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• Who broke the build?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  I recently sent round a list of broken builds at SSW and asked for them to be fixed or deleted if they are not being used. My colleague Peter came back with a couple of questions which I love as it tells me that at least one person reads my email I think first we need to answer a couple of other questions related to builds in general.   Why do we want the build to pass? Any developer can pick up a project and build it Standards can be enforced Constant quality is maintained Problems in code are identified early What could a failed build signify? Developers have not built and tested their code properly before checking in. Something added depends on a local resource that is not under version control or does not exist on the target computer. Developers are not writing tests to cover common problems. There are not enough tests to cover problems. Now we know why, lets answer Peters questions: Where is this list? (can we see it somehow) You can normally only see the builds listed for each project. But, you have a little application called “Build Notifications” on your computer. It is installed when you install Visual Studio 2010. Figure: Staring the build notification application on Windows 7. Once you have it open (it may disappear into your system tray) you should click “Options” and select all the projects you are involved in. This application only lists projects that have builds, so don’t worry if it is not listed. This just means you are about to setup a build, right? I just selected ALL projects that have builds. Figure: All builds are listed here In addition to seeing the list you will also get toast notification of build failure’s. How can we get more info on what broke the build? (who is interesting too, to point the finger but more important is what) The only thing worse than breaking the build, is continuing to develop on a broken build! Figure: I have highlighted the users who either are bad for braking the build, or very bad for not fixing it. To find out what is wrong with a build you need to open the build definition. You can open a web version by double clicking the build in the image above, or you can open it from “Team Explorer”. Just connect to your project and open out the “Builds” tree. Then Open the build by double clicking on it. Figure: Opening a build is easy, but double click it and then open a build run from the list. Figure: Good example, the build and tests have passed Figure: Bad example, there are 133 errors preventing POK from being built on the build server. For identifying failures see: Solution: Getting Silverlight to build on Team Build 2010 RC Solution: Testing Web Services with MSTest on Team Build Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build So, Peter asked about blame, let’s have a look and see: Figure: The build has been broken for so long I have no idea when it was broken, but everyone on this list is to blame (I am there too) The rest of the history is lost in the sands of time, there is no way to tell when the build was originally broken, or by whom, or even if it ever worked in the first place. Build should be protected by the team that uses them and the only way to do that is to have them own them. It is fine for me to go in and setup a build, but the ownership for a build should always reside with the person who broke it last. Conclusion This is an example of a pointless build. Lets be honest, if you have a system like TFS in place and builds are constantly left broken, or not added to projects then your developers don’t yet understand the value. I have found that adding a Gated Check-in helps instil that understanding of value. If you prevent them from checking in without passing that basic quality gate of “your code builds on another computer” then it makes them look more closely at why they can’t check-in. I have had builds fail because one developer had a “d” drive, but the build server did not. That is what they are there to catch.   If you want to know what builds to create and why I wrote a post on “Do you know the minimum builds to create on any branch?”   Technorati Tags: TFS2010,Gated Check-in,Builds,Build Failure,Broken Build

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• Hancon / Hanwang Graphics Tablet not recognised

  - by Martin Kyle

  I'm totally lost. I've just built a new system and installed Ubuntu 12.04. It's my first time with Linux and getting into the terminal / command line for the first time since IBMDOS 5 and Windows 3.1 has been a steep learning curve. However, the interface works beautifully apart from it doesn't recognize my Hanvon Artmaster AM1209. I have sent diagnostics to Digimend and Favux was kind enough to advise that the tablet should be using the Wacom X driver as the Hanvon is actually a Hanwang and these should be supported. lsusb reports: ID 0b57:8501 Beijing HanwangTechnology Co., Ltd xinput list reports: ? Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ? PS/2+USB Mouse id=8 [slave pointer (2)] ? Virtual core keyboard id=3 [master keyboard (2)] ? Virtual core XTEST keyboard id=5 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Power Button id=6 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Power Button id=7 [slave keyboard (3)] ? Eee PC WMI hotkeys id=9 [slave keyboard (3)] ? AT Translated Set 2 keyboard id=10 [slave keyboard (3)] Favux suggested inspecting /var/log/Xorg.0.log for the tablet but I cannot see any mention of it, and that is as far as I have got. I've tried researching the problem but I am struggling with all the new terminology and the fact that I want the PC to be a means to an end and not the end in itself where I spend the rest of my days tweaking and testing rather than just using it. Hope there is some help out there.

