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• My Codemash 2011 Retrospective

  - by Greg Malcolm

  I just got back from Codemash yesterday, and still on an adrenaline buzz. Here's my take on this years encounter: The Awesome Nearly everybody in one place Codemash is the ultimate place to catch up with community friends. This is my 3rd year visiting and I've got to know a great number of very cool people through various conferences, Give Camps and other community events. I'm finding more and more that Codemash is the best place to catch up with everybody regardless of technology interest or location. Of course I always make a whole bunch more friends while I'm there! Yay! Open Spaced I found the open spaces didn't work so well last year. This year things went a lot smoother and the topics were engaging and fresh. While I miss Alan Steven's approach of running it like an agile project, it was very cool to see that it evolving. Laptops were often cracked open, not just once but frequently! For example: Jasmine - Paired on a javascript kata using the Jasmine javascript test runner J - Sat in on a J demo from local J enthusiast, Tracy Harms Watir - More pairing, this time using Ruby with the watir-webdriver through cucumber. I'd mostly forgotten that Cucumber runs just fine without Rails. It made a change to do without. The other spaces were engaging too, but I think that's enough for that topic. Javascript Shenanigans I've already mentioned that I attended a Jasmine kata session. Jasmine is close to my heart right now every since I discovered it while on the hunt for a decent Javascript testing framework for a javascript koans project earlier this year. Well, it also got covered in the Java Precompiler and Pillar's vendor session, which was great to see. Node.js was also a reoccurring theme. Node.js in a nutshell? It's an extremely scalable Event based I/O server which runs on Javascript. I'd already encountered through a Startup Weekend project and have been noticing increasing interest of late. After encountering more node.js driven excitement from my peers at codemash I absolutely had to attend the open space on it. At least 20 people turned up and by the end we had some answers, a whole ton of new questions and an impromptu user group in the form of a twitter channel (#nodemash). I have no idea where this is going to go or how big it is going to become, but if it can cross the chasm into the enterprise it could become huge... Scala Koans I'm a bit of a Koans addict, and I really need more exposure to functional languages so I gave the Scala Koans precompiler a try. Great fun! I'm really glad I attended because I found I had a whole ton of questions. Currently the koans are available here, and the answers are here. Opportunities While we're on the subject can we change the subject now? Hai Gregory, You really need to keep the drinking for later in the day. I mean seriously, you're 34 and you still do this every single time! Sure, you made it to Chad Fowler keynote ok, but you looking a rather pale weren't you? Also might have been nice to attend 'Netflicks in the Cloud' instead of 'Sleeping It Off For People Who Should Know Better'. Kthxbye PS: Stop talking to yourself Not that I entirely regret it, I've had some of my greatest insights through late night drunken conversations at the CodeMash bar. Just might be nice to reign it in a little and get something out of the next morning too. Diversity This is something that is in the back of my mind because of conversations at Codemash as well as throughout the year; I'm realizing more and more how discouraging the IT profession is for women. I notice in the community there has been a lot of attention paid to stamping out harrasment, which is good, but there also seems to be a massive PR issue. I really don't have any solutions, but I figure it can't hurt to pay more attention to whats going on... And in Other News I now have a picture of Chad Fowler giving me more cowbell! Sadly I managed to lose the cowbell later on. Hopefully it's gone to a Better Place. The Womack Family Band joined in with the musicians jam this year. There's my cowbell again! Why must you hide from me? I also finally went in the water for the first time in all the I've been coming to codemash. Why did I wait so long?!?

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• SQL Constraints &ndash; CHECK and NOCHECK

  - by David Turner

  One performance issue i faced at a recent project was with the way that our constraints were being managed, we were using Subsonic as our ORM, and it has a useful tool for generating your ORM code called SubStage – once configured, you can regenerate your DAL code easily based on your database schema, and it can even be integrated into your build as a pre-build event if you want to do this.  SubStage also offers the useful feature of being able to generate DDL scripts for your entire database, and can script your data for you too. The problem came when we decided to use the generate scripts feature to migrate the database onto a test database instance – it turns out that the DDL scripts that it generates include the WITH NOCHECK option, so when we executed them on the test instance, and performed some testing, we found that performance wasn’t as expected. A constraint can be disabled, enabled but not trusted, or enabled and trusted.  When it is disabled, data can be inserted that violates the constraint because it is not being enforced, this is useful for bulk load scenarios where performance is important.  So what does it mean to say that a constraint is trusted or not trusted?  Well this refers to the SQL Server Query Optimizer, and whether it trusts that the constraint is valid.  If it trusts the constraint then it doesn’t check it is valid when executing a query, so the query can be executed much faster. Here is an example base in this article on TechNet, here we create two tables with a Foreign Key constraint between them, and add a single row to each.  We then query the tables: 1 DROP TABLE t2 2 DROP TABLE t1 3 GO 4 5 CREATE TABLE t1(col1 int NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY) 6 CREATE TABLE t2(col1 int NOT NULL) 7 8 ALTER TABLE t2 WITH CHECK ADD CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 FOREIGN KEY(col1) 9 REFERENCES t1(col1) 10 11 INSERT INTO t1 VALUES(1) 12 INSERT INTO t2 VALUES(1) 13 GO14 15 SELECT COUNT(*) FROM t2 16 WHERE EXISTS17 (SELECT *18 FROM t1 19 WHERE t1.col1 = t2.col1) This all works fine, and in this scenario the constraint is enabled and trusted.  We can verify this by executing the following SQL to query the ‘is_disabled’ and ‘is_not_trusted’ properties: 1 select name, is_disabled, is_not_trusted from sys.foreign_keys This gives the following result: We can disable the constraint using this SQL: 1 alter table t2 NOCHECK CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 And when we query the constraints again, we see that the constraint is disabled and not trusted: So the constraint won’t be enforced and we can insert data into the table t2 that doesn’t match the data in t1, but we don’t want to do this, so we can enable the constraint again using this SQL: 1 alter table t2 CHECK CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 But when we query the constraints again, we see that the constraint is enabled, but it is still not trusted: This means that the optimizer will check the constraint each time a query is executed over it, which will impact the performance of the query, and this is definitely not what we want, so we need to make the constraint trusted by the optimizer again.  First we should check that our constraints haven’t been violated, which we can do by running DBCC: 1 DBCC CHECKCONSTRAINTS (t2) Hopefully you see the following message indicating that DBCC completed without finding any violations of your constraint: Having verified that the constraint was not violated while it was disabled, we can simply execute the following SQL:   1 alter table t2 WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT fk_t2_t1 At first glance this looks like it must be a typo to have the keyword CHECK repeated twice in succession, but it is the correct syntax and when we query the constraints properties, we find that it is now trusted again: To fix our specific problem, we created a script that checked all constraints on our tables, using the following syntax: 1 ALTER TABLE t2 WITH CHECK CHECK CONSTRAINT ALL

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• Passing additional parameters to JQuery bind event function

  - by kazim sardar mehdi

  To pass the additional parameter to the event function pass an array of key value, as the second parameter to the bind event bind('click', { message: time }, onClick); e.g { message: time } and access it in the function using event(function parameter).data.message(key)   <div id="div1" style="border: 1px solid black; width: 100px; height: 100px">click me</div> <script type="text/javascript"> function onClick(event) { alert(event.data.message); } var time = "loaded at:" + new Date().toString(); $("div.#div1").bind('click', { message: time }, onClick); </script>

