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• Goodbye my beloved Nexus One, hello Windows Phone 7

  - by George Clingerman

  Last night my wife’s Nexus One finally bit the dust. You may not know but I’ve been nursing her Nexus One one along for quite a while after her screen shattered. I was able to replace it on my own (go me!) but little quirks have been popping up and the phone was quickly deteriorating. Lately it’s been the power button. Wifey would often have to press the power button several times to get her phone to turn on and last night it just wouldn’t wake up again. I took it apart and tried my best to see if I could somehow make it live once again but no luck this time. It was finally ready to retire. We looked at first for a replacement phone for her but she wasn’t really seeing anything she liked. So I decided to make the ultimate sacrifice and offer up my much loved Nexus One and I would then get a new Windows Phone 7 device. I love T-Mobile for my service so my choices were immediately limited to basically just a single phone. The HTC HD7. I read reviews and they were all over the board from people loving to people hating the phone but I decided, hey, why not, let’s take this plunge. And I did. I’ve only had the phone for about two days now so below is my list of first reaction pros/cons. These are basically things I’ve missed or things I’ve noticed that I really like about my new Windows Phone. Cons: * No Google Talk – I used this a LOT on my Nexus. I’ve found an application called “Flory” but it’s just an ok substitute, not the same as the full featured GTalk I had on my Nexus. * Seesmic is limited– I loved the way Seesmic worked on my Nexus. It was my mobile twitter client of choice. Everything about it worked really well. On Windows Phone 7 it’s just ok. I don’t get notification of new tweets, it’s several clicks to even see a new tweet. It’s definitely got some more development before it has the same features as it did on my Nexus. * Buttons don’t give great feedback – I’d read this on the reviews about the HTC HD7 and I’m finding it true myself. Pressing the buttons on the side of the phone and the power button on the top is finicky and I have to be looking at my phone to make sure I actually got them to press. * Web browsing is slow – I’m not sure what’s up with this, I’m connected to my wireless network at my house but it’s noticeably slower on my WP7 device than my Nexus. I even switched back to verify and it’s definitely true. Retrieving tweets, hitting up the XNA forums and just general web activities are all much slower on my WP7. I can’t think of any reason this would be true but it almost seems like it’s not using my wireless for everything.   Pros: * It’s pretty – the phone is really gorgeous. I loved the form of my Nexus One by the HTC HD7 is just as pretty, maybe even prettier! It’s got a nice large, bright screen. It feels good in my hand. And it even has a little kickstand to set the phone up for movie watching. Definitely a gorgeous phone. * LIVE integration – I lost a lot of nice integration with Google services but I gained a lot of integration with LIVE services that I also use. Now I can see when I get new GMail messages AND Hotmail messages. And having the Xbox LIVE integration is admittedly cool as well. * Tile notification rock – The Windows Phone 7 commercials are TRYING to get this message out but they’re doing a really poor job of this. Tile notifications really do save you from your phone. I have a whole little mini-informational dashboard at a glance. I unlock my phone and at a glace I can see new IMs, new mail messages, software updates etc. All just letting me know in the tiles I have arranged. That’s pretty cool. * The interface works really well – I feel super hip and cool swiping and sliding things around on my Windows Phone 7. Everything works that way and it’s great and fast and really good looking. I’m all about me feeling cool. * I’m gaming more – I had gotten a few games on my Nexus One but there really weren’t a lot of good developers flocking to the service. Just browsing through the Windows Phone 7 marketplace I’m already seeing a ton of games I want to try and buy. And I sat down and bet Pixel Man 0 just yesterday on my phone. I’m already gaming more than I did on my Nexus One. * Netflix integration is fantastic - It works just like it does on my Xbox 360 and I love having this feature on my phone. * It’s basically a Zune – I’ve been taking my Zune to work and listening to music off of that while I code. I no longer need to take it with me, now I just sync songs onto my phone and it’s my new Zune. I freaking love that. One less device to carry around.   All in all my cons have really little to do with the phone (just the buttons and the web browsing) and more to do with the applications needing to catch up a bit to what I’m used to. And the Pros are things that ARE phone specific so I’m seeing that as a good sign that I’m going to be very happy with my Windows Phone 7. So Wifey is happy having her Nexus One again, I’m happy with my new Windows Phone 7. Life is good. Now I just need to make a game to pay for it….

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• Content Based Routing with BRE and ESB

  - by Christopher House

  I've been working with BizTalk 2009 and the ESB toolkit for the past couple of days.  This is actually my first exposure to ESB and so far I'm pleased with how easy it is to work with. Initially we had planned to use UDDI for storing endpoint information.  However after discussing this with my client, we opted to look at BRE instead of UDDI since we're already storing transforms in BRE.  Fortunately making the change to BRE from UDDI was quite simple.  This solution of course has the added advantage of not needing to go through the convoluted process of registering our endpoints in UDDI. The first thing to remember if you want to do content based routing with BRE and ESB is that the pipleines included in the ESB toolkit don't include disassembler components.  This means that you'll need to first create a custom recieve pipeline with the necessary disassembler for your message type as well as the ESB components, itinerary selector and dispather. Next you need to create a BRE policy.  The ESB.ContextInfo vocabulary contains vocabulary links for the various items in the ESB context dictionary.  In this vocabulary, you'll find an item called Context Message Type, use this as the left hand side of your condition.  Set the right hand side to your message type, something like http://your.message.namespace/#yourrootelement.  Now find the ESB.EndPointInfo vocabulary.  This contains links to all the properties related to endpoint information.  Use the various set operators in your rule's action to configure your endpoint. In the example above, I'm using the WCF-SQL adapter. Now that the hard work is out of the way, you just need to configure the resolver in your itinerary. Nothing complicated here.  Just select BRE as your resolver implementation and select your policy from the drop-down list.  Note that when you select a policy, the Version field will be automatically filled in with the version of your policy.  If you leave this as-is, the resolver will always use that policy version.  Alternatively, you can clear the version number and the resolver will use the highest deployed version.

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• Android: debug certificate expired error

  - by Bill Osuch

  I started up Eclipse today, created a new project, and immediately had an error before I had changed a single line: Error generating final archive: Debug Certificate expired on 11/12/11 When installed, the Android SDK generates a "debug" signing certificate for you in a file called "debug.keystore". Eclipse uses this certificate rather than forcing you to create a new one for every project. In older versions of Eclipse, the certificate was only valid for 365 days, but as I understand it the default has been changed to 30 years in newer versions. If for whatever reason you don't want to upgrade Eclipse, you can manually delete the certificate to for Eclipse to generate a new one. You can find the location in Preferences -> Android -> Build -> Default debug keystore (mine was in C:\Users\myUserName\.android\); just delete the "debug.keystore" file, then go back into Eclipse and Clean the project to generate a new file.