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• Content Encryption Options in Oracle IRM 11g

  - by martin.abrahams

  Another of the innovations in Oracle IRM 11g is a wider choice of encryption algorithms for protecting content. The choice is now as illustrated below. As you see, three of the choices are marked as FIPS options, where FIPS refers to the Federal Information Processing Standard Publication 140-2, a U.S. government security standard for accreditation of cryptographic modules.

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• Combining Scrum, TFS2010 and Email to keep everyone in the loop

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Often you will receive rich information from your Product Owner (Customer) about tasks. That information can be in the form of Word documents, HTML Emails and Pictures, but you generally receive them in the context of an Email. You need to keep these so your Team can refer to it later, and so you can send a “done” when the task has been completed. This preserves the “history” of the task and allows you to keep relevant partied included in any future conversation. At SSW we keep the original email so that we can reply Done and delete the email. But keeping it in your email does not help other members of the team if they complete the task and need to send the “done”. Worse yet, the description field in Team Foundation Server 2010 (TFS 2010) does not support HTML and images, nor does the default task template support an “interested parties” or CC field. You can attach this content manually, but it can be time consuming. Figure: Description only supports plain text, and History supports HTML with no images   What should we do? At SSW we always follow the rules, and it just so happened that we have rules to both achieve this, and to make it easier. You should follow the existing Rules to Better Project Management  and attach the email to your task so you can refer to and reply to it later when you close the task: Do you know what Outlook add-ins you need? Describe the work item request in an email Use Outlook Add-in to move the email to a TFS Work Item When replying to an email with “done” you should follow: Do you update Team Companion template, so the email "subject" doesn't change? Do you update Team Companion template, so you can generate a proper "done" mail? Following these simple rules will help your Product Owner understand you better, and allow your team to more effectively collaborate with each other. An added bonus is that as we are keeping the email history in sync with TFS. When you “reply all” to the email all of the interested partied to the Task are also included. This notified those that may have been blocked by your task to keep up to date with its status. This has been published as Do you know to ensure that relevant emails are attached to tasks in our Rules to Better Scrum using TFS. What could we do better? I would like to see this process automated so that we capture the information correctly in the task without the need to use email. This would require a change to the process template in Team Foundation Server to add an “Interested Parties” field. Each reply to the email would need to be automatically processed into a Work Item. This could be done by adding a task identifier as the first item in the “Relates to” email header, and copying in an email address that you watch. This would then parse out the relevant information and add the new message to the history, update the “Interested parties” field and attach the Images. Upon reflection, it may even be possible, but more difficult to do this using ONLY the History field and including some of the header information in there to the build a done email with history. This would not currently deal with email “forks” well, but I think it would be adequate for our needs. It would be nice if we could find time to implement this, but currently it is but a pipe dream. Maybe Microsoft could implement something in the next version of Team Foundation Server, and in the mean time we have a process that works well. Technorati Tags: Scrum,SSW Rules,TFS 2010,TFS 2008

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• Introduction to Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems

  - by Ben Griswold

  Last year I took myself through a crash course on Lean Software Development and Kanban Systems in preparation for an in-house presentation.  I learned a bunch.  In this series, I’ll be sharing what I learned with you.   If your career looks anything like mine, you have probably been affiliated with a company or two which pushed requirements gathering and documentation to the nth degree. To add insult to injury, they probably added planning process (documentation, requirements, policies, meetings, committees) to the extent that it possibly retarded any progress. In my opinion, the typical company resembles the quote from Tom DeMarco. It isn’t enough just to do things right – we also had to say in advance exactly what we intended to do and then do exactly that. In the 1980s, Toyota turned the tables and revolutionize the automobile industry with their approach of “Lean Manufacturing.” A massive paradigm shift hit factories throughout the US and Europe. Mass production and scientific management techniques from the early 1900’s were questioned as Japanese manufacturing companies demonstrated that ‘Just-in-Time’ was a better paradigm. The widely adopted Japanese manufacturing concepts came to be known as ‘lean production’. Lean Thinking capitalizes on the intelligence of frontline workers, believing that they are the ones who should determine and continually improve the way they do their jobs. Lean puts main focus on people and communication – if people who produce the software are respected and they communicate efficiently, it is more likely that they will deliver good product and the final customer will be satisfied. In time, the abstractions behind lean production spread to logistics, and from there to the military, to construction, and to the service industry. As it turns out, principles of lean thinking are universal and have been applied successfully across many disciplines. Lean has been adopted by companies including Dell, FedEx, Lens Crafters, LLBean, SW Airlines, Digital River and eBay. Lean thinking got its name from a 1990’s best seller called The Machine That Changed the World : The Story of Lean Production. This book chronicles the movement of automobile manufacturing from craft production to mass production to lean production. Tom and Mary Poppendieck, that is.  Here’s one of their books: Implementing Lean Software Thinking: From Concept to Cash Our in-house presentations are supposed to run no more than 45 minutes.  I really cranked and got through my 87 slides in just under an hour. Of course, I had to cheat a little – I only covered the 7 principles and a single practice. In the next part of the series, we’ll dive into Principle #1: Eliminate Waste. And I am going to be a little obnoxious about listing my Lean and Kanban references with every series post.  The references are great and they deserve this sort of attention. 

