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  • Real Excel Templates 1.5

    - by Tim Dexter
    Not the next installment quite yet, just an update from what I knew yesterday. Right after I posted the Real Excel Templates I. Mike from the PM team got in touch to say he and Shirley had just had a meeting with a customer about the Excel Templates and all the fab features. He included BIPs extended functions, data pre-processing, sub templates and other functionality which was great new news. One caveat, much of the really new stuff, is not quite out in the wild yet. Will let you know as soon as I know more. Shirley and I shared a conversation around being able to re-group data in the templates. It's one of the most powerful features of the RTF template. Providing the ultimate flexibility in layouts. As I wrote yesterday, you need hierarchical data for Excel templates. I stand corrected, 'Of course you can do that in Excel, here's an example' said Shirley 'Very cunning Shirley, very cunning' says I. You can basically use the hidden sheet to re-group the data using native XSL. I'll cover the 'how' later. As you can see Excel templates are the new 'black' with lots of attention and more importantly development cycles to take them forward. Looks like we are going to have a great weekend weather wise here in Colorado. The yard work and pond are beckoning. Maybe the trout will be rising and I can give my rusty fly casting skills a run for their money. I need some stupid fish thou :0) See ya'll next week!

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  • Developing professionally for iOS, Android and web - an insight

    - by Scott Roberts
    This is not really a question on how to develop all three, I know various cross platform ways and so on. But I more want to know from developer standpoint how hard it is to basically develop iOS, Android and web apps? I am currently in my first job as a mobile/web developer. I have already developed my first iPhone/iPad app and now I have to develop the app for android because the web version I tried just didn't perform as well as needed and web databases just did not seem to make the cut. But I am not sure it's possible to be good at developing all 3 in terms of remembering all the api's etc. I wouldn't say I have an issue with the programming languages just how to use the api's for the various platforms. Also, all the other languages I look at, in my spare time, just feel like I am spreading myself to thin. Is it feasible for one person to be developing ios, android and web apps? Should I think about reducing it to iOS and web based apps? I develop everything by myself, so I have no one to discuss what the best solutions are for everything and I am just trying to workout as I go along. So any cross platform developers out there? Do companies have different teams for different platforms? Any insight would just help me get my head together. Hopefully this question makes sense.

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  • Is It Time To Specialize?

    - by Tim Murphy
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/18/is-it-time-to-specialize.aspx Over my career I have made a living as a generalist.  I have been a jack of all trades and a master of none.  It has served me well in that I am able to move from one technology to the other quickly and make myself productive.  Where it becomes a problem is deep knowledge.  I am constantly digging for the things that aren’t basic knowledge.  How do you make a product like WCF or Windows RT do more than just “Hello World”? As an architect I need to be a jack of all trades.  This is what helps me to bring the big picture of a project into focus for developers with different skills to accomplish the goals of the project. It is a key when the mix technologies crosses Windows, Unix and Mainframe with different languages and databases.  The larger the company that the project is for the more likely this scenario will arise. As a consultant and a developer I need to have specialized skills in order to get the job done efficiently.  if I have a SharePoint or Windows Phone project knowing the object model details and possible roadblocks of the technology allow me to stay within budgets as well as better advise the client on technology decisions. What is the solution?  Constant learning and associating with developers who specialize in a variety of technologies is the best thing you can do.  You may have thought you were done with classes when you left college, but in this industry you need to constantly be learning new products and languages.  The ultimate answer is you must generally specialize.  Learn as many subject areas as possible, but go deep when ever you can.  Sleep is overrated.  Good luck. del.icio.us Tags: software development,software architecture,specialization,generalist

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  • C# XNA: Effecient mesh building algorithm for voxel based terrain ("top" outside layer only, non-destructible)