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• Get your TFS 2012 task board demo ready in under 1 minute

  - by Tarun Arora

  Release Notes – http://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/  | Download | Source Code | Report a Bug | Ideas In this blog post, I’ll show you how to use the ‘TfsDemoSetup’ application to configure and setup the TFS 2012 task board for a demo in well less than 1 minute Step 1 – Note what you get with a newly created Team Project Create a new Team Project on TFS Preview         2. Click Create Project         3. The project creation has completed        4. Open the team web access and have a look at the home page Note – Since I created the project I am the only Team Member       A default Team by the name AdventureWorks Team has been created       A few sprints have been assigned to the default team but no dates for sprint start and end have been specified        A default Area Path for the team is missing       Step 2. Download the TFS Demo Setup Console application from Codeplex 1. Navigate to the TFS Demo Setup project on codeplex https://tfsdemosetup.codeplex.com/       2. Download Instructions and TFSDemo_<version>      3. Follow the steps in the Instructions.txt file      4. Unzip TFSDemo_<version> and open the target folder. Two important files in this folder, DemoDictionary.xml – This file contains the settings using which the demo environment will be setup SetupTfsDemo.exe – This will run the TFS demo environment setup application       Step 3 – Configure the setup (i.e. team name, members, sprint dates, etc) 1. Open up DemoDictionary.xml      2. Walkthrough DemoDictionary.xml             a. Basic Team Details         <Name> – Specify the name of the team         <Description> – Specify a description to go with the team         <SetAsDefaultTeam> – This accepts a value “true/false” when set to true, the newly created team will be set as the default team in the project         <BacklogIterationPath> – Specify a backlog iteration path for the team     b. Iterations – The iterations you specify here will be set as the Teams iterations        <Iterations> – Accepts multiple <Iteration> nodes.        <Iteration> – This is the most granular level of an Iteration        <Path> – The path to the sprint, sample values, Release 1\Sprint 1 or Release 2\Sprint 2        <StartDate> – The sprint start date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd        <FinishDate> – The sprint finish date, this accepts the format yyyy-MM-dd     c. Team Members – Team Members that need to be added to the newly created team will be added under this section         <TeamMembers> – Accepts multiple <TeamMember> nodes.         <TeamMember> – This is the most granular level of a Team Member         <User> – This accepts the username, if you are running this against TFSPreview then the live id of the user will need to be passed. If you are running this against TFS Server then the user id i.e. Domain\UserName will need to be passed          <Team> – Specify the name of the team that you want the user to be assigned to.     d. WorkItems – This section will allow you to add work items (product backlog Items and linked tasks) to the current sprint of the team         <WorkItems> – Accepts multiple <WorkItem> nodes.         <WorkItem> – Accepts one <ProductBacklogItem> and multiple <Task> nodes         <ProductBacklogItem> – Used to create a Product Backlog Item type work item               <Title> – The title of the Product Backlog Item               <Description> – The description of the Product Backlog Type Work Item               <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed.               <Effort> – The total effort required to complete the Product Backlog Item         <Task> – Used to create a linked task to the Product Backlog type work item               <Title> – The title of the task type work item               <Description> – The description of the Task Type Work Item               <AssignedTo> – Used to assign the work item to a team member. The team member name or email address can be passed.               <RemainingWork> – The remaining effort to complete the task type work item Step 4 – Setup the demo environment against the newly created Team Project 1. Run SetupTfsDemo.exe    2. Enter Y or y on the prompt to continue setting up TFS Demo setup.     3. Select the newly created Team project, for this blogpost I had created the Team Project – AdventureWorks, so that is what I’ll select in the Connect to TFS Server pop up    3. Click Connect and follow the messages that are written to the console application       Step 5 – Validate that the Demo environment is set up as per the configuration 1. The team web access is all lit up You have a Sprint, a burn down chart, team members…    2. The team Demo has been added and has been set up as the default team    3. The Sprint Backlog Iteration path, Sprints and Sprint start and finish dates have been set    4. The default area path has been setup    5. Taskboard – Backlog items view    6. Taskboard – Team members view      Step 6 – Exception Handling! 1. This solution has been tested against TFS 2012 Service/Server for the Scrum 2.1 process template. 2. You are likely to run into an exception if you mess up the config file 3. If the team already exists and you run the console app to set up the team (with the same name) you will run into exceptions. Please remember this is just an alpha release, if you have any feedback please leave a comment! Didn’t I say that it would just take 1 minute, Enjoy!

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• Windows Azure SDK 1.3 addresses early adopter feedback

  - by Eric Nelson

  At the end of November 2010 we released a new version of the Windows Azure SDK which contains many new features driven by the great feedback of early adopters plus a shiny new portal. New Portal implemented in Silverlight: The new portal is implemented using Silverlight and replaces the (IMHO rather clunky) original HTML + JavaScript portal. It is 100% better although does still have a few bugs. Enjoy! P.S. You can if you wish still use the old portal:   New runtime functionality: The following functionality is now generally available through the Windows Azure SDK and Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio and the new Windows Azure Management Portal: Elevated Privileges and Full IIS. You can now run a portion or all of your code in Web and Worker roles with elevated administrator privileges. The Web role now provides Full IIS functionality, which enables multiple IIS sites per Web role and the ability to install IIS modules. Remote Desktop functionality enables you to connect to a running instance of your application or service in order to monitor activity and troubleshoot common problems. Windows Server 2008 R2 Roles: Windows Azure now supports Windows Server 2008 R2 in its Web, worker and VM roles. This new support enables you to take advantage of the full range of Windows Server 2008 R2 features such as IIS 7.5, AppLocker, and enhanced command-line and automated management using PowerShell Version 2.0. New runtime functionality – in beta: Windows Azure Virtual Machine Role: Support for more types of new and existing Windows applications will soon be available with the introduction of the Virtual Machine (VM) role. You can move more existing applications to Windows Azure, reducing the need to make costly code or deployment changes. Extra Small Windows Azure Instance, which is priced at $0.05 per compute hour, provides developers with a cost-effective training and development environment. Developers can also use the Extra Small instance to prototype cloud solutions at a lower cost. Windows Azure Connect: (formerly Project Sydney), which enables a simple and easy-to-manage mechanism to set up IP-based network connectivity between on-premises and Windows Azure resources, is the first Windows Azure Virtual Network feature that we’re making available as a CTP. You can sign up for any of the betas via the Windows Azure Management Portal. Improved processes and simplified operations New portal! (see above) Access to new diagnostic information including the ability to click on a role to see role type, deployment time and last reboot time A new sign-up process that dramatically reduces the number of steps needed to sign up for Windows Azure. New scenario based Windows Azure Platform forums to help answer questions and share knowledge more efficiently. Multiple Service Administrators: Windows Azure now supports multiple Windows Live IDs to have administrator privileges on the same Windows Azure account. The objective is to make it easy for a team to work on the same Windows Azure account while using their individual Windows Live IDs.   Related Links Please also let us know through Microsoft Platform Ready if and when you intend to build an application using the Windows Azure Platform. Or indeed if you already have (Well done). You will get access to some great benefits if you do (more on that in a future post). It also really helps us better understand the demand out there which directly impacts how we will plan the next six months of activities around the Windows Azure Platform. Visit Microsoft Platform Ready to tell us about your plans for your applications UK based? Interested in the Windows Azure Platform? Join http://ukazure.ning.com Get started with the Windows Azure Platform http://bit.ly/startazure