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• Granular Clipboard Control in Oracle IRM

  - by martin.abrahams

  One of the main leak prevention controls that customers are looking for is clipboard control. After all, there is little point in controlling access to a document if authorised users can simply make unprotected copies by use of the cut and paste mechanism. Oddly, for such a fundamental requirement, many solutions only offer very simplistic clipboard control - and require the customer to make an awkward choice between usability and security. In many cases, clipboard control is simply an ON-OFF option. By turning the clipboard OFF, you disable one of the most valuable edit functions known to man. Try working for any length of time without copying and pasting, and you'll soon appreciate how valuable that function is. Worse, some solutions disable the clipboard completely - not just for the protected document but for all of the various applications you have open at the time. Normal service is only resumed when you close the protected document. In this way, policy enforcement bleeds out of the particular assets you need to protect and interferes with the entire user experience. On the other hand, turning the clipboard ON satisfies a fundamental usability requirement - but also makes it really easy for users to create unprotected copies of sensitive information, maliciously or otherwise. All they need to do is paste into another document. If creating unprotected copies is this simple, you have to question how much you are really gaining by applying protection at all. You may not be allowed to edit, forward, or print the protected asset, but all you need to do is create a copy and work with that instead. And that activity would not be tracked in any way. So, a simple ON-OFF control creates a real tension between usability and security. If you are only using IRM on a small scale, perhaps security can outweigh usability - the business can put up with the restriction if it only applies to a handful of important documents. But try extending protection to large numbers of documents and large user communities, and the restriction rapidly becomes really unwelcome. I am aware of one solution that takes a different tack. Rather than disable the clipboard, pasting is always permitted, but protection is automatically applied to any document that you paste into. At first glance, this sounds great - protection travels with the content. However, at any scale this model may not be so appealing once you've had to deal with support calls from users who have accidentally applied protection to documents that really don't need it - which would be all too easily done. This may help control leakage, but it also pollutes the system with documents that have policies applied with no obvious rhyme or reason, and it can seriously inconvenience the business by making non-sensitive documents difficult to access. And what policy applies if you paste some protected content into an already protected document? Which policy applies? There are no prizes for guessing that Oracle IRM takes a rather different approach. The Oracle IRM Approach Oracle IRM offers a spectrum of clipboard controls between the extremes of ON and OFF, and it leverages the classification-based rights model to give granular control that satisfies both security and usability needs. Firstly, we take it for granted that if you have EDIT rights, of course you can use the clipboard within a given document. Why would we force you to retype a piece of content that you want to move from HERE... to HERE...? If the pasted content remains in the same document, it is equally well protected whether it be at the beginning, middle, or end - or all three. So, the first point is that Oracle IRM always enables the clipboard if you have the right to edit the file. Secondly, whether we enable or disable the clipboard, we only affect the protected document. That is, you can continue to use the clipboard in the usual way for unprotected documents and applications regardless of whether the clipboard is enabled or disabled for the protected document(s). And if you have multiple protected documents open, each may have the clipboard enabled or disabled independently, according to whether you have Edit rights for each. So, even for the simplest cases - the ON-OFF cases - Oracle IRM adds value by containing the effect to the protected documents rather than to the whole desktop environment. Now to the granular options between ON and OFF. Thanks to our classification model, we can define rights that enable pasting between documents in the same classification - ie. between documents that are protected by the same policy. So, if you are working on this month's financial report and you want to pull some data from last month's report, you can simply cut and paste between the two documents. The two documents are classified the same way, subject to the same policy, so the content is equally safe in both documents. However, if you try to paste the same data into an unprotected document or a document in a different classification, you can be prevented. Thus, the control balances legitimate user requirements to allow pasting with legitimate information security concerns to keep data protected. We can take this further. You may have the right to paste between related classifications of document. So, the CFO might want to copy some financial data into a board document, where the two documents are sealed to different classifications. The CFO's rights may well allow this, as it is a reasonable thing for a CFO to want to do. But policy might prevent the CFO from copying the same data into a classification that is accessible to external parties. The above option, to copy between classifications, may be for specific classifications or open-ended. That is, your rights might enable you to go from A to B but not to C, or you might be allowed to paste to any classification subject to your EDIT rights. As for so many features of Oracle IRM, our classification-based rights model makes this type of granular control really easy to manage - you simply define that pasting is permitted between classifications A and B, but omit C. Or you might define that pasting is permitted between all classifications, but not to unprotected locations. The classification model enables millions of documents to be controlled by a few such rules. Finally, you MIGHT have the option to paste anywhere - such that unprotected copies may be created. This is rare, but a legitimate configuration for some users, some use cases, and some classifications - but not something that you have to permit simply because the alternative is too restrictive. As always, these rights are defined in user roles - so different users are subject to different clipboard controls as required in different classifications. So, where most solutions offer just two clipboard options - ON-OFF or ON-but-encrypt-everything-you-touch - Oracle IRM offers real granularity that leverages our classification model. Indeed, I believe it is the lack of a classification model that makes such granularity impractical for other IRM solutions, because the matrix of rules for controlling pasting would be impossible to manage - there are so many documents to consider, and more are being created all the time.

