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  • Quality Design for Asynchronous WCF Services Calls in a Middle-Tier and Returning Data to UI Tier

    - by Perplexed
    I have a WPF application with a group of asynchronous WCF service calls all mashed into the code behind, complete with event handlers and everything, that I have to refactor to productionize and maintain. I want to separate concerns here for maintainability and all the other good reasons to do this, but I'm not sure exactly how to achieve this. Anybody have any good ideas on how to do this, or at least some links to put me in the right direction? My thinking: Create an "infrastructure" layer and reference the services there. Move the asynchronous event handlers into this layer. When an update is called, I will bubble up my own event with my own derivation of the EventArgs class that contains the data the UI will need. I'll have a fairly coupled hooking of the UI to the infrastructure layer as it will consume events I fire off upon completion of an asynchronous data call.

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  • What are you using for Web UI/layout design?

    - by brendan
    What are folks out there using for web/ui design? For the most part we use PowerPoint at my company. The UI folks will mock up a screen in PowerPoint and we (the development group) will take it from there. So, for a side gig of mine I decided to do some mock ups to show the client prior to dev and I'm quickly feeling that PowerPoint is not the right tool for this. What are you using for this type of stuff - some other software? pen/paper?

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  • How would you go to "design" a cart within a Zend Framework project?

    - by ÉricP
    Hi, I know ZF well, and a little bit of Magento, but I'm new to E-commerce, and I'm sure there are best practice to follow when designing a cart model. How would go to design a cart? I though of two models, Model_Cart and Model_Cart_Item used in conjonction with Zend_Session to store the cart in session. What are your feedbacks? How would you go to do that? What should I know about writing a cart system? Note that I need a simple system, I even don't need to work with quantity

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  • Ideas for using R to create a T-shirt design (for useR 2010) ?

    - by Tal Galili
    There is now a competition for creating a T-shirt design for useR2010. Someone proposed the idea to use R for creating the T-shirt image. Which leads me to my questions: What type of images do you think might be fitting for this? How would you suggest to use R to create the images ? Would anyone here want to have a go at it? (p.s: I understand this is not a pure "programming" question. Yet it involves R programming, the understanding of R aesthetics, and some caring for the R community. I also understand I am at the risk of annoying people here with this question, so in case that happens - I deeply apologies! My only justification is that I am acting in good faith and in the purpose of having nice things for R users to enjoy, while learning something in the process) Related thread I once opened: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2162131/how-can-i-learn-to-create-beautiful-infographics-with-connection-to-my-r-knowled

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  • Design guide-lines for writing a Typed SQL Statement API ?

    - by this. __curious_geek
    Last night I came up to sometihng intersting while designing my new project that brought me to ask this qustion here. My project is supposed to follow Table Gateway pattern using tradional ADO.Net datasets for data access. I don't want to write plain queries in my data-access classes. So I came up with an idea of writing a parser kindaa api that exposes objects and methods to generate queries on the move based on my domain objects. Later I want this api to hook up to my Business objects and provide Typed SQL generator api right on the business object instances. Any idea or references how can I do this ? This seems very wide to start with that I'm compelled take your opinions here. Does there anything already exists that can do this ?

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  • c# class design - what can I use instead of "static abstract"?

    - by Ryan
    I want to do the following public abstract class MyAbstractClass { public static abstract int MagicId { get; } public static void DoSomeMagic() { // Need to get the MagicId value defined in the concrete implementation } } public class MyConcreteClass : MyAbstractClass { public static override int MagicId { get { return 123; } } } However I can't because you can't have static abstract members. I understand why I can't do this - any recommendations for a design that will achieve much the same result? (For clarity - what I am trying to do is provide a library with an abstract base class but the concrete versions MUST implement a few properties/methods themselves and yes, there are good reasons for keeping it static.)

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  • Synchronize Data between a Silverlight ListBox and a User Control