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• Mock RequireJS define dependencies with config.map

  - by Aligned

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Aligned/archive/2014/08/18/mock-requirejs-define-dependencies-with-config.map.aspxI had a module dependency, that I’m pulling down with RequireJS that I needed to use and write tests against. In this case, I don’t care about the actual implementation of the module (it’s simple enough that I’m just avoiding some AJAX calls). EDIT: make sure you look at the bottom example after the edit before using the config.map approach. I found that there is an easier way. I did not want to change the constructor of the consumer as I had a chain of changes that would have to be made and that would have been to invasive for this task. I found a question on StackOverflow with a short, but helpful answer from “Artem Oboturov”. We can use the config.map from RequireJs to achieve this. Here is some code: A module example (“usefulModule” in Common/Modules/usefulModule.js): define([], function() { "use strict"; var testMethod = function() { ... }; // add more functionality of the module return { testMethod; } }); A consumer of usefulModule example: define([ "Commmon/Modules/usefulModule" ], function(usefulModule) { "use strict"; var consumerModule = function(){ var self = this; // add functionality of the module } }); Using config.map in the html of the test runner page (and in your Karma config –> I’m still trying to figure this out): map: {'*': { // replace usefulModule with a mock 'Common/Modules/usefulModule': '/Tests/Specs/Common/usefulModuleMock.js' } } With the new mapping, Require will load usefulModuleMock.js from Tests/Specs/Common instead of the real implementation. Some of the answers on StackOverflow mentioned Squire.js, which looked interesting, but I wasn’t ready to introduce a new library at this time. That’s all you need to be able to mock a depency in RequireJS. However, there are many good cases when you should pass it in through the constructor instead of this approach.   EDIT: After all that, here’s another, probably better way: The consumer class, updated: define([ "Commmon/Modules/usefulModule" ], function(UsefulModule) { "use strict"; var consumerModule = function(){ var self = this; self.usefulModule = new UsefulModule(); // add functionality of the module } }); Jasmine test: define([ "consumerModule", "/UnitTests/Specs/Common/Mocks/usefulModuleMock.js" ], function(consumerModule, UsefulModuleMock){ describe("when mocking out the module", function(){ it("should probably just override the property", function(){ var consumer = new consumerModule(); consumer.usefulModule = new UsefulModuleMock(); }); }); });   Thanks for letting me think out loud :-).

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• Internet Explorer will not open Office files

  - by geekrutherford

  An issue was brought to my attention today at work where certain users were unable to open Office files (specifically Excel) from Internet Explorer 7.   The user would click on a button which simply generated an inline JS call to open a pop-up pointing to the .xlsx file on the server. IE would open the pop-up and then shortly thereafter the pop-up would disappear without the file ever opening.   I tweaked the security settings in the users browser...added the site to the list of trusted sites and lowered the security settings to Medium-Low. This allowed IE to at least prompt with the Save or Open message. Clicking either open resulted in "Internet Explorer Could Not Open the Site...".   Perturbed, I retreated back to Geek Central (aka my desk) and modified my application such that instead of simply pointing the browser to the file and now used Response.TransmitFile() to stream it to the browser instead. I thought to myself "this is perfect, it has to work!!!". Alas, no luck.   Bewildered and confused and returned to the lone users computer and started looking around the various IE options. I stumbled upon "Clear SSL State" under the "Content" tab. This appears to clear out all SSL certificates on the client forcing it to refresh. Doing this in concert with resetting the security levels for all zones back to their defaults seemed to do the trick.

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• DotNetNuke + PayPal

  - by Nuri Halperin

  A DotNetNuke i'm supporting has had a paypal "buy now" button and other variations with custom fields for a while now. About 2 weeks ago (somewhere in March 2010) they all stopped working. The problem manifested such that once you clicked the "buy now" button, Paypal site would throw a scary error page to the effect of: "Internal Server Error The server encountered an internal error or misconfiguration and was unable to complete your request. Please contact the server administrator, [email protected] and inform them of the time the error occurred, and anything you might have done that may have caused the error. More information about this error may be available in the server error log" Once I verified no cheeky content editor changed the page, I went digging for answers. The main source incompatibility of PayPal's simple HTML forms is that DNN includes a form on every page, and nested forms are not really supported. As blogged here and lamented here, the solution I came up with is simply to modify the form enctype to 'application/x-www-form-urlencoded' as illustrated below: 1: <input type="image" border="0" 2: src="https://www.paypal.com/en_US/i/btn/btn_buynowCC_LG.gif" 3: name="submit" 4: alt="PayPal - The safer, easier way to pay online!" 5: onClick="this.form.action='https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr'; this.form.enctype='application/x-www-form-urlencoded';this.form.submit();" /> One would think that PayPal would want the masses submitting HTML in all manners of "enctype", but I guess every company has it's quirks. At least my favorite non-profit can now continue and accept payments. Sigh.