    - by Tim Hatch
    To put this bluntly, for non-destructible/non-constructible voxel style terrain, are generated meshes handled much better than instancing? Is there another method to achieve millions of visible quad faces per scene with ease? If generated meshes per chunk is the way to go, what kind of algorithm might I want to use based on only EVER needing the outer layer rendered? I'm using 3D Perlin Noise for terrain generation (for overhangs/caves/etc). The layout is fantastic, but even for around 20k visible faces, it's quite slow using instancing (whether it's one big draw call or multiple smaller chunks). I've simplified it to the point of removing non-visible cubes and only having the top faces of my cube-like terrain be rendered, but with 20k quad instances, it's still pretty sluggish (30fps on my machine). My goal is for the world to be made using quite small cubes. Where multiple games (IE: Minecraft) have the player 1x1 cube in width/length and 2 high, I'm shooting for 6x6 width/length and 9 high. With a lot of advantages as far as gameplay goes, it also means I could quite easily have a single scene with millions of truly visible quads. So, I have been trying to look into changing my method from instancing to mesh generation on a chunk by chunk basis. Do video cards handle this type of processing better than separate quads/cubes through instancing? What kind of existing algorithms should I be looking into? I've seen references to marching cubes a few times now, but I haven't spent much time investigating it since I don't know if it's the better route for my situation or not. I'm also starting to doubt my need of using 3D Perlin noise for terrain generation since I won't want the kind of depth it would seem best at. I just like the idea of overhangs and occasional cave-like structures, but could find no better 'surface only' algorithms to cover that. If anyone has any better suggestions there, feel free to throw them at me too. Thanks, Mythics

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  • How to fix AVI index error

    - by Tim
    I try to open an AVI file. The first software I tried is VLC media player. It reports some error about AVI index: This AVI file is broken. Seeking will not work correctly. Do you want to try to fix it? This might take a long time. I chose yes, and it began fixing AVI index and existed when the repair progress bar reaches 20% or so. Then the video started playing and stopped much earlier than when it is supposed to finish. Next I tried to open it in Totem Movie Player, which also stopped earlier at the same place as in VLC player. I tried to play it in GMplayer. Now the entire AVI file can be played from start to finish, but it is impossible to drag playing progress bar while it was possible in VLC player and Totem player. I heard that Avidemux can fix AVI index error, but later discovered it failed to open the AVI file. So I was wondering how I can fix the AVI index error, or at least drag the playing progress bar in GMplayer? Thanks and regards!

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  • St. Louis Day of .NET 2010

    - by Scott Spradlin
    Register now at http://www.stlouisdayofdotnet.com/registration.aspx The Date This year's conference will be held on Friday and Saturday, August 20-21, 2010, at the Ameristar Conference Center in St. Charles, Missouri.  Sessions will begin at 8:00 a.m. and run through 4:30 p.m. on both days.  Registration and sign-in will open at 7:00 a.m. on Friday morning, and will run throughout the event. The Venue Based on the almost unanimous feedback from last year's event, we are very excited to bring our conference back to the Ameristar Conference Center. The Ameristar has worked with us to offer a great rate on their large suites, should you be traveling from out-of-town -- or are just interested in a night away from home.  Attendees can book a suite at a discounted rate of only $139/night, which is a substantial discount from their standard rates.  We encourage you take the opportunity to hang around, spend the night, and enjoy the social events and networking opportunities that we have planned. If you are interested in taking advantage of the discounted hotel rate, you can reserve your room online at Ameristar's Online Registration Site, using the special offer code: GDOTH10.  You can also call the hotel's reservation number at (636) 940-4301 and let them know you are attending the St. Louis Day of .NET 2010 to receive your discounted rates. The Content All attendees will have access to over 80 technical sessions by many great regional and national technology experts, covering a wide range of .NET development topics.  In addition to refreshments throughout the event, all attendees will be provided with breakfast and lunch on both days of the conference. You will find sessions on many of the most current .NET development topics including: Visual Studio .NET 2010 Silverlight 4.0 Windows 7 Series Phone Development ASP.NET MVC DotNetNuke SharePoint 2010 Architecture Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF) And much, much more... This year's event will also include many informal "Open Space" sessions where all attendees with similar interests can discuss current trends or issues they are facing in today's real-world development environments. Finally, all attendees are invited to a social networking event at the HOME Nightclub at the Ameristar, which will be held on the Friday evening of the conference. The Cost The cost of this year's conference is $200 per attendee.  However, for a limited time we are offering a $75 discount for early registrants. To take advantage of this discounted rate, you must register on our site prior to July 10, 2010.  We accept Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.  In addition, this year we allow for a single user of our site to easily register multiple attendees at once. To register, please visit the official St. Louis Day of .NET site at www.stldodn.com, and click on the "Registration" tab. For More Information And for the most up-to-the-minute information on the event, please follow us online: Twitter:  @stldodn Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/stldodn We strongly encourage you to share this email, as well as the attached flier, with your peers and colleagues, and anyone else you think might be interested in this exciting event. If you have any questions regarding registration, you can email us at [email protected] and we will be happy to address them. Sponsors We are extremely thankful to the many great sponsors who are partnering with us this year to help make the St. Louis Day of .NET 2010 a huge success. (There are still sponsorship opportunities available. For complete information, visit the sponsor page on the web site.)

