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  • Something for the weekend - Whats the most complex query?

    - by simonsabin
    Whenever I teach about SQL Server performance tuning I try can get across the message that there is no such thing as a table. Does that sound odd, well it isn't, trust me. Rather than tables you need to consider structures. You have 1. Heaps 2. Indexes (b-trees) Some people split indexes in two, clustered and non-clustered, this I feel confuses the situation as people associate clustered indexes with sorting, but don't associate non clustered indexes with sorting, this is wrong. Clustered and non-clustered indexes are the same b-tree structure(and even more so with SQL 2005) with the leaf pages sorted in a linked list according to the keys of the index.. The difference is that non clustered indexes include in their structure either, the clustered key(s), or the row identifier for the row in the table (see http://sqlblog.com/blogs/kalen_delaney/archive/2008/03/16/nonclustered-index-keys.aspx for more details). Beyond that they are the same, they have key columns which are stored on the root and intermediary pages, and included columns which are on the leaf level. The reason this is important is that this is how the optimiser sees the world, this means it can use any of these structures to resolve your query. Even if your query only accesses one table, the optimiser can access multiple structures to get your results. One commonly sees this with a non-clustered index scan and then a key lookup (clustered index seek), but importantly it's not restricted to just using one non-clustered index and the clustered index or heap, and that's the challenge for the weekend. So the challenge for the weekend is to produce the most complex single table query. For those clever bods amongst you that are thinking, great I will just use lots of xquery functions, sorry these are the rules. 1. You have to use a table from AdventureWorks (2005 or 2008) 2. You can add whatever indexes you like, but you must document these 3. You cannot use XQuery, Spatial, HierarchyId, Full Text or any open rowset function. 4. You can only reference your table once, i..e a FROM clause with ONE table and no JOINs 5. No Sub queries. The aim of this is to show how the optimiser can use multiple structures to build the results of a query and to also highlight why the optimiser is doing that. How many structures can you get the optimiser to use? As an example create these two indexes on AdventureWorks2008 create index IX_Person_Person on Person.Person (lastName, FirstName,NameStyle,PersonType) create index IX_Person_Person on Person.Person(BusinessentityId,ModifiedDate)with drop_existing    select lastName, ModifiedDate   from Person.Person  where LastName = 'Smith' You will see that the optimiser has decided to not access the underlying clustered index of the table but to use two indexes above to resolve the query. This highlights how the optimiser considers all storage structures, clustered indexes, non clustered indexes and heaps when trying to resolve a query. So are you up to the challenge for the weekend to produce the most complex single table query? The prize is a pdf version of a popular SQL Server book, or a physical book if you live in the UK.  

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  • Distinctly LINQ &ndash; Getting a Distinct List of Objects

    - by David Totzke
    Let’s say that you have a list of objects that contains duplicate items and you want to extract a subset of distinct items.  This is pretty straight forward in the trivial case where the duplicate objects are considered the same such as in the following example: List<int> ages = new List<int> { 21, 46, 46, 55, 17, 21, 55, 55 }; IEnumerable<int> distinctAges = ages.Distinct(); Console.WriteLine("Distinct ages:"); foreach (int age in distinctAges) { Console.WriteLine(age); } /* This code produces the following output: Distinct ages: 21 46 55 17 */ What if you are working with reference types instead?  Imagine a list of search results where items in the results, while unique in and of themselves, also point to a parent.  We’d like to be able to select a bunch of items in the list but then see only a distinct list of parents.  Distinct isn’t going to help us much on its own as all of the items are distinct already.  Perhaps we can create a class with just the information we are interested in like the Id and Name of the parents.  public class SelectedItem { public int ItemID { get; set; } public string DisplayName { get; set; } } We can then use LINQ to populate a list containing objects with just the information we are interested in and then get rid of the duplicates. IEnumerable<SelectedItem> list = (from item in ResultView.SelectedRows.OfType<Contract.ReceiptSelectResults>() select new SelectedItem { ItemID = item.ParentId, DisplayName = item.ParentName }) .Distinct(); Most of you will have guessed that this didn’t work.  Even though some of our objects are now duplicates, because we are working with reference types, it doesn’t matter that their properties are the same, they’re still considered unique.  What we need is a way to define equality for the Distinct() extension method. IEqualityComparer<T> Looking at the Distinct method we see that there is an overload that accepts an IEqualityComparer<T>.  We can simply create a class that implements this interface and that allows us to define equality for our SelectedItem class. public class SelectedItemComparer : IEqualityComparer<SelectedItem> { public new bool Equals(SelectedItem abc, SelectedItem def) { return abc.ItemID == def.ItemID && abc.DisplayName == def.DisplayName; } public int GetHashCode(SelectedItem obj) { string code = obj.DisplayName + obj.ItemID.ToString(); return code.GetHashCode(); } } In the Equals method we simply do whatever comparisons are necessary to determine equality and then return true or false.  Take note of the implementation of the GetHashCode method.  GetHashCode must return the same value for two different objects if our Equals method says they are equal.  Get this wrong and your comparer won’t work .  Even though the Equals method returns true, mismatched hash codes will cause the comparison to fail.  For our example, we simply build a string from the properties of the object and then call GetHashCode() on that. Now all we have to do is pass an instance of our IEqualitlyComarer<T> to Distinct and all will be well: IEnumerable<SelectedItem> list =     (from item in ResultView.SelectedRows.OfType<Contract.ReceiptSelectResults>()         select new SelectedItem { ItemID = item.dahfkp, DisplayName = item.document_code })                         .Distinct(new SelectedItemComparer());   Enjoy. Dave Just because I can… Technorati Tags: LINQ,C#

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  • Netbeans 7.2 Missing Modules Warning

    - by el10780
    Everytime I start Netbeans and the splash screen shows up when it gets to the part to load the modules I receive the following error message : Warning - could not install some modules: Editor Library 2 - None of the modules providing the capability org.netbeans.modules.editor.actions could be installed. Tags Based Editors Library - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.deprecated.pre65formatting/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Editor Library - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.deprecated.pre65formatting/0-1 was needed and not found. Preprocessor Bridge - None of the modules providing the capability org.netbeans.modules.java.preprocessorbridge.spi.JavaSourceUtilImpl could be installed. Freeform Ant Projects - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.indent.project/0-1 was needed and not found. Editor Code Templates - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Static Analysis Core - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Source - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.indent.project/0-1 was needed and not found. Eclipse Project Importer - The module named org.netbeans.modules.java.api.common/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Hints SPI - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Refactoring - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Editor - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Editor - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Editor - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.deprecated.pre65formatting/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Hints UI - The module named org.netbeans.modules.code.analysis/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Hints UI - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Legacy Java Hints SPI - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Hints - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Java Declarative Hints - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Javadoc - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. Javadoc - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Common Scripting Language API (new) - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. XML Text Editor - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. XML Text Editor - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.deprecated.pre65formatting/0-1 was needed and not found. CSS Editor - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. HTML Editor - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. JavaScript Editing - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. JavaScript Hints - The module named org.netbeans.spi.editor.hints/0-1 was needed and not found. Editing Files - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.bracesmatching/0-1 was needed and not found. IDE Platform - The module named org.netbeans.modules.editor.macros/0-1 was needed and not found. Java SE Projects - The module named org.netbeans.modules.java.api.common/0-1 was needed and not found. 86 further modules could not be installed due to the above problems. Whatever I press either Exit or Disable Modules and Continue or even I close from the "X" Button the Warning window closes and then Netbeans never starts. I have looked it up on the Internet,but I couldn't find a solution.

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  • Social Media Talk: Facebook, Really?? How Has It Become This Popular??

    - by david.talamelli
    If you have read some of my previous posts over the past few years either here or on my personal blog David's Journal on Tap you will know I am a Social Media enthusiast. I use various social media sites everday in both my work and personal life. I was surprised to read today on Mashable.com that Facebook now Commands 41% of Social Media Trafic. When I think of the Social Media sites I use most, the sites that jump into my mind first are LinkedIn, Blogging and Twitter. I do use Facebook in both work and in my personal life but on the list of sites I use it probably ranks closer to the bottom of the list rather than the top. I know Facebook is engrained in everything these days - but really I am not a huge Facebook fan - and I am finding that over the past 3-6 months my interest in Facebook is going down rather than up. From a work perspective - SM sites let me connect with candidates and communities and they help me talk about the things that I am doing here at Oracle. From a personal perspective SM sites let me keep in touch with friends and family both here and overseas in a really simple and easy way. Sites like LinkedIn give me a great way to proactively talk to both active and passive candidates. Twitter is fantastic to keep in touch with industry trends and keep up to date on the latest trending topics as well as follow conversations about whatever keyword you want to follow. Blogging lets me share my thoughts and ideas with others and while FB does have some great benefits I don't think the benefits outweigh the negatives of using FB. I use TweetDeck to keep track of my twitter feeds, the latest LinkedIn updates and Facebook updates. Tweetdeck is a great tool as it consolidates these 3 SM sites for me and I can quickly scan to see the latest news on any of them. From what I have seen from Facebook it looks like 70%-80% of people are using FB to grow their farm on farmville, start a mafia war on mafiawars or read their horoscope, check their love percentage, etc...... In between all these "updates" every now and again you do see a real update from someone who actually has something to say but there is so much "white noise" on FB from all the games and apps that is hard to see the real messages from all the 'games' information. I don't like having to scroll through what seems likes pages of farmville updates only to get one real piece of information. For me this is where FB's value really drops off. While I use SM everyday I try to use SM effectively. Sifting through so much noise is not effective and really I am not all that interested in Farmville, MafiaWars or any similar game/app. But what about Groups and Facebook Ads?? Groups are ok, but I am not sure I would call them SM game changers - yes there is a group for everything out there, but a group whether it is on FB or not is only as good as the community that supports and participates in it. Many of the Groups on FB (and elsewhere) are set up and never used or promoted by the moderator. I have heard that FB ads do have an impact, and I have not really looked at them - the question of cost jumps and return on investment comes to my mind though. FB does have some benefits, it is a great way to keep in touch with people and a great way to talk to others. I think it would have been interesting to see a different statistic measuring how effective that 41% of Social Media Traffic via FB really is or is it just a case of more people jumping online to play games. To me FB does not equal SM effectiveness, at the moment it is a tool that I sometimes need to use as opposed to want to use. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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  • Visual Studio 2010 Beta 2 Startup Failures

    - by Rick Strahl
    I’ve been working with VS 2010 Beta 2 for a while now and while it works Ok most of the time it seems the environment is very, very fragile when it comes to crashes and installed packages. Specifically I’ve been working just fine for days, then when VS 2010 crashes it will not re-start. Instead I get the good old Application cannot start dialog: Other failures I’ve seen bring forth other just as useful dialogs with information overload like Operation cannot be performed which for me specifically happens when trying to compile any project. After a bit of digging around and a post to Microsoft Connect the solution boils down to resetting the VS.NET environment. The Application Cannot Start issue stems from a package load failure of some sort, so the work around for this is typically: c:\program files\Visual Studio 2010\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /ResetSkipPkgs In most cases that should do the trick. If it doesn’t and the error doesn’t go away the more drastic: c:\program files\Visual Studio 2010\Common7\IDE\devenv.exe /ResetSettings is required which resets all settings in VS to its installation defaults. Between these two I’ve always been able to get VS to startup and run properly. BTW it’s handy to keep a list of command line options for Visual Studio around: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/xee0c8y7%28VS.100%29.aspx Note that the /? option in VS 2010 doesn’t display all the options available but rather displays the ‘demo version’ message instead, so the above should be helpful. Also note that unless you install Visual C++ the Visual Studio Command Prompt icon is not automatically installed so you may have to navigate manually to the appropriate folder above. Cannot Build Failures If you get the Cannot compile error dialog, there is another thing that have worked for me: Change your project build target from Debug to Release (or whatever – just change it) and compile again. If that doesn’t work doing the reset steps above will do it for me. It appears this failure comes from some sort of interference of other versions of Visual Studio installed on the system and running another version first. Resetting the build target explicitly seems to reset the build providers to a normalized state so that things work in many cases. But not all. Worst case – resetting settings will do it. The bottom line for working in VS 2010 has been – don’t get too attached to your custom settings as they will get blown away quite a bit. I’ve probably been through 20 or more of these VS resets although I’ve been working with it quite a bit on an internal project. It’s kind of frustrating to see this kind of high level instability in a Beta 2 product which is supposedly the last public beta they will put out. On the other hand this beta has been otherwise rather stable and performance is roughly equivalent to VS 2008. Although I mention the crash above – crashes I’ve seen have been relatively rare and no more frequent than in VS 2008 it seems. Given the drastic UI changes in VS 2010 (using WPF for the shell and editor) I’m actually impressed that the product is as stable as it is at this point. Also I was seriously worried about text quality going to a WPF model, but thankfully WPF 4.0 addresses the blurry text issue with native font rendering to render text on non-cleartype enabled systems crisply. Anyway I hope that these notes are helpful to some of you playing around with the beta and running into problems. Hopefully you won’t need them :-}© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010

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  • Uncovering Compiler Errors in ASP.NET MVC Views

    - by Ben Griswold
    ASPX and ASCX files are compiled on the fly when they are requested on the web server. This means it’s possible that you aren’t catching compile errors associated with your views when you build your ASP.NET MVC project in Visual Studio.  Unless you’re willing to click through your entire application, rendering each view looking for errors, you application is left a little vulnerable to user issues.  Fortunately, there’s a work around.  Open up your MVC project file in notepad or within the Visual Studio IDE by unloading the project and then editing the .csproj file (both actions are available by right-clicking on the Project Node in Solution Explorer.)  Notice the MvcBuildViews option.  It’s probably set to false.  Flip the value to true and you’ll magically start compiling your views when you build your application. <MvcBuildViews>false</MvcBuildViews> Taking this action will slow down your builds a bit, but if you’re a hack like me, it’ll probably save your day in the long run. Now you’re probably thinking, “Neat trick – how’s it work?”  Scroll down toward the bottom of your csproj file and you will notice the AfterBuild target triggers the AspNetCompiler action if the MvcBuildViews option is set to true.  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(MvcBuildViews)'=='true'">   <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp"                   PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" /> </Target> Great. One more thing. Let’s say you don’t want to slow down all of your builds, but you absolutely want to know if there are any compiler issues with your views before you commit your code to version control or deploy or whatever.  Here’s what you can do – change the AfterBuild condition to run if your configuration is set to Release mode.  <Target Name="AfterBuild" Condition="'$(Configuration)'=='Release'">   <!– Always pre-compile ASPX and ASCX in release mode –>   <AspNetCompiler VirtualPath="temp"                   PhysicalPath="$(ProjectDir)\..\$(ProjectName)" /> </Target> Now your debug mode builds will continue to be as fast as ever and you can quickly validate your views by building in release mode when you so choose.  There’s one little catch – this setup won’t consider the MvcBuildViews option whatsoever! So if you decide to go with this configuration, you might want to add a comment near the MvcBuildViews option letting other developers know they can change the MvcBuildViews option as much as they’d like but it’s not going to affect the AfterBuild action.  Or don’t include the comment and let your team members figure it out for themselves…

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  • Setting up Mono/ASP.NET 4.0 on Apache2/Ubuntu: Virtual hosts?