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• MapRedux - PowerShell and Big Data

  - by Dittenhafer Solutions

  MapRedux – #PowerShell and #Big Data Have you been hearing about “big data”, “map reduce” and other large scale computing terms over the past couple of years and been curious to dig into more detail? Have you read some of the Apache Hadoop online documentation and unfortunately concluded that it wasn't feasible to setup a “test” hadoop environment on your machine? More recently, I have read about some of Microsoft’s work to enable Hadoop on the Azure cloud. Being a "Microsoft"-leaning technologist, I am more inclinded to be successful with experimentation when on the Windows platform. Of course, it is not that I am "religious" about one set of technologies other another, but rather more experienced. Anyway, within the past couple of weeks I have been thinking about PowerShell a bit more as the 2012 PowerShell Scripting Games approach and it occured to me that PowerShell's support for Windows Remote Management (WinRM), and some other inherent features of PowerShell might lend themselves particularly well to a simple implementation of the MapReduce framework. I fired up my PowerShell ISE and started writing just to see where it would take me. Quite simply, the ScriptBlock feature combined with the ability of Invoke-Command to create remote jobs on networked servers provides much of the plumbing of a distributed computing environment. There are some limiting factors of course. Microsoft provided some default settings which prevent PowerShell from taking over a network without administrative approval first. But even with just one adjustment, a given Windows-based machine can become a node in a MapReduce-style distributed computing environment. Ok, so enough introduction. Let's talk about the code. First, any machine that will participate as a remote "node" will need WinRM enabled for remote access, as shown below. This is not exactly practical for hundreds of intended nodes, but for one (or five) machines in a test environment it does just fine. C:> winrm quickconfig WinRM is not set up to receive requests on this machine. The following changes must be made: Set the WinRM service type to auto start. Start the WinRM service. Make these changes [y/n]? y Alternatively, you could take the approach described in the Remotely enable PSRemoting post from the TechNet forum and use PowerShell to create remote scheduled tasks that will call Enable-PSRemoting on each intended node. Invoke-MapRedux Moving on, now that you have one or more remote "nodes" enabled, you can consider the actual Map and Reduce algorithms. Consider the following snippet: $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose Invoke-MapRedux takes an instance of a MapReduceItem which references the Map and Reduce scriptblocks, an array of computer names which are the remote nodes, and the initial data set to be processed. As simple as that, you can start working with concepts of big data and the MapReduce paradigm. Now, how did we get there? I have published the initial version of my PsMapRedux PowerShell Module on GitHub. The PsMapRedux module provides the Invoke-MapRedux function described above. Feel free to browse the underlying code and even contribute to the project! In a later post, I plan to show some of the inner workings of the module, but for now let's move on to how the Map and Reduce functions are defined. Map Both the Map and Reduce functions need to follow a prescribed prototype. The prototype for a Map function in the MapRedux module is as follows. A simple scriptblock that takes one PsObject parameter and returns a hashtable. It is important to note that the PsObject $dataset parameter is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property which offers an array of data to be processed by the Map function. $aMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) # Indicate the job is running on the remote node. Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); # The hashtable to return $list = @{}; # ... Perform the mapping work and prepare the $list hashtable result with your custom PSObject... # ... The $dataset has a single 'Data' property which contains an array of data rows # which is a subset of the originally submitted data set. # Return the hashtable (Key, PSObject) Write-Output $list; } Reduce Likewise, with the Reduce function a simple prototype must be followed which takes a $key and a result $dataset from the MapRedux's partitioning function (which joins the Map results by key). Again, the $dataset is a MapRedux custom object that has a "Data" property as described in the Map section. $aReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) # The hashtable to return $redux = @{}; # Return Write-Output $redux; } All Together Now When everything is put together in a short example script, you implement your Map and Reduce functions, query for some starting data, build the MapReduxItem via New-MapReduxItem and call Invoke-MapRedux to get the process started: # Import the MapRedux and SQL Server providers Import-Module "MapRedux" Import-Module “sqlps” -DisableNameChecking # Query the database for a dataset Set-Location SQLSERVER:\sql\dbserver1\default\databases\myDb $query = "SELECT MyKey, Date, Value1 FROM BigData ORDER BY MyKey"; Write-Host "Query: $query" $dataset = Invoke-SqlCmd -query $query # Build the Map function $MyMap = { Param ( [PsObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Map"); $list = @{}; foreach($row in $dataset.Data) { # Write-Host ("Key: " + $row.MyKey.ToString()); if($list.ContainsKey($row.MyKey) -eq $true) { $s = $list.Item($row.MyKey); $s.Sum += $row.Value1; $s.Count++; } else { $s = New-Object PSObject; $s | Add-Member -Type NoteProperty -Name MyKey -Value $row.MyKey; $s | Add-Member -type NoteProperty -Name Sum -Value $row.Value1; $list.Add($row.MyKey, $s); } } Write-Output $list; } $MyReduce = { Param ( [object] $key, [PSObject] $dataset ) Write-Host ($env:computername + "::Reduce - Count: " + $dataset.Data.Count) $redux = @{}; $count = 0; foreach($s in $dataset.Data) { $sum += $s.Sum; $count += 1; } # Reduce $redux.Add($s.MyKey, $sum / $count); # Return Write-Output $redux; } # Create the item data $Mr = New-MapReduxItem "My Test MapReduce Job" $MyMap $MyReduce # Array of processing nodes... $MyNodes = ("node1", "node2", "node3", "node4", "localhost") # Run the Map Reduce routine... $MyMrResults = Invoke-MapRedux -MapReduceItem $Mr -ComputerName $MyNodes -DataSet $dataset -Verbose # Show the results Set-Location C:\ $MyMrResults | Out-GridView Conclusion I hope you have seen through this article that PowerShell has a significant infrastructure available for distributed computing. While it does take some code to expose a MapReduce-style framework, much of the work is already done and PowerShell could prove to be the the easiest platform to develop and run big data jobs in your corporate data center, potentially in the Azure cloud, or certainly as an academic excerise at home or school. Follow me on Twitter to stay up to date on the continuing progress of my Powershell MapRedux module, and thanks for reading! Daniel

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• SQL Server Date Comparison Functions

