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  • Tool to track time estimations vs, actual time

    - by mb1
    Following these two questions: How to respond when asked for Estimate, What's the best project management software for small team I am looking for a tool that combines project management with the ability to plan all tasks for a project, give time estimates and afterwards track actual time spent on items and have comparison between estimate and actual time. I am going to try TargetProcess since I see it has time tracking capabilities. Anyone have a tool they use?

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  • Fastest Functional Language

    - by Farouk
    I've recently been delving into functional programming especially Haskell and F#, the prior more so. After some googling around I could not find a benchmark comparison of the more prominent functional languages (Scala,F# etc). I know it's not necessarily fair to some of the languages (Scala comes to mind) given that they are hybrids, but I just wanna know which outperforms which on what operations and overall.

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  • How to nest transactions nicely - &quot;begin transaction&quot; vs &quot;save transaction&quot; and SQL Server

    - by Brian Biales
    Do you write stored procedures that might be used by others?  And those others may or may not have already started a transaction?  And your SP does several things, but if any of them fail, you have to undo them all and return with a code indicating it failed? Well, I have written such code, and it wasn’t working right until I finally figured out how to handle the case when we are already in a transaction, as well as the case where the caller did not start a transaction.  When a problem occurred, my “ROLLBACK TRANSACTION” would roll back not just my nested transaction, but the caller’s transaction as well.  So when I tested the procedure stand-alone, it seemed to work fine, but when others used it, it would cause a problem if it had to rollback.  When something went wrong in my procedure, their entire transaction was rolled back.  This was not appreciated. Now, I knew one could "nest" transactions, but the technical documentation was very confusing.  And I still have not found the approach below documented anywhere.  So here is a very brief description of how I got it to work, I hope you find this helpful. My example is a stored procedure that must figure out on its own if the caller has started a transaction or not.  This can be done in SQL Server by checking the @@TRANCOUNT value.  If no BEGIN TRANSACTION has occurred yet, this will have a value of 0.  Any number greater than zero means that a transaction is in progress.  If there is no current transaction, my SP begins a transaction. But if a transaction is already in progress, my SP uses SAVE TRANSACTION and gives it a name.  SAVE TRANSACTION creates a “save point”.  Note that creating a save point has no effect on @@TRANCOUNT.  So my SP starts with something like this: DECLARE @startingTranCount int SET @startingTranCount = @@TRANCOUNT IF @startingTranCount > 0 SAVE TRANSACTION mySavePointName ELSE BEGIN TRANSACTION -- … Then, when ready to commit the changes, you only need to commit if we started the transaction ourselves: IF @startingTranCount = 0 COMMIT TRANSACTION And finally, to roll back just your changes so far: -- Roll back changes... IF @startingTranCount > 0 ROLLBACK TRANSACTION MySavePointName ELSE ROLLBACK TRANSACTION Here is some code that you can try that will demonstrate how the save points work inside a transaction. This sample code creates a temporary table, then executes selects and updates, documenting what is going on, then deletes the temporary table. if running in SQL Management Studio, set Query Results to: Text for best readability of the results. -- Create a temporary table to test with, we'll drop it at the end. CREATE TABLE #ATable( [Column_A] [varchar](5) NULL ) ON [PRIMARY] GO SET NOCOUNT ON -- Ensure just one row - delete all rows, add one DELETE #ATable -- Insert just one row INSERT INTO #ATable VALUES('000') SELECT 'Before TRANSACTION starts, value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable SELECT @@trancount AS CurrentTrancount --insert into a values ('abc') UPDATE #ATable SET Column_A = 'abc' SELECT 'UPDATED without a TRANSACTION, value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable BEGIN TRANSACTION SELECT 'BEGIN TRANSACTION, trancount is now ' AS Note, @@TRANCOUNT AS TranCount UPDATE #ATable SET Column_A = '123' SELECT 'Row updated inside TRANSACTION, value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable SAVE TRANSACTION MySavepoint SELECT 'Save point MySavepoint created, transaction count now:' as Note, @@TRANCOUNT AS TranCount UPDATE #ATable SET Column_A = '456' SELECT 'Updated after MySavepoint created, value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable SAVE TRANSACTION point2 SELECT 'Save point point2 created, transaction count now:' as Note, @@TRANCOUNT AS TranCount UPDATE #ATable SET Column_A = '789' SELECT 'Updated after point2 savepoint created, value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable ROLLBACK TRANSACTION point2 SELECT 'Just rolled back savepoint "point2", value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable ROLLBACK TRANSACTION MySavepoint SELECT 'Just rolled back savepoint "MySavepoint", value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable SELECT 'Both save points were rolled back, transaction count still:' as Note, @@TRANCOUNT AS TranCount ROLLBACK TRANSACTION SELECT 'Just rolled back the entire transaction..., value in table is: ' AS Note, * FROM #ATable DROP TABLE #ATable The output should look like this: Note                                           Column_A ---------------------------------------------- -------- Before TRANSACTION starts, value in table is:  000 CurrentTrancount ---------------- 0 Note                                               Column_A -------------------------------------------------- -------- UPDATED without a TRANSACTION, value in table is:  abc Note                                 TranCount ------------------------------------ ----------- BEGIN TRANSACTION, trancount is now  1 Note                                                Column_A --------------------------------------------------- -------- Row updated inside TRANSACTION, value in table is:  123 Note                                                   TranCount ------------------------------------------------------ ----------- Save point MySavepoint created, transaction count now: 1 Note                                                   Column_A ------------------------------------------------------ -------- Updated after MySavepoint created, value in table is:  456 Note                                              TranCount ------------------------------------------------- ----------- Save point point2 created, transaction count now: 1 Note                                                        Column_A ----------------------------------------------------------- -------- Updated after point2 savepoint created, value in table is:  789 Note                                                     Column_A -------------------------------------------------------- -------- Just rolled back savepoint "point2", value in table is:  456 Note                                                          Column_A ------------------------------------------------------------- -------- Just rolled back savepoint "MySavepoint", value in table is:  123 Note                                                        TranCount ----------------------------------------------------------- ----------- Both save points were rolled back, transaction count still: 1 Note                                                            Column_A --------------------------------------------------------------- -------- Just rolled back the entire transaction..., value in table is:  abc

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  • Converting #MDX to #DAX and PowerPivot Workshop online #ppws

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I just published the article Converting MDX to DAX – First Steps on the renewed SQLBI web site about converting MDX to DAX. The reason is that with BISM Tabular in Analysis Services 2012 you will be able to write queries in both DAX and MDX. If you already know MDX, you might wonder how to “translate” your MDX knowledge in DAX. I think that this is another way you can improve your knowledge about DAX: it has different concepts behind and this comparison should be helpful in this purpose. This is...(read more)

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  • Do software developers know what engineers actually do?

    - by lorin
    Software development is often contrasted with the traditional branches of engineering, most commonly civil or mechanical engineering. For example: "Software development isn't like engineering, it's like craftsmanship!" "Software development isn't like engineering, but it should be!" Do software developers understand what it is that engineers do and how they do it? At least, do they understand it well enough to be able to make an informed comparison with what software developers do?