    - by Dave
    I'm attempting to setup Mono/ASP.NET 4.0 on my Apache server (which is running on Ubuntu). Thus far, I've been following a few tutorials/scripts supplied here, and here. As of now: Apache 2.2 is installed (accessible via 'localhost') Mono 2.10.5 is installed However, I'm struggling to configure Apache correctly... apparently the Virtual Host setting isn't doing its job and invoking the mod_mono plugin, nor is it even pulling source from the proper directory. While the Virtual Host setting points to '\srv\www\localhost', it clearly is pulling content instead from 'var/www/', which I've found is the default DocumentRoot for virtual hosts. I can confirm: "/opt/mono-2.10/bin/mod-mono-server4" exists. Virtual hosts file is being read, since undoing the comment in the main httpd.conf changed the root directory from 'htdocs' to 'var/www/' The Mono installation is at least semi-capable of running ASP 4.0, as evidenced by running XSP, navigating to 0.0.0.0:8080/ and getting an ASP.NET style error page with "Mono ASP 4.0.x" at the bottom. Can anyone point out how to fix these configurations and get Mono linked up with Apache? Here are my configs and relevant information: /usr/local/apache2/conf/httpd.conf: # # This is the main Apache HTTP server configuration file. It contains the # configuration directives that give the server its instructions. # See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2> for detailed information. # In particular, see # <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/directives.html> # for a discussion of each configuration directive. # # Do NOT simply read the instructions in here without understanding # what they do. They're here only as hints or reminders. If you are unsure # consult the online docs. You have been warned. # # Configuration and logfile names: If the filenames you specify for many # of the server's control files begin with "/" (or "drive:/" for Win32), the # server will use that explicit path. If the filenames do *not* begin # with "/", the value of ServerRoot is prepended -- so "logs/foo_log" # with ServerRoot set to "/usr/local/apache2" will be interpreted by the # server as "/usr/local/apache2/logs/foo_log". # # ServerRoot: The top of the directory tree under which the server's # configuration, error, and log files are kept. # # Do not add a slash at the end of the directory path. If you point # ServerRoot at a non-local disk, be sure to point the LockFile directive # at a local disk. If you wish to share the same ServerRoot for multiple # httpd daemons, you will need to change at least LockFile and PidFile. # ServerRoot "/usr/local/apache2" # # Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses and/or # ports, instead of the default. See also the <VirtualHost> # directive. # # Change this to Listen on specific IP addresses as shown below to # prevent Apache from glomming onto all bound IP addresses. # #Listen 12.34.56.78:80 Listen 80 # # Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support # # To be able to use the functionality of a module which was built as a DSO you # have to place corresponding `LoadModule' lines at this location so the # directives contained in it are actually available _before_ they are used. # Statically compiled modules (those listed by `httpd -l') do not need # to be loaded here. # # Example: # LoadModule foo_module modules/mod_foo.so # <IfModule !mpm_netware_module> <IfModule !mpm_winnt_module> # # If you wish httpd to run as a different user or group, you must run # httpd as root initially and it will switch. # # User/Group: The name (or #number) of the user/group to run httpd as. # It is usually good practice to create a dedicated user and group for # running httpd, as with most system services. # User daemon Group daemon </IfModule> </IfModule> # 'Main' server configuration # # The directives in this section set up the values used by the 'main' # server, which responds to any requests that aren't handled by a # <VirtualHost> definition. These values also provide defaults for # any <VirtualHost> containers you may define later in the file. # # All of these directives may appear inside <VirtualHost> containers, # in which case these default settings will be overridden for the # virtual host being defined. # # # ServerAdmin: Your address, where problems with the server should be # e-mailed. This address appears on some server-generated pages, such # as error documents. e.g. [email protected] # ServerAdmin david@localhost # # ServerName gives the name and port that the server uses to identify itself. # This can often be determined automatically, but we recommend you specify # it explicitly to prevent problems during startup. # # If your host doesn't have a registered DNS name, enter its IP address here. # ServerName localhost:80 # # DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your # documents. By default, all requests are taken from this directory, but # symbolic links and aliases may be used to point to other locations. # DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs" # # Each directory to which Apache has access can be configured with respect # to which services and features are allowed and/or disabled in that # directory (and its subdirectories). # # First, we configure the "default" to be a very restrictive set of # features. # <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order deny,allow Deny from all </Directory> # # Note that from this point forward you must specifically allow # particular features to be enabled - so if something's not working as # you might expect, make sure that you have specifically enabled it # below. # # # This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to. # <Directory "/usr/local/apache2/htdocs"> # # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All", # or any combination of: # Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews # # Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All" # doesn't give it to you. # # The Options directive is both complicated and important. Please see # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options # for more information. # Options Indexes FollowSymLinks # # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files. # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords: # Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit # AllowOverride None # # Controls who can get stuff from this server. # Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> # # DirectoryIndex: sets the file that Apache will serve if a directory # is requested. # <IfModule dir_module> DirectoryIndex index.html </IfModule> # # The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being # viewed by Web clients. # <FilesMatch "^\.ht"> Order allow,deny Deny from all Satisfy All </FilesMatch> # # ErrorLog: The location of the error log file. # If you do not specify an ErrorLog directive within a <VirtualHost> # container, error messages relating to that virtual host will be # logged here. If you *do* define an error logfile for a <VirtualHost> # container, that host's errors will be logged there and not here. # ErrorLog "logs/error_log" # # LogLevel: Control the number of messages logged to the error_log. # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. # LogLevel warn <IfModule log_config_module> # # The following directives define some format nicknames for use with # a CustomLog directive (see below). # LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common <IfModule logio_module> # You need to enable mod_logio.c to use %I and %O LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %I %O" combinedio </IfModule> # # The location and format of the access logfile (Common Logfile Format). # If you do not define any access logfiles within a <VirtualHost> # container, they will be logged here. Contrariwise, if you *do* # define per-<VirtualHost> access logfiles, transactions will be # logged therein and *not* in this file. # CustomLog "logs/access_log" common # # If you prefer a logfile with access, agent, and referer information # (Combined Logfile Format) you can use the following directive. # #CustomLog "logs/access_log" combined </IfModule> <IfModule alias_module> # # Redirect: Allows you to tell clients about documents that used to # exist in your server's namespace, but do not anymore. The client # will make a new request for the document at its new location. # Example: # Redirect permanent /foo http://www.example.com/bar # # Alias: Maps web paths into filesystem paths and is used to # access content that does not live under the DocumentRoot. # Example: # Alias /webpath /full/filesystem/path # # If you include a trailing / on /webpath then the server will # require it to be present in the URL. You will also likely # need to provide a <Directory> section to allow access to # the filesystem path. # # ScriptAlias: This controls which directories contain server scripts. # ScriptAliases are essentially the same as Aliases, except that # documents in the target directory are treated as applications and # run by the server when requested rather than as documents sent to the # client. The same rules about trailing "/" apply to ScriptAlias # directives as to Alias. # ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/usr/local/apache2/cgi-bin/" </IfModule> <IfModule cgid_module> # # ScriptSock: On threaded servers, designate the path to the UNIX # socket used to communicate with the CGI daemon of mod_cgid. # #Scriptsock logs/cgisock </IfModule> # # "/usr/local/apache2/cgi-bin" should be changed to whatever your ScriptAliased # CGI directory exists, if you have that configured. # <Directory "/usr/local/apache2/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options None Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> # # DefaultType: the default MIME type the server will use for a document # if it cannot otherwise determine one, such as from filename extensions. # If your server contains mostly text or HTML documents, "text/plain" is # a good value. If most of your content is binary, such as applications # or images, you may want to use "application/octet-stream" instead to # keep browsers from trying to display binary files as though they are # text. # DefaultType text/plain <IfModule mime_module> # # TypesConfig points to the file containing the list of mappings from # filename extension to MIME-type. # TypesConfig conf/mime.types # # AddType allows you to add to or override the MIME configuration # file specified in TypesConfig for specific file types. # #AddType application/x-gzip .tgz # # AddEncoding allows you to have certain browsers uncompress # information on the fly. Note: Not all browsers support this. # #AddEncoding x-compress .Z #AddEncoding x-gzip .gz .tgz # # If the AddEncoding directives above are commented-out, then you # probably should define those extensions to indicate media types: # AddType application/x-compress .Z AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz # # AddHandler allows you to map certain file extensions to "handlers": # actions unrelated to filetype. These can be either built into the server # or added with the Action directive (see below) # # To use CGI scripts outside of ScriptAliased directories: # (You will also need to add "ExecCGI" to the "Options" directive.) # #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi # For type maps (negotiated resources): #AddHandler type-map var # # Filters allow you to process content before it is sent to the client. # # To parse .shtml files for server-side includes (SSI): # (You will also need to add "Includes" to the "Options" directive.) # #AddType text/html .shtml #AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml </IfModule> # # The mod_mime_magic module allows the server to use various hints from the # contents of the file itself to determine its type. The MIMEMagicFile # directive tells the module where the hint definitions are located. # #MIMEMagicFile conf/magic # # Customizable error responses come in three flavors: # 1) plain text 2) local redirects 3) external redirects # # Some examples: #ErrorDocument 500 "The server made a boo boo." #ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html #ErrorDocument 404 "/cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl" #ErrorDocument 402 http://www.example.com/subscription_info.html # # # MaxRanges: Maximum number of Ranges in a request before # returning the entire resource, or 0 for unlimited # Default setting is to accept 200 Ranges #MaxRanges 0 # # EnableMMAP and EnableSendfile: On systems that support it, # memory-mapping or the sendfile syscall is used to deliver # files. This usually improves server performance, but must # be turned off when serving from networked-mounted # filesystems or if support for these functions is otherwise # broken on your system. # #EnableMMAP off #EnableSendfile off # Supplemental configuration # # The configuration files in the conf/extra/ directory can be # included to add extra features or to modify the default configuration of # the server, or you may simply copy their contents here and change as # necessary. # Server-pool management (MPM specific) #Include conf/extra/httpd-mpm.conf # Multi-language error messages #Include conf/extra/httpd-multilang-errordoc.conf # Fancy directory listings #Include conf/extra/httpd-autoindex.conf # Language settings #Include conf/extra/httpd-languages.conf # User home directories #Include conf/extra/httpd-userdir.conf # Real-time info on requests and configuration #Include conf/extra/httpd-info.conf # Virtual hosts Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf # Local access to the Apache HTTP Server Manual #Include conf/extra/httpd-manual.conf # Distributed authoring and versioning (WebDAV) #Include conf/extra/httpd-dav.conf # Various default settings #Include conf/extra/httpd-default.conf # Secure (SSL/TLS) connections #Include conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf # # Note: The following must must be present to support # starting without SSL on platforms with no /dev/random equivalent # but a statically compiled-in mod_ssl. # <IfModule ssl_module> SSLRandomSeed startup builtin SSLRandomSeed connect builtin </IfModule> * /usr/local/apache2/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf * # # Virtual Hosts # # If you want to maintain multiple domains/hostnames on your # machine you can setup VirtualHost containers for them. Most configurations # use only name-based virtual hosts so the server doesn't need to worry about # IP addresses. This is indicated by the asterisks in the directives below. # # Please see the documentation at # <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/vhosts/> # for further details before you try to setup virtual hosts. # # You may use the command line option '-S' to verify your virtual host # configuration. # # Use name-based virtual hosting. # NameVirtualHost *:80 # # VirtualHost example: # Almost any Apache directive may go into a VirtualHost container. # The first VirtualHost section is used for all requests that do not # match a ServerName or ServerAlias in any <VirtualHost> block. # <VirtualHost *:80> ServerName localhost ServerAdmin david@localhost DocumentRoot "/srv/www/localhost" # MonoServerPath can be changed to specify which version of ASP.NET is hosted # mod-mono-server1 = ASP.NET 1.1 / mod-mono-server2 = ASP.NET 2.0 # For SUSE Linux Enterprise Mono Extension, uncomment the line below: # MonoServerPath localhost "/opt/novell/mono/bin/mod-mono-server2" # For Mono on openSUSE, uncomment the line below instead: MonoServerPath localhost "/opt/mono-2.10/bin/mod-mono-server4" # To obtain line numbers in stack traces you need to do two things: # 1) Enable Debug code generation in your page by using the Debug="true" # page directive, or by setting <compilation debug="true" /> in the # application's Web.config # 2) Uncomment the MonoDebug true directive below to enable mod_mono debugging MonoDebug localhost true # The MONO_IOMAP environment variable can be configured to provide platform abstraction # for file access in Linux. Valid values for MONO_IOMAP are: # case # drive # all # Uncomment the line below to alter file access behavior for the configured application MonoSetEnv localhost PATH=/opt/mono-2.10/bin:$PATH;LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/opt/mono-2.10/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH; # # Additional environtment variables can be set for this server instance using # the MonoSetEnv directive. MonoSetEnv takes a string of 'name=value' pairs # separated by semicolons. For instance, to enable platform abstraction *and* # use Mono's old regular expression interpreter (which is slower, but has a # shorter setup time), uncomment the line below instead: # MonoSetEnv localhost MONO_IOMAP=all;MONO_OLD_RX=1 MonoApplications localhost "/:/srv/www/localhost" <Location "/"> Allow from all Order allow,deny MonoSetServerAlias localhost SetHandler mono SetOutputFilter DEFLATE SetEnvIfNoCase Request_URI "\.(?:gif|jpe?g|png)$" no-gzip dont-vary </Location> <IfModule mod_deflate.c> AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/xml text/javascript </IfModule> </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/docs/dummy-host.example.com" ServerName dummy-host.example.com ServerAlias www.dummy-host.example.com ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-error_log" CustomLog "logs/dummy-host.example.com-access_log" common </VirtualHost> <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot "/usr/local/apache2/docs/dummy-host2.example.com" ServerName dummy-host2.example.com ErrorLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-error_log" CustomLog "logs/dummy-host2.example.com-access_log" common </VirtualHost> mono -V output: root@david-ubuntu:~# mono -V Mono JIT compiler version 2.6.7 (Debian 2.6.7-5ubuntu3) Copyright (C) 2002-2010 Novell, Inc and Contributors. www.mono-project.com TLS: __thread GC: Included Boehm (with typed GC and Parallel Mark) SIGSEGV: altstack Notifications: epoll Architecture: amd64 Disabled: none