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  A few months ago, I found myself working with a repetitive cursor that looped until the data had been manipulated enough times that it was finally correct.  The cursor was heavily dependent upon dates, every time requiring the earlier of two (or several) dates in one stored procedure, while requiring the later of two dates in another stored procedure. In short what I needed was a function that would allow me to perform the following evaluation: WHERE MAX(Date1, Date2) < @SomeDate The problem is, the MAX() function in SQL Server does not perform this functionality.  So, I set out to put these functions together.  They are titled: EarlierOf() and LaterOf(). /**********************************************************                               EarlierOf.sql   **********************************************************/ /**********************************************************   Return the later of two DATETIME variables.   Parameter 1: DATETIME1 Parameter 2: DATETIME2   Works for a variety of DATETIME or NULL values. Even though comparisons with NULL are actually indeterminate, we know conceptually that NULL is not earlier or later than any other date provided.   SYNTAX: SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('1/1/2000','12/1/2009') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('2009-12-01 00:00:00.000','2009-12-01 00:00:00.521') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf('11/15/2000',NULL) SELECT dbo.EarlierOf(NULL,'1/15/2004') SELECT dbo.EarlierOf(NULL,NULL)   **********************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE name = 'EarlierOf'       AND xtype = 'FN'       ) BEGIN             DROP FUNCTION EarlierOf END GO   CREATE FUNCTION EarlierOf (       @Date1                              DATETIME,       @Date2                              DATETIME )   RETURNS DATETIME   AS BEGIN       DECLARE @ReturnDate     DATETIME         IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = NULL             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NOT NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NOT NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             IF @Date2 < @Date1                   SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         EndOfFunction:       RETURN @ReturnDate   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON EarlierOf TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON EarlierOf TO UserRole2 --GO                                                                                             The inverse of this function is only slightly different. /**********************************************************                               LaterOf.sql   **********************************************************/ /**********************************************************   Return the later of two DATETIME variables.   Parameter 1: DATETIME1 Parameter 2: DATETIME2   Works for a variety of DATETIME or NULL values. Even though comparisons with NULL are actually indeterminate, we know conceptually that NULL is not earlier or later than any other date provided.   SYNTAX: SELECT dbo.LaterOf('1/1/2000','12/1/2009') SELECT dbo.LaterOf('2009-12-01 00:00:00.000','2009-12-01 00:00:00.521') SELECT dbo.LaterOf('11/15/2000',NULL) SELECT dbo.LaterOf(NULL,'1/15/2004') SELECT dbo.LaterOf(NULL,NULL)   **********************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE name = 'LaterOf'       AND xtype = 'FN'       ) BEGIN             DROP FUNCTION LaterOf END GO   CREATE FUNCTION LaterOf (       @Date1                              DATETIME,       @Date2                              DATETIME )   RETURNS DATETIME   AS BEGIN       DECLARE @ReturnDate     DATETIME         IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = NULL             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NULL AND @Date2 IS NOT NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE IF (@Date1 IS NOT NULL AND @Date2 IS NULL)       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         ELSE       BEGIN             SET @ReturnDate = @Date1             IF @Date2 > @Date1                   SET @ReturnDate = @Date2             GOTO EndOfFunction       END         EndOfFunction:       RETURN @ReturnDate   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON LaterOf TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON LaterOf TO UserRole2 --GO                                                                                             The interesting thing about this function is its simplicity and the built-in NULL handling functionality.  Its interesting, because it seems like something should already exist in SQL Server that does this.  From a different vantage point, if you create this functionality and it is easy to use (ideally, intuitively self-explanatory), you have made a successful contribution. Interesting is good.  Self-explanatory, or intuitive is FAR better.  Happy coding! Graeme

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• Clear for take off - Azure account setup and ready to go

  - by Rainer

  I completed today the Azure account setup and started working on a project to really test drive the Azure Platform and Azure SQL. Cool stuff! Ready for takeoff into the clear blue sky, where are the clouds?

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• PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010

  - by Sam Abraham

  The South Florida Chapter of the Project Management Institute is planning a Job Fair slated for September 2010. This year has seen a significant improvement in the job market with many surveyed companies indicating their intention to add temporary or permanent staff to their workforce in the near future.   The Job Fair Initiative fits well within the chapter's message and goal for this year: "Exercising Social Responsibility" - Our responsibility as PMI volunteers at all levels towards our members and surrounding community.   Our Free-to-members Annual Job Fair will play an important role in connecting Recruiters, Exhibitors and Job Seekers together thereby helping hiring companies gain access to a large talent pool at an affordable cost (Totally free in certain cases, details to be revealed once finalized) while giving job seekers centralized access to many reputable hiring companies in the South Florida area.   My involvement in the 2010 Job Fair started with a good conversation I had with Bernie Saenz, President and CEO of the South Florida PMI Chapter, in a networking event a few months ago. I had approached him with a few ideas in line with his goal to serve the community and our members given today's difficult economic climate. Bernie indicated that the Project Manager for the 2010 Job Fair had just been appointed and invited me to participate in this important initiative as a member of her team. I simply couldn't resist and gladly accepted the invitation.   I chose an initial role as Recruiter Relations Lead which entails developing documentation and timelines for our project plan with regards to Recruiter Engagement as well as reaching out to recruiting companies to meet target representation at the Job Fair.   Being heavily involved in the local Technical community has afforded me the privilege of coming in contact with many reputable Technology Recruiting companies. (As a matter of fact, I already have 2 interested very reputable IT recruiting firms willing to join us at the fair)   The excitement for me however will be finding and reaching out to recruiters in areas of Project Management and Leadership that I might not have been exposed to before including Finance, Healthcare and Marketing, to name a few.   Keep an eye in the upcoming few weeks for official announcements on the PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010.   Environment.Exit(0);   -Sam Abraham Site Director - West Palm Beach .Net User Group Recruiter Relations Lead - PMI South Florida Job Fair 2010 Project Lead - Mentoring Programs- PMI South Florida

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• Please Stop Voting Against a Candidate

