Search Results

Search found 50994 results on 2040 pages for 'simple solution'.

Page 174/2040 | < Previous Page | 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181  | Next Page >

  • How to Create Features for Windows SharePoint Services 3.0

    To customise a SharePoint (WSS 3.0) site, you'll need to understand 'Features'. The 'Feature' framework has become the most important method of customising a SharePoint site, because it is now defined by a list of Features, a layout page and a master page. One templated site can be turned into another by toggling Features and maybe switching the layout page or master page. Charles Lee explains.

    Read the article

  • Exporting PowerPoint Slides with Specific Heights and Widths

    - by Damon Armstrong
    I found myself in need of exporting PowerPoint slides from a presentation and was fairly excited when I found that you could save them off in standard image formats. The problem is that Microsoft conveniently exports all images with a resolution of 960 x 720 pixels, which is not the resolution I wanted.  You can, however, specify the resolution if you are willing to put a macro into your project: Sub ExportSlides()   For i = 1 To ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange.Count     Dim fileName As String     If (i < 10) Then       fileName = "C:\PowerPoint Export\Slide" & i & ".png"     Else       fileName = "C:\PowerPoint Export\Slide0" & i & ".png"     End If     ActiveWindow.Selection.SlideRange(i).Export fileName, "PNG", 1280, 720   Next End Sub When you call the Export method you can specify the file type as well as the dimensions to use when creating the image.  If the macro approach is not your thing, then you can also modify the default settings through the registry: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/827745