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• TypeScript Resources

  - by csmith18119

  TypeScript looks like a great start to evolving javascript.  I am going to start playing with it seeing what it is like.  This is the post I will update will all the resources I've found. Welcome to TypeScript - The TypeScript Language has an offical site, and this is it. This site does a nice job of giving the key information about the language and its uses, as well as highlighting that it is an open source project, which is cross platform. TypeScript is still causing quite a buzz in the community, here are some more of peoples initial impressions: Introducing TypeScript - Rob Eisenberg Why does TypeScript have to be the answer to anything? - Scott Hanselman TypeScript (or the obligatory post about it) - Shawn Wildermuth TypeScript project in Visual Studio 2012 - Linvi Microsoft TypeScript : A quick introduction and A Love Affair Begins here. - Anoop Madhusudanan Microsoft TypeScript : A Typed Superset of JavaScript & Using TypeScript in ASP.NET MVC Projects - Shiju Varghese Hello TypeScript - Getting Started - Sumit Maitra

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• SQL Azure: Notes on Building a Shard Technology

  - by Herve Roggero

  In Chapter 10 of the book on SQL Azure (http://www.apress.com/book/view/9781430229612) I am co-authoring, I am digging deeper in what it takes to write a Shard. It's actually a pretty cool exercise, and I wanted to share some thoughts on how I am designing the technology. A Shard is a technology that spreads the load of database requests over multiple databases, as transparently as possible. The type of shard I am building is called a Vertical Partition Shard  (VPS). A VPS is a mechanism by which the data is stored in one or more databases behind the scenes, but your code has no idea at design time which data is in which database. It's like having a mini cloud for records instead of services. Imagine you have three SQL Azure databases that have the same schema (DB1, DB2 and DB3), you would like to issue a SELECT * FROM Users on all three databases, concatenate the results into a single resultset, and order by last name. Imagine you want to ensure your code doesn't need to change if you add a new database to the shard (DB4). Now imagine that you want to make sure all three databases are queried at the same time, in a multi-threaded manner so your code doesn't have to wait for three database calls sequentially. Then, imagine you would like to obtain a breadcrumb (in the form of a new, virtual column) that gives you a hint as to which database a record came from, so that you could update it if needed. Now imagine all that is done through the standard SqlClient library... and you have the Shard I am currently building. Here are some lessons learned and techniques I am using with this shard: Parellel Processing: Querying databases in parallel is not too hard using the Task Parallel Library; all you need is to lock your resources when needed Deleting/Updating Data: That's not too bad either as long as you have a breadcrumb. However it becomes more difficult if you need to update a single record and you don't know in which database it is. Inserting Data: I am using a round-robin approach in which each new insert request is directed to the next database in the shard. Not sure how to deal with Bulk Loads just yet... Shard Databases:  I use a static collection of SqlConnection objects which needs to be loaded once; from there on all the Shard commands use this collection Extension Methods: In order to make it look like the Shard commands are part of the SqlClient class I use extension methods. For example I added ExecuteShardQuery and ExecuteShardNonQuery methods to SqlClient. Exceptions: Capturing exceptions in a multi-threaded code is interesting... but I kept it simple for now. I am using the ConcurrentQueue to store my exceptions. Database GUID: Every database in the shard is given a GUID, which is calculated based on the connection string's values. DataTable. The Shard methods return a DataTable object which can be bound to objects.  I will be sharing the code soon as an open-source project in CodePlex. Please stay tuned on twitter to know when it will be available (@hroggero). Or check www.bluesyntax.net for updates on the shard. Thanks!

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• Humerous Word 2010 "feature"?

  - by Michael Stephenson

  Im just sitting on the train to work and had a funny experience with word 2010 that I thought id share. Im writing a document and all of a sudden like usually happens the train gets a little bit bumpy.  Word decides it doesnt like this (maybe it prefers to fly?).  Anyway to show its dissatisfaction with the journey it starts adding new rows to my table in the document all by itself. 5 pages of rows later I still cant workout how to stop itso have to kill word. Thank you autosave

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• Use a Fake Http Channel to Unit Test with HttpClient