    - by psheriff
    One of the great things about XAML is the powerful data-binding capabilities. If you load up a list box with a collection of objects, you can display detail data about each object without writing any C# or VB.NET code. Take a look at Figure 1 that shows a collection of Product objects in a list box. When you click on a list box you bind the current Product object selected in the list box to a set of controls in a user control with just a very simple Binding statement in XAML.  Figure 1: Synchronizing a ListBox to a User Control is easy with Data Binding Product and Products Classes To illustrate this data binding feature I am going to just create some local data instead of using a WCF service. The code below shows a Product class that has three properties, namely, ProductId, ProductName and Price. This class also has a constructor that takes 3 parameters and allows us to set the 3 properties in an instance of our Product class. C#public class Product{  public Product(int productId, string productName, decimal price)  {    ProductId = productId;    ProductName = productName;    Price = price;  }   public int ProductId { get; set; }  public string ProductName { get; set; }  public decimal Price { get; set; }} VBPublic Class Product  Public Sub New(ByVal _productId As Integer, _                 ByVal _productName As String, _                 ByVal _price As Decimal)    ProductId = _productId    ProductName = _productName    Price = _price  End Sub   Private mProductId As Integer  Private mProductName As String  Private mPrice As Decimal   Public Property ProductId() As Integer    Get      Return mProductId    End Get    Set(ByVal value As Integer)      mProductId = value    End Set  End Property   Public Property ProductName() As String    Get      Return mProductName    End Get    Set(ByVal value As String)      mProductName = value    End Set  End Property   Public Property Price() As Decimal    Get      Return mPrice    End Get    Set(ByVal value As Decimal)      mPrice = value    End Set  End PropertyEnd Class To fill up a list box you need a collection class of Product objects. The code below creates a generic collection class of Product objects. In the constructor of the Products class I have hard-coded five product objects and added them to the collection. In a real-world application you would get your data through a call to service to fill the list box, but for simplicity and just to illustrate the data binding, I am going to just hard code the data. C#public class Products : List<Product>{  public Products()  {    this.Add(new Product(1, "Microsoft VS.NET 2008", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(2, "Microsoft VS.NET 2010", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(3, "Microsoft Silverlight 4", 1000));    this.Add(new Product(4, "Fundamentals of N-Tier eBook", 20));    this.Add(new Product(5, "ASP.NET Security eBook", 20));  }} VBPublic Class Products  Inherits List(Of Product)   Public Sub New()    Me.Add(New Product(1, "Microsoft VS.NET 2008", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(2, "Microsoft VS.NET 2010", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(3, "Microsoft Silverlight 4", 1000))    Me.Add(New Product(4, "Fundamentals of N-Tier eBook", 20))    Me.Add(New Product(5, "ASP.NET Security eBook", 20))  End SubEnd Class The Product Detail User Control Below is a user control (named ucProduct) that is used to display the product detail information seen in the bottom portion of Figure 1. This is very basic XAML that just creates a text block and a text box control for each of the three properties in the Product class. Notice the {Binding Path=[PropertyName]} on each of the text box controls. This means that if the DataContext property of this user control is set to an instance of a Product class, then the data in the properties of that Product object will be displayed in each of the text boxes. <UserControl x:Class="SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS.ucProduct"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  HorizontalAlignment="Left"  VerticalAlignment="Top">  <Grid Margin="4">    <Grid.RowDefinitions>      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />    </Grid.RowDefinitions>    <Grid.ColumnDefinitions>      <ColumnDefinition MinWidth="120" />      <ColumnDefinition />    </Grid.ColumnDefinitions>    <TextBlock Grid.Row="0"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Product Id" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="0"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=ProductId}" />    <TextBlock Grid.Row="1"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Product Name" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="1"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=ProductName}" />    <TextBlock Grid.Row="2"               Grid.Column="0"               Text="Price" />    <TextBox Grid.Row="2"             Grid.Column="1"             Text="{Binding Path=Price}" />  </Grid></UserControl> Synchronize ListBox with User Control You are now ready to fill the list box with the collection class of Product objects and then bind the SelectedItem of the list box to the Product detail user control. The XAML below is the complete code for Figure 1. <UserControl x:Class="SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS.MainPage"  xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"  xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"  xmlns:src="clr-namespace:SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS"  VerticalAlignment="Top"  HorizontalAlignment="Left">  <UserControl.Resources>    <src:Products x:Key="productCollection" />  </UserControl.Resources>  <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"        Margin="4"        Background="White">    <Grid.RowDefinitions>      <RowDefinition Height="Auto" />      <RowDefinition Height="*" />    </Grid.RowDefinitions>    <ListBox x:Name="lstData"             Grid.Row="0"             BorderBrush="Black"             BorderThickness="1"             ItemsSource="{Binding                   Source={StaticResource productCollection}}"             DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" />    <src:ucProduct x:Name="prodDetail"                   Grid.Row="1"                   DataContext="{Binding ElementName=lstData,                                          Path=SelectedItem}" />  </Grid></UserControl> The first step to making this happen is to reference the Silverlight project (SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS) where the Product and Products classes are located. I added this namespace and assigned it a namespace prefix of “src” as shown in the line below: xmlns:src="clr-namespace:SL_SyncListBoxAndUserControl_CS" Next, to use the data from an instance of the Products collection, you create a UserControl.Resources section in the XAML and add a tag that creates an instance of the Products class and assigns it a key of “productCollection”.   <UserControl.Resources>    <src:Products x:Key="productCollection" />  </UserControl.Resources> Next, you bind the list box to this productCollection object using the ItemsSource property. You bind the ItemsSource of the list box to the static resource named productCollection. You can then set the DisplayMemberPath attribute of the list box to any property of the Product class that you want. In the XAML below I used the ProductName property. <ListBox x:Name="lstData"         ItemsSource="{Binding             Source={StaticResource productCollection}}"         DisplayMemberPath="ProductName" /> You now need to create an instance of the ucProduct user contol below the list box. You do this by once again referencing the “src” namespace and typing in the name of the user control. You then set the DataContext property on this user control to a binding. The binding uses the ElementName attribute to bind to the list box name, in this case “lstData”. The Path of the data is SelectedItem. These two attributes together tell Silverlight to bind the DataContext to the selected item of the list box. That selected item is a Product object. So, once this is bound, the bindings on each text box in the user control are updated and display the current product information. <src:ucProduct x:Name="prodDetail"               DataContext="{Binding ElementName=lstData,                                      Path=SelectedItem}" /> Summary Once you understand the basics of data binding in XAML, you eliminate a lot code that is otherwise needed to move data into controls and out of controls back into an object. Connecting two controls together is easy by just binding using the ElementName and Path properties of the Binding markup extension. Another good tip out of this blog is use user controls and set the DataContext of the user control to have all of the data on the user control update through the bindings. NOTE: You can download the complete sample code (in both VB and C#) at my website. http://www.pdsa.com/downloads. Choose Tips & Tricks, then "SL – Synchronize List Box Data with User Control" from the drop-down. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for a free eBook on "Fundamentals of N-Tier".

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  • Does my use of the strategy pattern violate the fundamental MVC pattern in iOS?

    - by Goodsquirrel
    I'm about to use the 'strategy' pattern in my iOS app, but feel like my approach violates the somehow fundamental MVC pattern. My app is displaying visual "stories", and a Story consists (i.e. has @properties) of one Photo and one or more VisualEvent objects to represent e.g. animated circles or moving arrows on the photo. Each VisualEvent object therefore has a eventType @property, that might be e.g. kEventTypeCircle or kEventTypeArrow. All events have things in common, like a startTime @property, but differ in the way they are being drawn on the StoryPlayerView. Currently I'm trying to follow the MVC pattern and have a StoryPlayer object (my controller) that knows about both the model objects (like Story and all kinds of visual events) and the view object StoryPlayerView. To chose the right drawing code for each of the different visual event types, my StoryPlayer is using a switch statement. @implementation StoryPlayer // (...) - (void)showVisualEvent:(VisualEvent *)event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView { switch (event.eventType) { case kEventTypeCircle: [self showCircleEvent:event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView]; break; case kEventTypeArrow: [self showArrowDrawingEvent:event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView]; break; // (...) } But switch statements for type checking are bad design, aren't they? According to Uncle Bob they lead to tight coupling and can and should almost always be replaced by polymorphism. Having read about the "Strategy"-Pattern in Head First Design Patterns, I felt this was a great way to get rid of my switch statement. So I changed the design like this: All specialized visual event types are now subclasses of an abstract VisualEvent class that has a showOnStoryPlayerView: method. @interface VisualEvent : NSObject - (void)showOnStoryPlayerView:(StoryPlayerView *)storyPlayerView; // abstract Each and every concrete subclass implements a concrete specialized version of this drawing behavior method. @implementation CircleVisualEvent - (void)showOnStoryPlayerView:(StoryPlayerView *)storyPlayerView { [storyPlayerView drawCircleAtPoint:self.position color:self.color lineWidth:self.lineWidth radius:self.radius]; } The StoryPlayer now simply calls the same method on all types of events. @implementation StoryPlayer - (void)showVisualEvent:(VisualEvent *)event onStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView { [event showOnStoryPlayerView:storyPlayerView]; } The result seems to be great: I got rid of the switch statement, and if I ever have to add new types of VisualEvents in the future, I simply create new subclasses of VisualEvent. And I won't have to change anything in StoryPlayer. But of cause this approach violates the MVC pattern since now my model has to know about and depend on my view! Now my controller talks to my model and my model talks to the view calling methods on StoryPlayerView like drawCircleAtPoint:color:lineWidth:radius:. But this kind of calls should be controller code not model code, right?? Seems to me like I made things worse. I'm confused! Am I completely missing the point of the strategy pattern? Is there a better way to get rid of the switch statement without breaking model-view separation?