    Read the article

  • The Presentation Isn't Over Until It's Over

    - by Phil Factor
    The senior corporate dignitaries settled into their seats looking important in a blue-suited sort of way. The lights dimmed as I strode out in front to give my presentation.  I had ten vital minutes to make my pitch.  I was about to dazzle the top management of a large software company who were considering the purchase of my software product. I would present them with a dazzling synthesis of diagrams, graphs, followed by  a live demonstration of my software projected from my laptop.  My preparation had been meticulous: It had to be: A year’s hard work was at stake, so I’d prepared it to perfection.  I stood up and took them all in, with a gaze of sublime confidence. Then the laptop expired. There are several possible alternative plans of action when this happens     A. Stare at the smoking laptop vacuously, flapping ones mouth slowly up and down     B. Stand frozen like a statue, locked in indecision between fright and flight.     C. Run out of the room, weeping     D. Pretend that this was all planned     E. Abandon the presentation in favour of a stilted and tedious dissertation about the software     F. Shake your fist at the sky, and curse the sense of humour of your preferred deity I started for a few seconds on plan B, normally referred to as the ‘Rabbit in the headlamps of the car’ technique. Suddenly, a little voice inside my head spoke. It spoke the famous inane words of Yogi Berra; ‘The game isn't over until it's over.’ ‘Too right’, I thought. What to do? I ran through the alternatives A-F inclusive in my mind but none appealed to me. I was completely unprepared for this. Nowadays, longevity has since taught me more than I wanted to know about the wacky sense of humour of fate, and I would have taken two laptops. I hadn’t, but decided to do the presentation anyway as planned. I started out ignoring the dead laptop, but pretending, instead that it was still working. The audience looked startled. They were expecting plan B to be succeeded by plan C, I suspect. They weren’t used to denial on this scale. After my introductory talk, which didn’t require any visuals, I came to the diagram that described the application I’d written.  I’d taken ages over it and it was hot stuff. Well, it would have been had it been projected onto the screen. It wasn’t. Before I describe what happened then, I must explain that I have thespian tendencies.  My  triumph as Professor Higgins in My Fair Lady at the local operatic society is now long forgotten, but I remember at the time of my finest performance, the moment that, glancing up over the vast audience of  moist-eyed faces at the during the poignant  scene between Eliza and Higgins at the end, I  realised that I had a talent that one day could possibly  be harnessed for commercial use I just talked about the diagram as if it was there, but throwing in some extra description. The audience nodded helpfully when I’d done enough. Emboldened, I began a sort of mime, well, more of a ballet, to represent each slide as I came to it. Heaven knows I’d done my preparation and, in my mind’s eye, I could see every detail, but I had to somehow project the reality of that vision to the audience, much the same way any actor playing Macbeth should do the ghost of Banquo.  My desperation gave me a manic energy. If you’ve ever demonstrated a windows application entirely by mime, gesture and florid description, you’ll understand the scale of the challenge, but then I had nothing to lose. With a brief sentence of description here and there, and arms flailing whilst outlining the size and shape of  graphs and diagrams, I used the many tricks of mime, gesture and body-language  learned from playing Captain Hook, or the Sheriff of Nottingham in pantomime. I set out determinedly on my desperate venture. There wasn’t time to do anything but focus on the challenge of the task: the world around me narrowed down to ten faces and my presentation: ten souls who had to be hypnotized into seeing a Windows application:  one that was slick, well organized and functional I don’t remember the details. Eight minutes of my life are gone completely. I was a thespian berserker.  I know however that I followed the basic plan of building the presentation in a carefully controlled crescendo until the dazzling finale where the results were displayed on-screen.  ‘And here you see the results, neatly formatted and grouped carefully to enhance the significance of the figures, together with running trend-graphs!’ I waved a mime to signify an animated  window-opening, and looked up, in my first pause, to gaze defiantly  at the audience.  It was a sight I’ll never forget. Ten pairs of eyes were gazing in rapt attention at the imaginary window, and several pairs of eyes were glancing at the imaginary graphs and figures.  I hadn’t had an audience like that since my starring role in  Beauty and the Beast.  At that moment, I realized that my desperate ploy might work. I sat down, slightly winded, when my ten minutes were up.  For the first and last time in my life, the audience of a  ‘PowerPoint’ presentation burst into spontaneous applause. ‘Any questions?’ ‘Yes,  Have you got an agent?’ Yes, in case you’re wondering, I got the deal. They bought the software product from me there and then. However, it was a life-changing experience for me and I have never ever again trusted technology as part of a presentation.  Even if things can’t go wrong, they’ll go wrong and they’ll kill the flow of what you’re presenting.  if you can’t do something without the techno-props, then you shouldn’t do it.  The greatest lesson of all is that great presentations require preparation and  ‘stage-presence’ rather than fancy graphics. They’re a great supporting aid, but they should never dominate to the point that you’re lost without them.

    Read the article

  • Profiling SharePoint with ANTS Performance Profiler 5.2

    Using ANTS Performance Profiler with SharePoint has, previously, been possible, but not easy. Version 5.2 of ANTS Performance Profiler changes all that, and Chris Allen has put together a straight-forward guide to profiling SharePoint, demonstrating just how much easier it has become.

    Read the article

  • Opportunity Nokia's

    - by Andrew Clarke
    Nokia’s alliance with Microsoft is likely to be good news for anyone using Microsoft technologies, and particularly for .NET developers. Before the announcement, the future wasn’t looking so bright for the ‘mobile’ version of Windows, Windows Phone. Microsoft currently has only 3.1% of the Smartphone market, even though it has been involved in it for longer than its main rivals. Windows Phone has now got the basics right, but that is hardly sufficient by itself to change its predicament significantly. With Nokia's help, it is possible. Despite the promise of multi-tasking for third party apps, integration with Microsoft platforms such as Xbox and Office, direct integration of Twitter support, and the introduction of IE 9 “later this year”, there have been frustratingly few signs of urgency on Microsoft’s part in improving the Windows Phone  product. Until this happens, there seems little prospect of reward for third-party developers brave enough to support the platform with applications. This is puzzling when one sees how well SQL Server and Microsoft’s other server technologies have thrived in recent years, under good leadership from a management that understands the technology. The same just hasn’t been true for some of the consumer products. In consequence, iPads and Android tablets have already exposed diehard Windows users, for the first time, to an alternative GUI for consumer Tablet PCs, and the comparisons aren’t always in Windows’ favour. Nokia’s problem is obvious: Android’s meteoric rise. Android now has 33% of the worldwide market for smartphones, while the market share of Nokia’s Symbian has dropped from 44% to 31%. As details of the agreement emerge, it would seem that Nokia will bring a great deal of expertise, such as imaging and Nokia Maps, to Windows Phone that should make it more competitive. It is wrong to assume that Nokia’s decline will continue: the shock of Android’s sudden rise could be enough to sting them back to their previous form, and they have Microsoft’s huge resources and marketing clout to help them. For the sake of the whole Windows stack, I really hope the alliance succeeds.