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Applications get data from lots of different sources. The most common is to get data from a database or a web service. Typically, we encapsulate calls to a database in a Repository object and we create some sort of IRepository interface as an abstraction to decouple between layers and enable easier unit testing by leveraging faking and mocking. This works great for database interaction. However, when consuming a RESTful web service, this is is not always the best approach. The WCF Web APIs that are available on CodePlex (current drop is Preview 3) provide a variety of features to make building HTTP REST services more robust. When you download the latest bits, you’ll also find a new HttpClient which has been updated for .NET 4.0 as compared to the one that shipped for 3.5 in the original REST Starter Kit. The HttpClient currently provides the best API for consuming REST services on the .NET platform and the WCF Web APIs provide a number of extension methods which extend HttpClient and make it even easier to use. Let’s say you have a client application that is consuming an HTTP service – this could be Silverlight, WPF, or any UI technology but for my example I’ll use an MVC application: 1: using System; 2: using System.Net.Http; 3: using System.Web.Mvc; 4: using FakeChannelExample.Models; 5: using Microsoft.Runtime.Serialization; 6:   7: namespace FakeChannelExample.Controllers 8: { 9: public class HomeController : Controller 10: { 11: private readonly HttpClient httpClient; 12:   13: public HomeController(HttpClient httpClient) 14: { 15: this.httpClient = httpClient; 16: } 17:   18: public ActionResult Index() 19: { 20: var response = httpClient.Get("Person(1)"); 21: var person = response.Content.ReadAsDataContract<Person>(); 22:   23: this.ViewBag.Message = person.FirstName + " " + person.LastName; 24: 25: return View(); 26: } 27: } 28: } On line #20 of the code above you can see I’m performing an HTTP GET request to a Person resource exposed by an HTTP service. On line #21, I use the ReadAsDataContract() extension method provided by the WCF Web APIs to serialize to a Person object. In this example, the HttpClient is being passed into the constructor by MVC’s dependency resolver – in this case, I’m using StructureMap as an IoC and my StructureMap initialization code looks like this: 1: using StructureMap; 2: using System.Net.Http; 3:   4: namespace FakeChannelExample 5: { 6: public static class IoC 7: { 8: public static IContainer Initialize() 9: { 10: ObjectFactory.Initialize(x => 11: { 12: x.For<HttpClient>().Use(() => new HttpClient("http://localhost:31614/")); 13: }); 14: return ObjectFactory.Container; 15: } 16: } 17: } My controller code currently depends on a concrete instance of the HttpClient. Now I *could* create some sort of interface and wrap the HttpClient in this interface and use that object inside my controller instead – however, there are a few why reasons that is not desirable: For one thing, the API provided by the HttpClient provides nice features for dealing with HTTP services. I don’t really *want* these to look like C# RPC method calls – when HTTP services have REST features, I may want to inspect HTTP response headers and hypermedia contained within the message so that I can make intelligent decisions as to what to do next in my workflow (although I don’t happen to be doing these things in my example above) – this type of workflow is common in hypermedia REST scenarios. If I just encapsulate HttpClient behind some IRepository interface and make it look like a C# RPC method call, it will become difficult to take advantage of these types of things. Second, it could get pretty mind-numbing to have to create interfaces all over the place just to wrap the HttpClient. Then you’re probably going to have to hard-code HTTP knowledge into your code to formulate requests rather than just “following the links” that the hypermedia in a message might provide. Third, at first glance it might appear that we need to create an interface to facilitate unit testing, but actually it’s unnecessary. Even though the code above is dependent on a concrete type, it’s actually very easy to fake the data in a unit test. The HttpClient provides a Channel property (of type HttpMessageChannel) which allows you to create a fake message channel which can be leveraged in unit testing. In this case, what I want is to be able to write a unit test that just returns fake data. I also want this to be as re-usable as possible for my unit testing. I want to be able to write a unit test that looks like this: 1: [TestClass] 2: public class HomeControllerTest 3: { 4: [TestMethod] 5: public void Index() 6: { 7: // Arrange 8: var httpClient = new HttpClient("http://foo.com"); 9: httpClient.Channel = new FakeHttpChannel<Person>(new Person { FirstName = "Joe", LastName = "Blow" }); 10:   11: HomeController controller = new HomeController(httpClient); 12:   13: // Act 14: ViewResult result = controller.Index() as ViewResult; 15:   16: // Assert 17: Assert.AreEqual("Joe Blow", result.ViewBag.Message); 18: } 19: } Notice on line #9, I’m setting the Channel property of the HttpClient to be a fake channel. I’m also specifying the fake object that I want to be in the response on my “fake” Http request. I don’t need to rely on any mocking frameworks to do this. All I need is my FakeHttpChannel. The code to do this is not complex: 1: using System; 2: using System.IO; 3: using System.Net.Http; 4: using System.Runtime.Serialization; 5: using System.Threading; 6: using FakeChannelExample.Models; 7:   8: namespace FakeChannelExample.Tests 9: { 10: public class FakeHttpChannel<T> : HttpClientChannel 11: { 12: private T responseObject; 13:   14: public FakeHttpChannel(T responseObject) 15: { 16: this.responseObject = responseObject; 17: } 18:   19: protected override HttpResponseMessage Send(HttpRequestMessage request, CancellationToken cancellationToken) 20: { 21: return new HttpResponseMessage() 22: { 23: RequestMessage = request, 24: Content = new StreamContent(this.GetContentStream()) 25: }; 26: } 27:   28: private Stream GetContentStream() 29: { 30: var serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(T)); 31: Stream stream = new MemoryStream(); 32: serializer.WriteObject(stream, this.responseObject); 33: stream.Position = 0; 34: return stream; 35: } 36: } 37: } The HttpClientChannel provides a Send() method which you can override to return any HttpResponseMessage that you want. You can see I’m using the DataContractSerializer to serialize the object and write it to a stream. That’s all you need to do. In the example above, the only thing I’ve chosen to do is to provide a way to return different response objects. But there are many more features you could add to your own re-usable FakeHttpChannel. For example, you might want to provide the ability to add HTTP headers to the message. You might want to use a different serializer other than the DataContractSerializer. You might want to provide custom hypermedia in the response as well as just an object or set HTTP response codes. This list goes on. This is the just one example of the really cool features being added to the next version of WCF to enable various HTTP scenarios. The code sample for this post can be downloaded here.

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• Register the &quot;OneCode &amp; OneScript&quot; session at MVP Global Summit November 2013

  - by Jialiang

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Jialiang/archive/2013/11/04/register-the-quotonecode-amp-onescriptquot-session-at-mvp-global-summit.aspxThe yearly Microsoft MVP Global Summit will lift its curtain on Nov 17th in Bellevue, WA.  This year, we have prepared three new apps and many new samples in response to MVPs’ feedbacks last year.  If you are attending this year’s Microsoft MVP Global Summit, you will have the privilege to kiss or bite their development team   Sample Browser Windows Phone app – with 6000+ MSDN code samples which will be at your fingertips anytime and anywhere. Script Explorer for PowerShell ISE – with 8000+ script sample which will be at your fingertips when you are writing scripts in PowerShell ISE. PowerShell checkin policy for TFS – automatically checks your PowerShell script code against best practices of PowerShell. Interested?  Please open your Schedule Builder for the MVP Summit 2013, and register for the event called “OneCode & OneScript” on Nov 17th.  We look forward to seeing you and learning your feedback.

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• Organization &amp; Architecture UNISA Studies &ndash; Chap 5

  - by MarkPearl

  Learning Outcomes Describe the operation of a memory cell Explain the difference between DRAM and SRAM Discuss the different types of ROM Explain the concepts of a hard failure and a soft error respectively Describe SDRAM organization Semiconductor Main Memory The two traditional forms of RAM used in computers are DRAM and SRAM DRAM (Dynamic RAM) Divided into two technologies… Dynamic Static Dynamic RAM is made with cells that store data as charge on capacitors. The presence or absence of charge in a capacitor is interpreted as a binary 1 or 0. Because capacitors have natural tendency to discharge, dynamic RAM requires periodic charge refreshing to maintain data storage. The term dynamic refers to the tendency of the stored charge to leak away, even with power continuously applied. Although the DRAM cell is used to store a single bit (0 or 1), it is essentially an analogue device. The capacitor can store any charge value within a range, a threshold value determines whether the charge is interpreted as a 1 or 0. SRAM (Static RAM) SRAM is a digital device that uses the same logic elements used in the processor. In SRAM, binary values are stored using traditional flip flop logic configurations. SRAM will hold its data as along as power is supplied to it. Unlike DRAM, no refresh is required to retain data. SRAM vs. DRAM DRAM is simpler and smaller than SRAM. Thus it is more dense and less expensive than SRAM. The cost of the refreshing circuitry for DRAM needs to be considered, but if the machine requires a large amount of memory, DRAM turns out to be cheaper than SRAM. SRAMS are somewhat faster than DRAM, thus SRAM is generally used for cache memory and DRAM is used for main memory. Types of ROM Read Only Memory (ROM) contains a permanent pattern of data that cannot be changed. ROM is non volatile meaning no power source is required to maintain the bit values in memory. While it is possible to read a ROM, it is not possible to write new data into it. An important application of ROM is microprogramming, other applications include library subroutines for frequently wanted functions, System programs, Function tables. A ROM is created like any other integrated circuit chip, with the data actually wired into the chip as part of the fabrication process. To reduce costs of fabrication, we have PROMS. PROMS are… Written only once Non-volatile Written after fabrication Another variation of ROM is the read-mostly memory, which is useful for applications in which read operations are far more frequent than write operations, but for which non volatile storage is required. There are three common forms of read-mostly memory, namely… EPROM EEPROM Flash memory Error Correction Semiconductor memory is subject to errors, which can be classed into two categories… Hard failure – Permanent physical defect so that the memory cell or cells cannot reliably store data Soft failure – Random error that alters the contents of one or more memory cells without damaging the memory (common cause includes power supply issues, etc.) Most modern main memory systems include logic for both detecting and correcting errors. Error detection works as follows… When data is to be read into memory, a calculation is performed on the data to produce a code Both the code and the data are stored When the previously stored word is read out, the code is used to detect and possibly correct errors The error checking provides one of 3 possible results… No errors are detected – the fetched data bits are sent out An error is detected, and it is possible to correct the error. The data bits plus error correction bits are fed into a corrector, which produces a corrected set of bits to be sent out An error is detected, but it is not possible to correct it. This condition is reported Hamming Code See wiki for detailed explanation. We will probably need to know how to do a hemming code – refer to the textbook (pg. 188 – 189) Advanced DRAM organization One of the most critical system bottlenecks when using high-performance processors is the interface to main memory. This interface is the most important pathway in the entire computer system. The basic building block of main memory remains the DRAM chip. In recent years a number of enhancements to the basic DRAM architecture have been explored, and some of these are now on the market including… SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) DDR-DRAM RDRAM SDRAM (Synchronous DRAM) SDRAM exchanges data with the processor synchronized to an external clock signal and running at the full speed of the processor/memory bus without imposing wait states. SDRAM employs a burst mode to eliminate the address setup time and row and column line precharge time after the first access In burst mode a series of data bits can be clocked out rapidly after the first bit has been accessed SDRAM has a multiple bank internal architecture that improves opportunities for on chip parallelism SDRAM performs best when it is transferring large blocks of data serially There is now an enhanced version of SDRAM known as double data rate SDRAM or DDR-SDRAM that overcomes the once-per-cycle limitation of SDRAM