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• Setting Up IRM Test Content

  - by martin.abrahams

  A feature of the 11g IRM Server that sometimes gets overlooked is the ability to set up some test content that any IRM user can access to verify that their IRM Desktop can reach the server, authenticate successfully, and render protected content successfully. Such test content is useful for new users, and in troubleshooting scenarios. Here's how to set up some test content... In the management console, go to IRM - Administration - Test Content, as shown. The console will display a list of test content - initially an empty list. Use the Add option to specify the URL of a document or image, and define one or more labels for the test content in whichever languages your users favour. Note that you do not need to seal the image or document in order to use it as test content. Nor do you need to set up any rights for the test content. The IRM Server will handle the sealing and rights assignment automatically such that all authenticated users are authorised to view the test content. Repeat this process for as many different types of content as you would like to offer for test purposes - perhaps a Word document, a PDF document, and an image. To keep things simple the first time I did this, I used the URL of one of the images in the IRM Server's UI - so there was no problem with the IRM Server being able to reach that image. Whatever content you want to use, the IRM Server needs to be able to reach it at the URL you specify. Using Test Content Open a browser and browse to the URL that the IRM Desktop normally uses to access the IRM Server, for example: http://irm11g.oracle.com/irm_desktop If you are not sure, you can find this URL in the Servers tab of the IRM Options dialog. Go to the Test tab, and you will see your test content listed. By opening one of the items, you can verify that your IRM Desktop is healthy and that you can authenticate to the IRM Server.

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• Are project managers useful in Scrum?

  - by Martin Wickman

  There are three roles defined in Scrum: Team, Product Owner and Scrum Master. There is no project manager, instead the project manager job is spread across the three roles. For instance: The Scrum Master: Responsible for the process. Removes impediments. The Product Owner: Manages and prioritizes the list of work to be done to maximize ROI. Represents all interested parties (customers, stakeholders). The Team: Self manage its work by estimating and distributing it among themselves. Responsible for meeting their own commitments. So in Scrum, there is no longer a single person responsible for project success. There is no command-and-control structure in place. That seems to baffle a lot of people, specifically those not used to agile methods, and of course, PM's. I'm really interested in this and what your experiences are, as I think this is one of the things that can make or break a Scrum implementation. Do you agree with Scrum that a project manager is not needed? Do you think such a role is still required? Why?

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• SVN Export or Recursively Remove .SVN Folders

  - by Ben Griswold

  I shared this script with a coworker yesterday. It doesn’t do much; it recursively deletes .svn folders from a source tree.  It comes in handy if you want to share your codebase or you get in a terrible spot with SVN and you just want to start all over. Just blow away all svn artifacts and use your mulligan. It’s true. You can nearly get the same result using the SVN export command which copies your source sans the .svn folders to an alternate location.  The catch is an export only includes those files/folders which exist under version control.  If you want a clean copy of your source – versioned or not – export just might not do. The contents of the .cmd file include the following: for /f "tokens=* delims=" %%i in (’dir /s /b /a:d *.svn’) do ( rd /s /q "%%i" ) Just download and drop the unzipped “SVN Cleanup.cmd” file into the root of the project, execute and away you go.  If you search around enough, I know you can find similar scripts and approaches elsewhere, but I’m still uploading my script for completeness and future reference. Download SVN Cleanup

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• Display a JSON-string as a table

  - by Martin Aleksander

  I'm totally new to JSON, and have a json-string I need to display as a user-friendly table. I have this file, http://ish.tek.no/json_top_content.php?project_id=11&period=week, witch is showing ID-numbers for products (title) and the number of views. The Title-ID should be connected to this file; http://api.prisguide.no/export/product.php?id=158200 so I can get a table like this: ID | Product Name | Views 158200 | Samsung Galaxy SIII | 21049 How can I do this?