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  • Making a Job Change That's Easy Why Not Try a Career Change

    - by david.talamelli
    A few nights ago I received a comment on one of our blog posts that reminded me of a statistic that I heard a while back. The statistic reflected the change in our views towards work and showed how while people in past generations would stay in one role for their working career - now with so much choice people not only change jobs often but also change careers 4-5 times in their working life. To differentiate between a job change and a career change: when I say job change this could be an IT Sales person moving from one IT Sales role to another IT Sales role. A Career change for example would be that same IT Sales person moving from IT Sales to something outside the scope of their industry - maybe to something like an Engineer or Scuba Dive Instructor. The reason for Career changes can be as varied as the people who make them. Someone's motivation could be to pursue a passion or maybe there is a change in their personal circumstances forcing the change or it could be any other number of reasons. I think it takes courage to make a Career change - it can be easy to stay in your comfort zone and do what you know, but to really push yourself sometimes you need to try something new, it is a matter of making that career transition as smooth as possible for yourself. The comment that was posted is here below (thanks Dean for the kind words they are appreciated). Hi David, I just wanted to let you know that I work for a company called Milestone Search in Melbourne, Victoria Australia. (www.mstone.com.au) We subscribe to your feed on a daily basis and find your blogs both interesting and insightful. Not to mention extremely entertaining. I wonder if you have missed out on getting in journalism as this seems to be something you'd be great at ?: ) Anyways back to my point about changing careers. This could be anything from going from I.T. to Journalism, Engineering to Teaching or any combination of career you can think of. I don't think there ever has been a time where we have had so many opportunities to do so many different things in our working life. While this idea sounds great in theory, putting it into practice would be much harder to do I think. First, in an increasingly competitive job market, employers tend to look for specialists in their field. You may want to make a change but your options may be limited by the number of employers willing to take a chance on someone new to an industry that will likely require a significant investment in time to get brought up to speed. Also, using myself as an example if I was given the opportunity to move into Journalism/Communication/Marketing career from my career as an IT Recruiter - realistically I would have to take a significant pay cut to make this change as my current salary reflects the expertise I have in my current career. I would not immediately be up to speed moving into a new career and would not be able to justify a similar salary. Yes there are transferable skills in any career change, but even though you may have transferable skills you must realise that you will also have a large amount of learning to do which would take time. These are two initial hurdles that I immediately think of, there may be more but nothing is insurmountable. If you work out what you want to do with your working career whatever that may be, you then need to just need to work out the steps to get to your end goal. This is where utilising the power of your networks and using Social Media can come in handy. If you are interested in working somewhere why not proactively take the opportunity to research the industry or company - find out who it is you need to speak to and get in touch with them. We spend so much time working, we should enjoy the work we do and not be afraid to try new things. Waiting for your dream job to fall into your lap or be handed to you on a silver platter is not likely going to happen, so if there is something you do want to do, work out a plan to make it happen and chase after it. This article was originally posted on David Talamelli's Blog - David's Journal on Tap

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  • htaccess rewriterule works in one virtualhost, but not a second virtualhost

    - by Casey Flynn
    I have two virtualhosts configured with xampp on mac os x snow lion. Both use the following .htaccess file. <IfModule mod_rewrite.c> RewriteEngine On RewriteBase / # Protect hidden files from being viewed <Files .*> Order Deny,Allow Deny From All </Files> #Removes access to the system folder by users. #Additionally this will allow you to create a System.php controller, #previously this would not have been possible. #'system' can be replaced if you have renamed your system folder. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^system.* RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L] #When your application folder isn't in the system folder #This snippet prevents user access to the application folder #Submitted by: Fabdrol #Rename 'application' to your applications folder name. RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^application.* RewriteRule ^(.*)$ /index.php?/$1 [L] #Checks to see if the user is attempting to access a valid file, #such as an image or css document, if this isn't true it sends the #request to index.php RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d RewriteRule ^(.*)$ index.php/$01 [L] # If we don't have mod_rewrite installed, all 404's # can be sent to index.php, and everything works as normal. # Submitted by: ElliotHaughin ErrorDocument 404 /index.php My goal is to eliminate /index.php/ from my url strings. This htaccess works perfectly for one project, but not for the other (project/vhost) This is my vhosts.conf # # This is the main Apache HTTP server configuration file. It contains the # configuration directives that give the server its instructions. # See <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2> for detailed information. # In particular, see # <URL:http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/directives.html> # for a discussion of each configuration directive. # # Do NOT simply read the instructions in here without understanding # what they do. They're here only as hints or reminders. If you are unsure # consult the online docs. You have been warned. # # Configuration and logfile names: If the filenames you specify for many # of the server's control files begin with "/" (or "drive:/" for Win32), the # server will use that explicit path. If the filenames do *not* begin # with "/", the value of ServerRoot is prepended -- so "logs/foo.log" # with ServerRoot set to "/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles" will be interpreted by the # server as "/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/logs/foo.log". # # ServerRoot: The top of the directory tree under which the server's # configuration, error, and log files are kept. # # Do not add a slash at the end of the directory path. If you point # ServerRoot at a non-local disk, be sure to point the LockFile directive # at a local disk. If you wish to share the same ServerRoot for multiple # httpd daemons, you will need to change at least LockFile and PidFile. # ServerRoot "/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles" # # Listen: Allows you to bind Apache to specific IP addresses and/or # ports, instead of the default. See also the <VirtualHost> # directive. # # Change this to Listen on specific IP addresses as shown below to # prevent Apache from glomming onto all bound IP addresses. # #Listen 12.34.56.78:80 Listen 80 # # Dynamic Shared Object (DSO) Support # # To be able to use the functionality of a module which was built as a DSO you # have to place corresponding `LoadModule' lines at this location so the # directives contained in it are actually available _before_ they are used. # Statically compiled modules (those listed by `httpd -l') do not need # to be loaded here. # # Example: # LoadModule foo_module modules/mod_foo.so # LoadModule authn_file_module modules/mod_authn_file.so LoadModule authn_dbm_module modules/mod_authn_dbm.so LoadModule authn_anon_module modules/mod_authn_anon.so LoadModule authn_dbd_module modules/mod_authn_dbd.so LoadModule authn_default_module modules/mod_authn_default.so LoadModule authz_host_module modules/mod_authz_host.so LoadModule authz_groupfile_module modules/mod_authz_groupfile.so LoadModule authz_user_module modules/mod_authz_user.so LoadModule authz_dbm_module modules/mod_authz_dbm.so LoadModule authz_owner_module modules/mod_authz_owner.so LoadModule authnz_ldap_module modules/mod_authnz_ldap.so LoadModule authz_default_module modules/mod_authz_default.so LoadModule auth_basic_module modules/mod_auth_basic.so LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so LoadModule file_cache_module modules/mod_file_cache.so LoadModule cache_module modules/mod_cache.so LoadModule disk_cache_module modules/mod_disk_cache.so LoadModule mem_cache_module modules/mod_mem_cache.so LoadModule dbd_module modules/mod_dbd.so LoadModule bucketeer_module modules/mod_bucketeer.so LoadModule dumpio_module modules/mod_dumpio.so LoadModule echo_module modules/mod_echo.so LoadModule case_filter_module modules/mod_case_filter.so LoadModule case_filter_in_module modules/mod_case_filter_in.so LoadModule ext_filter_module modules/mod_ext_filter.so LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so LoadModule filter_module modules/mod_filter.so LoadModule charset_lite_module modules/mod_charset_lite.so LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so LoadModule ldap_module modules/mod_ldap.so LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so LoadModule logio_module modules/mod_logio.so LoadModule env_module modules/mod_env.so LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so LoadModule cern_meta_module modules/mod_cern_meta.so LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so LoadModule ident_module modules/mod_ident.so LoadModule usertrack_module modules/mod_usertrack.so LoadModule unique_id_module modules/mod_unique_id.so LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so LoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.so LoadModule proxy_ftp_module modules/mod_proxy_ftp.so LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so LoadModule proxy_ajp_module modules/mod_proxy_ajp.so LoadModule proxy_balancer_module modules/mod_proxy_balancer.so LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so LoadModule asis_module modules/mod_asis.so LoadModule info_module modules/mod_info.so LoadModule suexec_module modules/mod_suexec.so LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so LoadModule cgid_module modules/mod_cgid.so LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so LoadModule vhost_alias_module modules/mod_vhost_alias.so LoadModule negotiation_module modules/mod_negotiation.so LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so LoadModule imagemap_module modules/mod_imagemap.so LoadModule actions_module modules/mod_actions.so LoadModule speling_module modules/mod_speling.so LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so #LoadModule apreq_module modules/mod_apreq2.so LoadModule ssl_module modules/mod_ssl.so <IfDefine JUSTTOMAKEAPXSHAPPY> LoadModule php4_module modules/libphp4.so LoadModule php5_module modules/libphp5.so </IfDefine> <IfModule !mpm_winnt_module> <IfModule !mpm_netware_module> # # If you wish httpd to run as a different user or group, you must run # httpd as root initially and it will switch. # # User/Group: The name (or #number) of the user/group to run httpd as. # It is usually good practice to create a dedicated user and group for # running httpd, as with most system services. # User nobody Group nogroup </IfModule> </IfModule> # 'Main' server configuration # # The directives in this section set up the values used by the 'main' # server, which responds to any requests that aren't handled by a # <VirtualHost> definition. These values also provide defaults for # any <VirtualHost> containers you may define later in the file. # # All of these directives may appear inside <VirtualHost> containers, # in which case these default settings will be overridden for the # virtual host being defined. # # # ServerAdmin: Your address, where problems with the server should be # e-mailed. This address appears on some server-generated pages, such # as error documents. e.g. [email protected] # ServerAdmin [email protected] # # ServerName gives the name and port that the server uses to identify itself. # This can often be determined automatically, but we recommend you specify # it explicitly to prevent problems during startup. # # If your host doesn't have a registered DNS name, enter its IP address here. # #ServerName www.example.com:80 # XAMPP ServerName localhost # # DocumentRoot: The directory out of which you will serve your # documents. By default, all requests are taken from this directory, but # symbolic links and aliases may be used to point to other locations. # DocumentRoot "/Users/caseyflynn/Documents/workspace/vibecompass" # # Each directory to which Apache has access can be configured with respect # to which services and features are allowed and/or disabled in that # directory (and its subdirectories). # # First, we configure the "default" to be a very restrictive set of # features. # <Directory /> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None #XAMPP #Order deny,allow #Deny from all </Directory> # # Note that from this point forward you must specifically allow # particular features to be enabled - so if something's not working as # you might expect, make sure that you have specifically enabled it # below. # # # This should be changed to whatever you set DocumentRoot to. # <Directory "/Users/caseyflynn/Documents/workspace/vibecompass"> # # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All", # or any combination of: # Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews # # Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All" # doesn't give it to you. # # The Options directive is both complicated and important. Please see # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.2/mod/core.html#options # for more information. # Options Indexes FollowSymLinks ExecCGI Includes # # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files. # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords: # Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit # AllowOverride All # # Controls who can get stuff from this server. # Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> # # DirectoryIndex: sets the file that Apache will serve if a directory # is requested. # <IfModule dir_module> DirectoryIndex index.html index.php index.htmls index.htm </IfModule> # # The following lines prevent .htaccess and .htpasswd files from being # viewed by Web clients. # <FilesMatch "^\.ht"> Order allow,deny Deny from all </FilesMatch> # # ErrorLog: The location of the error log file. # If you do not specify an ErrorLog directive within a <VirtualHost> # container, error messages relating to that virtual host will be # logged here. If you *do* define an error logfile for a <VirtualHost> # container, that host's errors will be logged there and not here. # ErrorLog logs/error_log # # LogLevel: Control the number of messages logged to the error_log. # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. # LogLevel warn <IfModule log_config_module> # # The following directives define some format nicknames for use with # a CustomLog directive (see below). # LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b" common <IfModule logio_module> # You need to enable mod_logio.c to use %I and %O LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %>s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\" %I %O" combinedio </IfModule> # # The location and format of the access logfile (Common Logfile Format). # If you do not define any access logfiles within a <VirtualHost> # container, they will be logged here. Contrariwise, if you *do* # define per-<VirtualHost> access logfiles, transactions will be # logged therein and *not* in this file. # CustomLog logs/access_log common # # If you prefer a logfile with access, agent, and referer information # (Combined Logfile Format) you can use the following directive. # #CustomLog logs/access_log combined </IfModule> <IfModule alias_module> # # Redirect: Allows you to tell clients about documents that used to # exist in your server's namespace, but do not anymore. The client # will make a new request for the document at its new location. # Example: # Redirect permanent /foo http://www.example.com/bar # # Alias: Maps web paths into filesystem paths and is used to # access content that does not live under the DocumentRoot. # Example: # Alias /webpath /full/filesystem/path # # If you include a trailing / on /webpath then the server will # require it to be present in the URL. You will also likely # need to provide a <Directory> section to allow access to # the filesystem path. # # ScriptAlias: This controls which directories contain server scripts. # ScriptAliases are essentially the same as Aliases, except that # documents in the target directory are treated as applications and # run by the server when requested rather than as documents sent to the # client. The same rules about trailing "/" apply to ScriptAlias # directives as to Alias. # ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/cgi-bin/" </IfModule> <IfModule cgid_module> # # ScriptSock: On threaded servers, designate the path to the UNIX # socket used to communicate with the CGI daemon of mod_cgid. # #Scriptsock logs/cgisock </IfModule> # # "/Applications/xampp/xamppfiles/cgi-bin" should be changed to whatever your ScriptAliased # CGI directory exists, if you have that configured. # <Directory "/Applications/XAMPP/xamppfiles/phpmyadmin"> AllowOverride None Options None Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> # # DefaultType: the default MIME type the server will use for a document # if it cannot otherwise determine one, such as from filename extensions. # If your server contains mostly text or HTML documents, "text/plain" is # a good value. If most of your content is binary, such as applications # or images, you may want to use "application/octet-stream" instead to # keep browsers from trying to display binary files as though they are # text. # DefaultType text/plain <IfModule mime_module> # # TypesConfig points to the file containing the list of mappings from # filename extension to MIME-type. # TypesConfig etc/mime.types # # AddType allows you to add to or override the MIME configuration # file specified in TypesConfig for specific file types. # #AddType application/x-gzip .tgz # # AddEncoding allows you to have certain browsers uncompress # information on the fly. Note: Not all browsers support this. # #AddEncoding x-compress .Z #AddEncoding x-gzip .gz .tgz # # If the AddEncoding directives above are commented-out, then you # probably should define those extensions to indicate media types: # AddType application/x-compress .Z AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz # # AddHandler allows you to map certain file extensions to "handlers": # actions unrelated to filetype. These can be either built into the server # or added with the Action directive (see below) # # To use CGI scripts outside of ScriptAliased directories: # (You will also need to add "ExecCGI" to the "Options" directive.) # #AddHandler cgi-script .cgi AddHandler cgi-script .cgi .pl # For files that include their own HTTP headers: #AddHandler send-as-is asis # For server-parsed imagemap files: #AddHandler imap-file map # For type maps (negotiated resources): #AddHandler type-map var # # Filters allow you to process content before it is sent to the client. # # To parse .shtml files for server-side includes (SSI): # (You will also need to add "Includes" to the "Options" directive.) # AddType text/html .shtml AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml </IfModule> # # The mod_mime_magic module allows the server to use various hints from the # contents of the file itself to determine its type. The MIMEMagicFile # directive tells the module where the hint definitions are located. # #MIMEMagicFile etc/magic # # Customizable error responses come in three flavors: # 1) plain text 2) local redirects 3) external redirects # # Some examples: #ErrorDocument 500 "The server made a boo boo." #ErrorDocument 404 /missing.html #ErrorDocument 404 "/cgi-bin/missing_handler.pl" #ErrorDocument 402 http://www.example.com/subscription_info.html # # # EnableMMAP and EnableSendfile: On systems that support it, # memory-mapping or the sendfile syscall is used to deliver # files. This usually improves server performance, but must # be turned off when serving from networked-mounted # filesystems or if support for these functions is otherwise # broken on your system. # EnableMMAP off EnableSendfile off # Supplemental configuration # # The configuration files in the /Applications/xampp/etc/extra/ directory can be # included to add extra features or to modify the default configuration of # the server, or you may simply copy their contents here and change as # necessary. # Server-pool management (MPM specific) #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-mpm.conf # Multi-language error messages Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-multilang-errordoc.conf # Fancy directory listings #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-autoindex.conf # Language settings #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-languages.conf # User home directories Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-userdir.conf # Real-time info on requests and configuration #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-info.conf # Virtual hosts Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf # Local access to the Apache HTTP Server Manual #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-manual.conf # Distributed authoring and versioning (WebDAV) #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-dav.conf # Various default settings #Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-default.conf # Secure (SSL/TLS) connections Include /Applications/XAMPP/etc/extra/httpd-ssl.conf <IfModule ssl_module> <IfDefine SSL> Include etc/extra/httpd-ssl.conf </IfDefine> </IfModule> # # Note: The following must must be present to support # starting without SSL on platforms with no /dev/random equivalent # but a statically compiled-in mod_ssl. # <IfModule ssl_module> SSLRandomSeed startup builtin SSLRandomSeed connect builtin </IfModule> #XAMPP Include etc/extra/httpd-xampp.conf Any idea what might be the root of this? ANSWER: had to add this to my httpd.conf file <Directory /Users/caseyflynn/Documents/workspace/cobar> Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride all #XAMPP Order deny,allow Allow from all </Directory>

