaaS (Data as a Service) platform and how Hadoop processing capabilities are mixed with Database technologies. I thought this one of the best sessions I have seen in a long time. It discussed real use case, where problems existed, how they were solved and how Disney planned some of it. The planning focused on three things/phases: Determine the Strategy – Design a platform and evangelize this within the organization Focus on the people – Hire key people, grow and train the staff (and do not overload what you have with new things on top of their day-to-day job), leverage a partner with experience Work on Execution of the strategy – Implement the platform Hadoop next to the other technologies and work toward the DaaS platform This kind of fitted with some of the Linked-In comments, best summarized in “Think Platform – Think Hadoop”. In other words [my interpretation], step back and engineer a platform (like DaaS in the Disney example), then layer the rest of the solutions on top of this platform. One general observation, I got the impression that we have knowledge gaps left and right. On the one hand are people looking for more information and details on the Hadoop tools and languages. On the other I got the impression that the capabilities of today’s relational databases are underestimated. Mostly in terms of data volumes and parallel processing capabilities or things like commodity hardware scale-out models. All in all I liked this conference, it was great to chat with a wide range of people on Oracle big data, on big data, on use cases and all sorts of other stuff. Just hope they get a set of bigger rooms next time… and yes, I hope I’m going to be back next year!

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  • Day 4 - Game Sprites In Action

    - by dapostolov
    Yesterday I drew an image on the screen. Most exciting, but ... I spent more time blogging about it then actual coding. So this next little while I'm going to streamline my game and research and simply post key notes. Quick notes on the last session: The most important thing I wanted to point out were the following methods:           spriteBatch.Begin(SpriteBlendMode.AlphaBlend);           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White);           spriteBatch.End(); The spriteBatch object is used to draw Textures and a 2D texture is called a Sprite A texture is generally an image, which is called an Asset in XNA The Draw Method in the Game1.cs is looped (until exit) and utilises the spriteBatch object to draw a Scene To begin drawing a Scene you call the Begin Method. To end a Scene you call the End Method. And to place an image on the Scene you call the Draw method. The most simple implementation of the draw method is:           spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position, Color.White); 1) sprite - the 2D texture you loaded to draw 2) position - the 2d vector, a set of x & y coordinates 3) Color.White - the tint to apply to the texture, in this case, white light = nothing, nada, no tint. Game Sprites In Action! Today, I played around with Draw methods to get comfortable with their "quirks". The following is an example of the above draw method, but with more parameters available for us to use. Let's investigate!             spriteBatch.Draw(sprite, position2, null, Color.White, MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f), new Vector2(sprite.Width / 2, sprite.Height / 2), 1.0F, SpriteEffects.None, 0.0F); The parameters (in order): 1) sprite  the texture to display 2) position2 the position on the screen / scene this can also be a rectangle 3) null the portion of the image to display within an image null = display full image this is generally used for animation strips / grids (more on this below) 4) Color.White Texture tinting White = no tint 5) MathHelper.ToRadians(45.0f) rotation of the object, in this case 45 degrees rotates from the set plotting point. 6) new Vector(0,0) the plotting point in this case the top left corner the image will rotate from the top left of the texture in the code above, the point is set to the middle of the image. 7) 1.0f Image scaling (1x) 8) SpriteEffects.None you can flip the image horizontally or vertically 9) 0.0f The z index of the image. 0 = closer, 1 behind? And playing around with different combinations I was able to come up with the following whacky display:   Checking off Yesterdays Intention List: learn game development terminology (in progress) - We learned sprite, scene, texture, and asset. how to place and position (rotate) a static image on the screen (completed) - The thing to note was, it's was in radians and I found a cool helper method to convert degrees into radians. Also, the image rotates from it's specified point. how to layer static images on the screen (completed) - I couldn't seem to get the zIndex working, but one things for sure, the order you draw the image in also determines how it is rendered on the screen. understand image scaling (in progress) - I'm not sure I have this fully covered, but for the most part plug a number in the scaling field and the image grows / shrinks accordingly. can we reuse images? (completed) - yes, I loaded one image and plotted the bugger all over the screen. understand how framerate is handled in XNA (in progress) - I hacked together some code to display the framerate each second. A framerate of 60 appears to be the standard. Interesting to note, the GameTime object does provide you with some cool timing capabilities, such as...is the game running slow? Need to investigate this down the road. how to display text , basic shapes, and colors on the screen (in progress) - i got text rendered on the screen, and i understand containing rectangles. However, I didn't display "shapes" & "colors" how to interact with an image (collision of user input?) (todo) how to animate an image and understand basic animation techniques (in progress) - I was able to create a stripe animation of numbers ranging from 1 - 4, each block was 40 x 40 pixles for a total stripe size of 160 x 40. Using the portion (source Rectangle) parameter, i limited this display to each section at varying intervals. It was interesting to note my first implementation animated at rocket speed. I then tried to create a smoother animation by limiting the redraw capacity, which seemed to work. I guess a little more research will have to be put into this for animating characters / scenes. how to detect colliding images or screen edges (todo) - but the rectangle object can detect collisions I believe. how to manipulate the image, lets say colors, stretching (in progress) - I haven't figured out how to modify a specific color to be another color, but the tinting parameter definately could be used. As for stretching, use the rectangle object as the positioning and the image will stretch to fit! how to focus on a segment of an image...like only displaying a frame on a film reel (completed) - as per basic animation techniques what's the best way to manage images (compression, storage, location, prevent artwork theft, etc.) (todo) Tomorrows Intention Tomorrow I am going to take a stab at rendering a game menu and from there I'm going to investigate how I can improve upon the code and techniques. Intention List: Render a menu, fancy or not Show the mouse cursor Hook up click event A basic animation of somesort Investigate image / menu techniques D.

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