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  • Question on the implementation of my Entity System

    - by miguel.martin
    I am currently creating an Entity System, in C++, it is almost completed (I have all the code there, I just have to add a few things and test it). The only thing is, I can't figure out how to implement some features. This Entity System is based off a bit from the Artemis framework, however it is different. I'm not sure if I'll be able to type this out the way my head processing it. I'm going to basically ask whether I should do something over something else. Okay, now I'll give a little detail on my Entity System itself. Here are the basic classes that my Entity System uses to actually work: Entity - An Id (and some methods to add/remove/get/etc Components) Component - An empty abstract class ComponentManager - Manages ALL components for ALL entities within a Scene EntitySystem - Processes entities with specific components Aspect - The class that is used to help determine what Components an Entity must contain so a specific EntitySystem can process it EntitySystemManager - Manages all EntitySystems within a Scene EntityManager - Manages entities (i.e. holds all Entities, used to determine whether an Entity has been changed, enables/disables them, etc.) EntityFactory - Creates (and destroys) entities and assigns an ID to them Scene - Contains an EntityManager, EntityFactory, EntitySystemManager and ComponentManager. Has functions to update and initialise the scene. Now in order for an EntitySystem to efficiently know when to check if an Entity is valid for processing (so I can add it to a specific EntitySystem), it must recieve a message from the EntityManager (after a call of activate(Entity& e)). Similarly the EntityManager must know when an Entity is destroyed from the EntityFactory in the Scene, and also the ComponentManager must know when an Entity is created AND destroyed. I do have a Listener/Observer pattern implemented at the moment, but with this pattern I may remove a Listener (which is this case is dependent on the method being called). I mainly have this implemented for specific things related to a game, i.e. Teams, Tagging of entities, etc. So... I was thinking maybe I should call a private method (using friend classes) to send out when an Entity has been activated, deleted, etc. i.e. taken from my EntityFactory void EntityFactory::killEntity(Entity& e) { // if the entity doesn't exsist in the entity manager within the scene if(!getScene()->getEntityManager().doesExsist(e)) { return; // go back to the caller! (should throw an exception or something..) } // tell the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that we killed an Entity getScene()->getComponentManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); getScene()->getEntityManager().doOnEntityWillDie(e); // notify the listners for(Mouth::iterator i = getMouth().begin(); i != getMouth().end(); ++i) { (*i)->onEntityWillDie(*this, e); } _idPool.addId(e.getId()); // add the ID to the pool delete &e; // delete the entity } As you can see on the lines where I am telling the ComponentManager and the EntityManager that an Entity will die, I am calling a method to make sure it handles it appropriately. Now I realise I could do this without calling it explicitly, with the help of that for loop notifying all listener objects connected to the EntityFactory's Mouth (an object used to tell listeners that there's an event), however is this a good idea (good design, or what)? I've gone over the PROS and CONS, I just can't decide what I want to do. Calling Explicitly: PROS Faster? Since these functions are explicitly called, they can't be "removed" CONS Not flexible Bad design? (friend functions) Calling through Listener objects (i.e. ComponentManager/EntityManager inherits from a EntityFactoryListener) PROS More Flexible? Better Design? CONS Slower? (virtual functions) Listeners can be removed, i.e. may be removed and not get called again during the program, which could cause in a crash. P.S. If you wish to view my current source code, I am hosting it on BitBucket.

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  • In hindsight, is basing XAML on XML a mistake or a good approach?

    - by romkyns
    XAML is essentially a subset of XML. One of the main benefits of basing XAML on XML is said to be that it can be parsed with existing tools. And it can, to a large degree, although the (syntactically non-trivial) attribute values will stay in text form and require further parsing. There are two major alternatives to describing a GUI in an XML-derived language. One is to do what WinForms did, and describe it in real code. There are numerous problems with this, though it’s not completely advantage-free (a question to compare XAML to this approach). The other major alternative is to design a completely new syntax specifically tailored for the task at hand. This is generally known as a domain-specific language. So, in hindsight, and as a lesson for the future generations, was it a good idea to base XAML on XML, or would it have been better as a custom-designed domain-specific language? If we were designing an even better UI framework, should we pick XML or a custom DSL? Since it’s much easier to think positively about the status quo, especially one that is quite liked by the community, I’ll give some example reasons for why building on top of XML might be considered a mistake. Basing a language off XML has one thing going for it: it’s much easier to parse (the core parser is already available), requires much, much less design work, and alternative parsers are also much easier to write for 3rd party developers. But the resulting language can be unsatisfying in various ways. It is rather verbose. If you change the type of something, you need to change it in the closing tag. It has very poor support for comments; it’s impossible to comment out an attribute. There are limitations placed on the content of attributes by XML. The markup extensions have to be built "on top" of the XML syntax, not integrated deeply and nicely into it. And, my personal favourite, if you set something via an attribute, you use completely different syntax than if you set the exact same thing as a content property. It’s also said that since everyone knows XML, XAML requires less learning. Strictly speaking this is true, but learning the syntax is a tiny fraction of the time spent learning a new UI framework; it’s the framework’s concepts that make the curve steep. Besides, the idiosyncracies of an XML-based language might actually add to the "needs learning" basket. Are these disadvantages outweighted by the ease of parsing? Should the next cool framework continue the tradition, or invest the time to design an awesome DSL that can’t be parsed by existing tools and whose syntax needs to be learned by everyone? P.S. Not everyone confuses XAML and WPF, but some do. XAML is the XML-like thing. WPF is the framework with support for bindings, theming, hardware acceleration and a whole lot of other cool stuff.