    Read the article

  • No Rest for the Virtuous

    - by Chris Massey
    It has been an impressively brutal month in terms of security breaches, and across a whole range of fronts. The "Cablegate" leaks, courtesy of Wikileaks, appear to be in a league of their own. The "Operation Payback" DDoS attacks against PayPal, MasterCard and Visa (not to mention the less successful attack against Amazon) are equally impressive. Even more recently, the Gawker Media Network was subjected to a relatively sophisticated hack attack by Gnosis, with the hackers gaining access to some...(read more)

    Read the article

  • How to design Models the correct way: Object-oriented or "Package"-oriented?

    - by ajsie
    I know that in OOP you want every object (from a class) to be a "thing", eg. user, validator etc. I know the basics about MVC, how they different parts interact with each other. However, i wonder if the models in MVC should be designed according to the traditional OOP design, that is to say, should every model be a database/table/row (solution 2)? Or is the intention more like to collect methods that are affecting the same table or a bunch of related tables (solution 1). example for an Address book module in CodeIgniter, where i want be able to "CRUD" a Contact and add/remove it to/from a CRUD-able Contact Group. Models solution 1: bunching all related methods together (not real object, rather a "package") class Contacts extends Model { function create_contact() {) function read_contact() {} function update_contact() {} function delete_contact() {} function add_contact_to_group() {} function delete_contact_from_group() {} function create_group() {} function read_group() {} function update_group() {} function delete_group() {} } Models solution 2: the OOP way (one class per file) class Contact extends Model { private $name = ''; private $id = ''; function create_contact() {) function read_contact() {} function update_contact() {} function delete_contact() {} } class ContactGroup extends Model { private $name = ''; private $id = ''; function add_contact_to_group() {} function delete_contact_from_group() {} function create_group() {} function read_group() {} function update_group() {} function delete_group() {} } i dont know how to think when i want to create the models. and the above examples are my real tasks for creating an Address book. Should i just bunch all functions together in one class. then the class contains different logic (contact and group), so it can not hold properties that are specific for either one of them. the solution 2 works according to the OOP. but i dont know why i should make such a dividing. what would the benefits be to have a Contact object for example. Its surely not a User object, so why should a Contact "live" with its own state (properties and methods). you experienced guys with OOP/MVC, please shed a light on how one should think here in this very concrete task.

    Read the article

  • Restoring Databases

    - by Grant Fritchey
    I like the way Mike Walsh phrased it: You're Only As Good as Your Ability To Restore. Ain't it the truth. You may be taking backups, incrementals, and log backups of your databases. You may have DBCC in place, and all that fun stuff. But if you haven't restored the database, what do you have? You don't know. The trick is, restoring databases takes up a heck of a lot of space on your servers. To test all your productions backups, you'd need a system with as much space as production. unless.. Ever heard of SQL Virtual Restore? Check it out. With this, you answer Mike's questions and validate your backups without having to have twice the amount of space. That's a win, and we all know, winning is better than losing.

    Read the article

  • A Deep Dive into Transport Queues (Part 2)

    Johan Veldhuis completes his 'Deep Dive' by plunging even deeper into the mysteries of MS Exchange's Transport queues that are used to temporarily store messages which are waiting until they are passed through to the next stage, and explains how to change the way they work via configuration settings.