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  • POP Forums v9 Beta 1 for ASP.NET MVC 3 posted to CodePlex!

    - by Jeff
    As promised, I posted a beta build of my forum app for ASP.NET MVC 3. Get the new goodies here: http://popforums.codeplex.com/releases/view/58228 This is the first beta for the ASP.NET MVC 3 version of POP Forums. It is nearly feature complete, and ready for testing and feedback. For previous release notes, look here, here and here.Check out the live preview: http://preview.popforums.com/ForumsSetup instructions are on the home page of this project. The new hotness in the beta, or what has been done since the last preview: All views converted to use Razor E-mail subscription/notification of new posts New post indicators/mark read buttons Permalinks to posts Jump to newest post (from new post indicators) Recent topics Favorite topics Moderator functions for topics (pin/close/delete, plus move and rename) Search, ported from v8. Not a ton of optimization here, or new unit testing, but the old version worked pretty well User posts (topics the user posted in) Forgot password Vanity items (signatures and avatars) Hide vanity items per user preference Some minor data caching where appropriate A little bit of UI refinement Lots-o-bug fixes Lots-o-unit tests What's next? The plan between now and the next beta is as follows: Continue working through features/tasks, and fix bugs as they're reported Integrate the forum into a real, production site Refine the UI Refactor as much as possible... the code organization is not entirely logical in some places After the second beta, a release candidate will follow, with a real "final" release after that. Subsequent releases should come relatively frequently and without a lot of risk. The trick in building this thing has been that it mostly tossed the previous WebForms version, which was all full of crusties. The time table for this is a little harder to pin down, as day jobs and families will have their effect. Other notes Refactoring will be a priority. As the features of MVC have evolved, so have my desires to use it in a fashion that makes things clear and easy to follow. I don't even know if anyone will ever start mucking around in the code, but on the off chance they do, I'd like what they find to not suck. Other nice-to-haves are builds to target Windows Azure and SQL CE. A nice setup UI would be super too. I think the ASP.NET MVC world has gone long enough without a decent forum.The biggest challenge that I've found is making the forum something that can be dropped in any app. While it does rope its views into an area, areas are mostly just routing details. I haven't thought of a clever way yet to limit dependency injection, for example, to just the forum bits. I mean, everyone should be using Ninject, but how realistic is that? ;)How much time and effort should you spend on POP Forums in its current state? Change is inevitable, but at this point I'm reasonably committed to not changing the database schema. I really think it will stay as-is. All bets are off for the various interfaces throughout the app, but the data should generally resist change. It's not even that different from v8, which was one of the original goals because I didn't want to rewrite SQL or introduce a new ORM or whatever. My point is that if you wanted to build a site around this today, even though it's not entirely functional, I think it's low risk in terms of data loss. I can't vouch for whether or not you know what you're doing.I've been having some chats with people lately about quoting posts, and honestly there has to be something better and straight forward. That continues to be a holy grail of mine, and some day, I hope to find it.Enjoy... it's starting to feel more real every day!

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  • Call Webservices&hellip;Maybe!?

    - by MOSSLover
    So I have been doing preliminary work for my iOS talk for a while, but did not get into the meat of the project until recently.  One day I envision my talk uploading pictures from a camera on an iPhone or iPad into SharePoint and telling people how I did it.  As you know with my Silverlight talk and any new technology, building new talks with new technologies always ends up with some pain points that you must jump over just to grab data.  So step 1 always starts out with how do we even access a webservice using the new technology. I started out watching every single SPC video available on oAuth and Rest Webservices in SharePoint 2013.  I also sent an email to Eric Shupps about some REST and 2013 examples.  The videos further confused me, because all the videos were on SharePoint hosted apps (provider and autohosted).  I did not want to create a SharePoint hosted app, but instead a mobile app outside of the SharePoint context altogether.  Nick Swan sent me his code and it was great for a starting point on how the JSON calls would look like on iOS, but I was still missing a piece.  Nick does a great job on showing how to use the REST/JSON calls in a non-MS tech, however his presentation uses the SharePoint context and can grab the SPAppToken.  At this point I had to ask the question how do you grab the SAML token outside of SharePoint 2013 in iOS using Objective-C?  After reading all the MSDN documentation, some documentation on Restkit and Objective-C/oAuth calls, and some SharePoint 2013 blog post my head was swimming.  I was dreaming about REST and iOS in SharePoint 2013.  SAML tokens were taunting me.  I was nowhere near understanding 2013. I started talking to my friend, Pedro Jimenez, who is also playing with Objective-C and went to SPC.  He found me a couple good MSDN posts with REST/JSON calls that basically showed the accessToken was all I needed (at this point I was still thinking iOS needed to be a provider hosted app which is wrong).  So then again I had to ask the SAML token question…How do you get a SAML token outside of SharePoint without the TokenHelper class? So then I started talking to people and thinking why do I need to completely avoid TokenHelper…The solution in concept is basically create a webservice in Azure wrapped into a Provider Hosted App in SharePoint.  Wictor Wilen created a helper webservice in the following blog post: http://www.wictorwilen.se/Post/How-to-do-active-authentication-to-Office-365-and-SharePoint-Online.aspx. So now I have to basically stand up the webservice, the SharePoint app wrapper, and then use Restkit to call the first webservice to grab the token and then the second webservice to pass in the token and grab some SharePoint data.  What this means is that you can no longer just pass credentials into SharePoint webservices and get data back.  You have to pass in a SAML token with every single webservice call to SharePoint.  The theory is that this token is associated with the permissions the app can handle (read, write, whatever).  It seems like a ton of pain and a lot of work, but this is step 1 in my crusade to pull some piece of data into iOS from SharePoint and show people how to do it themselves.  In the upcoming months hopefully I can get halfway to my end goal. Technorati Tags: SharePoint 2013,REST,oAuth,Objective-C,iOS

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  • Databases in Source Control

    - by Grant Fritchey
    I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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  • Having Fun with Coding4Fun&rsquo;s Windows Phone 7 Controls

    - by mbcrump
    I’m a big believer in having a hobby project as you can probably tell from the first sentence in my “personal webpage using Silverlight” article. One of my current hobby projects is to re-do my current WP7 application in the marketplace. I knew up front that I needed a “Loading” animation and a better “About” box. After starting to develop my own, I noticed a great set of WP7 controls by Coding4Fun and decided to use them in my new application. Before I go any further they are FREE and Open-Source. It is really simple to get started, just go to the CodePlex site and click the download button. After you have downloaded it then extract it to a Folder and you will have 4 DLL files. They are listed below: Now create a Windows Phone 7 Project and add references to the DLL’s by right clicking on the References folder and clicking “Add references”.   After adding the references, we can get started. I needed a ProgressOverlay animation or “Loading Screen” while my RSS feed is downloading. Basically, you just need to add the following namespace to whatever page you want the control on: xmlns:Controls="clr-namespace:Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls;assembly=Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls" And then the code inside your Grid or wherever you want the Loading screen placed. <Controls:ProgressOverlay Name="progressOverlay" > <Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> <TextBlock>Loading</TextBlock> </Controls:ProgressOverlay.Content> </Controls:ProgressOverlay> Bam, you now have a great looking loading screen. Of course inside the ProgressOverlay, you may want to add a Visibility property to turn it off after your data loads if you are using MVVM or similar pattern.   Next up, I needed a nice clean “About Box” that looks good but is also functional. Meaning, if they click on my twitter name, web or email to launch the appropriate task. Again, this is only a few lines of code: var p = new AboutPrompt(); p.VersionNumber = "2.0"; p.Show("Michael Crump", "@mbcrump", "[email protected]", @"http://michaelcrump.net"); A nice clean “About” box with just a few lines of code! I’m all for code that I don’t have to write. It also comes with a pretty sweet InputPrompt for grabbing info from a user: The code for this is also very simple: InputPrompt input = new InputPrompt(); input.Completed += (s, e) => { MessageBox.Show(e.Result.ToString()); }; input.Title = "Input Box"; input.Message = "What does a \"Developer Large\" T-Shirt Mean? "; input.Show(); I also enjoyed the PhoneHelper that allows you to get data out of the WMAppManifest File very easy. So for example if I wanted the Version info from the WMAppManifest file. I could write one line and get it. PhoneHelper.GetAppAttribute("Version") Of course you would want to make sure you add the following using statement: using Coding4Fun.Phone.Controls.Data; You can’t have all these cool controls without a great set of Converters. The included BooleanToVisibility converter will convert a Boolean to and from a Visibility value. This is excellent when using something like a CheckBox to display a TextBox when its checked. See the example below: The code is below: <phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <Converters:BooleanToVisibilityConverter x:Key="BooleanToVisibilityConverter"/> </phone:PhoneApplicationPage.Resources> <CheckBox x:Name="checkBox"/> <TextBlock Text="Display Text" Visibility="{Binding ElementName=checkBox, Path=IsChecked, Converter={StaticResource BooleanToVisibilityConverter} }"/> That’s not all the goodies included. They also provide a RoundedButton, TimePicker and several other converters. The documentation is great and I would recommend you give them a shot if you need any of this functionality. Btw, thank Brian Peek for his awesome work on Coding4Fun!  Subscribe to my feed