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  • New Tabs at End Opens New Tabs at the End of the Chrome Tab Bar

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    Chrome: If you’d prefer to have new tabs open at the end of the row instead of next to their parent tab, New Tabs at End is a simple Google Chrome extension that will scoot your tabs where you want them. It’s a minor thing, to be sure, but many users prefer to have tabs open at the end of the row–I know it took me quite awhile as a new Chrome user to get used to the default next-to-parent action. If you’d prefer to have the new tabs open at the end, hit up the link below to install New Tabs at End to tweak your tab bar workflow. New Tabs at End [via Addictive Tips] How To Be Your Own Personal Clone Army (With a Little Photoshop) How To Properly Scan a Photograph (And Get An Even Better Image) The HTG Guide to Hiding Your Data in a TrueCrypt Hidden Volume

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  • Sets, Surrogates, Normalisation, Referential Integrity - the Theory with example Scaling considerati

    - by tonyrogerson
    The Slides and Demo's for the SQLBits session I did today at SQL Bits in London are attached. The Agenda was... Thinking in Sets Surrogate Keys ú What they are ú Comparison NEWID, NEWSEQUENTIALID, IDENTITY ú Fragmenation Normalisation ú An introduction – what is it? Why use it? ú Joins – Pre-filter problems, index intersection ú Fragmentation again Referential Integrity ú Optimiser -> Query rewrite ú Locking considerations around Foreign Keys and Declarative RI (using Triggers)...(read more)

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  • Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix