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  • April 2010 Chicago Architects Group Meeting

    - by Tim Murphy
    The Chicago Architects Group will be holding its next meeting on April 20th.  Please come and join us and get involved in our architect community. Register Presenter: Matt Hidinger Topic: Onion Architecture      Location: Illinois Technology Association 200 S. Wacker Dr., Suite 1500 Room A/B Chicago, IL 60606 Time: 5:30 - Doors open at 5:00 del.icio.us Tags: Chicago Architects Group,Data Integration Architecture,Mike Vogt

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  • Trigger Happy

    - by Tim Dexter
    Its been a while, I know, we’ll say no more OK? I’ll just write …In the latest BIP 11.1.1.6 release and if I’m really honest; the release before this (we'll call it dot 5 for brevity.) The boys and gals in the engine room have been real busy enhancing BIP with some new functionality. Those of you that use the scheduling engine in OBIEE may already know and use the ‘conditional scheduling’ feature. This allows you to be more intelligent about what reports get run and sent to folks on a scheduled basis. You create a ‘trigger’ analysis (answer) that is executed at schedule time prior to the main report. When the schedule rolls around, the trigger is run, if it returns rows, then the main report is run and delivered. If there are no rows returned, then the main report is not run. Useful right? Your users are not bombarded with 20 reports in their inbox every week that they need to wade throu. They get a handful that they know they need to look at. If you ensure you use conditional formatting in the report then they can find the anomalous data in the reports very quickly and move on to the rest of their day more quickly. You could even think of OBIEE as a virtual team member, scouring the data on your behalf 24/7 and letting you know when its found an issue.BI Publisher, wanting the team t-shirt and the khaki pants, has followed suit. You can now set up ‘triggers’ for it to execute before it runs the main report. Just like its big brother, if the scheduled report trigger returns rows of data; it then executes the main report. Otherwise, the report is skipped until the next schedule time rolls around. Sound familiar?BIP differs a little, in that you only need to construct a query to act as the trigger rather than a complete report. Let assume we have a monthly wage by department report on a schedule. We only want to send the report to managers if their departmental wages reach and/or exceed a certain amount. The toughest part about this is coming up with the SQL to test the business rule you want to implement. For my example, its not that tough: select d.department_name, sum(e.salary) as wage_total from employees e, departments d where d.department_id = e.department_id group by d.department_name having sum(e.salary) > 230000 We're looking for departments where the wage cost is greater than 230,000 Dexter Dollars! With a bit of messing I found out you can parametrize the query. Users can then set a value at schedule time if they need to. To create the trigger is straightforward enough. You can create multiple triggers for users to select at schedule time. Notice I also used a parameter in the query, :wamount. Note the matching parameter in the tree on the left. You also dont need to return multiple columns, one is fine, the key is if there are rows returned. You can build the rest of your report as usual. At scheduling time the Schedule tab has a bit more on it. If your users want to set the trigger, they check the Use Trigger box. The page will then pop fields to pick the appropriate trigger they want to use, even a trigger on another data model if needed. Note it will also ask for the parameter value associated with the trigger. At this point you should note that the data model does not make a distinction between trigger and data model (extract) parameters. So users will see the parameters on the General and Schedule tabs. If per chance you do need to just have a trigger parameters. You can just hide them from the report using the Parameters popup in the report designer, just un-check the 'Show' box I have tested the opposite case where you do not want main report parameters seen in the trigger section. BIP handles that for you! Once the report hits its allotted schedule time, the trigger is executed. Based on the results the report will either run or be 'skipped.' Now, you have a smarter scheduler that will only deliver reports when folks need to see them and take action on the contents. More official info here for developers and here for users.

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  • Backtick (Grave accent) button sticking

    - by Scott Lemmon
    I have Ubuntu 12.04 running in a Virtual Box virtual machine, on my Windows 7 32bit system. It has been working great, except that the backtick/tilde button sticks(not physically). When I hit the backtick button it keeps repeating until another input button is pressed. So if I press the spacebar while the backtick is repeating, it stops, but if I press the shift while it is repeating, the backtick turns into a tilde, and the tilde keeps repeating until I release the shift key (at which point it's a backtick again and keeps repeating). This sticking behavior only happens with the backtick key, and only in my Ubuntu virtualization, never in windows. I've tried both my laptop's keyboard and an external USB keyboard and the problem happens on both. Both keyboards I've tried are Japanese 106/109 key layout, but I'm using them with a English(US) 101 profile. When I refer to the backtick key above, I mean where it is on the US layout. If I use the Japanese profile, the key in that location (the US backtick location) still sticks, but its no longer mapped as the backtick key. Any thoughts as to what might be causing this and possible solutions? I've searched a lot, but have not found any help so far. Any help is greatly appreciated.