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  • ASP.NET Error Handling: Creating an extension method to send error email

    - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama
    Error handling in asp.net required to handle any kind of error occurred. We all are using that in one or another scenario. But some errors are there which will occur in some specific scenario in production environment in this case We can’t show our programming errors to the End user. So we are going to put a error page over there or whatever best suited as per our requirement. But as a programmer we should know that error so we can track the scenario and we can solve that error or can handle error. In this kind of situation an Error Email comes handy. Whenever any occurs in system it will going to send error in our email. Here I am going to write a extension method which will send errors in email. From asp.net 3.5 or higher version of .NET framework  its provides a unique way to extend your classes. Here you can fine more information about extension method. So lets create extension method via implementing a static class like following. I am going to use same code for sending email via my Gmail account from here. Following is code for that. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Web; using System.Net.Mail; namespace Experiement { public static class MyExtension { public static void SendErrorEmail(this Exception ex) { MailMessage mailMessage = new MailMessage(new MailAddress("[email protected]") , new MailAddress("[email protected]")); mailMessage.Subject = "Exception Occured in your site"; mailMessage.IsBodyHtml = true; System.Text.StringBuilder errorMessage = new System.Text.StringBuilder(); errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>","Exception",ex.Message)); errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>", "Stack Trace", ex.StackTrace)); if (ex.InnerException != null) { errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>", " Inner Exception", ex.InnerException.Message)); errorMessage.AppendLine(string.Format("<B>{0}</B>:{1}<BR/>", "Inner Stack Trace", ex.InnerException.StackTrace)); } mailMessage.Body = errorMessage.ToString(); System.Net.NetworkCredential networkCredentials = new System.Net.NetworkCredential("[email protected]", "password"); SmtpClient smtpClient = new SmtpClient(); smtpClient.EnableSsl = true; smtpClient.UseDefaultCredentials = false; smtpClient.Credentials = networkCredentials; smtpClient.Host = "smtp.gmail.com"; smtpClient.Port = 587; smtpClient.Send(mailMessage); } } } After creating an extension method let us that extension method to handle error like following in page load event of page. using System; namespace Experiement { public partial class WebForm1 : System.Web.UI.Page { protected void Page_Load(object sender,System.EventArgs e) { try { throw new Exception("My custom Exception"); } catch (Exception ex) { ex.SendErrorEmail(); Response.Write(ex.Message); } } } } Now in above code I have generated custom exception for example but in production It can be any Exception. And you can see I have use ex.SendErrorEmail() function in catch block to send email. That’s it.. Now it will throw exception and you will email in your email box like below.   That’s its. It’s so simple…Stay tuned for more.. Happy programming.. Technorati Tags: Exception,Extension Mehtod,Error Handling,ASP.NET

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  • Understanding Collabnet&rsquo;s LDAP binding

    - by Robert May
    We want to use both subversion usernames and passwords as well as Active Directory for our authentication on our Collabnet subversion server. This has proven to be more of a challenge than we thought, mostly because Collabnet’s documentation is pretty poor. To supplement that documentation, I add my own. The first thing to understand is that the attribute that you specify in the LDAP Login Attribute ONLY applies to lookups done for the user.  It does NOT apply to the LDAP Bind DN field.  Second, know that the debug logs (error is the one you want) don’t give you debug information for the bind DN, just the login attempts.  Third, by default, Active Directory does not allow anonymous binds, so you MUST put in a user that has the authority to query the Active Directory ldap. Because of these items, the values to set in those fields can be somewhat confusing.  You’ll want to have ADSI Edit handy (I also used ldp, which is installed by default on server 2008), since ADSI Edit can help you find stuff in your active directory.  Be careful, you can also break stuff. Here’s what should go into those fields. LDAP Security Level:  Should be set to None LDAP Server Host:  Should be set to the full name of a domain controller in your domain.  For example, dc.mydomain.com LDAP Server Port:  Should be set to 3268.  The default port of 389 will only query that specific server, not the global catalog.  By setting it to 3268, the global catalog will be queried, which is probably what you want. LDAP Base DN:  Should be set to the location where you want the search for users to begin.  By default, the search scope is set to sub, so all child organizational units below this setting will be searched.  In my case, I had created an OU specifically for users for group policies.  My value ended up being:  OU=MyOu,DC=domain,DC=org.   However, if you’re pointing it to the default Users folder, you may end up with something like CN=Users,DC=domain,DC=org (or com or whatever).  Again, use ADSI edit and use the Distinguished Name that it shows. LDAP Bind DN:  This needs to be the Distinguished Name of the user that you’re going to use for binding (i.e. the user you’ll be impersonating) for doing queries.  In my case, it ended up being CN=svn svn,OU=MyOu,DC=domain,DC=org.  Why the double svn, you might ask?  That’s because the first and last name fields are set to svn and by default, the distinguished name is the first and last name fields!  That’s important.  Its NOT the username or account name!  Again, use ADSI edit, browse to the username you want to use, right click and select properties, and then search the attributes for the Distinguished Name.  Once you’ve found that, select it and click View and you can copy and paste that into this field. LDAP Bind Password:  This is the password for the account in the Bind DN LDAP login Attribute: sAMAccountName.  If you leave this blank, uid is used, which may not even be set.  This tells it to use the Account Name field that’s defined under the account tab for users in Active Directory Users and Computers.  Note that this attribute DOES NOT APPLY to the LDAP Bind DN.  You must use the full distinguished name of the bind DN.  This attribute allows users to type their username and password for authentication, rather than typing their distinguished name, which they probably don’t know. LDAP Search Scope:  Probably should stay at sub, but could be different depending on your situation. LDAP Filter:  I left mine blank, but you could provide one to limit what you want to see.  LDP would be helpful for determining what this is. LDAP Server Certificate Verification:  I left it checked, but didn’t try it without it being checked. Hopefully, this will save some others pain when trying to get Collabnet setup. Technorati Tags: Subversion,collabnet

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  • SQL Server – SafePeak “Logon Trigger” Feature for Managing Data Access

    - by pinaldave
    Lately I received an interesting question about the abilities of SafePeak for SQL Server acceleration software: Q: “I would like to use SafePeak to make my CRM application faster. It is an application we bought from some vendor, after a while it became slow and we can’t reprogram it. SafePeak automated caching sounds like an easy and good solution for us. But, in my application there are many servers and different other applications services that address its main database, and some even change data, and I feel that there is a chance that some servers that during the connection process we may miss some. Is there a way to ensure that SafePeak will be aware of all connections to the SQL Server, so its cache will remain intact?” Interesting question, as I remember that SafePeak (http://www.safepeak.com/Product/SafePeak-Overview) likes that all traffic to the database will go thru it. I decided to check out the features of SafePeak latest version (2.1) and seek for an answer there. A: Indeed I found SafePeak has a feature they call “Logon Trigger” and is designed for that purpose. It is located in the user interface, under: Settings -> SQL instances management  ->  [your instance]  ->  [Logon Trigger] tab. From here you activate / deactivate it and control a white-list of enabled server IPs and Login names that SafePeak will ignore them. Click to Enlarge After activation of the “logon trigger” Safepeak server is notified by the SQL Server itself on each new opened connection. Safepeak monitors those connections and decides if there is something to do with them or not. On a typical installation SafePeak likes all application and users connections to go via SafePeak – this way it knows about data and schema updates immediately (real time). With activation of the safepeak “logon trigger”  a special CLR trigger is deployed on the SQL server and notifies Safepeak on any connection that has not arrived via SafePeak. In such cases Safepeak can act to clear and lock the cache or to ignore it. This feature enables to make sure SafePeak will be aware of all connections so SafePeak cache will maintain exactly correct all times. So even if a user, like a DBA will connect to the SQL Server not via SafePeak, SafePeak will know about it and take actions. The notification does not impact the work of that connection, the user or application still continue to do whatever they planned to do. Note: I found that activation of logon trigger in SafePeak requires that SafePeak SQL login will have the next permissions: 1) CONTROL SERVER; 2) VIEW SERVER STATE; 3) And the SQL Server instance is CLR enabled; Seeing SafePeak in action, I can say SafePeak brings fantastic resource for those who seek to get performance for SQL Server critical apps. SafePeak promises to accelerate SQL Server applications in just several hours of installation, automatic learning and some optimization configuration (no code changes!!!). If better application and database performance means better business to you – I suggest you to download and try SafePeak. The solution of SafePeak is indeed unique, and the questions I receive are very interesting. Have any more questions on SafePeak? Please leave your question as a comment and I will try to get an answer for you. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Book Reviews: Art of Community and Eyetracking Web Usability

    - by ultan o'broin
    Holidays time offers a chance to catch up on some user experience and user assistance related material. So, two short book reviews (which I considered using my new Tumblr blog for. More about that another time) coming up. The Art of Community by Jono Bacon Excellent starting point for anyone wanting to get going in the community software (FLOSS, for example) space or understand how to set up, manage, and leverage the collective intelligence of communities for whatever ends. The book is a little too long in my opinion, and of course, usage of what Jono is recommending needs to be nuanced and adapted for enterprise applications space (hardly surprising there is a lot about Ubuntu, Lug Radio, and so on given Jono's interests). Shame there wasn't more information on international, non-English community considerations too. Still, some great ideas and insight into setting up and managing communities that I will leverage (watch out for the results on this blog, later in 2011). One section, on collaborative writing really jumped out. It reinforced the whole idea that to successful community initiatives are based on instigators knowing what makes the community tick in the first place. How about this for insight into user profiles for people who write community user assistance (OK then, "doc") and what tools they might use (in this case, we're talking about Jokosher): "Most people who write documentation for open source software projects would fall into the category of power user. They are technology enthusiasts who are not interested in the super-technical avenues of programming, but want to help out. Many of these people have good writing skills and a good knowledge of using the software, so the documentation fit is natural. With Jokosher we wanted to acknowledge this profile of user. As such, instead of focussing on complex text processing tools, we encouraged our documentation contributors to use a wiki." The book is available for free here, and well as being available from usual sources. Eyetracking Web Usability by Jakob Nielsen and Kara Prentice Another fine book by established experts. I have some field experience of eyetracking studies myself --in the user assistance for enterprise applications space--though Jakob and Kara concentrate on websites for their research here. I would caution how much about websites transfers easily to the applications space, especially enterprise applications, as claimed in the book too. However, Jakob and Kara do make the case very well that understanding design goals (for example, productivity improvement in the case of applications) and the context of the software use is critical. Executing a study using eyetracking technology requires that you know what you want to test, can set up realistic tasks for testing by representative testers, and then analyze the results. Be precise, as lots of data will be generated (I think the authors underplay the effort in analyzing data too). What I found disappointing was the lack of emphasis on eyetracking as only part of the usability solution. It's really for fine-tuning designs in my opinion, and should be used after other design reviews. I also wasn't that crazy about the level of disengagement between the qualitative and quantitative side of this kind of testing that the book indicated. I think it is useful to have testers verbalize their thoughts and for test engineers to prompt, intervene, or guide as necessary. More on cultural or international aspects to usability testing might have been included too (websites are available to everyone). To conclude, I enjoyed the book, took on board some key takeaways about methodologies and found the recommendations sensible and easy to follow (for example about Forms layouts). Applying enterprise applications requirements such as those relating to user profiles, design goals, and overall context of use in conjunction with what's in this book would be the way to go here. It also made me think of how interesting it would be to compare eyetracking findings between website and enterprise applications usage.

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  • Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 5 - Jobs Module / View