    - by Rick Strahl
    originally published in CoDe Magazine Editorial Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix, which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers. Let’s face it: ASP.NET development isn’t exactly trivial unless you already have a fair bit of familiarity with sophisticated development practices. Stick a non-developer in front of Visual Studio .NET or even the Visual Web Developer Express edition and it’s not likely that the person in front of the screen will be very productive or feel inspired. Yet other technologies like PHP and even classic ASP did provide the ability for non-developers and hobbyists to become reasonably proficient in creating basic web content quickly and efficiently. WebMatrix appears to be Microsoft’s attempt to bring back some of that simplicity with a number of technologies and tools. The key is to provide a friendly and fully self-contained development environment that provides all the tools needed to build an application in one place, as well as tools that allow publishing of content and databases easily to the web server. WebMatrix is made up of several components and technologies: IIS Developer Express IIS Developer Express is a new, self-contained development web server that is fully compatible with IIS 7.5 and based on the same codebase that IIS 7.5 uses. This new development server replaces the much less compatible Cassini web server that’s been used in Visual Studio and the Express editions. IIS Express addresses a few shortcomings of the Cassini server such as the inability to serve custom ISAPI extensions (i.e., things like PHP or ASP classic for example), as well as not supporting advanced authentication. IIS Developer Express provides most of the IIS 7.5 feature set providing much better compatibility between development and live deployment scenarios. SQL Server Compact 4.0 Database access is a key component for most web-driven applications, but on the Microsoft stack this has mostly meant you have to use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. SQL Server Compact is not new-it’s been around for a few years, but it’s been severely hobbled in the past by terrible tool support and the inability to support more than a single connection in Microsoft’s attempt to avoid losing SQL Server licensing. The new release of SQL Server Compact 4.0 supports multiple connections and you can run it in ASP.NET web applications simply by installing an assembly into the bin folder of the web application. In effect, you don’t have to install a special system configuration to run SQL Compact as it is a drop-in database engine: Copy the small assembly into your BIN folder (or from the GAC if installed fully), create a connection string against a local file-based database file, and then start firing SQL requests. Additionally WebMatrix includes nice tools to edit the database tables and files, along with tools to easily upsize (and hopefully downsize in the future) to full SQL Server. This is a big win, pending compatibility and performance limits. In my simple testing the data engine performed well enough for small data sets. This is not only useful for web applications, but also for desktop applications for which a fully installed SQL engine like SQL Server would be overkill. Having a local data store in those applications that can potentially be accessed by multiple users is a welcome feature. ASP.NET Razor View Engine What? Yet another native ASP.NET view engine? We already have Web Forms and various different flavors of using that view engine with Web Forms and MVC. Do we really need another? Microsoft thinks so, and Razor is an implementation of a lightweight, script-only view engine. Unlike the Web Forms view engine, Razor works only with inline code, snippets, and markup; therefore, it is more in line with current thinking of what a view engine should represent. There’s no support for a “page model” or any of the other Web Forms features of the full-page framework, but just a lightweight scripting engine that works with plain markup plus embedded expressions and code. The markup syntax for Razor is geared for minimal typing, plus some progressive detection of where a script block/expression starts and ends. This results in a much leaner syntax than the typical ASP.NET Web Forms alligator (<% %>) tags. Razor uses the @ sign plus standard C# (or Visual Basic) block syntax to delineate code snippets and expressions. Here’s a very simple example of what Razor markup looks like along with some comment annotations: <!DOCTYPE html> <html>     <head>         <title></title>     </head>     <body>     <h1>Razor Test</h1>          <!-- simple expressions -->     @DateTime.Now     <hr />     <!-- method expressions -->     @DateTime.Now.ToString("T")          <!-- code blocks -->     @{         List<string> names = new List<string>();         names.Add("Rick");         names.Add("Markus");         names.Add("Claudio");         names.Add("Kevin");     }          <!-- structured block statements -->     <ul>     @foreach(string name in names){             <li>@name</li>     }     </ul>           <!-- Conditional code -->        @if(true) {                        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->        <text>         true        </text>;    }    else    {        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->       <text>       false       </text>;    }    </body> </html> Like the Web Forms view engine, Razor parses pages into code, and then executes that run-time compiled code. Effectively a “page” becomes a code file with markup becoming literal text written into the Response stream, code snippets becoming raw code, and expressions being written out with Response.Write(). The code generated from Razor doesn’t look much different from similar Web Forms code that only uses script tags; so although the syntax may look different, the operational model is fairly similar to the Web Forms engine minus the overhead of the large Page object model. However, there are differences: -Razor pages are based on a new base class, Microsoft.WebPages.WebPage, which is hosted in the Microsoft.WebPages assembly that houses all the Razor engine parsing and processing logic. Browsing through the assembly (in the generated ASP.NET Temporary Files folder or GAC) will give you a good idea of the functionality that Razor provides. If you look closely, a lot of the feature set matches ASP.NET MVC’s view implementation as well as many of the helper classes found in MVC. It’s not hard to guess the motivation for this sort of view engine: For beginning developers the simple markup syntax is easier to work with, although you obviously still need to have some understanding of the .NET Framework in order to create dynamic content. The syntax is easier to read and grok and much shorter to type than ASP.NET alligator tags (<% %>) and also easier to understand aesthetically what’s happening in the markup code. Razor also is a better fit for Microsoft’s vision of ASP.NET MVC: It’s a new view engine without the baggage of Web Forms attached to it. The engine is more lightweight since it doesn’t carry all the features and object model of Web Forms with it and it can be instantiated directly outside of the HTTP environment, which has been rather tricky to do for the Web Forms view engine. Having a standalone script parser is a huge win for other applications as well – it makes it much easier to create script or meta driven output generators for many types of applications from code/screen generators, to simple form letters to data merging applications with user customizability. For me personally this is very useful side effect and who knows maybe Microsoft will actually standardize they’re scripting engines (die T4 die!) on this engine. Razor also better fits the “view-based” approach where the view is supposed to be mostly a visual representation that doesn’t hold much, if any, code. While you can still use code, the code you do write has to be self-contained. Overall I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor will become the new standard view engine for MVC in the future – and in fact there have been announcements recently that Razor will become the default script engine in ASP.NET MVC 3.0. Razor can also be used in existing Web Forms and MVC applications, although that’s not working currently unless you manually configure the script mappings and add the appropriate assemblies. It’s possible to do it, but it’s probably better to wait until Microsoft releases official support for Razor scripts in Visual Studio. Once that happens, you can simply drop .cshtml and .vbhtml pages into an existing ASP.NET project and they will work side by side with classic ASP.NET pages. WebMatrix Development Environment To tie all of these three technologies together, Microsoft is shipping WebMatrix with an integrated development environment. An integrated gallery manager makes it easy to download and load existing projects, and then extend them with custom functionality. It seems to be a prominent goal to provide community-oriented content that can act as a starting point, be it via a custom templates or a complete standard application. The IDE includes a project manager that works with a single project and provides an integrated IDE/editor for editing the .cshtml and .vbhtml pages. A run button allows you to quickly run pages in the project manager in a variety of browsers. There’s no debugging support for code at this time. Note that Razor pages don’t require explicit compilation, so making a change, saving, and then refreshing your page in the browser is all that’s needed to see changes while testing an application locally. It’s essentially using the auto-compiling Web Project that was introduced with .NET 2.0. All code is compiled during run time into dynamically created assemblies in the ASP.NET temp folder. WebMatrix also has PHP Editing support with syntax highlighting. You can load various PHP-based applications from the WebMatrix Web Gallery directly into the IDE. Most of the Web Gallery applications are ready to install and run without further configuration, with Wizards taking you through installation of tools, dependencies, and configuration of the database as needed. WebMatrix leverages the Web Platform installer to pull the pieces down from websites in a tight integration of tools that worked nicely for the four or five applications I tried this out on. Click a couple of check boxes and fill in a few simple configuration options and you end up with a running application that’s ready to be customized. Nice! You can easily deploy completed applications via WebDeploy (to an IIS server) or FTP directly from within the development environment. The deploy tool also can handle automatically uploading and installing the database and all related assemblies required, making deployment a simple one-click install step. Simplified Database Access The IDE contains a database editor that can edit SQL Compact and SQL Server databases. There is also a Database helper class that facilitates database access by providing easy-to-use, high-level query execution and iteration methods: @{       var db = Database.OpenFile("FirstApp.sdf");     string sql = "select * from customers where Id > @0"; } <ul> @foreach(var row in db.Query(sql,1)){         <li>@row.FirstName @row.LastName</li> } </ul> The query function takes a SQL statement plus any number of positional (@0,@1 etc.) SQL parameters by simple values. The result is returned as a collection of rows which in turn have a row object with dynamic properties for each of the columns giving easy (though untyped) access to each of the fields. Likewise Execute and ExecuteNonQuery allow execution of more complex queries using similar parameter passing schemes. Note these queries use string-based queries rather than LINQ or Entity Framework’s strongly typed LINQ queries. While this may seem like a step back, it’s also in line with the expectations of non .NET script developers who are quite used to writing and using SQL strings in code rather than using OR/M frameworks. The only question is why was something not included from the beginning in .NET and Microsoft made developers build custom implementations of these basic building blocks. The implementation looks a lot like a DataTable-style data access mechanism, but to be fair, this is a common approach in scripting languages. This type of syntax that uses simple, static, data object methods to perform simple data tasks with one line of code are common in scripting languages and are a good match for folks working in PHP/Python, etc. Seems like Microsoft has taken great advantage of .NET 4.0’s dynamic typing to provide this sort of interface for row iteration where each row has properties for each field. FWIW, all the examples demonstrate using local SQL Compact files - I was unable to get a SQL Server connection string to work with the Database class (the connection string wasn’t accepted). However, since the code in the page is still plain old .NET, you can easily use standard ADO.NET code or even LINQ or Entity Framework models that are created outside of WebMatrix in separate assemblies as required. The good the bad the obnoxious - It’s still .NET The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it :)) of Razor and the compilation model is that, behind it all, it’s still .NET. Although the syntax may look foreign, it’s still all .NET behind the scenes. You can easily access existing tools, helpers, and utilities simply by adding them to the project as references or to the bin folder. Razor automatically recognizes any assembly reference from assemblies in the bin folder. In the default configuration, Microsoft provides a host of helper functions in a Microsoft.WebPages assembly (check it out in the ASP.NET temp folder for your application), which includes a host of HTML Helpers. If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC before, a lot of the helpers should look familiar. Documentation at the moment is sketchy-there’s a very rough API reference you can check out here: http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/tutorials/asp-net-web-pages-api-reference Who needs WebMatrix? Uhm… good Question Clearly Microsoft is trying hard to create an environment with WebMatrix that is easy to use for newbie developers. The goal seems to be simplicity in providing a minimal development environment and an easy-to-use script engine/language that makes it easy to get started with. There’s also some focus on community features that can be used as starting points, such as Web Gallery applications and templates. The community features in particular are very nice and something that would be nice to eventually see in Visual Studio as well. The question is whether this is too little too late. Developers who have been clamoring for a simpler development environment on the .NET stack have mostly left for other simpler platforms like PHP or Python which are catering to the down and dirty developer. Microsoft will be hard pressed to win those folks-and other hardcore PHP developers-back. Regardless of how much you dress up a script engine fronted by the .NET Framework, it’s still the .NET Framework and all the complexity that drives it. While .NET is a fine solution in its breadth and features once you get a basic handle on the core features, the bar of entry to being productive with the .NET Framework is still pretty high. The MVC style helpers Microsoft provides are a good step in the right direction, but I suspect it’s not enough to shield new developers from having to delve much deeper into the Framework to get even basic applications built. Razor and its helpers is trying to make .NET more accessible but the reality is that in order to do useful stuff that goes beyond the handful of simple helpers you still are going to have to write some C# or VB or other .NET code. If the target is a hobby/amateur/non-programmer the learning curve isn’t made any easier by WebMatrix it’s just been shifted a tad bit further along in your development endeavor when you run out of canned components that are supplied either by Microsoft or the community. The database helpers are interesting and actually I’ve heard a lot of discussion from various developers who’ve been resisting .NET for a really long time perking up at the prospect of easier data access in .NET than the ridiculous amount of code it takes to do even simple data access with raw ADO.NET. It seems sad that such a simple concept and implementation should trigger this sort of response (especially since it’s practically trivial to create helpers like these or pick them up from countless libraries available), but there it is. It also shows that there are plenty of developers out there who are more interested in ‘getting stuff done’ easily than necessarily following the latest and greatest practices which are overkill for many development scenarios. Sometimes it seems that all of .NET is focused on the big life changing issues of development, rather than the bread and butter scenarios that many developers are interested in to get their work accomplished. And that in the end may be WebMatrix’s main raison d'être: To bring some focus back at Microsoft that simpler and more high level solutions are actually needed to appeal to the non-high end developers as well as providing the necessary tools for the high end developers who want to follow the latest and greatest trends. The current version of WebMatrix hits many sweet spots, but it also feels like it has a long way to go before it really can be a tool that a beginning developer or an accomplished developer can feel comfortable with. Although there are some really good ideas in the environment (like the gallery for downloading apps and components) which would be a great addition for Visual Studio as well, the rest of the development environment just feels like crippleware with required functionality missing especially debugging and Intellisense, but also general editor support. It’s not clear whether these are because the product is still in an early alpha release or whether it’s simply designed that way to be a really limited development environment. While simple can be good, nobody wants to feel left out when it comes to necessary tool support and WebMatrix just has that left out feeling to it. If anything WebMatrix’s technology pieces (which are really independent of the WebMatrix product) are what are interesting to developers in general. The compact IIS implementation is a nice improvement for development scenarios and SQL Compact 4.0 seems to address a lot of concerns that people have had and have complained about for some time with previous SQL Compact implementations. By far the most interesting and useful technology though seems to be the Razor view engine for its light weight implementation and it’s decoupling from the ASP.NET/HTTP pipeline to provide a standalone scripting/view engine that is pluggable. The first winner of this is going to be ASP.NET MVC which can now have a cleaner view model that isn’t inconsistent due to the baggage of non-implemented WebForms features that don’t work in MVC. But I expect that Razor will end up in many other applications as a scripting and code generation engine eventually. Visual Studio integration for Razor is currently missing, but is promised for a later release. The ASP.NET MVC team has already mentioned that Razor will eventually become the default MVC view engine, which will guarantee continued growth and development of this tool along those lines. And the Razor engine and support tools actually inherit many of the features that MVC pioneered, so there’s some synergy flowing both ways between Razor and MVC. As an existing ASP.NET developer who’s already familiar with Visual Studio and ASP.NET development, the WebMatrix IDE doesn’t give you anything that you want. The tools provided are minimal and provide nothing that you can’t get in Visual Studio today, except the minimal Razor syntax highlighting, so there’s little need to take a step back. With Visual Studio integration coming later there’s little reason to look at WebMatrix for tooling. It’s good to see that Microsoft is giving some thought about the ease of use of .NET as a platform For so many years, we’ve been piling on more and more new features without trying to take a step back and see how complicated the development/configuration/deployment process has become. Sometimes it’s good to take a step - or several steps - back and take another look and realize just how far we’ve come. WebMatrix is one of those reminders and one that likely will result in some positive changes on the platform as a whole. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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  • Comparing Table Variables with Temporary Tables