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  • Flash framerate reliability

    - by Tim Cooper
    I am working in Flash and a few things have been brought to my attention. Below is some code I have some questions on: addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, function(e:Event):void { if (KEY_RIGHT) { // Move character right } // Etc. }); stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_DOWN, function(e:KeyboardEvent):void { // Report key which is down }); stage.addEventListener(KeyboardEvent.KEY_UP, function(e:KeyboardEvent):void { // Report key which is up }); I have the project configured so that it has a framerate of 60 FPS. The two questions I have on this are: What happens when it is unable to call that function every 1/60 of a second? Is this a way of processing events that need to be limited by time (ex: a ball which needs to travel to the right of the screen from the left in X seconds)? Or should it be done a different way?

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  • New Windows Phone 7 Stencil For Cacoo

    - by Tim Murphy
    I have created a stencil for wire framing Windows Phone 7 application in Cacoo.  This is definitely a work in progress, but until it is complete I would suggest combining this stencil with the Android stencil that is available by default in Cacoo.  Below are a couple of screen shots of the stencil so far. First here is what the stencil window looks like currently. Taking a closer look the main device frame is illustrated below Lastly is the button pallet which contains the icons from the Windows Phone toolkit. Check back and see more as other general controls are added to speed mocking your applications.  You can find the stencil here. del.icio.us Tags: Windows Phone 7,Cacoo,Stencil,Design

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  • Designing a Database Application with OOP

    - by Tim C
    I often develop SQL database applications using Linq, and my methodology is to build model classes to represent each table, and each table that needs inserting or updating gets a Save() method (which either does an InsertOnSubmit() or SubmitChanges(), depending on the state of the object). Often, when I need to represent a collection of records, I'll create a class that inherits from a List-like object of the atomic class. ex. public class CustomerCollection : CoreCollection<Customer> { } Recently, I was working on an application where end-users were experiencing slowness, where each of the objects needed to be saved to the database if they met a certain criteria. My Save() method was slow, presumably because I was making all kinds of round-trips to the server, and calling DataContext.SubmitChanges() after each atomic save. So, the code might have looked something like this foreach(Customer c in customerCollection) { if(c.ShouldSave()) { c.Save(); } } I worked through multiple strategies to optimize, but ultimately settled on passing a big string of data to a SQL stored procedure, where the string has all the data that represents the records I was working with - it might look something like this: CustomerID:34567;CurrentAddress:23 3rd St;CustomerID:23456;CurrentAddress:123 4th St So, SQL server parses the string, performs the logic to determine appropriateness of save, and then Inserts, Updates, or Ignores. With C#/Linq doing this work, it saved 5-10 records / s. When SQL does it, I get 100 records / s, so there is no denying the Stored Proc is more efficient; however, I hate the solution because it doesn't seem nearly as clean or safe. My real concern is that I don't have any better solutions that hold a candle to the performance of the stored proc solution. Am I doing something obviously wrong in how I'm thinking about designing database applications? Are there better ways of designing database applications?

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  • CLR 4.0: Corrupted State Exceptions

    - by Scott Dorman
    Corrupted state exceptions are designed to help you have fewer bugs in your code by making it harder to make common mistakes around exception handling. A very common pattern is code like this: public void FileSave(String name) { try { FileStream fs = new FileStream(name, FileMode.Create); } catch (Exception e) { MessageBox.Show("File Open Error"); throw new Exception(IOException); } The standard recommendation is not to catch System.Exception but rather catch the more specific exceptions (in this case, IOException). While this is a somewhat contrived example, what would happen if Exception were really an AccessViolationException or some other exception indicating that the process state has been corrupted? What you really want to do is get out fast before persistent data is corrupted or more work is lost. To help solve this problem and minimize the chance that you will catch exceptions like this, CLR 4.0 introduces Corrupted State Exceptions, which cannot be caught by normal catch statements. There are still places where you do want to catch these types of exceptions, particularly in your application’s “main” function or when you are loading add-ins.  There are also rare circumstances when you know code that throws an exception isn’t dangerous, such as when calling native code. In order to support these scenarios, a new HandleProcessCorruptedStateExceptions attribute has been added. This attribute is added to the function that catches these exceptions. There is also a process wide compatibility switch named legacyCorruptedStateExceptionsPolicy which when set to true will cause the code to operate under the older exception handling behavior. Technorati Tags: CLR 4.0, .NET 4.0, Exception Handling, Corrupted State Exceptions