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• How can architects work with self-organizing Scrum teams?

  - by Martin Wickman

  An organization with a number of agile Scrum teams also has a small group of people appointed as "enterprise architects". The EA group acts as control and gatekeeper for quality and adherence to decisions. This leads to overlaps between the team decision and EA decisions. For instance, the team might want to use library X or want to use REST instead of SOAP, but the EA does not approve of that. Now, this can lead to frustration when team decisions are overruled. Taken far enough, it can potentially lead to a situation where the EA people "grabs" all power and the team ends up feeling demotivated and not very agile at all. The Scrum guides has this to say about it: Self-organizing: No one (not even the Scrum Master) tells the Development Team how to turn Product Backlog into Increments of potentially releasable functionality. Is that reasonable? Should the EA team be disbanded? Should the teams refuse or simply comply?

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• Windows expand over 2 monitors in quad-monitor setup

  - by Martin

  i just installed ubuntu 11.10 with my previous hardware setup: 4 monitors and 2 identical nvidia graphic cards. draging windows around all 4 monitors works nice, but when i maximize a window it expand always over 2 screens. (2x twinview). i had an workaround for this in 11.04 but cant remember what it was... may one of you guys have quad monitors up and running with window maximizing on only one screen my xorg.conf looks like this: # nvidia-settings: X configuration file generated by nvidia-settings # nvidia-settings: version 280.13 (buildd@allspice) Thu Aug 11 20:54:45 UTC 2011 # nvidia-xconfig: X configuration file generated by nvidia-xconfig # nvidia-xconfig: version 280.13 ([email protected]) Wed Jul 27 17:15:58 PDT 2011 Section "ServerLayout" # Removed Option "Xinerama" "1" # Removed Option "Xinerama" "0" Identifier "Layout0" Screen 0 "Screen0" 0 0 Screen 1 "Screen1" 0 1080 InputDevice "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard" InputDevice "Mouse0" "CorePointer" Option "Xinerama" "1" EndSection Section "Files" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Mouse0" Driver "mouse" Option "Protocol" "auto" Option "Device" "/dev/psaux" Option "Emulate3Buttons" "no" Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5" EndSection Section "InputDevice" # generated from default Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "kbd" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor0" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Samsung SMB2220N" HorizSync 31.0 - 80.0 VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Monitor" Identifier "Monitor1" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Samsung SMB2220N" HorizSync 31.0 - 80.0 VertRefresh 56.0 - 75.0 Option "DPMS" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device0" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce GTX 550 Ti" BusID "PCI:2:0:0" EndSection Section "Device" Identifier "Device1" Driver "nvidia" VendorName "NVIDIA Corporation" BoardName "GeForce GTX 550 Ti" BusID "PCI:3:0:0" EndSection Section "Screen" # Removed Option "TwinView" "True" # Removed Option "MetaModes" "nvidia-auto-select, nvidia-auto-select" # Removed Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select 1920x1080 +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select 1920x1080 +1920+0" Identifier "Screen0" Device "Device0" Monitor "Monitor0" DefaultDepth 24 Option "TwinView" "1" Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0" Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Screen" # Removed Option "TwinView" "True" # Removed Option "MetaModes" "nvidia-auto-select, nvidia-auto-select" # Removed Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select 1920x1080 +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select 1920x1080 +1920+0" Identifier "Screen1" Device "Device1" Monitor "Monitor1" DefaultDepth 24 Option "TwinView" "1" Option "TwinViewXineramaInfoOrder" "CRT-0" Option "metamodes" "CRT-0: nvidia-auto-select +0+0, CRT-1: nvidia-auto-select +1920+0" SubSection "Display" Depth 24 EndSubSection EndSection Section "Extensions" Option "Composite" "Disable" EndSection

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• Ghost team foundation build controllers