    This articles brings a comparison of temporary tables with table variables from SQL Server author, Wayne Sheffield. In includes an in-depth look at the differences between them. SQL Server monitoring made easy "Keeping an eye on our many SQL Server instances is much easier with SQL Response." Mike Lile.Download a free trial of SQL Response now.

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #034

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 UDF – User Defined Function to Strip HTML – Parse HTML – No Regular Expression The UDF used in the blog does fantastic task – it scans entire HTML text and removes all the HTML tags. It keeps only valid text data without HTML task. This is one of the quite commonly requested tasks many developers have to face everyday. De-fragmentation of Database at Operating System to Improve Performance Operating system skips MDF file while defragging the entire filesystem of the operating system. It is absolutely fine and there is no impact of the same on performance. Read the entire blog post for my conversation with our network engineers. Delay Function – WAITFOR clause – Delay Execution of Commands How do you delay execution of the commands in SQL Server – ofcourse by using WAITFOR keyword. In this blog post, I explain the same with the help of T-SQL script. Find Length of Text Field To measure the length of TEXT fields the function is DATALENGTH(textfield). Len will not work for text field. As of SQL Server 2005, developers should migrate all the text fields to VARCHAR(MAX) as that is the way forward. Retrieve Current Date Time in SQL Server CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} There are three ways to retrieve the current datetime in SQL SERVER. CURRENT_TIMESTAMP, GETDATE(), {fn NOW()} Explanation and Comparison of NULLIF and ISNULL An interesting observation is NULLIF returns null if it comparison is successful, whereas ISNULL returns not null if its comparison is successful. In one way they are opposite to each other. Here is my question to you - How to create infinite loop using NULLIF and ISNULL? If this is even possible? 2008 Introduction to SERVERPROPERTY and example SERVERPROPERTY is a very interesting system function. It returns many of the system values. I use it very frequently to get different server values like Server Collation, Server Name etc. SQL Server Start Time We can use DMV to find out what is the start time of SQL Server in 2008 and later version. In this blog you can see how you can do the same. Find Current Identity of Table Many times we need to know what is the current identity of the column. I have found one of my developers using aggregated function MAX () to find the current identity. However, I prefer following DBCC command to figure out current identity. Create Check Constraint on Column Some time we just need to create a simple constraint over the table but I have noticed that developers do many different things to make table column follow rules than just creating constraint. I suggest constraint is a very useful concept and every SQL Developer should pay good attention to this subject. 2009 List Schema Name and Table Name for Database This is one of the blog post where I straight forward display script. One of the kind of blog posts, which I still love to read and write. Clustered Index on Separate Drive From Table Location A table devoid of primary key index is called heap, and here data is not arranged in a particular order, which gives rise to issues that adversely affect performance. Data must be stored in some kind of order. If we put clustered index on it then the order will be forced by that index and the data will be stored in that particular order. Understanding Table Hints with Examples Hints are options and strong suggestions specified for enforcement by the SQL Server query processor on DML statements. The hints override any execution plan the query optimizer might select for a query. 2010 Data Pages in Buffer Pool – Data Stored in Memory Cache One of my earlier year article, which I still read it many times and point developers to read it again. It is clear from the Resultset that when more than one index is used, datapages related to both or all of the indexes are stored in Memory Cache separately. TRANSACTION, DML and Schema Locks Can you create a situation where you can see Schema Lock? Well, this is a very simple question, however during the interview I notice over 50 candidates failed to come up with the scenario. In this blog post, I have demonstrated the situation where we can see the schema lock in database. 2011 Solution – Puzzle – Statistics are not updated but are Created Once In this example I have created following situation: Create Table Insert 1000 Records Check the Statistics Now insert 10 times more 10,000 indexes Check the Statistics – it will be NOT updated Auto Update Statistics and Auto Create Statistics for database is TRUE Now I have requested two things in the example 1) Why this is happening? 2) How to fix this issue? Selecting Domain from Email Address This is a straight to script blog post where I explain how to select only domain name from entire email address. Solution – Generating Zero Without using Any Numbers in T-SQL How to get zero digit without using any digit? This is indeed a very interesting question and the answer is even interesting. Try to come up with answer in next 10 minutes and if you can’t come up with the answer the blog post read this post for solution. 2012 Simple Explanation and Puzzle with SOUNDEX Function and DIFFERENCE Function In simple words - SOUNDEX converts an alphanumeric string to a four-character code to find similar-sounding words or names. DIFFERENCE function returns an integer value. The  integer returned is the number of characters in the SOUNDEX values that are the same. Read Only Files and SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) I have come across a very interesting feature in SSMS related to “Read Only” files. I believe it is a little unknown feature as well so decided to write a blog about the same. Identifying Column Data Type of uniqueidentifier without Querying System Tables How do I know if any table has a uniqueidentifier column and what is its value without using any DMV or System Catalogues? Only information you know is the table name and you are allowed to return any kind of error if the table does not have uniqueidentifier column. Read the blog post to find the answer. Solution – User Not Able to See Any User Created Object in Tables – Security and Permissions Issue Interesting question – “When I try to connect to SQL Server, it lets me connect just fine as well let me open and explore the database. I noticed that I do not see any user created instances but when my colleague attempts to connect to the server, he is able to explore the database as well see all the user created tables and other objects. Can you help me fix it?” Importing CSV File Into Database – SQL in Sixty Seconds #018 – Video Here is interesting small 60 second video on how to import CSV file into Database. ColumnStore Index – Batch Mode vs Row Mode Here is the logic behind when Columnstore Index uses Batch Mode and when it uses Row Mode. A batch typically represents about 1000 rows of data. Batch mode processing also uses algorithms that are optimized for the multicore CPUs and increased memory throughput. Follow up – Usage of $rowguid and $IDENTITY This is an excellent follow up blog post of my earlier blog post where I explain where to use $rowguid and $identity.  If you do not know the difference between them, this is a blog with a script example. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Store a formula in a table and use the formula in a javascript/PHP function