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• Network communications mechanisms for SQL Server

  - by Akshay Deep Lamba

  Problem I am trying to understand how SQL Server communicates on the network, because I'm having to tell my networking team what ports to open up on the firewall for an edge web server to communicate back to the SQL Server on the inside. What do I need to know? Solution In order to understand what needs to be opened where, let's first talk briefly about the two main protocols that are in common use today: TCP - Transmission Control Protocol UDP - User Datagram Protocol Both are part of the TCP/IP suite of protocols. We'll start with TCP. TCP TCP is the main protocol by which clients communicate with SQL Server. Actually, it is more correct to say that clients and SQL Server use Tabular Data Stream (TDS), but TDS actually sits on top of TCP and when we're talking about Windows and firewalls and other networking devices, that's the protocol that rules and controls are built around. So we'll just speak in terms of TCP. TCP is a connection-oriented protocol. What that means is that the two systems negotiate the connection and both agree to it. Think of it like a phone call. While one person initiates the phone call, the other person has to agree to take it and both people can end the phone call at any time. TCP is the same way. Both systems have to agree to the communications, but either side can end it at any time. In addition, there is functionality built into TCP to ensure that all communications can be disassembled and reassembled as necessary so it can pass over various network devices and be put together again properly in the right order. It also has mechanisms to handle and retransmit lost communications. Because of this functionality, TCP is the protocol used by many different network applications. The way the applications all can share is through the use of ports. When a service, like SQL Server, comes up on a system, it must listen on a port. For a default SQL Server instance, the default port is 1433. Clients connect to the port via the TCP protocol, the connection is negotiated and agreed to, and then the two sides can transfer information as needed until either side decides to end the communication. In actuality, both sides will have a port to use for the communications, but since the client's port is typically determined semi-randomly, when we're talking about firewalls and the like, typically we're interested in the port the server or service is using. UDP UDP, unlike TCP, is not connection oriented. A "client" can send a UDP communications to anyone it wants. There's nothing in place to negotiate a communications connection, there's nothing in the protocol itself to coordinate order of communications or anything like that. If that's needed, it's got to be handled by the application or by a protocol built on top of UDP being used by the application. If you think of TCP as a phone call, think of UDP as a postcard. I can put a postcard in the mail to anyone I want, and so long as it is addressed properly and has a stamp on it, the postal service will pick it up. Now, what happens it afterwards is not guaranteed. There's no mechanism for retransmission of lost communications. It's great for short communications that doesn't necessarily need an acknowledgement. Because multiple network applications could be communicating via UDP, it uses ports, just like TCP. The SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service uses UDP. Network Communications - Talking to SQL Server When an instance of SQL Server is set up, what TCP port it listens on depends. A default instance will be set up to listen on port 1433. A named instance will be set to a random port chosen during installation. In addition, a named instance will be configured to allow it to change that port dynamically. What this means is that when a named instance starts up, if it finds something already using the port it normally uses, it'll pick a new port. If you have a named instance, and you have connections coming across a firewall, you're going to want to use SQL Server Configuration Manager to set a static port. This will allow the networking and security folks to configure their devices for maximum protection. While you can change the network port for a default instance of SQL Server, most people don't. Network Communications - Finding a SQL Server When just the name is specified for a client to connect to SQL Server, for instance, MySQLServer, this is an attempt to connect to the default instance. In this case the client will automatically attempt to communicate to port 1433 on MySQLServer. If you've switched the port for the default instance, you'll need to tell the client the proper port, usually by specifying the following syntax in the connection string: <server>,<port>. For instance, if you moved SQL Server to listen on 14330, you'd use MySQLServer,14330 instead of just MySQLServer. However, because a named instance sets up its port dynamically by default, the client never knows at the outset what the port is it should talk to. That's what the SQL Browser or the SQL Server Listener Service (SQL Server 2000) is for. In this case, the client sends a communication via the UDP protocol to port 1434. It asks, "Where is the named instance?" So if I was running a named instance called SQL2008R2, it would be asking the SQL Browser, "Hey, how do I talk to MySQLServer\SQL2008R2?" The SQL Browser would then send back a communications from UDP port 1434 back to the client telling the client how to talk to the named instance. Of course, you can skip all of this of you set that named instance's port statically. Then you can use the <server>,<port> mechanism to connect and the client won't try to talk to the SQL Browser service. It'll simply try to make the connection. So, for instance, is the SQL2008R2 instance was listening on port 20080, specifying MySQLServer,20080 would attempt a connection to the named instance. Network Communications - Named Pipes Named pipes is an older network library communications mechanism and it's generally not used any longer. It shouldn't be used across a firewall. However, if for some reason you need to connect to SQL Server with it, this protocol also sits on top of TCP. Named Pipes is actually used by the operating system and it has its own mechanism within the protocol to determine where to route communications. As far as network communications is concerned, it listens on TCP port 445. This is true whether we're talking about a default or named instance of SQL Server. The Summary Table To put all this together, here is what you need to know: Type of Communication Protocol Used Default Port Finding a SQL Server or SQL Server Named Instance UDP 1434 Communicating with a default instance of SQL Server TCP 1433 Communicating with a named instance of SQL Server TCP * Determined dynamically at start up Communicating with SQL Server via Named Pipes TCP 445

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• App Fabric Service Bus and Access Control Pricing