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Quite often after an upgrade there are things left over. Most of the time they are easy to delete, but sometimes it takes a little effort. Even rarer are those times when something just will not go away no matter how much you try. We have had a ghost team build controller hanging around for a while now, and it had defeated my best efforts to get rid of it. The build controller was from our old TFS server from before our TFS 2010 beta 2 upgrade and was really starting to annoy me. Every time I try to delete it I get the message: Controller cannot be deleted because there are build in progress -Manage Build Controller dialog   Figure: Deleting a ghost controller does not always work. I ended up checking all of our 172 Team Projects for the build that was queued, but did not find anything. Jim Lamb pointed me to the “tbl_BuildQueue” table in the team Project Collection database and sure enough there was the nasty little beggar. Figure: The ghost build was easily spotted Adam Cogan asked me: “Why did you suspect this one?” Well, there are a number of things that led me to suspect it: QueueId is very low: Look at the other items, they are in the thousands not single digits ControllerId: I know there is only one legitimate controller, and I am assuming that 6 relates to “zzUnicorn” DefinitionId: This is a very low number and I looked it up in “tbl_BuildDefinition” and it did not exist QueueTime: As we did not upgrade to TFS 2010 until late 2009 a date of 2008 for a queued build is very suspect Status: A status of 2 means that it is still queued This build must have been queued long ago when we were using TFS 2008, probably a beta, and it never got cleaned up. As controllers are new in TFS 2010 it would have created the “zzUnicorn” controller to handle any build servers that already exist. I had previously deleted the Agent, but leaving the controller just looks untidy. Now that the ghost build has been identified there are two options: Delete the row I would not recommend ever deleting anything from the database to achieve something in TFS. It is really not supported. Set the Status to cancelled (Recommended) This is the best option as TFS will then clean it up itself So I set the Status of this build to 2 (cancelled) and sure enough it disappeared after a couple of minutes and I was then able to then delete the “zzUnicorn” controller. Figure: Almost completely clean Now all I have to do is get rid of that untidy “zzBunyip” agent, but that will require rewriting one of our build scripts which will have to wait for now.   Technorati Tags: ALM,TFBS,TFS 2010

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• Database Connectivity Test with UDL File

  - by Ben Griswold

  I bounced around between projects a lot last week.  What each project had in common was the need to validate at least one SQL connection.  Whether you have SQL tools like SSMS installed or not, this is a very easy task if you are aware of the UDL (Universal Data Link) files.  Create a new file and name it anything as long as it has the .udl extension. Open the file, choose a provider: Click Next >> or navigate to the Connection Tab to provide connection information.  Once you provide server and login credentials, the database list will populate.  At this point, you know the connection is valid. but go ahead and click the Test Connection button anyway. On the final tab, you can provide extra connection information like Application Name which can come in handy.  The All tab is beneficial if you want to build a valid connection string to include in your own applications.  If you save the file and then open in Notepad, you’ll find that said connection string: Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Persist Security Info=False;Initial Catalog=master;Data Source=(local);Application Name=TestApp I hope this tip helps save you some time.  How do you test if you don’t have SSMS installed?

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• Building a common syntax and scoping framework.

  - by Ben DeMott

  Hello fellow programmers, I was discussing a project the other day with a colleague of mine and I was curious to see what others had to say or if such a thing already existed. Background There are many programming languages. There are many IDE's and source editors that highlight and edit source code. Following perfectly and exactly the rules of a language to present auto-complete options and understand scopes in the code is rather complex. This task is complex enough that most IDE's implement different source-editors as plugins that often re-implement the same features over and over but in a different way (netbeans). From what I can tell most IDE's and source editors re-implement parsers that use regular expressions, or some meta-syntax Naur Form to describe the languages grammer generically. These parsers are implemented over and over and over again. Question Has anyone attempted to unify or describe a set of features through an API and have a consistent interface to parsing various programming languages and dialects. I'm not describing an IDE - but a consistent API for any program to use to parse and obtain meta-information from the source code. I realize various programming languages offer many different features which are difficult to 'abstract' into a set of features, but I feel this would be a worthwhile venture. It seems to me that this could possibly allow the authors of interpreters to help maintain a central grammer intepreter for their language. the Python foundation could maintain the Python grammer api, ANSI the C grammer api, Oracle the Java grammer API, etc Example usage If this was API existed code documentation generators could theoretically work across all dialects and languages to some level. It wouldn't matter if your project used 5 different languages a single application could document all of them and the comments and doc-tags within. Has anyone attempted this comprehensively?