    - by Muhaimin Abdul
    I have a MySql database where part of it handles instrument's depth of water. Each instrument has its own formula of calculation how depth the water when the operator collect the reading I stored the formula for each instrument in database/MySql. Example formula: [55-57] this is the simple minus operation, where the number is actually represent the id of a row. How do I represent those number with id of a row and later convert it to javascript readable code. I simply want to do keyup event where everytime user key in something into text field then the other part of HTML would reflect changes based on formula that I fetched from database FYI, I'm using BackboneJS together with RequireJS

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  • Running Multiple Queries in Oracle SQL Developer

    - by thatjeffsmith
    There are two methods for running queries in SQL Developer: Run Statement Run Statement, Shift+Enter, F9, or this button Run Script No grids, just script (SQL*Plus like) ouput is fine, thank you very much! What’s the Difference? There are some obvious differences between the two features, the most obvious being the format of the output delivered. But there are some other, more subtle differences here, primarily around fetching. What is Fetch? After you run send your query to Oracle, it has to do 3 things: Parse Execute Fetch Technically it has to do at least 2 things, and sometimes only 1. But, to get the data back to the user, the fetch must occur. If you have a 10 row query or a 1,000,000 row query, this can mean 1 or many fetches in groups of records. Ok, before I went on the Fetch tangent, I said there were two ways to run statements in SQL Developer: Run Statement Run statement brings your query results to a grid with a single fetch. The user sees 50, 100, 500, etc rows come back, but SQL Developer and the database know that there are more rows waiting to be retrieved. The process on the server that was used to execute the query is still hanging around too. To alleviate this, increase your fetch size to 500. Every query ran will come back with the first 500 rows, and rows will be continued to be fetched in 500 row increments. You’ll then see most of your ad hoc queries complete with a single fetch. Scroll down, or hit Ctrl+End to force a full fetch and get all your rows back. Run Script Run Script runs the contents of the worksheet (or what’s highlighted) as a ‘script.’ What does that mean exactly? Think of this as being equivalent to running this in SQL*Plus: @my_script.sql; Each statement is executed. Also, ALL rows are fetched. So once it’s finished executing, there are no open cursors left around. The more obvious difference here is that the output comes back formatted as plain old text. Run one or more commands plus SQL*Plus commands like SET and SPOOL The Trick: Run Statement Works With Multiple Statements! It says ‘run statement,’ but if you select more than one with your mouse and hit the button – it will run each and throw the results to 1 grid for each statement. If you mouse hover over the Query Result panel tab, SQL Developer will tell you the query used to populate that grid. This will work regardless of what you have this preference set to: DATABASE – WORKSHEET – SHOW QUERY RESULTS IN NEW TABS Mind the fetch though! Close those cursors by bring back all the records or closing the grids when you’re done with them.

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  • What is safe to exclude for a full system backup?

    - by seb
    Hi, I'm looking for a list which paths/files are safe to exclude for a full system/home backup. Considering that I have a list of installed packages. /home/*/.thumbnails /home/*/.cache /home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/Cache /home/*/.mozilla/firefox/*.default/OfflineCache /home/*/.local/share/Trash /home/*/.gvfs/ /tmp/ /var/tmp/ not real folders but can cause severe problems when 'restoring' /dev /proc /sys What about... /var/ in general? /var/backups/ - can get quite large /var/log/ - does not require much space and can help for later comparison /lost+found/

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  • Design review for application facing memory issues

    - by Mr Moose
    I apologise in advance for the length of this post, but I want to paint an accurate picture of the problems my app is facing and then pose some questions below; I am trying to address some self inflicted design pain that is now leading to my application crashing due to out of memory errors. An abridged description of the problem domain is as follows; The application takes in a “dataset” that consists of numerous text files containing related data An individual text file within the dataset usually contains approx 20 “headers” that contain metadata about the data it contains. It also contains a large tab delimited section containing data that is related to data in one of the other text files contained within the dataset. The number of columns per file is very variable from 2 to 256+ columns. The original application was written to allow users to load a dataset, map certain columns of each of the files which basically indicating key information on the files to show how they are related as well as identify a few expected column names. Once this is done, a validation process takes place to enforce various rules and ensure that all the relationships between the files are valid. Once that is done, the data is imported into a SQL Server database. The database design is an EAV (Entity-Attribute-Value) model used to cater for the variable columns per file. I know EAV has its detractors, but in this case, I feel it was a reasonable choice given the disparate data and variable number of columns submitted in each dataset. The memory problem Given the fact the combined size of all text files was at most about 5 megs, and in an effort to reduce the database transaction time, it was decided to read ALL the data from files into memory and then perform the following; perform all the validation whilst the data was in memory relate it using an object model Start DB transaction and write the key columns row by row, noting the Id of the written row (all tables in the database utilise identity columns), then the Id of the newly written row is applied to all related data Once all related data had been updated with the key information to which it relates, these records are written using SqlBulkCopy. Due to our EAV model, we essentially have; x columns by y rows to write, where x can by 256+ and rows are often into the tens of thousands. Once all the data is written without error (can take several minutes for large datasets), Commit the transaction. The problem now comes from the fact we are now receiving individual files containing over 30 megs of data. In a dataset, we can receive any number of files. We’ve started seen datasets of around 100 megs coming in and I expect it is only going to get bigger from here on in. With files of this size, data can’t even be read into memory without the app falling over, let alone be validated and imported. I anticipate having to modify large chunks of the code to allow validation to occur by parsing files line by line and am not exactly decided on how to handle the import and transactions. Potential improvements I’ve wondered about using GUIDs to relate the data rather than relying on identity fields. This would allow data to be related prior to writing to the database. This would certainly increase the storage required though. Especially in an EAV design. Would you think this is a reasonable thing to try, or do I simply persist with identity fields (natural keys can’t be trusted to be unique across all submitters). Use of staging tables to get data into the database and only performing the transaction to copy data from staging area to actual destination tables. Questions For systems like this that import large quantities of data, how to you go about keeping transactions small. I’ve kept them as small as possible in the current design, but they are still active for several minutes and write hundreds of thousands of records in one transaction. Is there a better solution? The tab delimited data section is read into a DataTable to be viewed in a grid. I don’t need the full functionality of a DataTable, so I suspect it is overkill. Is there anyway to turn off various features of DataTables to make them more lightweight? Are there any other obvious things you would do in this situation to minimise the memory footprint of the application described above? Thanks for your kind attention.