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  • getting database connectivity issue from only one part of my ASP.net project?

    - by Greg
    Hi, Something weird has started happening to my project with Dynamic Data. Suddenly I am now getting connection errors when going to the DD navigation pages, but things work fine on the default DD main page, and also other MVC pages I've added in myself work fine to the database. Any ideas? So in summary if I go to the following web pages: custom URL for my custom controller - this works fine, including getting database data main DD page from root URL - this works fine click on a link to a table maintenance page from the main DD page - GET DATABASE CONNECTIVITY ERROR Some items: * I'm using SQL Server Express 2008 * Doesn't seem to be any debug/error info in VS2010 at all I can see * Web config entry: <add name="Model1Container" connectionString="metadata=res://*/Model1.csdl|res://*/Model1.ssdl|res://*/Model1.msl;provider=System.Data.SqlClient;provider connection string=&quot;Data Source=GREG\SQLEXPRESS_2008;Initial Catalog=greg_development;Integrated Security=True;MultipleActiveResultSets=True&quot;" providerName="System.Data.EntityClient"/> Error: Server Error in '/' Application. A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.Data.SqlClient.SqlException: A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified) Source Error: Line 39: DropDownList1.Items.Add(new ListItem("[Not Set]", NullValueString)); Line 40: } Line 41: PopulateListControl(DropDownList1); Line 42: // Set the initial value if there is one Line 43: string initialValue = DefaultValue; Source File: U:\My Dropbox\source\ToplogyLibrary\Topology_Web_Dynamic\DynamicData\Filters\ForeignKey.ascx.cs Line: 41 Stack Trace: [SqlException (0x80131904): A network-related or instance-specific error occurred while establishing a connection to SQL Server. The server was not found or was not accessible. Verify that the instance name is correct and that SQL Server is configured to allow remote connections. (provider: SQL Network Interfaces, error: 26 - Error Locating Server/Instance Specified)] System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnection.OnError(SqlException exception, Boolean breakConnection) +5009598 System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.ThrowExceptionAndWarning() +234 System.Data.SqlClient.TdsParser.Connect(ServerInfo serverInfo, SqlInternalConnectionTds connHandler, Boolean ignoreSniOpenTimeout, Int64 timerExpire, Boolean encrypt, Boolean trustServerCert, Boolean integratedSecurity) +341 System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.AttemptOneLogin(ServerInfo serverInfo, String newPassword, Boolean ignoreSniOpenTimeout, TimeoutTimer timeout, SqlConnection owningObject) +129 System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.LoginNoFailover(ServerInfo serverInfo, String newPassword, Boolean redirectedUserInstance, SqlConnection owningObject, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, TimeoutTimer timeout) +239 System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds.OpenLoginEnlist(SqlConnection owningObject, TimeoutTimer timeout, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, String newPassword, Boolean redirectedUserInstance) +195 System.Data.SqlClient.SqlInternalConnectionTds..ctor(DbConnectionPoolIdentity identity, SqlConnectionString connectionOptions, Object providerInfo, String newPassword, SqlConnection owningObject, Boolean redirectedUserInstance) +232 System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnectionFactory.CreateConnection(DbConnectionOptions options, Object poolGroupProviderInfo, DbConnectionPool pool, DbConnection owningConnection) +185 System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.CreatePooledConnection(DbConnection owningConnection, DbConnectionPool pool, DbConnectionOptions options) +33 System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.CreateObject(DbConnection owningObject) +524 System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.UserCreateRequest(DbConnection owningObject) +66 System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionPool.GetConnection(DbConnection owningObject) +479 System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionFactory.GetConnection(DbConnection owningConnection) +108 System.Data.ProviderBase.DbConnectionClosed.OpenConnection(DbConnection outerConnection, DbConnectionFactory connectionFactory) +126 System.Data.SqlClient.SqlConnection.Open() +125 System.Data.EntityClient.EntityConnection.OpenStoreConnectionIf(Boolean openCondition, DbConnection storeConnectionToOpen, DbConnection originalConnection, String exceptionCode, String attemptedOperation, Boolean& closeStoreConnectionOnFailure) +52 [EntityException: The underlying provider failed on Open.] System.Data.EntityClient.EntityConnection.OpenStoreConnectionIf(Boolean openCondition, DbConnection storeConnectionToOpen, DbConnection originalConnection, String exceptionCode, String attemptedOperation, Boolean& closeStoreConnectionOnFailure) +161 System.Data.EntityClient.EntityConnection.Open() +98 System.Data.Objects.ObjectContext.EnsureConnection() +81 System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery`1.GetResults(Nullable`1 forMergeOption) +46 System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery`1.System.Collections.Generic.IEnumerable<T>.GetEnumerator() +44 System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery`1.GetEnumeratorInternal() +36 System.Data.Objects.ObjectQuery.System.Collections.IEnumerable.GetEnumerator() +10 System.Web.DynamicData.Misc.FillListItemCollection(IMetaTable table, ListItemCollection listItemCollection) +50 System.Web.DynamicData.QueryableFilterUserControl.PopulateListControl(ListControl listControl) +85 Topology_Web_Dynamic.ForeignKeyFilter.Page_Init(Object sender, EventArgs e) in U:\My Dropbox\source\ToplogyLibrary\Topology_Web_Dynamic\DynamicData\Filters\ForeignKey.ascx.cs:41 System.Web.Util.CalliHelper.EventArgFunctionCaller(IntPtr fp, Object o, Object t, EventArgs e) +14 System.Web.Util.CalliEventHandlerDelegateProxy.Callback(Object sender, EventArgs e) +35 System.Web.UI.Control.OnInit(EventArgs e) +91 System.Web.UI.UserControl.OnInit(EventArgs e) +83 System.Web.UI.Control.InitRecursive(Control namingContainer) +140 System.Web.UI.Control.AddedControl(Control control, Int32 index) +197 System.Web.UI.ControlCollection.Add(Control child) +79 System.Web.DynamicData.DynamicFilter.EnsureInit(IQueryableDataSource dataSource) +200 System.Web.DynamicData.QueryableFilterRepeater.<Page_InitComplete>b__1(DynamicFilter f) +11 System.Collections.Generic.List`1.ForEach(Action`1 action) +145 System.Web.DynamicData.QueryableFilterRepeater.Page_InitComplete(Object sender, EventArgs e) +607 System.EventHandler.Invoke(Object sender, EventArgs e) +0 System.Web.UI.Page.OnInitComplete(EventArgs e) +8871862 System.Web.UI.Page.ProcessRequestMain(Boolean includeStagesBeforeAsyncPoint, Boolean includeStagesAfterAsyncPoint) +604 Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.1