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• Project Euler 15: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 15.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 15 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=15 # Starting in the top left corner of a 2x2 grid, there # are 6 routes (without backtracking) to the bottom right # corner. How many routes are their in a 20x20 grid? import time start = time.time() def factorial(n): if n == 0: return 1 else: return n * factorial(n-1) rows, cols = 20, 20 print factorial(rows+cols) / (factorial(rows) * factorial(cols)) print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• Configure SQL Server to Allow Remote Connections

  - by Ben Griswold

  Okay. This post isn’t about configuring SQL to allow remote connections, but wait, I still may be able to help you out. "A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: Named Pipes Provider, error: 40 – Could not open a connection to SQL Server)" I love this exception. It summarized the issue and leads you down a path to solving the problem.  I do wish the bit about allowing remote connections was left out of the message though. I can’t think of a time when having remote connections disabled caused me grief.  Heck, I can’t ever remember how to enable remote connections unless I Google for the answer. Anyway, 9 out of 10 times, SQL Server simply isn’t running.  That’s why the exception occurs.  The next time this exception pops up, open up the services console and make sure SQL Server is started.  And if that’s not the problem, only then start digging into the other possible reasons for the failure.

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• Project Euler 9: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 9.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 9 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=9 # A Pythagorean triplet is a set of three natural numbers, # a b c, for which, # a2 + b2 = c2 # For example, 32 + 42 = 9 + 16 = 25 = 52. # There exists exactly one Pythagorean triplet for which # a + b + c = 1000. Find the product abc. import time start = time.time() product = 0 def pythagorean_triplet(): for a in range(1,501): for b in xrange(a+1,501): c = 1000 - a - b if (a*a + b*b == c*c): return a*b*c print pythagorean_triplet() print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• google-chrome video application association

  - by Ben Lee

  Is there any way to tell google-chrome to launch video files of particular types in an external application (or even just to bring up the download box as if the type was un-handled), instead of showing the video inside the browser? Searching online, it seems that chrome is supposed to use xdg-mime for file associations, but apparently is ignoring this for video. For example, when I do: xdg-mime query default video/mpeg It returns dragonplayer.desktop. But when I click on a mpeg video link, chrome displays it internally instead of launching Dragon Player (if I double click on a mpeg file in my file manager, on the other hand, it does open Dragon Player). So is there a way to tell chrome to respect this setting, or another way to coax chrome into opening the file externally? If it matters, I'm running the latest version of google-chrome stable (not chromium) at the time of writing, v. 18.0.1025.151, on kubuntu 11.10.

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• Amazon SOA: database as a Service

  - by Martin Lee

  There is an interesting interview with Werner Vogels which is partly about how Amazon does Service Oriented Architecture: For us service orientation means encapsulating the data with the business logic that operates on the data, with the only access through a published service interface. No direct database access is allowed from outside the service, and there’s no data sharing among the services. I do not understand that. Why do they need to 'wrap' a database into some layer if it already can be consumed as a service by other service through database adaptors? Does Amazon do that just because they need to expose the database to third parties or because of anything else? Why "no direct database access is allowed"? What are the advantages of such an architectural decision?

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• Fastest pathfinding for static node matrix