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  • Summary of TaleoWorld 2012

    - by Scott Ewart
    Taleo World resulted in lively, positive conversation on social media, with 1,595 references on Twitter. Conversation was driven by users live-tweeting about the keynotes, product sessions/demos and customers. The Wednesday morning keynote resulted in a spike, and users responded positively to executive’s view on HCM and the innovative Oracle-Taleo product roadmap.   This is a recap of the Twitter feed conversations highlighting top tweets and photos, as well as supporting materials, including the resulting coverage.  Please read The Taleo World Storify and click here. Five unique articles appeared on Taleo World. The Ventana Research blog and InformationWeek wrote in-depth articles focusing on Mark Hurd’s presentation, product strategy, and demonstrations of Oracle Taleo Cloud Service Feature Pack 12B and Oracle Fusion Tap, overall stressing Oracle’s commitment to customers and product development. To view the full-text of all articles , please click below on the articles' name. Oracle Presents a Taleo Future for Human Capital Management - Ventana Research blog Innovation as a Choice - Steve Boese's HR Technology blog Oracle Touts Taleo As HCM Heats Up - InformationWeek With 43% of the Current Workforce Retiring In 10 Years, What’s A CEO To Do? - HireVue Digital Distortion blog  What’s Your Recruitment Metrics Story? - SmashFly Recruitment Marketing Technology blog.

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  • Microsoft StyleCop is now Open Source

    - by Scott Dorman
    I have previously talked about Microsoft StyleCop. For those that might not know about it, StyleCop is a source analysis tool (different from the static analysis that FxCop performs) that analyzes the source code directly. As a result, it focuses on more design (or style) issues such as layout, readability and documentation. In an interesting move (and one that I am happy to see), Microsoft has decided to make StyleCop an open source project (under the MS-PL license) available on CodePlex. (The project site isn’t up  yet, but should be in the next few weeks.) This will give the development community the opportunity to help contribute to the project, expanding support to other languages (currently it only supports C#), adding features, and fixing bugs. Shortly after the CodePlex site is up, StyleCop 4.4 will be released which includes support for C# 4.0 as well as a large number of bug fixes and other improvements. Technorati Tags: Code Style and Standard,StyleCop

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  • apache2 is making my amazon ec2 unavailable, any ideas?

    - by Tim
    I have a web server running on a EC2 c1.medium intance. The instance is running on ubuntu, with apache2 and mysql.The ubuntu and apache version are the next; Ubuntu DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=11.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=natty DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 11.04" Apache2 Server version: Apache/2.2.17 (Ubuntu) Server built: Feb 22 2011 18:33:02 Sometimes randomly, my server "hangs up", I cannot connect to it using normal web access or ssh access. If I reboot the instance it reboots fine, the amazon system log doesn't show anything weird, but the problem persists The only way to solve it its stopping the instance, and start it again. I think that the problem its has something to do with apache, because the last lines of the error log lists: normal errors [Sun Jun 19 06:25:09 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.17 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.3.5-1ubuntu7.2 with Suhosin-Patch configured -- resuming normal operations nobody cant connetc... no more erros until i stop and start the instance normal errors [Wed Jun 22 14:21:18 2011] [notice] Apache/2.2.17 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.3.5-1ubuntu7.2 with Suhosin-Patch configured -- resuming normal operations nobody cant connetc... no more erros until i stop and start the instance Can somebody please help me?

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  • The Dispose Pattern (and FxCop warnings)

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

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  • ArchBeat Link-o-Rama for 2012-03-30

    - by Bob Rhubart
    The One Skill All Leaders Should Work On | Scott Edinger blogs.hbr.org Assertiveness, according to HBR blogger Scott Edinger, has the "power to magnify so many other leadership strengths." When Your Influence Is Ineffective | Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe blogs.hbr.org "Influence becomes ineffective when individuals become so focused on the desired outcome that they fail to fully consider the situation," say Chris Musselwhite and Tammie Plouffe. BPM in Retail Industry | Sanjeev Sharma blogs.oracle.com Sanjeev Sharma shares links to a pair of blog posts that address common BPM use-cases in the Retail industry. Oracle VM: What if you have just 1 HDD system | Yury Velikanov www.pythian.com "To start playing with Oracle VM v3 you need to configure some storage to be used for new VM hosts," says Yury Velikanov. He shows you how in this post. Thought for the Day "Elegance is not a dispensable luxury but a factor that decides between success and failure." — Edsger Dijkstra