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  • Android chess development design [on hold]

    - by Plejo
    I want to develop human vs human android chess game and I have bunch of new questions. I would like to have screen where online players are shown(nickname, rating) and when player challenge antoher player and he accpet it game begins. These are my questions: When player install application, does he have to create account/login or does every instance of installed application have some kind of ID so I can recognize it on server side? I want to have also ratings of players saved in my DB so login procedure will probably be necessary. When player connects to server server updates online players list. When he challenge another player and he accept server exchange ip`s(and ports? which port to use?) between players. Then they connect to each other and game begins. What is best practice for connection between server-android and android-android? Probably sockets, right? Is there any library for handling lost connection etc.? Which server do you recommend?

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  • SQL SERVER – How to Recover SQL Database Data Deleted by Accident

    - by Pinal Dave
    In Repair a SQL Server database using a transaction log explorer, I showed how to use ApexSQL Log, a SQL Server transaction log viewer, to recover a SQL Server database after a disaster. In this blog, I’ll show you how to use another SQL Server disaster recovery tool from ApexSQL in a situation when data is accidentally deleted. You can download ApexSQL Recover here, install, and play along. With a good SQL Server disaster recovery strategy, data recovery is not a problem. You have a reliable full database backup with valid data, a full database backup and subsequent differential database backups, or a full database backup and a chain of transaction log backups. But not all situations are ideal. Here we’ll address some sub-optimal scenarios, where you can still successfully recover data. If you have only a full database backup This is the least optimal SQL Server disaster recovery strategy, as it doesn’t ensure minimal data loss. For example, data was deleted on Wednesday. Your last full database backup was created on Sunday, three days before the records were deleted. By using the full database backup created on Sunday, you will be able to recover SQL database records that existed in the table on Sunday. If there were any records inserted into the table on Monday or Tuesday, they will be lost forever. The same goes for records modified in this period. This method will not bring back modified records, only the old records that existed on Sunday. If you restore this full database backup, all your changes (intentional and accidental) will be lost and the database will be reverted to the state it had on Sunday. What you have to do is compare the records that were in the table on Sunday to the records on Wednesday, create a synchronization script, and execute it against the Wednesday database. If you have a full database backup followed by differential database backups Let’s say the situation is the same as in the example above, only you create a differential database backup every night. Use the full database backup created on Sunday, and the last differential database backup (created on Tuesday). In this scenario, you will lose only the data inserted and updated after the differential backup created on Tuesday. If you have a full database backup and a chain of transaction log backups This is the SQL Server disaster recovery strategy that provides minimal data loss. With a full chain of transaction logs, you can recover the SQL database to an exact point in time. To provide optimal results, you have to know exactly when the records were deleted, because restoring to a later point will not bring back the records. This method requires restoring the full database backup first. If you have any differential log backup created after the last full database backup, restore the most recent one. Then, restore transaction log backups, one by one, it the order they were created starting with the first created after the restored differential database backup. Now, the table will be in the state before the records were deleted. You have to identify the deleted records, script them and run the script against the original database. Although this method is reliable, it is time-consuming and requires a lot of space on disk. How to easily recover deleted records? The following solution enables you to recover SQL database records even if you have no full or differential database backups and no transaction log backups. To understand how ApexSQL Recover works, I’ll explain what happens when table data is deleted. Table data is stored in data pages. When you delete table records, they are not immediately deleted from the data pages, but marked to be overwritten by new records. Such records are not shown as existing anymore, but ApexSQL Recover can read them and create undo script for them. How long will deleted records stay in the MDF file? It depends on many factors, as time passes it’s less likely that the records will not be overwritten. The more transactions occur after the deletion, the more chances the records will be overwritten and permanently lost. Therefore, it’s recommended to create a copy of the database MDF and LDF files immediately (if you cannot take your database offline until the issue is solved) and run ApexSQL Recover on them. Note that a full database backup will not help here, as the records marked for overwriting are not included in the backup. First, I’ll delete some records from the Person.EmailAddress table in the AdventureWorks database.   I can delete these records in SQL Server Management Studio, or execute a script such as DELETE FROM Person.EmailAddress WHERE BusinessEntityID BETWEEN 70 AND 80 Then, I’ll start ApexSQL Recover and select From DELETE operation in the Recovery tab.   In the Select the database to recover step, first select the SQL Server instance. If it’s not shown in the drop-down list, click the Server icon right to the Server drop-down list and browse for the SQL Server instance, or type the instance name manually. Specify the authentication type and select the database in the Database drop-down list.   In the next step, you’re prompted to add additional data sources. As this can be a tricky step, especially for new users, ApexSQL Recover offers help via the Help me decide option.   The Help me decide option guides you through a series of questions about the database transaction log and advises what files to add. If you know that you have no transaction log backups or detached transaction logs, or the online transaction log file has been truncated after the data was deleted, select No additional transaction logs are available. If you know that you have transaction log backups that contain the delete transactions you want to recover, click Add transaction logs. The online transaction log is listed and selected automatically.   Click Add if to add transaction log backups. It would be best if you have a full transaction log chain, as explained above. The next step for this option is to specify the time range.   Selecting a small time range for the time of deletion will create the recovery script just for the accidentally deleted records. A wide time range might script the records deleted on purpose, and you don’t want that. If needed, you can check the script generated and manually remove such records. After that, for all data sources options, the next step is to select the tables. Be careful here, if you deleted some data from other tables on purpose, and don’t want to recover them, don’t select all tables, as ApexSQL Recover will create the INSERT script for them too.   The next step offers two options: to create a recovery script that will insert the deleted records back into the Person.EmailAddress table, or to create a new database, create the Person.EmailAddress table in it, and insert the deleted records. I’ll select the first one.   The recovery process is completed and 11 records are found and scripted, as expected.   To see the script, click View script. ApexSQL Recover has its own script editor, where you can review, modify, and execute the recovery script. The insert into statements look like: INSERT INTO Person.EmailAddress( BusinessEntityID, EmailAddressID, EmailAddress, rowguid, ModifiedDate) VALUES( 70, 70, N'[email protected]' COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AS, 'd62c5b4e-c91f-403f-b630-7b7e0fda70ce', '20030109 00:00:00.000' ); To execute the script, click Execute in the menu.   If you want to check whether the records are really back, execute SELECT * FROM Person.EmailAddress WHERE BusinessEntityID BETWEEN 70 AND 80 As shown, ApexSQL Recover recovers SQL database data after accidental deletes even without the database backup that contains the deleted data and relevant transaction log backups. ApexSQL Recover reads the deleted data from the database data file, so this method can be used even for databases in the Simple recovery model. Besides recovering SQL database records from a DELETE statement, ApexSQL Recover can help when the records are lost due to a DROP TABLE, or TRUNCATE statement, as well as repair a corrupted MDF file that cannot be attached to as SQL Server instance. You can find more information about how to recover SQL database lost data and repair a SQL Server database on ApexSQL Solution center. There are solutions for various situations when data needs to be recovered. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com)Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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  • Open Source WPF UML Design tool