  - by Sean Martin

  I'm programming a route finding routine in VB.NET for an online game I play, and I'm searching for the fastest route finding algorithm for my map type. The game takes place in space, with thousands of solar systems connected by jump gates. The game devs have provided a DB dump containing a list of every system and the systems it can jump to. The map isn't quite a node tree, since some branches can jump to other branches - more of a matrix. What I need is a fast pathfinding algorithm. I have already implemented an A* routine and a Dijkstra's, both find the best path but are too slow for my purposes - a search that considers about 5000 nodes takes over 20 seconds to compute. A similar program on a website can do the same search in less than a second. This website claims to use D*, which I have looked into. That algorithm seems more appropriate for dynamic maps rather than one that does not change - unless I misunderstand it's premise. So is there something faster I can use for a map that is not your typical tile/polygon base? GBFS? Perhaps a DFS? Or have I likely got some problem with my A* - maybe poorly chosen heuristics or movement cost? Currently my movement cost is the length of the jump (the DB dump has solar system coordinates as well), and the heuristic is a quick euclidean calculation from the node to the goal. In case anyone has some optimizations for my A*, here is the routine that consumes about 60% of my processing time, according to my profiler. The coordinateData table contains a list of every system's coordinates, and neighborNode.distance is the distance of the jump. Private Function findDistance(ByVal startSystem As Integer, ByVal endSystem As Integer) As Integer 'hCount += 1 'If hCount Mod 0 = 0 Then 'Return hCache 'End If 'Initialize variables to be filled Dim x1, x2, y1, y2, z1, z2 As Integer 'LINQ queries for solar system data Dim systemFromData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = startSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z Dim systemToData = From result In jumpDataDB.coordinateDatas Where result.systemId = endSystem Select result.x, result.y, result.z 'LINQ execute 'Fill variables with solar system data for from and to system For Each solarSystem In systemFromData x1 = (solarSystem.x) y1 = (solarSystem.y) z1 = (solarSystem.z) Next For Each solarSystem In systemToData x2 = (solarSystem.x) y2 = (solarSystem.y) z2 = (solarSystem.z) Next Dim x3 = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) Dim y3 = Math.Abs(y1 - y2) Dim z3 = Math.Abs(z1 - z2) 'Calculate distance and round 'Dim distance = Math.Round(Math.Sqrt(Math.Abs((x1 - x2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((y1 - y2) ^ 2) + Math.Abs((z1 - z2) ^ 2))) Dim distance = firstConstant * Math.Min(secondConstant * (x3 + y3 + z3), Math.Max(x3, Math.Max(y3, z3))) 'Dim distance = Math.Abs(x1 - x2) + Math.Abs(z1 - z2) + Math.Abs(y1 - y2) 'hCache = distance Return distance End Function And the main loop, the other 30% 'Begin search While openList.Count() != 0 'Set current system and move node to closed currentNode = lowestF() move(currentNode.id) For Each neighborNode In neighborNodes If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 0) Then If Not onList(neighborNode.toSystem, 1) Then Dim newNode As New nodeData() newNode.id = neighborNode.toSystem newNode.parent = currentNode.id newNode.g = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance newNode.h = findDistance(newNode.id, endSystem) newNode.f = newNode.g + newNode.h newNode.security = neighborNode.security openList.Add(newNode) shortOpenList(OLindex) = newNode.id OLindex += 1 Else Dim proposedG As Integer = currentNode.g + neighborNode.distance If proposedG < gValue(neighborNode.toSystem) Then changeParent(neighborNode.toSystem, currentNode.id, proposedG) End If End If End If Next 'Check to see if done If currentNode.id = endSystem Then Exit While End If End While If clarification is needed on my spaghetti code, I'll try to explain.

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• T4Toolbox and Visual Studio 2010

  - by Ben Griswold

  I’ve been using the T4Toolbox to help generate my ASP.NET MVC models and scaffolding for a while now.  Another developer tried using my generator project last week and ran into troubles due to a breaking change around the RenderCore() and TransformText() methods in support for VS 2010.  If you upgraded to the latest version of T4Toolbox and receive a build error similar to the following, you are probably in the same boat: GeneratedTextTransformation.[Template].RenderCore(): no suitable method found to override We took the easy way out.  I had him uninstall the latest version of T4Toolbox and install version 9.7.25.1 which my templates were initially coded against.  For now, that worked great, but it sounds like I’ll be doing some rework of the 20+ templates in my project to support Visual Studio 2010 when we migrate later this month.

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• A talk about observer pattern

  - by Martin

  As part of a university course I'm taking, I have to hold a 10 minute talk about the observer pattern. So far these are my points: What is it? (defenition) Polling is an alternative Polling VS Observer When Observer is better When Polling is better (taken from here) A statement that Mediator pattern is worth checking out. (I won't have time to cover it in 10 minutes) I would be happy to hear about: Any suggestions to add something? Another alternative (if exists)

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• Project Euler 5: (Iron)Python

  - by Ben Griswold

  In my attempt to learn (Iron)Python out in the open, here’s my solution for Project Euler Problem 5.  As always, any feedback is welcome. # Euler 5 # http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=5 # 2520 is the smallest number that can be divided by each # of the numbers from 1 to 10 without any remainder. # What is the smallest positive number that is evenly # divisible by all of the numbers from 1 to 20? import time start = time.time() def gcd(a, b): while b: a, b = b, a % b return a def lcm(a, b): return a * b // gcd(a, b) print reduce(lcm, range(1, 20)) print "Elapsed Time:", (time.time() - start) * 1000, "millisecs" a=raw_input('Press return to continue')

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• upstart-supervised init script for Apache?

  - by Ben Williams

  I want to run apache on Ubuntu 10.04, and use the nice supervision stuff in upstart (I'm not just talking about the apache init script, but proper service supervision a la daemontools - which is to say, restarting apache when it dies, things like that). Does anyone have a running upstart config for supervising apache on ubuntu 10.04? The Googles have been no help to me, but it could be that my google-fu is weak.

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