  - by kaleidoscope

  The Service Bus costs $3.99 per Connection-month on a consumption basis for individually provisioned connections. Data transfers charges would also apply. Or, if you are able to forecast your needs ahead of time, you can purchase “Packs” of Connections. For example: $9.95 for a pack of 5 Connections, $49.75 for a pack of 25, $199.00 for a pack of 100, or $995 for a pack of 500, plus data transfer charges. Connection Packs represent an effective rate of $1.99 per Connection-month. Access Control will be priced at $1.99 per 100,000 Transactions, which includes token requests and management operations, plus associated data transfer. Typically, Service Bus developers depend on Access Control to secure their Connections. More Information: http://azurefeeds.com/post/865/Announcing_Windows_Azure_platform_commercial_offer_availability_and_updated_AppFabric_pricing.aspx   Amit, S

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• Code review recommendations and Code Smells

  - by Michael Freidgeim

  Some time ago Twitter told that I am similar to Boris Lipschitz . Indeed he is also .Net programmer from Russia living in Australia. I‘ve read his list of Code Review points and found them quite comprehensive. A few points  were not clear for me, and it forced me for a further reading.In particular the statement “Exception should not be used to return a status or an error code.” wasn’t fully clear for me, because sometimes we store an exception as an object with all error details and I believe it’s a valid approach. However I agree that throwing exceptions should be avoided, if you expect to return error as a part of a normal flow. Related link: http://codeutopia.net/blog/2010/03/11/should-a-failed-function-return-a-value-or-throw-an-exception/ Another point slightly puzzled me“If Thread.Sleep() is used, can it be replaced with something else, ei Timer, AutoResetEvent, etc” . I believe, that there are very rare cases, when anyone using Thread.Sleep in any production code. Usually it is used in mocks and prototypes.I had to look further to clarify “Dependency injection is used instead of Service Location pattern”.Even most of articles has some preferences to Dependency injection, there are also advantages to use Service Location. E.g see http://geekswithblogs.net/KyleBurns/archive/2012/04/27/dependency-injection-vs.-service-locator.aspx. http://www.cookcomputing.com/blog/archives/000587.html  refers to Concluding Thoughts of Martin Fowler The choice between Service Locator and Dependency Injection is less important than the principle of separating service configuration from the use of services within an applicationThe post had a link to excellent article Code Smells of Jeff Atwood, but the statement, that “code should not pass a review if it violates any of the  code smells” sound too strict for my environment. In particular, I disagree with “Dead Code” recommendation “Ruthlessly delete code that isn't being used. That's why we have source control systems!”. If there is a chance that not used code will be required in a future, it is convenient to keep it as commented or #if/#endif blocks with appropriate explanation, why it could be required in the future. TFS is a good source control system, but context search in source code of current solution is much easier than finding something in the previous versions of the code.I also found a link to a good book “Clean Code.A.Handbook.of.Agile.Software”

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• Ajax Autocomplete Extender

  - by Jason Ulloa

  El objetivo de este post es preparar un ejemplo sobre un tema que es planteado muy frecuentemente en los Foros de MSDN, como realizar un Autocomplete contra una base de datos. Qué requerimos? Antes de poder realizar un Autocomplete debemos tener en cuenta los elementos principales que requerimos para poder hacerlo funcionar, descritos de la siguiente manera: 1. Textbox: Nuestro grandioso amigo Textbox, que será donde el usuario ingresará los datos a buscar. 2. Un Webservice: que contendrá el método que se conectara a la base de datos y devolverá una lista con la información encontrada. 3. Ajax Autocomplete Extender: este es por decirlo así, el elemento más importante. Nos servirá como medio de enlace entre el webservice que expone el método y el textbox recuperando y mostrando los datos en forma de lista desplegable. La implementación Si bien parecierá complicado, crear un autocomplete extender es bastante sencillo. Empezaremos creando un nuevo sitio asp.net, en este sitio agregaremos un textbox y dos controles muy importantes de Ajax el ToolkitScriptManager para controlar el rende rizado de los script de ajax y el AutocompleteExtender que, como mencione anteriormente, será el medio de enlace. Antes de mostrar como quedará el código de lo anterior, explicaré algunas propiedades del AutocompleteExtender para que se entienda de mejor manera: 1. El ServicePath: contiene la ruta relativa al webservice que utilizaremos. 2. MinimumPrefixLength: se refiere al número de caracteres que deben ser digitados antes de iniciar la búsqueda. 3. ServiceMethod: el nombre del metodo de nuestro webservice que se encargará de devolver los datos. 4. EnableCaching: para mantener en cache los datos consultados, obteniendo mayor velocidad. 5. TargetControlID: una de las propiedades más importantes, acá se coloca el nombre del textbox al cual se unirá el Autocomplete 6. CompletionInterval: tiempo que debe transcurrir antes de iniciar con el trabajo de los datos. Una vez, explicadas las propiedades básicas, veamos como queda implementada la primer parte de nuestro autocomplete: <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <asp:ToolkitScriptManager ID="manager" runat="server" /> <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> <asp:AutoCompleteExtender ID="AutoCompleteExtender1" runat="server" ServicePath="WebService.asmx" MinimumPrefixLength="1" ServiceMethod="PersonasInfo " EnableCaching="true" TargetControlID="TextBox1" UseContextKey="True" CompletionSetCount="10" CompletionInterval="0"> </asp:AutoCompleteExtender> </div> </form>   Ahora que nuestro código html está completo, es hora de trabajar directamente con nuestro webservice, este deberá contener un método que devuelva una lista o arreglo de datos, los cuales por supuesto, serán traídos desde la base de datos. Antes de implementar este método, debemos asegurarnos de que nuestra clase del webservice tiene habilitados los espacios para ser utilizada [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptService()] [WebService(Namespace = "http://tempuri.org/")] [WebServiceBinding(ConformsTo = WsiProfiles.BasicProfile1_1)] public class WebService : System.Web.Services.WebService {}   Ahora si, nuestro metodo principal [WebMethod()] [System.Web.Script.Services.ScriptMethod()] public string[] PersonasInfo(string prefixText, int count) { string connstring = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["LocalSqlServer"].ConnectionString;   using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(connstring)) { SqlCommand comando = new SqlCommand("select nombre from personas where nombre LIKE '%' + @param + '%' ", conn); comando.Parameters.AddWithValue("@param", prefixText); SqlDataReader dr = default(SqlDataReader); comando.Connection.Open(); dr = comando.ExecuteReader(); List<string> items = new List<string>();   while (dr.Read()) { items.Add(dr["nombre"].ToString()); } comando.Connection.Close(); return items.ToArray(); } }   Del método anterior no explicaré en profundidad, pues es bastante sencillo. Una consulta a la base de datos utilizando un datareader y devolviendo los datos en una lista como arreglo. Lo más importante serían las 2 primeras líneas [WebMethod()] y el [ScriptMethod()] las cuales habilitan nuestro método para poder ser accedido y utilizado. Por último, el código de ejemplo en C# (VB Autcomplete):

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• Cooking with Wessty: WordPress and HTML 5