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER:  This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”.  This is not a post for whom I am voting.  This is simply a post to address an issue that I cannot ignore any longer.  This two-party system that we have allowed to establish a foothold is killing this country.    More than 2 Options I was recently asked, “If you had to choose Romney or Obama who would you pick?”  I replied “Non sequiter.  The founders of this nation ensured that I never have to pick from only two candidates.”  But somehow that is the way this country’s citizens think.  I told someone last week that there are around 20 candidates for president and she was genuinely surprised.  (There are actually 25 candidates.)  She had no idea there were that many and, even though she knew there are more, she didn’t know any names beyond Romney and Obama.  Well, I am going to try and educate people like her on other options. Vote for a Candidate, not against another Candidate So this post is the first in a series with a little bit of information about each candidate for president.  I implore you…I beg you, please do your civic duty and conduct a little bit of investigation and research on your own to find the right candidate for you.  Hey, if your candidate is Romney or Obama, that’s fine.  As long as it’s an educated decision.  But please…stop voting against a candidate.  Start voting for a candidate. A List of CandidatesAs I mentioned, I am going to write a little something about each candidate and I’m going to go by alphabetical order by PARTY, then by CANDIDATE LAST NAME so as to not show any bias. P.S. – If you want to know the candidate I selected I am happy to tell you.  But that’s not what this series is about.PARTYCANDIDATEAmerica's Party   Tom HoeflingAmerican Third Position PartyMerlin MillerAmericans Elect PartyNo candidates met the requirement to enter into the online caucus.Constitution PartyVirgil GoodeDemocratic Party   Barack ObamaGrassroots Party   Jim CarlsonGreen Party   Jill SteinIndependent American Party   Will ChristensenJustice PartyRocky AndersonLibertarian Party   Gary JohnsonObjectivist PartyTom StevensPeace and Freedom Party   Roseanne BarrReform PartyAndre BarnettRepublican PartyMitt RomneySocialism and Liberation PartyPeta LindsaySocialist Equality PartyJerry WhiteSocialist Party USAStewart AlexanderSocialist Workers PartyJames HarrisIndependent Candidates Jeff BossRichard DuncanJerry Litzel Dean Morstad Jill Reed Randall TerrySheila Tittle Michael Vargo

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• UDDI vs SO-Aware: Why SO-Aware is the More Efficient and Interoperable Alternative

  - by Vishal

  Hello folks,   If you are implementing a service oriented architecture, and are unsure of the best governance approach to follow, then this webinar is a must-attend event for you.  We will discuss why SO-Aware is the more efficient and interoperable alternative to traditional UDDI-based SOA-governance.   Specifically, we will address the differences between UDDI and SO-Aware in terms of service discovery, configuration, and policy resolution.  Finally, we will address why the REST/Odata based model implemented by SO-Aware enables the most efficient governance not only for WCF but for BizTalk, the Windows Server AppFabric and the Windows Azure AppFabric as well.   Join us on January 26th at 2:00 ET - to register, click here    Thanks,   Vishal

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• Best Practices - Core allocation

  - by jsavit

  This post is one of a series of "best practices" notes for Oracle VM Server for SPARC (also called Logical Domains) Introduction SPARC T-series servers currently have up to 4 CPU sockets, each of which has up to 8 or (on SPARC T3) 16 CPU cores, while each CPU core has 8 threads, for a maximum of 512 dispatchable CPUs. The defining feature of Oracle VM Server for SPARC is that each domain is assigned CPU threads or cores for its exclusive use. This avoids the overhead of software-based time-slicing and emulation (or binary rewriting) of system state-changing privileged instructions used in traditional hypervisors. To create a domain, administrators specify either the number of CPU threads or cores that the domain will own, as well as its memory and I/O resources. When CPU resources are assigned at the individual thread level, the logical domains constraint manager attempts to assign threads from the same cores to a domain, and avoid "split core" situations where the same CPU core is used by multiple domains. Sometimes this is unavoidable, especially when domains are allocated and deallocated CPUs in small increments. Why split cores can matter Split core allocations can silenty reduce performance because multiple domains with different address spaces and memory contents are sharing the core's Level 1 cache (L1$). This is called false cache sharing since even identical memory addresses from different domains must point to different locations in RAM. The effect of this is increased contention for the cache, and higher memory latency for each domain using that core. The degree of performance impact can be widely variable. For applications with very small memory working sets, and with I/O bound or low-CPU utilization workloads, it may not matter at all: all machines wait for work at the same speed. If the domains have substantial workloads, or are critical to performance then this can have an important impact: This blog entry was inspired by a customer issue in which one CPU core was split among 3 domains, one of which was the control and service domain. The reported problem was increased I/O latency in guest domains, but the root cause might be higher latency servicing the I/O requests due to the control domain being slowed down. What to do about it Split core situations are easily avoided. In most cases the logical domain constraint manager will avoid it without any administrative action, but it can be entirely prevented by doing one of the several actions: Assign virtual CPUs in multiples of 8 - the number of threads per core. For example: ldm set-vcpu 8 mydomain or ldm add-vcpu 24 mydomain. Each domain will then be allocated on a core boundary. Use the whole core constraint when assigning CPU resources. This allocates CPUs in increments of entire cores instead of virtual CPU threads. The equivalent of the above commands would be ldm set-core 1 mydomain or ldm add-core 3 mydomain. Older syntax does the same thing by adding the -c flag to the add-vcpu, rm-vcpu and set-vcpu commands, but the new syntax is recommended. When whole core allocation is used an attempt to add cores to a domain fails if there aren't enough completely empty cores to satisfy the request. See https://blogs.oracle.com/sharakan/entry/oracle_vm_server_for_sparc4 for an excellent article on this topic by Eric Sharakan. Don't obsess: - if the workloads have minimal CPU requirements and don't need anywhere near a full CPU core, then don't worry about it. If you have low utilization workloads being consolidated from older machines onto a current T-series, then there's no need to worry about this or to assign an entire core to domains that will never use that much capacity. In any case, make sure the most important domains have their own CPU cores, in particular the control domain and any I/O or service domain, and of course any important guests. Summary Split core CPU allocation to domains can potentially have an impact on performance, but the logical domains manager tends to prevent this situation, and it can be completely and simply avoided by allocating virtual CPUs on core boundaries.

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• New partnership allows auto-transposition of client/server application to Windows Azure

  - by Webgui

  The economics of IT is changing rapidly, and organizations are searching to widen and secure availability of their systems and at the same time lower costs which is exactly what the cloud meant to do. Running your systems on Microsoft’s Windows Azure cloud for example would improve and secure the availability, accessibility and scalability (both up and down) of your systems and support the new IT economics. However, in order to take advantage of the cloud's promise of lower cost of ownership, the applications must be built or adjusted to work on that platform and in most cases this is not a simple task.  Even existing web applications cannot always be transferred to Azure without some changes, and for client/server applications, the task is way more challenging even to the point where it seems impossible. The reason is the gaps between the client/server desktop technology and the cloud's. For that reason, most of the known methodologies to migrate existing client/server applications actually involve rewrite of the desktop systems for the cloud. A unique approach is introduced by Visual WebGui which creates a virtualization layer atop ASP.Net web server, it moves the transformed or generated .Net code to that layer, and then using a patent pending protocol it renders a user interface within a plain browser. The end result is pure .NET code that is a base code for a pure rich web application and now due to a collaboration with Microsoft Windows Azure Visual WebGui provides the shortest path from client/server to the Azure cloud by being able to handle close to 95% of the transformation to the cloud platform in an automatic way. Application Migration to Azure without migraines More information about the Instant CloudMove Azure solution here.