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  • xsltproc killed, out of memory

    - by David Parks
    I'm trying to split up a 13GB xml file into small ~50MB xml files with this XSLT style sheet. But this process kills xsltproc after I see it taking up over 1.7GB of memory (that's the total on the system). Is there any way to deal with huge XML files with xsltproc? Can I change my style sheet? Or should I use a different processor? Or am I just S.O.L.? <xsl:stylesheet xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform" version="1.0" xmlns:exsl="http://exslt.org/common" extension-element-prefixes="exsl" xmlns:fn="http://www.w3.org/2005/xpath-functions"> <xsl:output method="xml" indent="yes"/> <xsl:strip-space elements="*"/> <xsl:param name="block-size" select="75000"/> <xsl:template match="/"> <xsl:copy> <xsl:apply-templates select="mysqldump/database/table_data/row[position() mod $block-size = 1]" /> </xsl:copy> </xsl:template> <xsl:template match="row"> <exsl:document href="chunk-{position()}.xml"> <add> <xsl:for-each select=". | following-sibling::row[position() &lt; $block-size]" > <doc> <xsl:for-each select="field"> <field> <xsl:attribute name="name"><xsl:value-of select="./@name"/></xsl:attribute> <xsl:value-of select="."/> </field> <xsl:text>&#xa;</xsl:text> </xsl:for-each> </doc> </xsl:for-each> </add> </exsl:document> </xsl:template>

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  • Building Private IaaS with SPARC and Oracle Solaris

    - by ferhat
    A superior enterprise cloud infrastructure with high performing systems using built-in virtualization! We are happy to announce the expansion of Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure with Oracle's SPARC T-Series servers and Oracle Solaris.  Designed, tuned, tested and fully documented, the Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure now offers customers looking to upgrade, consolidate and virtualize their existing SPARC-based infrastructure a proven foundation for private cloud-based services which can lower TCO by up to 81 percent(1). Faster time to service, reduce deployment time from weeks to days, and can increase system utilization to 80 percent. The Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure can also be deployed at up to 50 percent lower cost over five years than comparable alternatives(2). The expanded solution announced today combines Oracle’s latest SPARC T-Series servers; Oracle Solaris 11, the first cloud OS; Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle’s Sun ZFS Storage Appliance, and, Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c, which manages all Oracle system technologies, streamlining cloud infrastructure management. Thank you to all who stopped by Oracle booth at the CloudExpo Conference in New York. We were also at Cloud Boot Camp: Building Private IaaS with Oracle Solaris and SPARC, discussing how this solution can maximize return on investment and help organizations manage costs for their existing infrastructures or for new enterprise cloud infrastructure design. Designed, tuned, and tested, Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure is a complete cloud infrastructure or any virtualized environment  using the proven documented best practices for deployment and optimization. The solution addresses each layer of the infrastructure stack using Oracle's powerful SPARC T-Series as well as x86 servers with storage, network, virtualization, and management configurations to provide a robust, flexible, and balanced foundation for your enterprise applications and databases.  For more information visit Oracle Optimized Solution for Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure. Solution Brief: Accelerating Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Deployments White Paper: Reduce Complexity and Accelerate Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure Deployments Technical White Paper: Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure on SPARC (1) Comparison based on current SPARC server customers consolidating existing installations including Sun Fire E4900, Sun Fire V440 and SPARC Enterprise T5240 servers to latest generation SPARC T4 servers. Actual deployments and configurations will vary. (2) Comparison based on solution with SPARC T4-2 servers with Oracle Solaris and Oracle VM Server for SPARC versus HP ProLiant DL380 G7 with VMware and Red Hat Enterprise Linux and IBM Power 720 Express - Power 730 Express with IBM AIX Enterprise Edition and Power VM.

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  • 8-Puzzle Solution executes infinitely [migrated]

    - by Ashwin
    I am looking for a solution to 8-puzzle problem using the A* Algorithm. I found this project on the internet. Please see the files - proj1 and EightPuzzle. The proj1 contains the entry point for the program(the main() function) and EightPuzzle describes a particular state of the puzzle. Each state is an object of the 8-puzzle. I feel that there is nothing wrong in the logic. But it loops forever for these two inputs that I have tried : {8,2,7,5,1,6,3,0,4} and {3,1,6,8,4,5,7,2,0}. Both of them are valid input states. What is wrong with the code? Note For better viewing copy the code in a Notepad++ or some other text editor(which has the capability to recognize java source file) because there are lot of comments in the code. Since A* requires a heuristic, they have provided the option of using manhattan distance and a heuristic that calculates the number of misplaced tiles. And to ensure that the best heuristic is executed first, they have implemented a PriorityQueue. The compareTo() function is implemented in the EightPuzzle class. The input to the program can be changed by changing the value of p1d in the main() function of proj1 class. The reason I am telling that there exists solution for the two my above inputs is because the applet here solves them. Please ensure that you select 8-puzzle from teh options in the applet. EDITI gave this input {0,5,7,6,8,1,2,4,3}. It took about 10 seconds and gave a result with 26 moves. But the applet gave a result with 24 moves in 0.0001 seconds with A*. For quick reference I have pasted the the two classes without the comments : EightPuzzle import java.util.*; public class EightPuzzle implements Comparable <Object> { int[] puzzle = new int[9]; int h_n= 0; int hueristic_type = 0; int g_n = 0; int f_n = 0; EightPuzzle parent = null; public EightPuzzle(int[] p, int h_type, int cost) { this.puzzle = p; this.hueristic_type = h_type; this.h_n = (h_type == 1) ? h1(p) : h2(p); this.g_n = cost; this.f_n = h_n + g_n; } public int getF_n() { return f_n; } public void setParent(EightPuzzle input) { this.parent = input; } public EightPuzzle getParent() { return this.parent; } public int inversions() { /* * Definition: For any other configuration besides the goal, * whenever a tile with a greater number on it precedes a * tile with a smaller number, the two tiles are said to be inverted */ int inversion = 0; for(int i = 0; i < this.puzzle.length; i++ ) { for(int j = 0; j < i; j++) { if(this.puzzle[i] != 0 && this.puzzle[j] != 0) { if(this.puzzle[i] < this.puzzle[j]) inversion++; } } } return inversion; } public int h1(int[] list) // h1 = the number of misplaced tiles { int gn = 0; for(int i = 0; i < list.length; i++) { if(list[i] != i && list[i] != 0) gn++; } return gn; } public LinkedList<EightPuzzle> getChildren() { LinkedList<EightPuzzle> children = new LinkedList<EightPuzzle>(); int loc = 0; int temparray[] = new int[this.puzzle.length]; EightPuzzle rightP, upP, downP, leftP; while(this.puzzle[loc] != 0) { loc++; } if(loc % 3 == 0){ temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc + 1]; temparray[loc + 1] = 0; rightP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); rightP.setParent(this); children.add(rightP); }else if(loc % 3 == 1){ //add one child swaps with right temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc + 1]; temparray[loc + 1] = 0; rightP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); rightP.setParent(this); children.add(rightP); //add one child swaps with left temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc - 1]; temparray[loc - 1] = 0; leftP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); leftP.setParent(this); children.add(leftP); }else if(loc % 3 == 2){ // add one child swaps with left temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc - 1]; temparray[loc - 1] = 0; leftP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); leftP.setParent(this); children.add(leftP); } if(loc / 3 == 0){ //add one child swaps with lower temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc + 3]; temparray[loc + 3] = 0; downP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); downP.setParent(this); children.add(downP); }else if(loc / 3 == 1 ){ //add one child, swap with upper temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc - 3]; temparray[loc - 3] = 0; upP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); upP.setParent(this); children.add(upP); //add one child, swap with lower temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc + 3]; temparray[loc + 3] = 0; downP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); downP.setParent(this); children.add(downP); }else if (loc / 3 == 2 ){ //add one child, swap with upper temparray = this.puzzle.clone(); temparray[loc] = temparray[loc - 3]; temparray[loc - 3] = 0; upP = new EightPuzzle(temparray, this.hueristic_type, this.g_n + 1); upP.setParent(this); children.add(upP); } return children; } public int h2(int[] list) // h2 = the sum of the distances of the tiles from their goal positions // for each item find its goal position // calculate how many positions it needs to move to get into that position { int gn = 0; int row = 0; int col = 0; for(int i = 0; i < list.length; i++) { if(list[i] != 0) { row = list[i] / 3; col = list[i] % 3; row = Math.abs(row - (i / 3)); col = Math.abs(col - (i % 3)); gn += row; gn += col; } } return gn; } public String toString() { String x = ""; for(int i = 0; i < this.puzzle.length; i++){ x += puzzle[i] + " "; if((i + 1) % 3 == 0) x += "\n"; } return x; } public int compareTo(Object input) { if (this.f_n < ((EightPuzzle) input).getF_n()) return -1; else if (this.f_n > ((EightPuzzle) input).getF_n()) return 1; return 0; } public boolean equals(EightPuzzle test){ if(this.f_n != test.getF_n()) return false; for(int i = 0 ; i < this.puzzle.length; i++) { if(this.puzzle[i] != test.puzzle[i]) return false; } return true; } public boolean mapEquals(EightPuzzle test){ for(int i = 0 ; i < this.puzzle.length; i++) { if(this.puzzle[i] != test.puzzle[i]) return false; } return true; } } proj1 import java.util.*; public class proj1 { /** * @param args */ public static void main(String[] args) { int[] p1d = {1, 4, 2, 3, 0, 5, 6, 7, 8}; int hueristic = 2; EightPuzzle start = new EightPuzzle(p1d, hueristic, 0); int[] win = { 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8}; EightPuzzle goal = new EightPuzzle(win, hueristic, 0); astar(start, goal); } public static void astar(EightPuzzle start, EightPuzzle goal) { if(start.inversions() % 2 == 1) { System.out.println("Unsolvable"); return; } // function A*(start,goal) // closedset := the empty set // The set of nodes already evaluated. LinkedList<EightPuzzle> closedset = new LinkedList<EightPuzzle>(); // openset := set containing the initial node // The set of tentative nodes to be evaluated. priority queue PriorityQueue<EightPuzzle> openset = new PriorityQueue<EightPuzzle>(); openset.add(start); while(openset.size() > 0){ // x := the node in openset having the lowest f_score[] value EightPuzzle x = openset.peek(); // if x = goal if(x.mapEquals(goal)) { // return reconstruct_path(came_from, came_from[goal]) Stack<EightPuzzle> toDisplay = reconstruct(x); System.out.println("Printing solution... "); System.out.println(start.toString()); print(toDisplay); return; } // remove x from openset // add x to closedset closedset.add(openset.poll()); LinkedList <EightPuzzle> neighbor = x.getChildren(); // foreach y in neighbor_nodes(x) while(neighbor.size() > 0) { EightPuzzle y = neighbor.removeFirst(); // if y in closedset if(closedset.contains(y)){ // continue continue; } // tentative_g_score := g_score[x] + dist_between(x,y) // // if y not in openset if(!closedset.contains(y)){ // add y to openset openset.add(y); // } // } // } } public static void print(Stack<EightPuzzle> x) { while(!x.isEmpty()) { EightPuzzle temp = x.pop(); System.out.println(temp.toString()); } } public static Stack<EightPuzzle> reconstruct(EightPuzzle winner) { Stack<EightPuzzle> correctOutput = new Stack<EightPuzzle>(); while(winner.getParent() != null) { correctOutput.add(winner); winner = winner.getParent(); } return correctOutput; } }