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  • Fun With the Chrome JavaScript Console and the Pluralsight Website

    - by Steve Michelotti
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/michelotti/archive/2013/07/24/fun-with-the-chrome-javascript-console-and-the-pluralsight-website.aspxI’m currently working on my third course for Pluralsight. Everyone already knows that Scott Allen is a “dominating force” for Pluralsight but I was curious how many courses other authors have published as well. The Pluralsight Authors page - http://pluralsight.com/training/Authors – shows all 146 authors and you can click on any author’s page to see how many (and which) courses they have authored. The problem is: I don’t want to have to click into 146 pages to get a count for each author. With this in mind, I figured I could write a little JavaScript using the Chrome JavaScript console to do some “detective work.” My first step was to figure out how the HTML was structured on this page so I could do some screen-scraping. Right-click the first author - “Inspect Element”. I can see there is a primary <div> with a class of “main” which contains all the authors. Each author is in an <h3> with an <a> tag containing their name and link to their page:     This web page already has jQuery loaded so I can use $ directly from the console. This allows me to just use jQuery to inspect items on the current page. Notice this is a multi-line command. In order to use multiple lines in the console you have to press SHIFT-ENTER to go to the next line:     Now I can see I’m extracting data just fine. At this point I want to follow each URL. Then I want to screen-scrape this next page to see how many courses each author has done. Let’s take a look at the author detail page:       I can see we have a table (with a css class of “course”) that contains rows for each course authored. This means I can get the number of courses pretty easily like this:     Now I can put this all together. Back on the authors page, I want to follow each URL, extract the returned HTML, and grab the count. In the code below, I simply use the jQuery $.get() method to get the author detail page and the “data” variable that is in the callback contains the HTML. A nice feature of jQuery is that I can simply put this HTML string inside of $() and I can use jQuery selectors directly on it in conjunction with the find() method:     Now I’m getting somewhere. I have every Pluralsight author and how many courses each one has authored. But that’s not quite what I’m after – what I want to see are the authors that have the MOST courses in the library. What I’d like to do is to put all of the data in an array and then sort that array descending by number of courses. I can add an item to the array after each author detail page is returned but the catch here is that I can’t perform the sort operation until ALL of the author detail pages have executed. The jQuery $.get() method is naturally an async method so I essentially have 146 async calls and I don’t want to perform my sort action until ALL have completed (side note: don’t run this script too many times or the Pluralsight servers might think your an evil hacker attempting a DoS attack and deny you). My C# brain wants to use a WaitHandle WaitAll() method here but this is JavaScript. I was able to do this by using the jQuery Deferred() object. I create a new deferred object for each request and push it onto a deferred array. After each request is complete, I signal completion by calling the resolve() method. Finally, I use a $.when.apply() method to execute my descending sort operation once all requests are complete. Here is my complete console command: 1: var authorList = [], 2: defList = []; 3: $(".main h3 a").each(function() { 4: var def = $.Deferred(); 5: defList.push(def); 6: var authorName = $(this).text(); 7: var authorUrl = $(this).attr('href'); 8: $.get(authorUrl, function(data) { 9: var courseCount = $(data).find("table.course tbody tr").length; 10: authorList.push({ name: authorName, numberOfCourses: courseCount }); 11: def.resolve(); 12: }); 13: }); 14: $.when.apply($, defList).then(function() { 15: console.log("*Everything* is complete"); 16: var sortedList = authorList.sort(function(obj1, obj2) { 17: return obj2.numberOfCourses - obj1.numberOfCourses; 18: }); 19: for (var i = 0; i < sortedList.length; i++) { 20: console.log(authorList[i]); 21: } 22: });   And here are the results:     WOW! John Sonmez has 44 courses!! And Matt Milner has 29! I guess Scott Allen isn’t the only “dominating force”. I would have assumed Scott Allen was #1 but he comes in as #3 in total course count (of course Scott has 11 courses in the Top 50, and 14 in the Top 100 which is incredible!). Given that I’m in the middle of producing only my third course, I better get to work!