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• Code Analysis Rule Sets in Visual Studio 2010

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 introduces the concept of rule sets when configuring code analysis.  This is a valuable change from Visual Studio 2008 that I didn't even realize I wanted.  Visual Studio 2008 by default selected all rules and then you had to remove rules on an item by item basis. The rule sets fall into logical groups including "Microsoft All Rules", "Microsoft Basic Correctness Rules", "Microsoft Security Rules", et al.  And within the project properties you can select one rule set, multiple rule sets, or you can define your own rule set based upon another. Selecting a single rule set is obviously the easiest option.  The default rule set when you create a new project is the "Microsoft Minimum Recommended Rules".  However, in my opinion the recommended rules are just too permissive.  For that reason you might want to change your rule set to "Microsoft All Rules" until you get around to creating your own rule set; or alternately you can select multiple rule sets which is an option from the rule set combo box.  The Visual Studio documentation has comprehensive help on what is contained within the rule sets. Creating your own rule set is easy if not obvious.  You need to start a rule set from an existing rule set.  To get started select a rule set in the combo box within the Code Analysis tab of the project properties.  I selected the "Microsoft All Rules" for my rule set, but you may find it easier to start with the "Microsoft Minimum Recommended Rules" if your rules are on the more permissive side. Once your rule set is selected click the Open button.  This will display a dialog that is similar in composition to the rules selection from Visual Studio 2008.  Browsing through the tree view you can select or deselect individual rules within their categories; and you can indicate that the rules are flagged as errors instead of the default which is a warning.  A nice touch to the form is that you get a help pane when you select an individual rule.  That helped me considerably when I first configured my rule set. Once you have finished selecting your rules click the Save tool button, specify a location and name, and click the Save button on the Save As dialog.  Once you're back on the Code Analysis tab you'll choose the Browse option within the combo box and open the file you just created.

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• SilverlightShow for 06-12 Dec 2010

  - by Dave Campbell

  In an effort to get some synergy in the Silverlight community, the SilverlightShow folks and I have decided to share some information. As always, I'm running a bit behind, so I get to post first with the material they provided to me :) Check out the five most popular news at SilverlightShow for last week (06 - 12 Dec 2010). The news that hit the top is the announcement for the upcoming SilverlightShow webinar with Gill Cleeren [which I posted about a couple weeks ago] (check other webinars Gill delivered for SilverlightShow) and the free Telerik license given away to attendees. Michael Crump's digest of Silverlight 5 news announced at Firestarter was the next most attention-grabbing news. Here is SilverlightShow's weekly top 5: Join our next webinar and win a license for Telerik RadControls for Silverlight Silverlight 5 - What's New (Including Screenshots & Code Snippets) Glossy TextBlock Custom Control For Windows Phone WP7 development vs iOS, Android and mobile Web Silverlight Simple Drag And Drop / Or Browse View Model / MVVM File Upload Control Visit and bookmark SilverlightShow... they've got a lot of good things happening over there. Stay in the 'Light

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• New Horizons arrives at Neptune on a 25-year anniversary!

  - by TATWORTH

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/TATWORTH/archive/2014/08/25/new-horizons-arrives-at-neptune-on-a-25-year-anniversary.aspxToday the New Horizons probe to the planet Pluto crosses the orbit of the planet Neptune. By a “cosmic coincidence”, this is exactly 25 years since Voyager 2 took close-up pictures of Neptune and its satellite Triton. For more see http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/passingplanets/passingPlanets_current.php New Horizons current position is shown at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/mission/whereis_nh.php

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• The Current week dates

  - by MoezMousavi

  The Current week dates Might be a bit vierd as we normaly not writing a multicultural web site. So not very frequently using CultureInfo however, it is  actully quite good to use it to get the week days.               CultureInfo info = Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture;             DayOfWeek firstday = info.DateTimeFormat.FirstDayOfWeek;             DayOfWeek today = info.Calendar.GetDayOfWeek(DateTime.Now);               int diff = today - firstday;               DateTime firstDate = DateTime.Now.AddDays(-diff);             DateTime lastDate = firstDate.AddDays(6);

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• Creating a Strong Bridge to the Post PC World

  - by Webgui

  Moving from location to location requires strong roads.  When crossing a barrier though, like a body of water or valley, we are required to build a strong bridge to get us from point A to point B in a way that is fast, safe, and easy.Yet we are not talking here about driving a car or riding a bus.  As we in the computing world are evidencing the move to the post-PC era, modernizing and migrating legacy applications to harness the power of HTML5 web, cloud and mobile is one of the most difficult challenges enterprises have faced.  Constant technological changes have weakened the business value of legacy systems, which have been developed over the years through huge investments.  There are several risks of course in this move.  Do you choose to simply rewrite code of legacy apps and transform them to HTML5 one by one?  This is quite expensive (according to research firm Gartner, the cost is $6 - $26 per line of code).  Of course, the pace of the rewriting process is very slow – around 170 lines per day for each developer – which slows down business productivity in a world in which no organization can afford to fall behind.  Other questions include whether the new cloud-based apps will have the same functionality as the trusted applications that worked for you for years.  How will the user experience be affected?  And of course, what about data security?  So we are faced with the challenge of building a sturdy bridge to stabilize our move in order to allow us to confidently and easily move our legacy applications into the post-PC era.   We at Gizmox are excited to release the first downloadable Community Technology Preview (CTP) of our Instant CloudMove Transposition Studio.Developers: To download the tool, and try it out for yourself, please visit http://www.visualwebgui.com/download.aspx.The CTP is the first and only tool-based solution allowing any Microsoft Visual Studio developer to extend VB6 and .NET enterprise client/server applications into HTML5 web, cloud and mobile applications, including the ability to upgrade their code and UI while doing so.   It is the only solution to fully replicate enterprise desktop applications behavior in the post-PC era.  With Instant CloudMove, the transposed application is available on any mobile or tablet device, browser and across any client operating system. Moreover, the extended application logic and data remains on the server behind the fire-wall and therefore the application’s front end is secured-by-design.   We would love for you to try out the tool for yourselves and let us know what you think.  How are you finding the move?