    Now we starting getting into a more code-heavy portion of this series, thankfully though this means the groundwork is all set for the most part and after adding the modules we will have a complete application that can be provided with full source. The Jobs module will have two concerns- adding and maintaining jobs that can then be broadcast out to the website. How they are displayed on the site will be handled by our admin system (which will just poll from this common database), so we aren't too concerned with that, but rather with getting the information into the system and allowing the backend administration/HR users to keep things up to date. Since there is a fair bit of information that we want to display, we're going to move editing to a separate view so we can get all that information in an easy-to-use spot. With all the files created for this module, the project looks something like this: And now... on to the code. XAML for the Job Posting View All we really need for the Job Posting View is a RadGridView and a few buttons. This will let us both show off records and perform operations on the records without much hassle. That XAML is going to look something like this: 01.<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" 02.Background="White"> 03.<Grid.RowDefinitions> 04.<RowDefinition Height="30" /> 05.<RowDefinition /> 06.</Grid.RowDefinitions> 07.<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> 08.<Button x:Name="xAddRecordButton" 09.Content="Add Job" 10.Width="120" 11.cal:Click.Command="{Binding AddRecord}" 12.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 13.<Button x:Name="xEditRecordButton" 14.Content="Edit Job" 15.Width="120" 16.cal:Click.Command="{Binding EditRecord}" 17.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 18.</StackPanel> 19.<telerikGrid:RadGridView x:Name="xJobsGrid" 20.Grid.Row="1" 21.IsReadOnly="True" 22.AutoGenerateColumns="False" 23.ColumnWidth="*" 24.RowDetailsVisibilityMode="VisibleWhenSelected" 25.ItemsSource="{Binding MyJobs}" 26.SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedJob, Mode=TwoWay}" 27.command:SelectedItemChangedEventClass.Command="{Binding SelectedItemChanged}"> 28.<telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> 29.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Job Title" 30.DataMemberBinding="{Binding JobTitle}" 31.UniqueName="JobTitle" /> 32.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Location" 33.DataMemberBinding="{Binding Location}" 34.UniqueName="Location" /> 35.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Resume Required" 36.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsResume}" 37.UniqueName="NeedsResume" /> 38.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="CV Required" 39.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsCV}" 40.UniqueName="NeedsCV" /> 41.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Overview Required" 42.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsOverview}" 43.UniqueName="NeedsOverview" /> 44.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Active" 45.DataMemberBinding="{Binding IsActive}" 46.UniqueName="IsActive" /> 47.</telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> 48.</telerikGrid:RadGridView> 49.</Grid> I'll explain what's happening here by line numbers: Lines 11 and 16: Using the same type of click commands as we saw in the Menu module, we tie the button clicks to delegate commands in the viewmodel. Line 25: The source for the jobs will be a collection in the viewmodel. Line 26: We also bind the selected item to a public property from the viewmodel for use in code. Line 27: We've turned the event into a command so we can handle it via code in the viewmodel. So those first three probably make sense to you as far as Silverlight/WPF binding magic is concerned, but for line 27... This actually comes from something I read onDamien Schenkelman's blog back in the day for creating an attached behavior from any event. So, any time you see me using command:Whatever.Command, the backing for it is actually something like this: SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior.cs: 01.public class SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior : CommandBehaviorBase<Telerik.Windows.Controls.DataControl> 02.{ 03.public SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DataControl element) 04.: base(element) 05.{ 06.element.SelectionChanged += new EventHandler<SelectionChangeEventArgs>(element_SelectionChanged); 07.} 08.void element_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangeEventArgs e) 09.{ 10.// We'll only ever allow single selection, so will only need item index 0 11.base.CommandParameter = e.AddedItems[0]; 12.base.ExecuteCommand(); 13.} 14.} SelectedItemChangedEventClass.cs: 01.public class SelectedItemChangedEventClass 02.{ 03.#region The Command Stuff 04.public static ICommand GetCommand(DependencyObject obj) 05.{ 06.return (ICommand)obj.GetValue(CommandProperty); 07.} 08.public static void SetCommand(DependencyObject obj, ICommand value) 09.{ 10.obj.SetValue(CommandProperty, value); 11.} 12.public static readonly DependencyProperty CommandProperty = 13.DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("Command", typeof(ICommand), 14.typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventClass), new PropertyMetadata(OnSetCommandCallback)); 15.public static void OnSetCommandCallback(DependencyObject dependencyObject, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) 16.{ 17.DataControl element = dependencyObject as DataControl; 18.if (element != null) 19.{ 20.SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior behavior = GetOrCreateBehavior(element); 21.behavior.Command = e.NewValue as ICommand; 22.} 23.} 24.#endregion 25.public static SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior GetOrCreateBehavior(DataControl element) 26.{ 27.SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior behavior = element.GetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty) as SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior; 28.if (behavior == null) 29.{ 30.behavior = new SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(element); 31.element.SetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty, behavior); 32.} 33.return behavior; 34.} 35.public static SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior GetSelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DependencyObject obj) 36.{ 37.return (SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior)obj.GetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty); 38.} 39.public static void SetSelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DependencyObject obj, SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior value) 40.{ 41.obj.SetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty, value); 42.} 43.public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty = 44.DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior", 45.typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior), typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventClass), null); 46.} These end up looking very similar from command to command, but in a nutshell you create a command based on any event, determine what the parameter for it will be, then execute. It attaches via XAML and ties to a DelegateCommand in the viewmodel, so you get the full event experience (since some controls get a bit event-rich for added functionality). Simple enough, right? Viewmodel for the Job Posting View The Viewmodel is going to need to handle all events going back and forth, maintaining interactions with the data we are using, and both publishing and subscribing to events. Rather than breaking this into tons of little pieces, I'll give you a nice view of the entire viewmodel and then hit up the important points line-by-line: 001.public class JobPostingViewModel : ViewModelBase 002.{ 003.private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; 004.private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; 005.public DelegateCommand<object> AddRecord { get; set; } 006.public DelegateCommand<object> EditRecord { get; set; } 007.public DelegateCommand<object> SelectedItemChanged { get; set; } 008.public RecruitingContext context; 009.private QueryableCollectionView _myJobs; 010.public QueryableCollectionView MyJobs 011.{ 012.get { return _myJobs; } 013.} 014.private QueryableCollectionView _selectionJobActionHistory; 015.public QueryableCollectionView SelectedJobActionHistory 016.{ 017.get { return _selectionJobActionHistory; } 018.} 019.private JobPosting _selectedJob; 020.public JobPosting SelectedJob 021.{ 022.get { return _selectedJob; } 023.set 024.{ 025.if (value != _selectedJob) 026.{ 027._selectedJob = value; 028.NotifyChanged("SelectedJob"); 029.} 030.} 031.} 032.public SubscriptionToken editToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 033.public SubscriptionToken addToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 034.public JobPostingViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAgg, IRegionManager regionmanager) 035.{ 036.// set Unity items 037.this.eventAggregator = eventAgg; 038.this.regionManager = regionmanager; 039.// load our context 040.context = new RecruitingContext(); 041.this._myJobs = new QueryableCollectionView(context.JobPostings); 042.context.Load(context.GetJobPostingsQuery()); 043.// set command events 044.this.AddRecord = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.AddNewRecord); 045.this.EditRecord = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.EditExistingRecord); 046.this.SelectedItemChanged = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.SelectedRecordChanged); 047.SetSubscriptions(); 048.} 049.#region DelegateCommands from View 050.public void AddNewRecord(object obj) 051.{ 052.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobEvent>().Publish(true); 053.} 054.public void EditExistingRecord(object obj) 055.{ 056.if (_selectedJob == null) 057.{ 058.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<NotifyUserEvent>().Publish("No job selected."); 059.} 060.else 061.{ 062.this._myJobs.EditItem(this._selectedJob); 063.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobEvent>().Publish(this._selectedJob); 064.} 065.} 066.public void SelectedRecordChanged(object obj) 067.{ 068.if (obj.GetType() == typeof(ActionHistory)) 069.{ 070.// event bubbles up so we don't catch items from the ActionHistory grid 071.} 072.else 073.{ 074.JobPosting job = obj as JobPosting; 075.GrabHistory(job.PostingID); 076.} 077.} 078.#endregion 079.#region Subscription Declaration and Events 080.public void SetSubscriptions() 081.{ 082.EditJobCompleteEvent editComplete = eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>(); 083.if (editToken != null) 084.editComplete.Unsubscribe(editToken); 085.editToken = editComplete.Subscribe(this.EditCompleteEventHandler); 086.AddJobCompleteEvent addComplete = eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>(); 087.if (addToken != null) 088.addComplete.Unsubscribe(addToken); 089.addToken = addComplete.Subscribe(this.AddCompleteEventHandler); 090.} 091.public void EditCompleteEventHandler(bool complete) 092.{ 093.if (complete) 094.{ 095.JobPosting thisJob = _myJobs.CurrentEditItem as JobPosting; 096.this._myJobs.CommitEdit(); 097.this.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 098.{ 099.ActionHistory myAction = new ActionHistory(); 100.myAction.PostingID = thisJob.PostingID; 101.myAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been edited by {1}", thisJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 102.myAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 103.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddActionEvent>().Publish(myAction); 104.} 105., null); 106.} 107.else 108.{ 109.this._myJobs.CancelEdit(); 110.} 111.this.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "JobPostingsView"); 112.} 113.public void AddCompleteEventHandler(JobPosting job) 114.{ 115.if (job == null) 116.{ 117.// do nothing, new job add cancelled 118.} 119.else 120.{ 121.this.context.JobPostings.Add(job); 122.this.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 123.{ 124.ActionHistory myAction = new ActionHistory(); 125.myAction.PostingID = job.PostingID; 126.myAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been added by {1}", job.JobTitle, "default user"); 127.myAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 128.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddActionEvent>().Publish(myAction); 129.} 130., null); 131.} 132.this.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "JobPostingsView"); 133.} 134.#endregion 135.public void GrabHistory(int postID) 136.{ 137.context.ActionHistories.Clear(); 138._selectionJobActionHistory = new QueryableCollectionView(context.ActionHistories); 139.context.Load(context.GetHistoryForJobQuery(postID)); 140.} Taking it from the top, we're injecting an Event Aggregator and Region Manager for use down the road and also have the public DelegateCommands (just like in the Menu module). We also grab a reference to our context, which we'll obviously need for data, then set up a few fields with public properties tied to them. We're also setting subscription tokens, which we have not yet seen but I will get into below. The AddNewRecord (50) and EditExistingRecord (54) methods should speak for themselves for functionality, the one thing of note is we're sending events off to the Event Aggregator which some module, somewhere will take care of. Since these aren't entirely relying on one another, the Jobs View doesn't care if anyone is listening, but it will publish AddJobEvent (52), NotifyUserEvent (58) and EditJobEvent (63)regardless. Don't mind the GrabHistory() method so much, that is just grabbing history items (visibly being created in the SubmitChanges callbacks), and adding them to the database. Every action will trigger a history event, so we'll know who modified what and when, just in case. ;) So where are we at? Well, if we click to Add a job, we publish an event, if we edit a job, we publish an event with the selected record (attained through the magic of binding). Where is this all going though? To the Viewmodel, of course! XAML for the AddEditJobView This is pretty straightforward except for one thing, noted below: 001.<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" 002.Background="White"> 003.<Grid x:Name="xEditGrid" 004.Margin="10" 005.validationHelper:ValidationScope.Errors="{Binding Errors}"> 006.<Grid.Background> 007.<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" 008.StartPoint="0.5,0"> 009.<GradientStop Color="#FFC7C7C7" 010.Offset="0" /> 011.<GradientStop Color="#FFF6F3F3" 012.Offset="1" /> 013.</LinearGradientBrush> 014.</Grid.Background> 015.<Grid.RowDefinitions> 016.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 017.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 018.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 019.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 020.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 021.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 022.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 023.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 024.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 025.</Grid.RowDefinitions> 026.<Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 027.<ColumnDefinition Width="150" /> 028.<ColumnDefinition Width="150" /> 029.<ColumnDefinition Width="300" /> 030.<ColumnDefinition Width="100" /> 031.</Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 032.<!-- Title --> 033.<TextBlock Margin="8" 034.Text="{Binding AddEditString}" 035.TextWrapping="Wrap" 036.Grid.Column="1" 037.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 038.FontSize="16" /> 039.<!-- Data entry area--> 040. 041.<TextBlock Margin="8,0,0,0" 042.Style="{StaticResource LabelTxb}" 043.Grid.Row="1" 044.Text="Job Title" 045.VerticalAlignment="Center" /> 046.<TextBox x:Name="xJobTitleTB" 047.Margin="0,8" 048.Grid.Column="1" 049.Grid.Row="1" 050.Text="{Binding activeJob.JobTitle, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 051.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 052.<TextBlock Margin="8,0,0,0" 053.Grid.Row="2" 054.Text="Location" 055.d:LayoutOverrides="Height" 056.VerticalAlignment="Center" /> 057.<TextBox x:Name="xLocationTB" 058.Margin="0,8" 059.Grid.Column="1" 060.Grid.Row="2" 061.Text="{Binding activeJob.Location, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 062.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 063. 064.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 065.Grid.Row="3" 066.Text="Description" 067.TextWrapping="Wrap" 068.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 069. 070.<TextBox x:Name="xDescriptionTB" 071.Height="84" 072.TextWrapping="Wrap" 073.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 074.Grid.Column="1" 075.Grid.Row="3" 076.Text="{Binding activeJob.Description, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 077.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 078.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 079.Grid.Row="4" 080.Text="Requirements" 081.TextWrapping="Wrap" 082.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 083. 084.<TextBox x:Name="xRequirementsTB" 085.Height="84" 086.TextWrapping="Wrap" 087.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 088.Grid.Column="1" 089.Grid.Row="4" 090.Text="{Binding activeJob.Requirements, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 091.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 092.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 093.Grid.Row="5" 094.Text="Qualifications" 095.TextWrapping="Wrap" 096.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 097. 098.<TextBox x:Name="xQualificationsTB" 099.Height="84" 100.TextWrapping="Wrap" 101.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 102.Grid.Column="1" 103.Grid.Row="5" 104.Text="{Binding activeJob.Qualifications, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 105.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 106.<!-- Requirements Checkboxes--> 107. 108.<CheckBox x:Name="xResumeRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 109.Content="Resume Required" 110.Grid.Row="6" 111.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 112.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsResume, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 113. 114.<CheckBox x:Name="xCoverletterRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 115.Content="Cover Letter Required" 116.Grid.Column="2" 117.Grid.Row="6" 118.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsCV, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 119. 120.<CheckBox x:Name="xOverviewRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 121.Content="Overview Required" 122.Grid.Row="7" 123.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 124.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsOverview, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 125. 126.<CheckBox x:Name="xJobActiveCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 127.Content="Job is Active" 128.Grid.Column="2" 129.Grid.Row="7" 130.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.IsActive, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 131. 132.<!-- Buttons --> 133. 134.<Button x:Name="xAddEditButton" Margin="8,8,0,10" 135.Content="{Binding AddEditButtonString}" 136.cal:Click.Command="{Binding AddEditCommand}" 137.Grid.Column="2" 138.Grid.Row="8" 139.HorizontalAlignment="Left" 140.Width="125" 141.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 142. 143.<Button x:Name="xCancelButton" HorizontalAlignment="Right" 144.Content="Cancel" 145.cal:Click.Command="{Binding CancelCommand}" 146.Margin="0,8,8,10" 147.Width="125" 148.Grid.Column="2" 149.Grid.Row="8" 150.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 151.</Grid> 152.</Grid> The 'validationHelper:ValidationScope' line may seem odd. This is a handy little trick for catching current and would-be validation errors when working in this whole setup. This all comes from an approach found on theJoy Of Code blog, although it looks like the story for this will be changing slightly with new advances in SL4/WCF RIA Services, so this section can definitely get an overhaul a little down the road. The code is the fun part of all this, so let us see what's happening under the hood. Viewmodel for the AddEditJobView We are going to see some of the same things happening here, so I'll skip over the repeat info and get right to the good stuff: 001.public class AddEditJobViewModel : ViewModelBase 002.{ 003.private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; 004.private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; 005. 006.public RecruitingContext context; 007. 008.private JobPosting _activeJob; 009.public JobPosting activeJob 010.{ 011.get { return _activeJob; } 012.set 013.{ 014.if (_activeJob != value) 015.{ 016._activeJob = value; 017.NotifyChanged("activeJob"); 018.} 019.} 020.} 021. 022.public bool isNewJob; 023. 024.private string _addEditString; 025.public string AddEditString 026.{ 027.get { return _addEditString; } 028.set 029.{ 030.if (_addEditString != value) 031.{ 032._addEditString = value; 033.NotifyChanged("AddEditString"); 034.} 035.} 036.} 037. 038.private string _addEditButtonString; 039.public string AddEditButtonString 040.{ 041.get { return _addEditButtonString; } 042.set 043.{ 044.if (_addEditButtonString != value) 045.{ 046._addEditButtonString = value; 047.NotifyChanged("AddEditButtonString"); 048.} 049.} 050.} 051. 052.public SubscriptionToken addJobToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 053.public SubscriptionToken editJobToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 054. 055.public DelegateCommand<object> AddEditCommand { get; set; } 056.public DelegateCommand<object> CancelCommand { get; set; } 057. 058.private ObservableCollection<ValidationError> _errors = new ObservableCollection<ValidationError>(); 059.public ObservableCollection<ValidationError> Errors 060.{ 061.get { return _errors; } 062.} 063. 064.private ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> _valResults = new ObservableCollection<ValidationResult>(); 065.public ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> ValResults 066.{ 067.get { return this._valResults; } 068.} 069. 070.public AddEditJobViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAgg, IRegionManager regionmanager) 071.{ 072.// set Unity items 073.this.eventAggregator = eventAgg; 074.this.regionManager = regionmanager; 075. 076.context = new RecruitingContext(); 077. 078.AddEditCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.AddEditJobCommand); 079.CancelCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.CancelAddEditCommand); 080. 081.SetSubscriptions(); 082.} 083. 084.#region Subscription Declaration and Events 085. 086.public void SetSubscriptions() 087.{ 088.AddJobEvent addJob = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobEvent>(); 089. 090.if (addJobToken != null) 091.addJob.Unsubscribe(addJobToken); 092. 093.addJobToken = addJob.Subscribe(this.AddJobEventHandler); 094. 095.EditJobEvent editJob = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobEvent>(); 096. 097.if (editJobToken != null) 098.editJob.Unsubscribe(editJobToken); 099. 100.editJobToken = editJob.Subscribe(this.EditJobEventHandler); 101.} 102. 103.public void AddJobEventHandler(bool isNew) 104.{ 105.this.activeJob = null; 106.this.activeJob = new JobPosting(); 107.this.activeJob.IsActive = true; // We assume that we want a new job to go up immediately 108.this.isNewJob = true; 109.this.AddEditString = "Add New Job Posting"; 110.this.AddEditButtonString = "Add Job"; 111. 112.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "AddEditJobView"); 113.} 114. 115.public void EditJobEventHandler(JobPosting editJob) 116.{ 117.this.activeJob = null; 118.this.activeJob = editJob; 119.this.isNewJob = false; 120.this.AddEditString = "Edit Job Posting"; 121.this.AddEditButtonString = "Edit Job"; 122. 123.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "AddEditJobView"); 124.} 125. 126.#endregion 127. 128.#region DelegateCommands from View 129. 130.public void AddEditJobCommand(object obj) 131.{ 132.if (this.Errors.Count > 0) 133.{ 134.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 135. 136.foreach (var valR in this.Errors) 137.{ 138.errorMessages.Add(valR.Exception.Message); 139.} 140. 141.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<DisplayValidationErrorsEvent>().Publish(errorMessages); 142. 143.} 144.else if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(this.activeJob, new ValidationContext(this.activeJob, null, null), _valResults, true)) 145.{ 146.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 147. 148.foreach (var valR in this._valResults) 149.{ 150.errorMessages.Add(valR.ErrorMessage); 151.} 152. 153.this._valResults.Clear(); 154. 155.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<DisplayValidationErrorsEvent>().Publish(errorMessages); 156.} 157.else 158.{ 159.if (this.isNewJob) 160.{ 161.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(this.activeJob); 162.} 163.else 164.{ 165.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(true); 166.} 167.} 168.} 169. 170.public void CancelAddEditCommand(object obj) 171.{ 172.if (this.isNewJob) 173.{ 174.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(null); 175.} 176.else 177.{ 178.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(false); 179.} 180.} 181. 182.#endregion 183.} 184.} We start seeing something new on line 103- the AddJobEventHandler will create a new job and set that to the activeJob item on the ViewModel. When this is all set, the view calls that familiar MakeMeActive method to activate itself. I made a bit of a management call on making views self-activate like this, but I figured it works for one reason. As I create this application, views may not exist that I have in mind, so after a view receives its 'ping' from being subscribed to an event, it prepares whatever it needs to do and then goes active. This way if I don't have 'edit' hooked up, I can click as the day is long on the main view and won't get lost in an empty region. Total personal preference here. :) Everything else should again be pretty straightforward, although I do a bit of validation checking in the AddEditJobCommand, which can either fire off an event back to the main view/viewmodel if everything is a success or sent a list of errors to our notification module, which pops open a RadWindow with the alerts if any exist. As a bonus side note, here's what my WCF RIA Services metadata looks like for handling all of the validation: private JobPostingMetadata() { } [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage = "Description should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength = 1)] [Required(ErrorMessage = "Description is required.")] public string Description; [Required(ErrorMessage="Active Status is Required")] public bool IsActive; [StringLength(100, ErrorMessage = "Posting title must be more than 3 but less than 100 characters.", MinimumLength = 3)] [Required(ErrorMessage = "Job Title is required.")] public bool JobTitle; [Required] public string Location; public bool NeedsCV; public bool NeedsOverview; public bool NeedsResume; public int PostingID; [Required(ErrorMessage="Qualifications are required.")] [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage="Qualifications should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength=1)] public string Qualifications; [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage = "Requirements should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength = 1)] [Required(ErrorMessage="Requirements are required.")] public string Requirements;   The RecruitCB Alternative See all that Xaml I pasted above? Those are now two pieces sitting in the JobsView.xaml file now. The only real difference is that the xEditGrid now sits in the same place as xJobsGrid, with visibility swapping out between the two for a quick switch. I also took out all the cal: and command: command references and replaced Button events with clicks and the Grid selection command replaced with a SelectedItemChanged event. Also, at the bottom of the xEditGrid after the last button, I add a ValidationSummary (with Visibility=Collapsed) to catch any errors that are popping up. Simple as can be, and leads to this being the single code-behind file: 001.public partial class JobsView : UserControl 002.{ 003.public RecruitingContext context; 004.public JobPosting activeJob; 005.public bool isNew; 006.private ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> _valResults = new ObservableCollection<ValidationResult>(); 007.public ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> ValResults 008.{ 009.get { return this._valResults; } 010.} 011.public JobsView() 012.{ 013.InitializeComponent(); 014.this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(JobsView_Loaded); 015.} 016.void JobsView_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 017.{ 018.context = new RecruitingContext(); 019.xJobsGrid.ItemsSource = context.JobPostings; 020.context.Load(context.GetJobPostingsQuery()); 021.} 022.private void xAddRecordButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 023.{ 024.activeJob = new JobPosting(); 025.isNew = true; 026.xAddEditTitle.Text = "Add a Job Posting"; 027.xAddEditButton.Content = "Add"; 028.xEditGrid.DataContext = activeJob; 029.HideJobsGrid(); 030.} 031.private void xEditRecordButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 032.{ 033.activeJob = xJobsGrid.SelectedItem as JobPosting; 034.isNew = false; 035.xAddEditTitle.Text = "Edit a Job Posting"; 036.xAddEditButton.Content = "Edit"; 037.xEditGrid.DataContext = activeJob; 038.HideJobsGrid(); 039.} 040.private void xAddEditButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 041.{ 042.if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(this.activeJob, new ValidationContext(this.activeJob, null, null), _valResults, true)) 043.{ 044.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 045.foreach (var valR in this._valResults) 046.{ 047.errorMessages.Add(valR.ErrorMessage); 048.} 049.this._valResults.Clear(); 050.ShowErrors(errorMessages); 051.} 052.else if (xSummary.Errors.Count > 0) 053.{ 054.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 055.foreach (var err in xSummary.Errors) 056.{ 057.errorMessages.Add(err.Message); 058.} 059.ShowErrors(errorMessages); 060.} 061.else 062.{ 063.if (this.isNew) 064.{ 065.context.JobPostings.Add(activeJob); 066.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 067.{ 068.ActionHistory thisAction = new ActionHistory(); 069.thisAction.PostingID = activeJob.PostingID; 070.thisAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been edited by {1}", activeJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 071.thisAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 072.context.ActionHistories.Add(thisAction); 073.context.SubmitChanges(); 074.}, null); 075.} 076.else 077.{ 078.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 079.{ 080.ActionHistory thisAction = new ActionHistory(); 081.thisAction.PostingID = activeJob.PostingID; 082.thisAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been added by {1}", activeJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 083.thisAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 084.context.ActionHistories.Add(thisAction); 085.context.SubmitChanges(); 086.}, null); 087.} 088.ShowJobsGrid(); 089.} 090.} 091.private void xCancelButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 092.{ 093.ShowJobsGrid(); 094.} 095.private void ShowJobsGrid() 096.{ 097.xAddEditRecordButtonPanel.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 098.xEditGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 099.xJobsGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 100.} 101.private void HideJobsGrid() 102.{ 103.xAddEditRecordButtonPanel.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 104.xJobsGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 105.xEditGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 106.} 107.private void ShowErrors(List<string> errorList) 108.{ 109.string nm = "Errors received: \n"; 110.foreach (string anerror in errorList) 111.nm += anerror + "\n"; 112.RadWindow.Alert(nm); 113.} 114.} The first 39 lines should be pretty familiar, not doing anything too unorthodox to get this up and running. Once we hit the xAddEditButton_Click on line 40, we're still doing pretty much the same things except instead of checking the ValidationHelper errors, we both run a check on the current activeJob object as well as check the ValidationSummary errors list. Once that is set, we again use the callback of context.SubmitChanges (lines 68 and 78) to create an ActionHistory which we will use to track these items down the line. That's all? Essentially... yes. If you look back through this post, most of the code and adventures we have taken were just to get things working in the MVVM/Prism setup. Since I have the whole 'module' self-contained in a single JobView+code-behind setup, I don't have to worry about things like sending events off into space for someone to pick up, communicating through an Infrastructure project, or even re-inventing events to be used with attached behaviors. Everything just kinda works, and again with much less code. Here's a picture of the MVVM and Code-behind versions on the Jobs and AddEdit views, but since the functionality is the same in both apps you still cannot tell them apart (for two-strike): Looking ahead, the Applicants module is effectively the same thing as the Jobs module, so most of the code is being cut-and-pasted back and forth with minor tweaks here and there. So that one is being taken care of by me behind the scenes. Next time, we get into a new world of fun- the interview scheduling module, which will pull from available jobs and applicants for each interview being scheduled, tying everything together with RadScheduler to the rescue. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Beginner Geek: Scan a Document or Picture in Windows 7