  - by David Wesst

  WordPress is easily one, if not the most, popular blogging platforms on the web. With the release of WordPress 3.x, the potential for what you can do with this open source software is limitless. This technique intends to show you how to get your WordPress wielding the power of the future web, that being HTML 5. --- Ingredients WordPress 3.x Your favourite HTML 5 compliant browser (e.g. Internet Explorer 9) Directions Setup WordPress on your server or host. Note: You can setup a WordPress.com account, but you will require an paid add-on to really take advantage of this technique.Login to the administration panel. Login to the administration section of your blog, using your web browser.  On the left side of the page, click the Appearance heading. Then, click on Themes. At the top of the page, select the Install Themes tab. In the search box, type the “toolbox” and click search. In the search results, you should see an theme called Toolbox. Click the Install link in the Toolbox item. A dialog window should appear with a sample picture of what the theme looks like. Click on the Install Now button in the bottom right corner. Et voila! Once the installation is done, you are done and ready to bring your blog into the future of the web. Try previewing your blog in HTML 5 by clicking the preview link.   Now, you are probably thinking “Man…HTML 5 looks like junk”. To that, I respond: “HTML was never why your site looked good in the first place. It was the CSS.” Now you have an un-stylized theme that uses HTML 5 elements throughout your WordPress site. If you want to learn how to apply CSS to your WordPress blog, you should check out the WordPress codex that pretty much covers everything there is to cover about WordPress development. Now, remember how we noted earlier that your free WordPress.com account wouldn’t take advantage of this technique? That is because, as of the time of this writing, you needed to pay a fee to use custom CSS. Remember now, this only gives you the foundation to create your own HTML 5 WordPress site. There are some HTML 5 themes out there that already look good, and were built using this as the foundation and added some CSS 3 to really spice it up. Looking forward to seeing more HTML 5 WordPress sites! Enjoy developing the future of the web. Resources Toolbox Theme JustCSS Theme WordPress Installation Tutorial WordPress Theme Development Tutorial This post also appears at http://david.wes.st

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• AJI Report #15&ndash;Zac Harlan Talks About Iowa Code Camp

  - by Jeff Julian

  We sit down with Zac Harlen and talk about Iowa Code Camp, what makes up a Code Camp, and how to start your own Code Camp. Zac has been a part of the leadership team for a few years for Iowa Code Camp and is the Development Manager for JP Cycles. We also get into what it takes to speak at a Code Camp if you are interested in growing beyond the user group as a speaker. Listen to the Show Site: LinkedIn Profile Blog: Zac Harlan Twitter: @ZacHarlan

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• A Bad Day at Work

  - by TehGrumpyCoder

  There's lots of ways of having a bad day at work... I suppose for many people, just being *at* work makes it a bad day, but I happen to be one of those people that found a way to do something I like for a living. I've always said "if you're not having fun, what's the point?" ... on the latest Zune podcast, they were interviewing someone from the WP7 team and he said they're mantra is "It's not done until it's fun" ... I like that too. But, even when you're doing what you like for a living, it can get tedious. There were times that I didn't look forward to going out and playing guitar on a Friday or Saturday night, and some nights I was looking at my watch just waiting for it to be over. Well, that was today... like Steve Martin in "The Jerk" ... the first hour was like a regular hour, but then the rest of the morning was like a day, and the afternoon has been like a week. I've got a list of stuff I need to get into my head, and it's tough when the highest technology you have during 9 hours of your day is .NET 2.0 and you can only run what IT installed. I get wrapped around the power take-off reading something and dearly want to write some code to try, but with the state of technology here, it's like trying to teach jazz chords to someone that showed up for their lesson with that stupid plastic guitar from Guitar Hero. I tried to watch a training video... downloaded it zipped so maybe it wouldn't be noticed like it might if I streamed it. Then nothing on this machine would play the video... dang! Well, if someone doesn't take me out on the drive tonight or back in tomorrow, maybe it'll be a better day... or maybe I'll d/l a bunch of training videos in a different format, or bring in a decent viewer, or download them to my Zune maybe... that would work. I suppose at age 61 there are worse things than feeling stifled... for instance, so far I've lived 2 years longer than my father... but at the same time, he's the one that pointed out that in my first letter home from Boot Camp "He's complaining, he's fine"... guess he had my number :) I think he'd appreciate "Teh Grumpy Coder"

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• SharePoint Online BPOS Help ...

  - by Harish Pavithran

  Hi here is the link that I like to check out BPOS related help   http://www.microsoft.com/online/help/en-us/helphowto/SharePoint-Online.htm

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• OData Mix10 &ndash; Part Dos

  - by Jon Dalberg

  The other day I had a snazzy post on fetching all the video (WMV) files from Mix ‘10. A simple, console application that grabbed the urls from the OData feed and downloaded the videos. I wanted to change that app to fire the OData query asynchronously so here’s what resulted: 1: static void Main(string[] args) 2: { 3: var mix = new Mix.EventEntities(new Uri("http://api.visitmix.com/OData.svc")); 4:   5: var temp = mix.Files.Where(f => f.TypeName == "WMV"); 6: var query = temp as DataServiceQuery<Mix.File>; 7:   8: query.BeginExecute(OnFileQueryComplete, query); 9:   10: // waiting... 11: Console.ReadLine(); 12: } 13:   14: static void OnFileQueryComplete(IAsyncResult result) 15: { 16: var query = result.AsyncState as DataServiceQuery<Mix.File>; 17: var response = query.EndExecute(result); 18:   19: var web = new WebClient(); 20:   21: var myVideos = Path.Combine(Environment.GetFolderPath(Environment.SpecialFolder.MyVideos), "Mix10"); 22:   23: Directory.CreateDirectory(myVideos); 24:   25: foreach (Mix.File f in response) 26: { 27: var fileName = new Uri(f.Url).Segments.Last(); 28: Console.WriteLine(f.Url); 29: web.DownloadFile(f.Url, Path.Combine(myVideos, fileName)); 30: } 31: } There are two important things here that are not explained well in the MSDN docs: See lines 5 and 6? That’s where I query for the WMV files and it returns an IQueryable<T>. You *have* to cast that to a DataServiceQuery<T> and then call BeginExecute. The documented example does not filter so it didn’t show that step. Line 16 shows the correct way to get the previously executed DataServiceQuery<T> from the async result. If you looked at the MSDN example docs it shows (incorrectly) just casting the result, like this: // wrong var query = result as DataServiceQuery<Mix.File>; Other than those items it is relatively straight forward and we’re all async-ified. Enjoy!

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• BizTalk 2009 - Custom Functoid Categories