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  • Corona SDK: Quality of support and resources?

    - by Nick Wiggill
    I've not used Corona SDK before and am looking into it for a friend. (He is also considering Unity.) I wonder what the support is like for Corona? While Unity has a great many customers and so the Unity team can often not address issues directly, the community at large is very helpful and there are many excellent resources: tutorials, forum posts, code resources. What is Corona like in this regard, and by comparison?

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  • Slick2D: Animation not being parsed from spritesheet correctly

    - by user2066880
    I have a 960x960 spritesheet with each tile being 192x192. I initialized my spritesheet and animation like so: spritesheet = new SpriteSheet("resources/spritesheets/player.png", 192, 192); walkingLeft = new Animation(spritesheet, 3, 0, 0, 1, true, 20, true); When I attempt to render the animation, I get a java.lang.ArrayIndexOutOfBoundsException: -1 error. This error doesn't occur when I'm creating an animation from images in the same row. Therefore, I'm assuming that the error is being caused because of the way Slick is handling horizontal scanning (going to the next row after reaching the end).

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  • deciphering columnar transposition cipher

    - by Arfan M
    I am looking for an idea on how to decipher a columnar transposition cipher without knowing the key or the length of the key. When I take the cipher text as input to my algorithm I will guess the length of the key to be the factors of the length of the cipher text. I will take the first factor suppose the length was 20 letters so I will take 2*10 (2 rows and 10 columns). Now I want to arrange the cipher text in the columns and read it row wise to see if there is any word forming and match it with a dictionary if it is something sensible. If it matches the dictionary then it means it is in correct order or else I want to know how to make other combinations of the columns and read the string again row wise. Please suggest another approach that is more efficient.

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  • A WPF Image/Text Button

    - by psheriff
    Some of our customers are asking us to give them a Windows 8 look and feel for their applications. This includes things like buttons, tiles, application bars, and other features. In this blog post I will describe how to create a button that looks similar to those you will find in a Windows 8 application bar. In Figure 1 you can see two different kinds of buttons. In the top row is a WPF button where the content of the button includes a Border, an Image and a TextBlock. In the bottom row are four...(read more)

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  • To Bit or Not To Bit

    - by Johnm
    'Twas a long day of troubleshooting and firefighting and now, with most of the office vacant, you face a blank scripting window to create a new table in his database. Many questions circle your mind like dirty water gurgling down the bathtub drain: "How normalized should this table be?", "Should I use an identity column?", "NVarchar or Varchar?", "Should this column be NULLABLE?", "I wonder what apple blue cheese bacon cheesecake tastes like?" Well, there are times when the mind goes it's own direction. A Bit About Bit At some point during your table creation efforts you will encounter the decision of whether to use the bit data type for a column. The bit data type is an integer data type that recognizes only the values of 1, 0 and NULL as valid. This data type is often utilized to store yes/no or true/false values. An example of its use would be a column called [IsGasoline] which would be intended to contain the value of 1 if the row's subject (a car) had a gasoline engine and a 0 if the subject did not have a gasoline engine. The bit data type can even be found in some of the system tables of SQL Server. For example, the sysssispackages table in the msdb database which contains SQL Server Integration Services Package information for the packages stored in SQL Server. This table contains a column called [IsEncrypted]. A value of 1 indicates that the package has been encrypted while the value of 0 indicates that it is not. I have learned that the most effective way to disperse the crowd that surrounds the office coffee machine is to engage into SQL Server debates. The bit data type has been one of the most reoccurring, as well as the most enjoyable, of these topics. It contains a practical side and a philosophical side. Practical Consideration This data type certainly has its place and is a valuable option for database design; but it is often used in situations where the answer is really not a pure true/false response. In addition, true/false values are not very informative or scalable. Let's use the previously noted [IsGasoline] column for illustration. While on the surface it appears to be a rather simple question when evaluating a car: "Does the car have a gasoline engine?" If the person entering data is entering a row for a Jeep Liberty, the response would be a 1 since it has a gasoline engine. If the person is entering data is entering a row for a Chevrolet Volt, the response would be a 0 since it is an electric engine. What happens when a person is entering a row for the gasoline/electric hybrid Toyota Prius? Would one person's conclusion be consistent with another person's conclusion? The argument could be made that the current intent for the database is to be used only for pure gasoline and pure electric engines; but this is where the scalability issue comes into play. With the use of a bit data type a database modification and data conversion would be required if the business decided to take on hybrid engines. Whereas, alternatively, if the int data type were used as a foreign key to a reference table containing the engine type options, the change to include the hybrid option would only require an entry into the reference table. Philosophical Consideration Since the bit data type is often used for true/false or yes/no data (also called Boolean) it presents a philosophical conundrum of what to do about the allowance of the NULL value. The inclusion of NULL in a true/false or yes/no response simply violates the logical principle of bivalence which states that "every proposition is either true or false". If NULL is not true, then it must be false. The mathematical laws of Boolean logic support this concept by stating that the only valid values of this scenario are 1 and 0. There is another way to look at this conundrum: NULL is also considered to be the absence of a response. In other words, it is the equivalent to "undecided". Anyone who watches the news can tell you that polls always include an "undecided" option. This could be considered a valid option in the world of yes/no/dunno. Through out all of these considerations I have discovered one absolute certainty: When you have found a person, or group of persons, who are willing to entertain a philosophical debate of the bit data type, you have found some true friends.