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• Development teams do not scale

  - by Matt Watson

  Recently I have been thinking about how development teams don't scale very well. The bigger a team and the product get, the more time the team spends fixing software bugs. This means they spend more time doing troubleshooting and debugging as the grow. The problem is that since developers don't typically have access to production servers, there is a bottleneck in the process when doing production troubleshooting.For a team that has 10 developers, I would guess than 0-2 of them have access to production servers. If that team grows to 20 people, it is probably the same 0-2 people that have production access still. This means that those 2 key people are a bottleneck and the team does not scale correctly as you add more resources. All those new developers want is to help track down and fix software bugs, but they don't have the visibility to do it. So they end up being less productive and frustrated because they really want to fix the problems. The people who do have production access end up spending too much of their time doing troubleshooting instead of working on new projects.The solution is to remove the bottlenecks and get those people working on more important tasks. Stackify can solve this problem by giving all the developers read only access to production servers. This allows them to access the information they need to do troubleshooting on their own.

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• Interfaces and Virtuals Everywhere????

  - by David V. Corbin

  First a disclaimer; this post is about micro-optimization of C# programs and does not apply to most common scenarios - but when it does, it is important to know. Many developers are in the habit of declaring member virtual to allow for future expansion or using interface based designs1. Few of these developers think about what the runtime performance impact of this decision is. A simple test will show that this decision can have a serious impact. For our purposes, we used a simple loop to time the execution of 1 billion calls to both non-virtual and virtual implementations of a method that took no parameters and had a void return type: Direct Call:     1.5uS Virtual Call:   13.0uS The overhead of the call increased by nearly an order of magnitude! Once again, it is important to realize that if the method does anything of significance then this ratio drops quite quickly. If the method does just 1mS of work, then the differential only accounts for a 1% decrease in performance. Additionally the method in question must be called thousands of times in order to produce a meaqsurable impact at the application level. Yet let us consider a situation such as the per-pixel processing of a graphics processing application. Here we may have a method which is called millions of times and even the slightest increase in overhead can have significant ramification. In this case using either explicit virtuals or interface based constructs is likely to be a mistake. In conclusion, good design principles should always be the driving force behind descisions such as these; but remember that these decisions do not come for free.   1) When a concrete class member implements an interface it does not need to be explicitly marked as virtual (unless, of course, it is to be overriden in a derived concerete class). Nevertheless, when accessed via the interface it behaves exactly as if it had been marked as virtual.

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• MDX needs a function or macro syntax

  - by Darren Gosbell

  I was having an interesting discussion with a few people about the impact of named sets on performance (the same discussion noted by Chris Webb here: http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2011/03/16/referencing-named-sets-in-calculations). And apparently the core of the performance issue comes down to the way named sets are materialized within the SSAS engine. Which lead me to the thought that what we really need is a syntax for declaring a non-materialized set or to take this even further a way of declaring an MDX expression as function or macro so that it can be re-used in multiple places. Because sometimes you do want the set materialised, such as when you use an ordered set for calculating rankings. But a lot of the time we just want to make our MDX modular and want to avoid having to repeat the same code over and over. I did some searches on connect and could not find any similar suggestions so I posted one here: https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/651646/mdx-macro-or-function-syntax Although apparently I did not search quite hard enough as Chris Webb made a similar suggestion some time ago, although he also included a request for true MDX stored procedures (not the .Net style stored procs that we have at the moment): https://connect.microsoft.com/SQLServer/feedback/details/473694/create-parameterised-queries-and-functions-on-the-server Chris also pointed out this post that he did last year http://cwebbbi.wordpress.com/2010/09/13/iccube/ where he pointed out that the icCube product already has this sort of functionality. So if you think either or both of these suggestions is a good idea then I would encourage you to click on the links and vote for them.

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• BizTalk Send Ports, Delivery Notification and ACK / NACK messages

  - by Robert Kokuti

  Recently I worked on an orchestration which sent messages out to a Send Port on a 'fire and forget' basis. The idea was that once the orchestration passed the message to the Messagebox, it was left to BizTalk to manage the sending process. Should the send operation fail, the Send Port got suspended, and the orchestration completed asynchronously, regardless of the Send Port success or failure. However, we still wanted to log the sending success, using the ACK / NACK messages. On normal ports, BizTalk generates ACK / NACK messages back to the Messagebox, if the logical port's Delivery Notification property is set to 'Transmitted'. Unfortunately, this setting also causes the orchestration to wait for the send port's result, and should the Send Port fail, the orchestration will also receive a 'DeliveryFailureException' exception. So we may end up with a suspended port and a suspended orchestration - not the outcome wanted here, there was no value in suspending the orchestration in our case. There are a couple of ways to fix this: 1. Catch the DeliveryFailureException  (full type name Microsoft.XLANGs.BaseTypes.DeliveryFailureException) and do nothing in the orchestration's exception block. Although this works, it still slows down the orchestration as the orchestration still has to wait for the outcome of the send port operation. 2. Use a Direct Port instead, and set the ACK request on the message Context, prior passing to the port: msgToSend(BTS.AckRequired) = true; This has to be done in an expression shape, as a Direct logical port does not have Delivery Notification property - make sure to add a reference to Microsoft.BizTalk.GlobalPropertySchemas. Setting this context value in the message will cause the messaging agent to create an appropriate ACK or NACK message after the port execution. The ACK / NACK messages can be caught and logged by dedicated Send Ports, filtering on BTS.AckType value (which is either ACK or NACK). ACK/NACK messages are treated in a special way by BizTalk, and a useful feature is that the original message's context values are copied to the ACK/NACK message context - these can be used for logging the right information. Other useful context properties of the ACK/NACK messages: -  BTS.AckSendPortName can be used to identify the original send port. - BTS.AckOwnerID, aka http://schemas.microsoft.com/BizTalk/2003/system-properties.AckOwnerID - holds the instance ID of the failed Send Port - can be used to resubmit / terminate the instance Someone may ask, can we just turn off the Delivery Notification on a 'normal' port, and set the AckRequired property on the message as for a Direct port. Unfortunately, this does not work - BizTalk seems to remove this property automatically, if the message goes through a port where Delivery Notification is set to None.

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