  - by StuartBrierley

  I recently had cause to code a number of custom functoids to aid with some maps that I was writing. Once these were developed and deployed to C:\Program Files\Microsoft BizTalk Server 2009\Developer Tools\Mapper Extensions a quick refresh allowed them to appear in toolbox.  After dropping these on a map and configuring the appropriate inputs I tested the map to check that they worked as expected.  All but one of the functoids worked as expecetd, but the final functoid appeared not to be firing at all. I had already tested the code used in a simple test harness application, so I was confident in the code used, but I still needed to figure out what the problem might be. Debugging the map helped me on the way; for some reason the functoid in question was not shown correctly - the functoid definition was wrong. After some investigations I found that the functoid type you assign when coding a custom functoid affects more than just the category it appears in; different functoid types have different capabilities, including what they can link too.  For example, a logical functoid can not provide content for an output element, it can only say whether the element exists.  Map this via a Value Mapping functoid and the value of true or false can be seen in the output element. The functoid I was having problems with was one whare I had used the XPath functoid type, this had seemed to be a good fit as I was looking up content in a config file using xpath and I wanted it to appear the advanced area.  From the table below you can see that this functoid type is marked as "Internal Only", preventing it from being used for custom functoids.  Changing my type to String allowed the functoid to function as expected. Category Description Toolbox Group Assert Internal Use Only Advanced Conversion Converts characters to and from numerics and converts numbers from one base to another. Conversion Count Internal Use Only Advanced Cumulative Performs accumulations of the value of a field that occurs multiple times in a source document and outputs a single output. Cumulative DatabaseExtract Internal Use Only Database DatabaseLookup Internal Use Only Database DateTime Adds date, time, date and time, or add days to a specified date, in output data. Date/Time ExistenceLooping Internal Use Only Advanced Index Internal Use Only Advanced Iteration Internal Use Only Advanced Keymatch Internal Use Only Advanced Logical Controls conditional behavior of other functoids to determine whether particular output data is created. Logical Looping Internal Use Only Advanced MassCopy Internal Use Only Advanced Math Performs specific numeric calculations such as addition, multiplication, and division. Mathematical NilValue Internal Use Only Advanced Scientific Performs specific scientific calculations such as logarithmic, exponential, and trigonometric functions. Scientific Scripter Internal Use Only Advanced String Manipulates data strings by using well-known string functions such as concatenation, length, find, and trim. String TableExtractor Internal Use Only Advanced TableLooping Internal Use Only Advanced Unknown Internal Use Only Advanced ValueMapping Internal Use Only Advanced XPath Internal Use Only Advanced Links http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/microsoft.biztalk.basefunctoids.functoidcategory(BTS.20).aspx http://blog.eliasen.dk/CommentView,guid,d33b686b-b059-4381-a0e7-1c56e808f7f0.aspx

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• How do I Series: Connecting an Expression Blend Project to Team Foundation Server

  - by Enrique Lima

  I have heard of people wanting and needing to add projects created in Expression Blend to Team Foundation Server. Here is the recipe: 1) Create your project in Expression Blend … click OK 2) Select the option to open your recently created project in Visual Studio. Once that option is selected, your solution will open up in Visual Studio, close Expression Blend at this point. Now, I want to add this project to Source Control … Next, I connect to my TFS environment, and pick the location to save my project Once the project is added, I will get a status window of pending changes for my project, all that we are left to do is to check in those changes. Since we have checked in our project, we can now close Visual Studio, and we will proceed to open Expression Blend again. And select our project we will! We notice some differences from before, just by opening it What differences you say?!? Notice the lock to the right of the item name … And we also get this when we right click … And there we have it, it is a combination of tools to achieve this, but it is well worth it.

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• The Dispose Pattern (and FxCop warnings)

  - by Scott Dorman

  [This is actually a response to Bill’s blog post, but since it isn’t possible to leave this as a comment on his blog it’s a post here.] There are many different ways to implement the Dispose pattern correctly. Some are (in my opinion) better than others. In Bill’s blog post he presents a particular pattern, which is an excerpt from his book (Effective C#). The issue centers around the fact that a reader took the code sample presented in the book and ran FxCop (Code Analysis) on it, which generated a warning: “Ensure that base.Dispose() is always called.” The “lesson learned” that Bill presents is that “tools are there to help us, not control us.” While I completely agree with the belief that tools are there to help us, I think it’s important to understand why FxCop is raising this particular warning. The code presented in Bill’s book looks like: // Have its own disposed flag.private bool disposed = false;protected override void Dispose(bool isDisposing){ // Don't dispose more than once. if (disposed) return; if (isDisposing) { // TODO: free managed resources here. } // TODO: free unmanaged resources here. // Let the base class free its resources. // Base class is responsible for calling // GC.SuppressFinalize( ) base.Dispose(isDisposing); // Set derived class disposed flag: disposed = true;} This code does follow all of the guidelines for implementing the Dispose pattern. In this case, it’s presumably part of a larger example showing how to implement the pattern as part of a base class. The reason FxCop is warning you about this code is the first if statement in the Dispose method, which will cause the method to exit if disposed is true. The problem here is that there is the possibility that if the disposed flag is true, the call to base.Dispose() will never be executed. As Bill points out, it is possible for some other code elsewhere in the class to set this flag. He states that this is an “unlikely occurrence.” While that is probably true, it can be a potentially dangerous assumption to make and is one that can be easily corrected. By changing the code slightly you can remove this assumption and correct the FxCop violation. private bool disposed = false;protected override void Dispose(bool disposing){ if (!disposed) { if (disposing) { // Dispose managed resources. } // Dispose unmanaged resources. disposed = true; } base.Dispose(disposing);} Using this implementation allows the call to base.Dispose() to always occur, which ensures that the the disposal chain is always properly followed. Technorati Tags: .NET,C#,Dispose Pattern

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• Slides and Files from Day of .Net Ann Arbor &lsquo;10

  - by Brian Jackett

  This past Saturday I presented “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” at the Ann Arbor Day of .Net conference in Ann Arbor, MI.  Below are my slides and PowerShell demo scripts I used during the presentation.  Thanks to everyone who attended my session, as well as the sponsors, speakers, organizers and all attendees who made this event happen.   Slides and demo scripts

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• Thou shalt not put code on a piedestal - Code is a tool, no more, no less