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  • Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - CLR metadata 2

    - by Simon Cooper
    Before we look any further at the CLR metadata, we need a quick diversion to understand how the metadata is actually stored. Encoding table information As an example, we'll have a look at a row in the TypeDef table. According to the spec, each TypeDef consists of the following: Flags specifying various properties of the class, including visibility. The name of the type. The namespace of the type. What type this type extends. The field list of this type. The method list of this type. How is all this data actually represented? Offset & RID encoding Most assemblies don't need to use a 4 byte value to specify heap offsets and RIDs everywhere, however we can't hard-code every offset and RID to be 2 bytes long as there could conceivably be more than 65535 items in a heap or more than 65535 fields or types defined in an assembly. So heap offsets and RIDs are only represented in the full 4 bytes if it is required; in the header information at the top of the #~ stream are 3 bits indicating if the #Strings, #GUID, or #Blob heaps use 2 or 4 bytes (the #US stream is not accessed from metadata), and the rowcount of each table. If the rowcount for a particular table is greater than 65535 then all RIDs referencing that table throughout the metadata use 4 bytes, else only 2 bytes are used. Coded tokens Not every field in a table row references a single predefined table. For example, in the TypeDef extends field, a type can extend another TypeDef (a type in the same assembly), a TypeRef (a type in a different assembly), or a TypeSpec (an instantiation of a generic type). A token would have to be used to let us specify the table along with the RID. Tokens are always 4 bytes long; again, this is rather wasteful of space. Cutting the RID down to 2 bytes would make each token 3 bytes long, which isn't really an optimum size for computers to read from memory or disk. However, every use of a token in the metadata tables can only point to a limited subset of the metadata tables. For the extends field, we only need to be able to specify one of 3 tables, which we can do using 2 bits: 0x0: TypeDef 0x1: TypeRef 0x2: TypeSpec We could therefore compress the 4-byte token that would otherwise be needed into a coded token of type TypeDefOrRef. For each type of coded token, the least significant bits encode the table the token points to, and the rest of the bits encode the RID within that table. We can work out whether each type of coded token needs 2 or 4 bytes to represent it by working out whether the maximum RID of every table that the coded token type can point to will fit in the space available. The space available for the RID depends on the type of coded token; a TypeOrMethodDef coded token only needs 1 bit to specify the table, leaving 15 bits available for the RID before a 4-byte representation is needed, whereas a HasCustomAttribute coded token can point to one of 18 different tables, and so needs 5 bits to specify the table, only leaving 11 bits for the RID before 4 bytes are needed to represent that coded token type. For example, a 2-byte TypeDefOrRef coded token with the value 0x0321 has the following bit pattern: 0 3 2 1 0000 0011 0010 0001 The first two bits specify the table - TypeRef; the other bits specify the RID. Because we've used the first two bits, we've got to shift everything along two bits: 000000 1100 1000 This gives us a RID of 0xc8. If any one of the TypeDef, TypeRef or TypeSpec tables had more than 16383 rows (2^14 - 1), then 4 bytes would need to be used to represent all TypeDefOrRef coded tokens throughout the metadata tables. Lists The third representation we need to consider is 1-to-many references; each TypeDef refers to a list of FieldDef and MethodDef belonging to that type. If we were to specify every FieldDef and MethodDef individually then each TypeDef would be very large and a variable size, which isn't ideal. There is a way of specifying a list of references without explicitly specifying every item; if we order the MethodDef and FieldDef tables by the owning type, then the field list and method list in a TypeDef only have to be a single RID pointing at the first FieldDef or MethodDef belonging to that type; the end of the list can be inferred by the field list and method list RIDs of the next row in the TypeDef table. Going back to the TypeDef If we have a look back at the definition of a TypeDef, we end up with the following reprensentation for each row: Flags - always 4 bytes Name - a #Strings heap offset. Namespace - a #Strings heap offset. Extends - a TypeDefOrRef coded token. FieldList - a single RID to the FieldDef table. MethodList - a single RID to the MethodDef table. So, depending on the number of entries in the heaps and tables within the assembly, the rows in the TypeDef table can be as small as 14 bytes, or as large as 24 bytes. Now we've had a look at how information is encoded within the metadata tables, in the next post we can see how they are arranged on disk.

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  • Spotlight on RIVA: CRM integration for Oracle CRM on Demand and Microsoft Exchange

    - by Richard Lefebvre
    Introducing Riva from Omni - an Oracle ISV partner specializing in Enterprise Management and Integration Solutions Riva delivers advanced, server-side integration for Oracle CRM On Demand and Microsoft Exchange or even Novell GroupWise. Riva allows Oracle customers to go beyond the standard Outlook plug-in to deliver additional value for the end user as they interact between Outlook and CRM On Demand. Riva syncs CRM On Demand to ALL Exchange mail apps, not just Windows Outlook.  So, whether customers are using Outlook 2010, Outlook Web Access (web client), Outlook 2011 for Mac, Apple Mail, Outlook on Citrix  or a mobile device, Riva's got them covered. There are no plug-ins to be installed, configured, managed and maintained on users' desktops, laptops as Riva delivers Server-side synchronisation for CRMOD and Exchange. The automation of CRM and Outlook integration will remove the reliance upon users to synchronise between the two with Riva handling this process. Riva allows administrators to define sync policies and apply them to individuals or groups of users depending on their sync requirements. Administrators will be able to determine and manage the exposure of the most pertinent detail to be synchronised between Outlook and CRM On Demand. Custom and organic contact filtering for large deployments i.e. Based on ownership, groupings and contact frequency, filters can be applied on what contact records are shared with the users. Riva provides the capability to synchronise CRM and Outlook beyond Contacts, Calendar entries and Email. The synchronisation can be extended to cater for  opportunities, quotes and custom objects for example within the Outlook interface. Riva SmartConvert Folders can automate the creation of opportunities and associated contacts for example if they don't already exist. This can facilitate a reduction in manual detail entry through quick association whilst also benefiting user adoption. From a mobile perspective, Riva allows users to view and manage their CRM On Demand contacts, calendar, tasks, opportunities and cases from iPad, iPhone, Android and BlackBerry devices.  Again, there are no mobile apps or additional plugins to install, configure or manage. We sync CRM On Demand to Exchange.  Because the mobile device is connected to an Exchange mailbox, the information automatically syncs down to the native address book, calendar and mail apps on the smartphone or tablet. Riva Datasheet for CRM On Demand Riva Brochure – Oracle CRM On Demand  Technical Knowledgebase & Riva Trial  http://kb.omni-ts.com/47/ Comparison to Outlook Plug-ins Riva Diagram – Riva Comparison with Outlook Plug-ins Contact: Wolfgang Berger - [email protected]

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