    - by oazabir
    PlantUmlEditor is my new free open source UML designer project built using WPF and .NET 3.5. If you have used plantuml before, you know that you can quickly create sophisitcated UML diagrams without struggling with a designer. Especially those who use Visio to draw UML diagrams (God forbid!), you will be at heaven. This is a super fast way to get your diagrams up and ready for show. You can *write* UML diagrams in plain English, following a simple syntax and get diagrams generated on-the-fly. This editor really saves time designing UML diagrams. I have to produce quick diagrams to convey ideas quickly to Architects, Designers and Developers everyday. So, I use this tool to write some quick diagrams at the speed of coding, and the diagrams get generated on the fly. Instead of writing a long mail explaining some complex operation or some business process in English, I can quickly write it in the editor in almost plain English, and get a nice looking activity/sequence diagram generated instantly. Making major changes is also as easy as doing search-replace and copy-pasting blocks here and there. You don't get such agility in any conventional mouse-based UML designers. I have submited a full codeproject article to give you a detail walkthrough how I have built this. Please read this article and vote for me if you like it. PlantUML Editor: A fast and simple UML editor using WPF http://www.codeproject.com/KB/smart/plantumleditor.aspx You can download the project from here: http://code.google.com/p/plantumleditor/

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  • Game Design Dilemma

    - by Chris Williams
    I'm working on a 2d tilemapped RPG. I've actually made quite a fair amount of progress, but I'm at a point where I need to make a UI decision. I have the overland world completely mapped out, and I have several towns and special areas. I'm on the fence about how to integrate the two. Scenario 1: I have one ginormous map, where everything is the same scale. This means you can walk in and out of towns without having to load or wait and transition in any way. With everything the same scale, movement costs the same no matter where you are (in terms of time/turns/energy/hunger/whatever/etc...)  The potential downside to this is that it could take quite a long time to get anywhere on foot. Scenario 2: I have an overland map, a set of town maps, overland tactical maps, dungeon maps & special area maps. The overland map is at a different scale than the other maps. This means that time/turns/energy/hunger/whatever/etc is calculated at a different rate than on the other maps, which have a 1:1 scale. When entering a town, dungeon, special area or having a random encounter, you would effectively zoom in from the overland scale to the tactical scale. When you are done with combat, or exit a dungeon or town, it would zoom back out to the overland map. The downside to this is that at the zoomed out scale, the overland map isn't all that big (comparitively) and you can traverse it fairly quickly (in real time, not game world time.) Options: 1) Go with scenario 1, as is. 2) Go with scenario 1 and introduce a slightly speedier version of overland travel, such as a horse. 3) Go with scenario 1 and introduce "instant" travel, via portals or some kind of "click the big map" mechanism. This would only work with places you've already been, or somehow unlocked (perhaps via a quest.) 4) Go with Scenario 2, as is.   Thoughts, opinions, suggestions?  Feedback appreciated.

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  • Day 2 - Game Design Documentation