  - by Ralf Westphal

  “Write great code and everything else becomes easier” is what Paul Pagel believes in. That´s his version of an adage by Brian Marick he cites: “treat code as an end, not just a means.” And he concludes: “My post-Agile world is software craftsmanship.” I wonder, if that´s really the way to go. Will “simply” writing great code lead the software industry into the light? He´s alluding to the philosopher Kant who proposed, a human beings should never be treated as a means, but always as an end. But should we transfer this ethical statement into the world of software? I doubt it.   Reason #1: Human beings are categorially different from code. They are autonomous entities who need to find a way of living happily together. To Kant it seemed this goal could only be reached if nobody (ab)used a human being for his/her purposes. Because using a human being, i.e. treating it as a means, would contradict the fundamental autonomy and freedom of human beings. People should hold up a symmetric view of their relationships: Since nobody wants to be (ab)used, nobody should (ab)use anybody else. If you want to be treated decently, with respect, in accordance with your own free will - which means as an end - then do the same to other people. Code is dead, it´s a product, it´s a tool for people to reach their goals. No company spends any money on code other than to save money or earn money in the long run. Code is not a puppy. Enterprises do not commission software development to just feel good in its company. Code is not a buddy. Code is a slave, if you will. A mechanical slave, a non-tangible robot. Code is a tool, is a tool. And if we start to treat it differently, if we elevate its status unduely… I guess that will contort our relationship in a contraproductive way. Please get me right: Just because something is “just a tool”, “just a product” does not mean we should not be careful while designing, building, using it. Right to the contrary. We should be very careful when writing code – but not for the code´s sake! We should be careful because we respect our customers who are fellow human beings who should be treated as an end. If we are careless, neglectful, ignorant when producing code on their behalf, then we´re using them. Being sloppy means you´re caring more for yourself that for your customer. You´re then treating the customer as a means to fulfill some of your own needs. That´s plain unethical behavior.   Reason #2: The focus should always be on your purpose, not on any tool. But if code is treated as an end, then the focus is on the code. That might sound right, because where else should be your focus as a software developer? But, well, I´d say, your focus should be on delivering value to your customer. Because in the end your customer does not care if you write a single line of code. She just wants her problem to be solved. Solving problems is the purpose of any contractor. Code must be treated just as a means, a tool we know how to handle very well. But if we´re really trying to be craftsmen then we should be conscious about exactly that and act ethically. That means we must never be so focused on our tool as to be unable to suggest better solutions to the problems of our customers than code.   I´m all with Paul when he urges us to “Write great code”. Sure, if you need to write code, then by all means do so. Write the best code you can think of – and then try to improve it. Paul has all the best intentions when he signs Brians “treat code as an end” - but as we all know: “The road to hell is paved with best intentions” ;-) Yes, I can imagine a “hell of code focus”. In fact, I don´t need to imagine it, I´m seeing it quite often. Because code hell is whereever two developers stand together and are so immersed in talking about all sorts of coding tricks, design patterns, code smells, technologies, platforms, tools that they lose sight of the big picture. Talking about TDD or SOLID or refactoring is a sign of consciousness – relative to the “cowboy coders” view of the world. But from yet another point of view TDD, SOLID, and refactoring are just cures for ailments within a system. And I fear, if “Writing great code” is the only focus or the main focus of software development, then we as an industry lose the ability to see that. Focus draws a line around something, it defines a horizon for perceptions and thinking. So if we focus on code our horizon ends where “the land of code” ends. I don´t think that should be our professional attitude.   So what about Software Craftsmanship as the next big thing after Agility? I think Software Craftsmanship has an important message for all software developers and beyond. But to make it the successor of the Agility movement seems to miss a point. Agility never claimed to solve all software development problems, I´d say. So to blame it for having missed out on certain aspects of it is wrong. If I had to summarize Agility in one word I´d say “Value”. Agility put value for the customer back in software development. Focus on delivering value early and often – that´s Agility´s mantra. All else follows from that. And I ask you: Is that obsolete? Is delivering value not hip anymore? No, sure not. That´s our very purpose as software developers. So how can Agility become obsolete and need to be replaced? We need to do away with this “either/or”-thinking. It´s either Agility or Lean or Software Craftsmanship or whatnot. Instead we should start integrating concepts and movements. Think “both/and”. Think Agility plus Software Craftsmanship plus Lean plus whatnot. We don´t neet to tear down anything from a piedestal and replace it with a new idol. Instead we should do away with piedestals and arrange whatever is helpful is a circle. Then we can turn to concepts, movements for whatever they are best. After 10 years of Agility we should be able to identify what it was good at – and keep that. Keep Agility around and add whatever Agility was lacking or never concerned with. Add whatever is at the core of Software Craftsmanship. Add whatever is at the core of Lean etc. But don´t call out the age of Post-Agility. Because it better never will end. Because once we start to lose Agility´s core we´re losing focus of the customer.

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• Craftsmanship Tour Day 0: New York

  - by Liam McLennan

  Arriving at JFK, at dawn, is beautiful. From above 1,000ft I can see no crime, poverty or ugliness – just the dark orange sunrise-through-smog. The Atlantic appears calm, and I take that as a good sign. Today is the first day of my software craftsmanship tour. I will be visiting three of the shining lights of the software industry over five days, exchanging ideas and learning. Arriving on the red eye from Seattle I feel like hell. My lips, not used to the dry air, are cracked and bleeding. I get changed in the JFK restroom and make my way from the airport. Following Rik’s directions I take the airtrain to Jamaica. Rik is an engineering manager at Didit in Long Island, the first stop on my tour. From Jamaica I take the Long Island Rail Road train to Rockville Centre, home of Didit.

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• HOWTO Turn off SPARC T4 or Intel AES-NI crypto acceleration.

  - by darrenm

  Since we released hardware crypto acceleration for SPARC T4 and Intel AES-NI support we have had a common question come up: 'How do I test without the hardware crypto acceleration?'. Initially this came up just for development use so developers can do unit testing on a machine that has hardware offload but still cover the code paths for a machine that doesn't (our integration and release testing would run on all supported types of hardware anyway).  I've also seen it asked in a customer context too so that we can show that there is a performance gain from the hardware crypto acceleration, (not just the fact that SPARC T4 much faster performing processor than T3) and measure what it is for their application. With SPARC T2/T3 we could easily disable the hardware crypto offload by running 'cryptoadm disable provider=n2cp/0'.  We can't do that with SPARC T4 or with Intel AES-NI because in both of those classes of processor the encryption doesn't require a device driver instead it is unprivileged user land callable instructions. Turns out there is away to do this by using features of the Solaris runtime loader (ld.so.1). First I need to expose a little bit of implementation detail about how the Solaris Cryptographic Framework is implemented in Solaris 11.  One of the new Solaris 11 features of the linker/loader is the ability to have a single ELF object that has multiple different implementations of the same functions that are selected at runtime based on the capabilities of the machine.  The alternate to this is having the application coded to call getisax() and make the choice itself.  We use this functionality of the linker/loader when we build the userland libraries for the Solaris Cryptographic Framework (specifically libmd.so, and the unfortunately misnamed due to historical reasons libsoftcrypto.so) The Solaris linker/loader allows control of a lot of its functionality via environment variables, we can use that to control the version of the cryptographic functions we run.  To do this we simply export the LD_HWCAP environment variable with values that tell ld.so.1 to not select the HWCAP section matching certain features even if isainfo says they are present.  For SPARC T4 that would be: export LD_HWCAP="-aes -des -md5 -sha256 -sha512 -mont -mpul" and for Intel systems with AES-NI support: export LD_HWCAP="-aes" This will work for consumers of the Solaris Cryptographic Framework that use the Solaris PKCS#11 libraries or use libmd.so interfaces directly.  It also works for the Oracle DB and Java JCE.  However does not work for the default enabled OpenSSL "t4" or "aes-ni" engines (unfortunately) because they do explicit calls to getisax() themselves rather than using multiple ELF cap sections. However we can still use OpenSSL to demonstrate this by explicitly selecting "pkcs11" engine  using only a single process and thread.  $ openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 54170.81k 187416.00k 489725.70k 805445.63k 1018880.00k $ LD_HWCAP="-aes" openssl speed -engine pkcs11 -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 29376.37k 58328.13k 79031.55k 86738.26k 89191.77k We can clearly see the difference this makes in the case where AES offload to the SPARC T4 was disabled. The "t4" engine is faster than the pkcs11 one because there is less overhead (again on a SPARC T4-1 using only a single process/thread - using -multi you will get even bigger numbers). $ openssl speed -evp aes-128-cbc ... type 16 bytes 64 bytes 256 bytes 1024 bytes 8192 bytes aes-128-cbc 85526.61k 89298.84k 91970.30k 92662.78k 92842.67k Yet another cool feature of the Solaris linker/loader, thanks Rod and Ali. Note these above openssl speed output is not intended to show the actual performance of any particular benchmark just that there is a significant improvement from using hardware acceleration on SPARC T4. For cryptographic performance benchmarks see the http://blogs.oracle.com/BestPerf/ postings.

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