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  • Re-writing URL's with lighttpd

    - by Tim Post
    I'm using Lighttpd to serve a GET based API that I'm working on, and I'm having some difficulty with re-writing requests. My API calls are very simple. An example would be : url:/method/submethod?var1=something&var2=something&key=something This is what I have: url.rewrite-once = ( "^/methodfoo(.*)" => "/index.php$1&method=methodfoo") This works fine if all methods were shallow, but I have methodfoo/submethod to deal with. What I'd like to do is use a rule that can split this up for me, appending a &submethod to the end of the rewritten string. For instance: url://methodfoo/submethod?foo=bar&foobar=foo Would be re-written to: url://index.php?foo=bar&foobar=foo&method=methodfoo&submethod=foo Can I do that without an explicit rule for each submethod? Additional Information: Yes, I know I can use a rule like: "^/methodfoo/(.*)/(.*)" => "/index.php$2&method=methodfoo&submethod=$1" However, That fuglifies (TM) my link structure, as it would have to match: url://methodfoo/submethod/?foo=bar&foobar=foo When I really want: url://methodfoo/submethod?foo=bar&foobar=foo Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

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  • New Oracle.com global navigation

    - by tim.bonnemann
    This is a guest post by Michal Kopec, Senior User Experience Architect her at Oracle Marketing Brand and Creative. We have just refreshed the Oracle.com global navigation to serve you better with Oracle related information and news. Highlights 1. Updated, user-oriented and business information balanced navigational categories. Say hello to the new categories: Downloads, Education and Oracle Technology Network. Oracle Partner Network navigation received a facelift too. 2. Brand new flyout based navigation - mouse over Partners for instance - providing both a high level content overview as well as shortcut links for most popular website destinations 3. Introducing audience based - I'm a... - and - I want to... - task-based navigation. Now you can navigate based on who you are or what is you want to accomplish. Please note this is an initial step - we want to build out those based on your opinions and feedback. 4. Adjusted Oracle Technology Network horizontal navigation to match Oracle.com. Oracle Technology Network users can now benefit from OTN content being accessible from anywhere during their Oracle.com and OTN visits of course :) 5. Last but not least - we applied the same refreshed global navigation to a couple of country sites - starting with Oracle Brazil and Oracle China. More to come. The project internal code name is Mosaic. It is an effort to provide you with unified user and brand experience during your Oracle websites visit. Every time you hear Mosaic expect great things to happen. With that - please let us know what you think. We value your opinion.

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  • Copying A Slide From One Presentation To Another

    - by Tim Murphy
    There are many ways to generate a PowerPoint presentation using Open XML.  The first way is to build it by hand strictly using the SDK.  Alternately you can modify a copy of a base presentation in place.  The third approach to generate a presentation is to build a new presentation from the parts of an existing presentation by copying slides as needed.  This post will focus on the third option. In order to make this solution a little more elegant I am going to create a VSTO add-in as I did in my previous post.  This one is going to insert Tags to identify slides instead of NonVisualDrawingProperties which I used to identify charts, tables and images.  The code itself is fairly short. SlideNameForm dialog = new SlideNameForm(); Selection selection = Globals.ThisAddIn.Application.ActiveWindow.Selection;   if(dialog.ShowDialog() == DialogResult.OK) { selection.SlideRange.Tags.Add(dialog.slideName,dialog.slideName); } Zeyad Rajabi has a good post here on combining slides from two presentations.  The example he gives is great if you are doing a straight merge.  But what if you want to use your source file as almost a supermarket where you pick and chose slides and may even insert them repeatedly?  The following code uses the tags we created in the previous step to pick a particular slide an copy it to a destination file. using (PresentationDocument newDocument = PresentationDocument.Open(OutputFileText.Text,true)) { PresentationDocument templateDocument = PresentationDocument.Open(FileNameText.Text, false);   uniqueId = GetMaxIdFromChild(newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideMasterIdList); uint maxId = GetMaxIdFromChild(newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideIdList);   SlidePart oldPart = GetSlidePartByTagName(templateDocument, SlideToCopyText.Text);   SlidePart newPart = newDocument.PresentationPart.AddPart<SlidePart>(oldPart, "sourceId1");   SlideMasterPart newMasterPart = newDocument.PresentationPart.AddPart(newPart.SlideLayoutPart.SlideMasterPart);   SlideIdList idList = newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideIdList;   // create new slide ID maxId++; SlideId newId = new SlideId(); newId.Id = maxId; newId.RelationshipId = "sourceId1"; idList.Append(newId);   // Create new master slide ID uniqueId++; SlideMasterId newMasterId = new SlideMasterId(); newMasterId.Id = uniqueId; newMasterId.RelationshipId = newDocument.PresentationPart.GetIdOfPart(newMasterPart); newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.SlideMasterIdList.Append(newMasterId);   // change slide layout ID FixSlideLayoutIds(newDocument.PresentationPart);     //newPart.Slide.Save(); newDocument.PresentationPart.Presentation.Save(); } The GetMaxIDFromChild and FixSlideLayoutID methods are barrowed from Zeyad’s article.  The GetSlidePartByTagName method is listed below.  It is really one LINQ query that finds SlideParts with child Tags that have the requested Name. private SlidePart GetSlidePartByTagName(PresentationDocument templateDocument, string tagName) { return (from p in templateDocument.PresentationPart.SlideParts where p.UserDefinedTagsParts.First().TagList.Descendants <DocumentFormat.OpenXml.Presentation.Tag>().First().Name == tagName.ToUpper() select p).First(); } This is what really makes the difference from what Zeyad posted.  The most powerful thing you can have when generating documents from templates is a consistent way of naming items to be manipulated.  I will be show more approaches like this in upcoming posts. del.icio.us Tags: Office Open XML,Presentation,PowerPoint,VSTO,TagList