    - by Mysticgeek
    There may come a time when you want to digitize your priceless old pictures, or need to scan a receipts and documents for your company. Today we look at how to scan a picture or document in Windows 7. Scanning Your Document In this example we’re using an HP PSC 1500 All-In-One printer connected to a Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit system. Different scanners will vary, however the process is essentially the same. The scanning process has changed a bit since the XP days. To scan a document in Windows 7, place the document or picture in the scanner, click on Start, and go to Devices and Printers.   When the Devices and Printers window opens, find your scanning device and double-click on it to get the manufacturers Printer Actions menu. For our HP PSC 1500 we have a few different options like printing, device setup, and scanner actions. Here we’ll click on the Scan a document or photo hyperlink. The New Scan window opens and from here you can adjust the quality of the scanned image and choose the output file type. Then click the Preview button to get an idea of what the image will look like.   If you’re not happy with the preview, then you can go back and make any adjustments to the quality of the document or photo. Once everything looks good, click on the Scan button. The scanning process will start. The amount of time it takes will depend on your scanner type, and the quality of the settings you choose. The higher the quality…the more time it will take. You will have the option to tag the picture if you want to… Now you can view your scanned document or photo inside Windows Photo Viewer. If you’re happy with the look of the document, you can send it off in an email, put it on an network drive, FTP it… whatever you need to do with it. Another method is to place the document of photo you wish to scan in the scanner, open up Devices and Printers, then right-click on the scanning device and select Start Scan from the context menu. This should bypass the manufacturer screen and go directly into the New Scan window, where you can start the scan process. From the Context Menu you can also choose Scan Properties. This will allow you to test the scanner if you’re having problems with it and change some of its settings. Or you can choose Scan Profiles which allows you to use pre-selected settings, create your own, or set one as the default. Although scanning documents and photos isn’t a common occurrence as it was a few years ago, Windows 7 still includes the feature. When you need to scan a document or photo in Windows 7, this should get you started. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Easily Rotate Pictures In Word 2007Beginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7Customize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaSecure Computing: Detect and Eliminate Malware Using Windows DefenderMark Your Document As Final in Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes

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  • Increase the size of Taskbar Preview Thumbnails in Windows 7