    - by dapostolov
    So yesterday I didn't cut any code for my game but I was able to do a tiny bit of research on the XNA Game Development Technology and the communities out there and do you know what? I feel I'm a bit closer to my goal. The bad news is today I didn't cut code either. However, not all is lost because I wanted to get my ideas on paper and today I just did that.  Today, I began to jot down notes about the game and how I felt the visual elements would interact with each other. Unlike my workplace, my personal level of documentation is nothing more than a task list or a mind map of my ideas; it helps me streamline my solutions quiet effectively and circumvent the long process of articulating each thought to the n-th degree. I truly dislike documentation (because I have an extremely hard time articulating my thought and solutions); however, because I tend to do a really good job with documentation I tend to get stuck writing the buggers. But as a generalist remark: 'No Developer likes documentation.' For now let's stick with my basic notes and call this post a living document. Here are my notes, fresh, from after watching the new first episode of Merlin second season! Actually, a quick recommendation to anyone who is reading this (if anyone is): I truly recommend you envelope yourself in the medium or task you're trying to tackle. Be one with moment and feel it! For instance: Are you writing a fantasy script / game? What would the music of the genre sound like? For me the Conan the Barbarian soundtrack by Basil Poledouris is frackin awesome. There are many other good CD's out there, which I listen to (some who even use medival instruments, but Conan I keep returning to. It's a creative trigger for me. Ask yourself what would the imagery look like? Time to surf google for artist renditions of fantasy! What would the game feel like? Start playing some of your favorite games that inspire you, be wary though, have some self control and don't let it absorb your time. Anyhow, onto the documentation... Screens, Scenes, and Sprites. Oh My! (groan...) The first thing that came to mind were the screens, I thought the following would suffice: Menu Screen Character Customisation Screen Loading Screen? Battle Ground The Menu Screen Ok. So, the thought here is when the game loads a huge title is displayed: Wizard Wars. The player is prompted with 3 menu items: 1 Player Game, 2 Player Game, and Exit. Since I'm targetting the PC platform, as a non-networked game to start, I picture myself running my mouse over each menu option and the visual element of the menu item changes, along with a sound to indicate that I am over a curent menu item. And as I move my mouse away, it changes back, and possibly an exit mouse sound. Maybe on the screen somewhere is a brazier alit with a magical tome open right beside it, OR, maybe the tome is the menu! I hear the menu music as mellow, not obtrusive or piercing. On a menu item select, a confirmation sound bellows to indicate the players selection. The Esc key will always return me to the previous screens or desktop. The menu screen must feel...dark, like a really important ritual is about to happen and thus the music should build up. 1 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) 2 Player Game - > Customize Character(s) Exit - > Back to Windows Notes: So the first thing I pick up here are a couple things: First and foremost, my artistic abilities suck crap, so I may have to hire an artist (now that i've said that, lets get techy) graphical objects will be positioned within a scene on each screen / window. Menu items will be represented grapically, possibly animated, and have sound / animation effects triggered by user input or a time line. I have an animated scene involving a brazier or fire on a stick IF I was to move this game to the xbox, I'd have to track which menu item is currently selected (unless I do a mouse pointer type thing.) WindowObject has a scene A Scene has many GameObjects GameObject has a position graphic or animation MenuObject is a GameObject which has a mouse in, mouse out, and click event which either does something graphically (animation), does something with sound, or moves to another screen.  Character Customisation Screen With either the 1 or 2 player option selected, both selections will come to this screen; a wizard requires a name, powers, and vestements of course! Player one will configure his character first and then player two. I considered a split screen for PC but to have two people fighting over a keyboard would probably suck. For XBox, a split screen could work; maybe when I get into the networking portion (phase 2 blog?) of this game I will remove the 2 player option for PC and provide only multiplayer and I will leave 2 player for xbox...hmm... Anyhow...I picture the creation process as follows: Name: (textbox / keyboard entry) - for xbox, this would have to be different. Robe Color: (color box, or something) Stats: Speed, Oomph, and Health. (as sliders) 1 as minimum and 10 as maximum. Ok, Back, and Cancel buttons / options. Each stat has a benefit which are listed below. The idea is the player decides if he wants his wizard to run fast, be a tank and ... hit with a purse.Regardless, the player will have a pool of 12 points to use. Ideally, A balanced wizard will have 5 in each attribute. Spells? The only spell of choice is a ball of fire which comes without question. The music and screen should still feel like a ritual. The Character Speed Basically, how fast your character moves and casts. Oomph (Best Monster Truck Voice): PURE POWAH!!! The damage output of your fireball. Health How much damage you can take. Notes: I realise the game dynamics may sound uninteresting at the moment; but I think after a couple releases, we could have some other grand ideas such as: saved profiles, gold to upgrade arsenal of spells, talents, etc...but for now...a vanilla fireball thrower mage will suffice for this experiment. OK. So... a MenuObject  may need to be loosely coupled to allow future items such as networking? may be a button? a CharacterObject has a name speed oomph health and a funky robe color. cap on the three stats (1-10) an arsenal of 1 spell (possibly could expand this) The Loading Screen As is. The Battleground Screen For now, I'm keeping the screen as max resolution for the PC. The screen isn't going to move or even be a split screen. I'm not aiming high here because I want to see what level of change is involved when new features / concepts are added to game content. I'm interested to find out if we could apply techniques such as MVC or MVVM to this type of development or is it too tightly coupled? This reminds me when when my best friend and I were brainstorming our game idea (this is going back a while...1994, 6?) and he cringed at the thought of bringing business technology into games, especially when I suggested a database to store character information and COM / DCOM as the medium, but it seems I wasn't far off (reflecting); just like his implementation of a xml "config file" for dynamic direct-x menus back before .net in 1999...anyhow...i digress... The Battle One screen, two characters lobing balls of fire at each other...It doesn't get better than that. Every so often a scroll appears...and the fireballs bounce off walls, or the wizard has rapid fire, or even scrolls of healing! The scroll options are endless. Two bars at the top, each the color of the wizard (with their name beside the bar) indicate how much health they have. Possibly the appearance of the scrolls means the battle is taking too long? I'm thinking 1 player controls: up, down, left, right and space to fire the button. Or even possibly, mouse click and shift - mouse button to fire a spell in the direction they are facing. Two player controls: a, s, d, f and space AND arrows (up, down, left, right) and Del key or Crtl. The game ends when a player has 0 health and a dialog box appears asking for a rematch / reconfigure / exit. Health goes down when a fireball (friendly or not), connects with a wizard. When a wizard connects with a scroll, a countdown clock / icon appears near the health bar and the wizard begins to glow. For the most part, a wizard can have only scroll 1 effect on him at a time. Notes: Ok, there's alot to cover here. a CharacterObject is a GameObject it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has sounds (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, whistling, other?) it has animations (walking, running, casting, impact, dying, laughing, idle, other?) it has a lifespan (determined by health) it is alive or dead it has a position a ScrollObject is a GameObject it carries a transferance of points "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it carries a transferance of "other" it is stationary it has a sound on impact it has a stationary animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by game) it is alive or dead it has a position a WallObject is a GameObject it has a sound on fireball impact? it is a still image / stationary it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it is dead it has a position A FireBall is a GameObject it carries a transferance of poinst "damage" (or healing, bad scroll effect?) (determinde by caster) it travels at a set velocity it travels in a direction it has a sound it has a travel animation it has an impact animation / or transfers an impact animation it has a fade animation? it has a lifespan (determined by caster) it is alive or dead it has a position As I look at this, I can see some common attributes in each object that I can carry up to the GameObject. I think I'm going to end the documentation here, it's taken me a bit of time to type this all out, tomorrow. I'll load up my IDE and my paint studio to get some good old fashioned cowboy hacking going!   D.

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  • 7 Web Design Tutorials from PSD to HTML/CSS

    - by Sushaantu
    Some time back when I was looking for some tutorials to create a website from scratch i.e. the process from designing the PSD to slice it and CSS/XHTML it, then not many quality results appeared. But that was like almost an year back and a lot of water has flown down the river Thanes since [...]

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  • What is "The" book for database design?

    - by FarmBoy
    In programming, there is often a canonical book for a particular topic, like the dragon book for compilers, K&R for C, etc. Is their a book regarding modern database design that simply must be read by anyone that would hope to eventually design databases? I'm not looking for a bunch of recommendations here. The answer I'm looking for is either "Yes, it's [Title, author]." or "No, there are many good books on databases, but no one must-read."