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  • How to set up a (relatively) secure kiosk on Natty?

    - by Tim
    I'm trying to get my application to be the only thing a user sees when the machine is powered on - like a kiosk, but a little more secure. Ideally, what I'd like to happen is this: At machine power-on, the user sees the Ubuntu splash image, then my app. While the app is running, the user can't get back to the desktop or a text login prompt via any keyboard shortcut. This is the (relatively) secure bit. When the user exits the app, the user sees a shutdown image, then the machine powers off. In particular, I'd like to configure things so that the user never sees the Gnome desktop on startup or shutdown. At the moment, I've configured a default user to be logged on automatically, with an autostart item which starts my app, but after the Ubuntu startup screen the user sees the Gnome desktop briefly before my app is started. When the app is exited, the user is taken back to the Gnome desktop and has to shut the machine down manually. Also, because of time constraints, I can't really start over with a different window manager. Is there an easy way to configure all of this?

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  • Spotlight on an office - Dublin!

    - by Tim Koekkoek
    In this third instalment of our monthly topic ‘Spotlight on an Office’, we visit Dublin, Ireland Oracle has 5 offices in Dublin all in the EastPoint Business Park close to Dublin City centre. In Dublin there are currently 1,000 people working for Oracle. You’ll find, among others, a large part of OracleDirect, our inside sales organization, part of our EMEA Finance organization and employees from Product and Systems Development who work on the heart of Oracle’s products. Facilities EastPoint Business Park is located next to the Irish Financial Service Centre (IFSC) and is only one train stop away from Dublin city centre. This seafront business park and nearby amenities cater for staff’s needs, which include a Sandwich Bar, a Coffee Shop and a small Convenience Store and Newsagent. Moreover there is a Physical Therapy Clinic and Beauty Salon onsite, Pilates and Boot Camp classes, weekly WeightWatcher Classes, five football / tennis courts and an outdoor chess board. When the sun is shining On sunny days comfy, colourful beanbags are spread throughout the park to relax and every Wednesday there is the Irish Village Market providing staff with a variety of delicious gourmet foods from all over the world. Friday afternoons after work are often used by Oracle employees to start the weekend socializing in The Epicenter Cafe Bar & Venue. In the office In the Oracle offices, you have an open floor design and an open door policy which makes it really easy to walk over to your colleagues or a manager to discuss your projects and keep informed with what is going on. This way you also have a great chance to bond with your colleagues. In two of the Oracle buildings there are subsidized canteens especially for Oracle employees with chefs cooking something special everyday! One of the best things about Oracle in Dublin is that it is really multinational. Currently there are more than 25 languages spoken by Oracle employees. So you will work with colleagues from all around the globe, every day, which makes it a really interesting and exciting experience. Sport & Social There is also a dedicated Sport and Social Club, Oraclub. They organize many sport and social activities. It doesn’t matter which sport is your favourite, Oraclub caters for like-minded individuals and makes sure you can play or watch your favourite sport. Furthermore, Oraclub organizes exhibition matches to get you acquainted with some other sports. Last year the Gaelic Warriors (A Wheelchair Rugby club) held an exhibition match. Oraclub also offer Oracle parties, language courses and offer discounts on many events! So whether you want to go to a Robbie Williams concert, an exhibition of Van Gogh or a match of the Irish Rugby team, Oraclub is there for everyone! There are also plenty of possibilities to get involved in volunteering. Want to know more about the current vacancies in Dublin? Check https://campus.oracle.com for all of our vacancies.

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