    - by Matthew Guay
    Taskbar thumbnail previews are incredibly useful in Windows 7, but for some users they may be too small.  Here’s a tool to help you make your taskbar thumbnail previews just like you want them. A few years ago we featured a tool to increase the size of your thumbnail previews in Windows Vista, but unfortunately this application doesn’t work correctly in Windows 7.  However, there is a new tool for Windows 7 that lets you customize your taskbar thumbnail previews even more in Windows 7.  With it, you can change almost anything about your taskbar thumbnail previews.  The default taskbar thumbnails are nice, but may be too small for users with vision problems or with very high resolution monitors.  Whatever your need, this is a great tool to make the thumbnails looks and work just like you want. Let’s get started Download the Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer (link below), and unzip the files.  Run the Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer when you’re done.  Simply double-click on it; you don’t need to run it as administrator. Now, you change the size, spacing, margin, and delay time of your taskbar thumbnails.  The Delay Time setting is very handy; to speed things up, we set it to 0 so there’s no delay between when you mouse-over a taskbar icon to when you see the thumbnail.  Simply drag the slider to the size (or time in the delay settings) you want, and click Apply settings.  Windows Explorer will automatically restart, and your new taskbar thumbnails will be ready to use. Here is the default Windows 7 thumbnail preview of a video playing in Media player: And here’s the taskbar thumbnail enlarged to 380px.  Now you can really watch a video from your taskbar thumbnail. The larger taskbar thumbnails show up a little different in Internet Explorer.  It shows a larger preview of your active tab, and smaller previews of your other tabs.  Notice also that Aero peek shows the tab you’re hovering over in Internet Explorer, but the tab name in IE’s toolbar doesn’t change to the one you’re previewing.   Here we increased the width between the thumbnails, while keeping the thumbnails at their default size.  This could be useful if you have trouble selecting the correct preview, and we can imagine it would be a very useful modification on touch screens. And, if you ever take your changes too far, and want to revert to your default Windows 7 taskbar thumbnail previews, simply run the Customizer again and select Restore Defaults.  Windows Explorer will restart again, and your taskbar thumbnails will be back to their default settings.   Conclusion This tool makes it safe and easy to change the size, spacing, and more of your taskbar thumbnail previews.  And since you can always revert to the default settings, you can experiment without fear of messing up your computer.  If you’d prefer to change the settings manually without using a dedicated application, here’s a list of the registry changes you can make to accomplish this by hand. Link Download the Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnail Customizer from The Windows Club Vista Users: Increase Size of Windows Vista Taskbar Previews Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Bounty(Paid!) for Increasing Windows Vista Taskbar Preview SizeGet Vista Taskbar Thumbnail Previews in Windows XPVista Style Popup Previews for Firefox TabsIncrease Size of Windows Vista Taskbar PreviewsWhat is dwm.exe And Why Is It Running? TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos

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  • Your Job Search Should be More Than Just a New Year's Resolution

    - by david.talamelli
    I love the beginning of a new year, it is a great chance to refocus and either re-evaluate goals you are working to or even set new ones. I don't have any statistics to measure this but I am sure that one of the more popular new year's resolutions in the general workforce is to either get a new job or work to further develop one's career. I think this is a good idea, in today's competitive work force people should have a plan of what they want to do, what role they are after and how to get there. One common mistake I think many people make though is that a career plan shouldn't be a once a year thought. When people finish with the holiday season with their new year's resolution to find a new job fresh in their mind, you can see the enthusiasm and motivation a person has to make something happen. Emails are sent, calls are made, applications are made, networking is happening, etc..... Finding the right role that you are after however can be difficult, while it would be great if that dream role was available just at the time you happened to be looking for it - in reality this is not always the case. Job Seekers need to keep reminding themselves that while sometimes that dream job they are after is available at the same time they are looking, that also a Job search can be a difficult and long process. Many people who set out with the best of intentions in January to find a new job can soon lose interest in a job search if they do not immediately find a role. Just like the Christmas decorations are put away and the photos from New Year's are stored away - a Job Seeker's motivation may slowly decrease until that person finds themselves 12 months later in the same situation in same role and looking for that new opportunity again. Rather than just "going for it" and looking for a role in the month of January, a person's job search or career plan should be an ongoing activity and thought process that is constantly updated and evaluated over the course of the year. It can be hard to stay motivated over an extended period of time, especially when you are newly motivated and ready for that new role and the results are not immediate. Rather than letting your job search fall down the priority list and into the "too hard basket" a few ideas that may keep your enthusiasm fresh Update your resume every 6 months, even if you are not looking for a job - it is easy to forget what you have accomplished if you don't keep your details updated. Also it is good to be prepared and have a resume ready to go in case you do get an unexpected phone call for that 'dream job' you have been hoping for. Work out what you want out of your next role before you begin your job search - rather than aimlessly searching job ads or talking to people - think of the organisations or type of role you would like before you search. If you know what you are looking for it will be much easier to work out how to get there than if you do not know what you want. Don't expect immediate results once you decide to look for another job, things don't always fall into place. Timing and delivery can be important pieces of being selected for a role, companies don't hire every role in January. Have an open mind - people you meet or talk to may not result in immediate results for your job search but every connection may help you get a bit closer to what you are after . These actions will not guarantee a positive result, but in today's competitive work force every little of extra preparation and planning helps. All the best for 2011 and I hope your career plan whatever it may be is a success.

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  • AutoFit in PowerPoint: Turn it OFF

    - by Daniel Moth
    Once a feature has shipped, it is very hard to eliminate it from the next release. If I was in charge of the PowerPoint product, I would not hesitate for a second to remove the dreadful AutoFit feature. Fortunately, AutoFit can be turned off on a slide-by-slide basis and, even better, globally: go to the PowerPoint "Options" and under "Proofing" find the "AutoCorrect Options…" button which brings up the dialog where you need to uncheck the last two checkboxes (see the screenshot to the right). AutoFit is the ability for the user to keep hitting the Enter key as they type more and more text into a slide and it magically still fits, by shrinking the space between the lines and then the text font size. It is the root of all slide evil. It encourages people to think of a slide as a Word document (which may be your goal, if you are presenting to execs in Microsoft, but that is a different story). AutoFit is the reason you fall asleep in presentations. AutoFit causes too much text to appear on a slide which by extension causes the following: When the slide appears, the text is so small so it is not readable by everyone in the audience. They dismiss the presenter as someone who does not care for them and then they stop paying attention. If the text is readable, but it is too much (hence the AutoFit feature kicked in when the slide was authored), the audience is busy reading the slide and not paying attention to the presenter. Humans can either listen well or read well at the same time, so when they are done reading they now feel that they missed whatever the speaker was saying. So they "switch off" for the rest of the slide until the next slide kicks in, which is the natural point for them to pick up paying attention again. Every slide ends up with different sized text. The less visual consistency between slides, the more your presentation feels unprofessional. You can do better than dismiss the (subconscious) negative effect a deck with inconsistent slides has on an audience. In contrast, the absence of AutoFit Leads to consistency among all slides in a deck with regards to amount of text and size of said text. Ensures the text is readable by everyone in the audience (presuming the PowerPoint template is designed for the room where the presentation is delivered). Encourages the presenter to create slides with the minimum necessary text to help the audience understand the basic structure, flow, and key points of the presentation. The "meat" of the presentation is delivered verbally by the presenter themselves, which is why they are in the room in the first place. Following on from the previous point, the audience can at a quick glance consume the text on the slide when it appears and then concentrate entirely on the presenter and what they have to say. You could argue that everything above has nothing to do with the AutoFit feature and all to do with the advice to keep slide content short. You would be right, but the on-by-default AutoFit feature is the one that stops most people from seeing and embracing that truth. In other words, the slides are the tool that aids the presenter in delivering their message, instead of the presenter being the tool that advances the slides which hold the message. To get there, embrace terse slides: the first step is to turn off this horrible feature (that was probably introduced due to the misuse of this tool within Microsoft). The next steps are described on my next post. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • TiVo Follow-up&hellip;Training Opportunities

    - by MightyZot
    A few posts ago I talked about my experience with TiVo Customer Service. While I didn’t receive bad service per se, I felt like the reps could have communicated better. I made the argument that it should be just as easy to leave a company as it is to engage with a company, even though my intention is to remain a TiVo fan. I worked for DataStorm Technologies in the early 90s. I pointed out to another developer that we were leaving files behind in our installations. My opinion was that, if the customer is uninstalling our application, there should be no trace of it left after uninstall except for the customer’s data. He replied with, “screw ‘em. They’re leaving us. Why do we care if we left anything behind?” Wow. Surely there is a lot of arrogance in that statement. Think about this…how often do you change your services, devices, or whatever?  Personally, I change things up about once every two or three years. If I don’t change things up, I at least think about it. So, every two or three years there is an opportunity for you (as a vendor or business) to sell me something. (That opportunity actually exists all the time, because there are many of these two or three year periods overlapping.) Likewise, you have the opportunity to win back my business every two or three years as well. Customer service on exit is just as important as customer service during engagement because, every so often, you have another chance to gain back my loyalty. If you screw that up on exit, your chances are close to zero. In addition, you need to consider all of the potential or existing customers that are part of or affected by my social organizations. “Melissa” at TiVo gave me a call last week and set up some time to talk about my experience. We talked yesterday and she gave me a few moments to pontificate about my thoughts on the importance of a complete customer experience. She had listened to my customer support calls and agreed that I had made it clear that I intended to remain a TiVo customer even though suddenLink is handling my subscription. She said that suddenLink is a very important partner for them and, of course, they want to do everything they can to support TiVo / suddenLink customers.  “Melissa” also said that they had turned this experience into a training opportunity for the reps involved. I hope that is true, because that “programmer arrogance” that I mentioned above (which was somewhat pervasive back then) may be part of the reason why that company is no longer around. Good job “Melissa”!  And, like I said, I am still a TiVo fan. In fact, we love our new TiVo and many of the great new features. In addition, if you’re one of the two people that read these posts, please remember that these are just opinions. Your experiences may be, and likely will be, completely unique to you.

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  • How Exactly Is One Linux OS “Based On” Another Linux OS?

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    When reviewing different flavors of Linux, you’ll frequently come across phrases like “Ubuntu is based on Debian” but what exactly does that mean? Today’s Question & Answer session comes to us courtesy of SuperUser—a subdivision of Stack Exchange, a community-driven grouping of Q&A web sites. The Question SuperUser reader PLPiper is trying to get a handle on how Linux variants work: I’ve been looking through quite a number of Linux distros recently to get an idea of what’s around, and one phrase that keeps coming up is that “[this OS] is based on [another OS]“. For example: Fedora is based on Red Hat Ubuntu is based on Debian Linux Mint is based on Ubuntu For someone coming from a Mac environment I understand how “OS X is based on Darwin”, however when I look at Linux Distros, I find myself asking “Aren’t they all based on Linux..?” In this context, what exactly does it mean for one Linux OS to be based on another Linux OS? So, what exactly does it mean when we talk about one version of Linux being based off another version? The Answer SuperUser contributor kostix offers a solid overview of the whole system: Linux is a kernel — a (complex) piece of software which works with the hardware and exports a certain Application Programming Interface (API), and binary conventions on how to precisely use it (Application Binary Interface, ABI) available to the “user-space” applications. Debian, RedHat and others are operating systems — complete software environments which consist of the kernel and a set of user-space programs which make the computer useful as they perform sensible tasks (sending/receiving mail, allowing you to browse the Internet, driving a robot etc). Now each such OS, while providing mostly the same software (there are not so many free mail server programs or Internet browsers or desktop environments, for example) differ in approaches to do this and also in their stated goals and release cycles. Quite typically these OSes are called “distributions”. This is, IMO, a somewhat wrong term stemming from the fact you’re technically able to build all the required software by hand and install it on a target machine, so these OSes distribute the packaged software so you either don’t need to build it (Debian, RedHat) or they facilitate such building (Gentoo). They also usually provide an installer which helps to install the OS onto a target machine. Making and supporting an OS is a very complicated task requiring a complex and intricate infrastructure (upload queues, build servers, a bug tracker, and archive servers, mailing list software etc etc etc) and staff. This obviously raises a high barrier for creating a new, from-scratch OS. For instance, Debian provides ca. 37k packages for some five hardware architectures — go figure how much work is put into supporting this stuff. Still, if someone thinks they need to create a new OS for whatever reason, it may be a good idea to use an existing foundation to build on. And this is exactly where OSes based on other OSes come into existence. For instance, Ubuntu builds upon Debian by just importing most packages from it and repackaging only a small subset of them, plus packaging their own, providing their own artwork, default settings, documentation etc. Note that there are variations to this “based on” thing. For instance, Debian fosters the creation of “pure blends” of itself: distributions which use Debian rather directly, and just add a bunch of packages and other stuff only useful for rather small groups of users such as those working in education or medicine or music industry etc. Another twist is that not all these OSes are based on Linux. For instance, Debian also provide FreeBSD and Hurd kernels. They have quite tiny user groups but anyway. Have something to add to the explanation? Sound off in the the comments. Want to read more answers from other tech-savvy Stack Exchange users? Check out the full discussion thread here.     

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  • Getting UPK data into Excel

    - by maria.cozzolino(at)oracle.com
    Did you ever want someone to review your UPK outline outside of the Developer? You can send your outline to an Excel report, which can be distributed through email. Depending on how much additional data you want with your outline, there are two ways you can do this task. Basic data: • You can print a listing of all the items in the outline. • With your outline open, choose File/Print... • Choose the "Save document as" command on the right, and choose Excel (or xlsx). • HINT: If you have not expanded your entire outline, it's faster to use the commands in Developer to expand the entire outline. However, you can expand specific sections by clicking on them in the print preview. • NOTE: If you have the Details view displayed rather than the Player view, you can print all the data that appears in that view. Advanced data: If you desire a more detailed report, you can use the HP Quality Center publishing style, which also creates an Excel file. This style contains a default set of fields for use with Quality Center, but any of the metadata fields can be added to the report, and it can be used for more than just importing into HP Quality Center. To add additional columns to the HP Quality Center publishing style: 1. Make a copy of the publishing style. This process ensures that you have a good copy to revert to if something goes wrong with your customizations, and also allows you to keep your modifications when the software is upgraded. 2. Open the copy of the columnspec.xml file in your favorite XML editor - I use notepad. (This file is located in a language-specific folder in the HP Quality Center publishing style.) 3. Scroll down the columnspec file until you find the column to include. All the metadata fields that can be added to the report are listed in the columnspec file - you just need to tell the system to include the columns. 4. You will see a series of sections like this: 5. Change the value for "col export" to "yes". This will include the column in the Excel file. 6. If desired, change the value for "Play_ModesColHeader" to be whatever name you wish to appear in the Excel column heading. 7. Save the columnspec file. 8. Save the publishing style package. Now, when you publish for HP Quality Center, you will see your newly added columns. You can refer to the section on Customizing HP Quality Center Output in the Content Deployment Guide for additional customization details. Happy customization! I'd be interested in hearing what other uses you have for Excel reporting. Wishing you and yours a happy and healthy New Year! ~~Maria Cozzolino, Manager of Software Requirements and UI

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