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  • Spatial data in the UK

    - by simonsabin
    I am just loving the fact that the Ordance Survey has now released a huge amount of data that can be used freely. I’ve downloaded the Panorama (tm) data http://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/oswebsite/products/land-form-panorama-contours/index.html . which is all the contours for the UK This I’ve loaded into SQL Server using Safe Computing’s FME ( http://www.safe.com/ ). This is because the data is a Autocad DXF file and translating that to SQL Server spatial data is not easy. The FME workbench is not...(read more)

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  • Initial Review - Mastering Unreal Technology I: Introduction to Level Design with Unreal Engine 3

    - by Matt Christian
    Recently I purchased 3 large volumes on using the Unreal 3 Engine to create levels and custom games.  This past weekend I cracked the spine of the first and started reading.  Here are my early impressions (I'm ~250 pages into it, with appendices it's about 900). Pros Interestingly, the book starts with an overview of the Unreal engines leading up to Unreal 3 (including Gears of War) and follows with some discussion on planning a mod and what goes into the game development process.  This is nice for an intro to the book and is much preferred rather than a simple chapter detailing what is on the included CD, how to install and setup UnrealEd, etc...  While the chapter on Unreal history and planning can be considered 'fluff', it's much less 'fluffy' than most books provide. I need to mention one thing here that is pretty crucial in the way I'm going to continue reviewing this book.  Most technical books like this are used as a shelf reference; as a thick volume you use for looking up techniques every now and again.  Even so, I prefer reading from cover to cover, including chapters I may already be knowledgable on (I'm sure this is typical for most people).  If there was a chapter on installing UnrealEd (the previously mentioned 'fluff'), I would probably force myself to read it, even though I've installed the game and engine multiple times on different systems. Chapter 3 is where we really get to the introduction piece of UnrealEd, creating your first basic level.  This large chapter details creating two small rooms, adding static meshes, adding lighting, creating and adding particle emitters, creating a door that animates with Unreal Matinee and Kismet, static meshes with physics, and other little additions to make your level look less beginner.  This really is a chapter that overviews the entire rest of the book, as each chapter following details the creation and intermediate usages of Static Meshes, Materials, Lighting, etc... One other very nice part to this book is the way the tutorials are setup.  Each tutorial builds off the previous and all are step-by-step.  If you haven't completed one yet, you can find all the starting files on the CD that comes with the book. Cons While the description of the overview chapter (Chapter 3) is fresh in your mind, let me start the cons by saying this chapter is setup extremely confusing for the noob.  At one point, you end up creating a door mesh and setting it up as a InteropMesh so that it is ready to be animated, only to switch to particles and spend a good portion of time working on a different piece of the level.  Yes, this is actually how I develop my levels (jumping back and forth), though it's very odd for a book to jump out of sequence. The next item might be a positive or a negative depending on your skill level with UnrealEd.  Most of the introduction to the editor layout is found in one of the Appendices instead of before Chapter 3.  For new readers, this might lead to confusion as Appendix A would typically be read between Chapter 2 and 3.  However, this is a positive for those with some experience in UnrealEd as they don't have to force themselves through a 'learn every editor button' chapter.  I'm listing this in the Cons section as the book is 'Introduction to...' and is probably going to be directed toward a lot of very beginner developers. Finally, there's a lack of general description to a lot of the underlying engine and what each piece in UnrealEd is or does.  Sometimes you'll be performing Tutorial after Tutorial with barely a paragraph in between describing ANY of what you've just done.  Tutorial 1.1 Step 6 says to press Button X, so you do.  But why?  This is in part a problem with the structure of the tutorials rather than the content of the book.  Since the tutorials are so focused on a step-by-step (or procedural) description of a process, you learn the process and not why you're doing that.  For example, you might learn how to size a material to a surface, but will only learn what buttons to press and not what each one does. This becomes extremely apparent in the chapter on Static Meshes as most of the chapter is spent in 3D Studio Max.  Since there are books on 3DSM and modelling, the book really only tells you the steps and says to go grab a book on modelling if you're really interested in 3DSM.  Again, I've learned the process to develop my own meshes in 3DSM, but I don't know the why behind the steps. Conclusion So far the book is very good though I would have a hard time recommending it to a complete beginner.  I would suggest anyone looking at this book (obviously including the other 2, more advanced volumes) to pick up a copy of UDK or Unreal 3 (available online or via download services such as Steam) and watch some online tutorials and play with it first.  You'll find plenty of online videos available that were created by the authors and may suit as a better introduction to the editor.

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  • SharePoint 2010 Design & Deployment Best Practices

    - by Michael Van Cleave
    Well now that SharePoint 2010 has successfully launched and everyone is scratching for every piece of best practices information they can get their hands on, I would like to invite anyone and everyone to come and take part in ShareSquared's next webinar. The webinar will cover some key information such as: Pros and cons of the different approaches to installing and configuring SharePoint 2010 Configuration Best Practices for SharePoint 2010 farms Services architecture; dependencies, licensing, and topologies Information Architecture guidance for sizing, multilingual support, multi-tenancy, and more. Using tools such as SharePoint Composer and SharePoint Maestro to configure and deploy SharePoint 2010 And most of all, avoiding common pitfalls for installation and deployment. What is better than all of that? Well, the even more exciting thing is that the presenters will be our very own SharePoint MVP's Gary Lapointe and Paul Stork. If you don't know who these guys are then you should definitely check out their blogs and their contributions to the SharePoint community. To get more information and register click here: REGISTER Other great links to information in this post: ShareSquared, Inc Gary Lapointe's Blog Paul Stork's Blog SharePoint Composer Check it out and get up to speed from some of the best in the industry. Michael

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  • Installing a VADTools design component into your 3CX Voice Application Designer toolbox

    - by ParadigmShift
    The 3CX Voice Application Designer is an innovative tool for creating IVR (Interactive Voice Response) Applications, or Voice Applications.  It is a familiar drag-and-drop experience that Visual Studio developers will get the hang of pretty quick. Additionally, there are new 3rd party components released by BlueVoice, that are distributed though www.UtahVoIPStore.com I thought I’d post a quick introduction to it, by showing how to install a component into you designer tool box.  In this example I am using the CommandLine component, which lets you call the command line from your voice application. First, copy the ZIP file that came with your component to the root folder of your VAD project. Now extract the zip file into the root directory. The component will be in the root directory and the Libraries directory will have a new DLL file. Open your VAD project and right-click on the project in project explorer to add the new component to your project. Navigate to the root folder of your project and select the new component. The component is now ready for you to use in your toolbox.

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