    Read the article

  • Exploring your database schema with SQL

    In the second part of Phil's series of articles on finding stuff (such as objects, scripts, entities, metadata) in SQL Server, he offers some scripts that should be handy for the developer faced with tracking down problem areas and potential weaknesses in a database.

    Read the article

  • Basic Defensive Database Programming Techniques

    We can all recognise good-quality database code: It doesn't break with every change in the server's configuration, or on upgrade. It isn't affected by concurrent usage, or high workload. In an extract from his forthcoming book, Alex explains just how to go about producing resilient TSQL code that works, and carries on working.

    Read the article

  • Antenna Aligner Part 7: Connecting the dots

    - by Chris George
    The app is basically ready, so I eagerly started to sort out creating the application entry in iTunes Connect. It's mostly intuitive actually, although I did have to create yet another icon for iTunes sized 512x512 pixels, damn lucky I did the original graphics as vector! It took me longer to write the application description than anything else, I'm so not a tech author! I didn't like the way you have to 'make up' an SKU (Stock Keeping Unit) number. I have to do some googling to find out that it really doesn't matter what it is! It should be more obvious what to do from the actual website itself. That aside, the rest of it was actually fairly straightforward. As well as the details of the application, iPhone and iPad screenshots were also required. This posed somewhat of a problem. The iPhone ones were easy (as I have one!), but I do not (yet) own an iPad . So I thought I'd leave the iPad screenshots out for now. Once the application details were sorted, I moved onto the rights and pricing. At the start of the project I had made the decision that I wouldn't charge any more than the lowest amount £0.59. I believe there is a market for this, but as my first foray into app development I didn't want to take the mick. I did realise, however, that I had built my app with a developer certificate and provisioning profile. This was fairly quickly corrected, and again Nomad made this very easy to switch over to the distribution certificate and provisioning profile. With a sense of excitement I cracked open iTunes connect and clicked the upload button ... ...slight snag... . when the Nomad project was started, Apple allowed uploads of these binaries via iTunes Connect. But this is no longer possible, the only upload path is via the Application Loader available from the Apple Developer program. This itself has one limitation, it only runs on a mac! D'OH!!!  Actually my language was somewhat more colourful when this fact came to light. After picking my laptop up off the floor and putting it back together... ok only joking, but I did nearly throw it out of frustration!... I started to consider the options; I briefly entertained the idea of buying a cheap mac from ebay... no, that defeats the whole object of what I'm doing, plus my wife wouldn't be impressed there are some guys out there in the interweb who will upload your app for a small fee...but I don't really like the idea of giving some faceless email address my apple developer login details, as well as my app binary! find some willing friend with a mac who would kindly let me use it... obviously this is the only sensible option. In the meantime, I informed the Nomad team about this slight 'issue' and they are currently investigating possible solutions...

    Read the article

  • WPF: How to get the bounds of a control in an automatic layout container, in the container coordinate space

    - by Bart Read
    Googling this the other day, I started to get the impression that this might be annoyingly tricky. You might wonder why this is necessary at all, given that WPF implements layout for you in most cases (except for containers such as Canvas), but trust me, if you're developing custom elements, at some point you're probably going to need it. If you're adding controls to a Canvas you can always use the attached Left, Right, etc., properties to get the bounds. Fortunately it's really no more difficult...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Max Trinidad Sells PowerShell on the Puerto Rican Seashore

    - by SQLBeat
      In this episode, Max Trinidad, Powershell MVP lets me bait him into predicting the future of computing and helps me understand a thing or two about cultural misconceptions around locked men’s restrooms at busy cantinas. We are in beautiful Puerto Rico for this podcast and in honor of that, I try my hand at Espanol. I know as much Spanish as I do BizTalk Server and it shows, embarrassingly so.  Max is always happy but I make him cry on this one and I feel really horrible about it. I promise. It is my function. CLICK BELOW TO LISTEN >>>>>>>CLICK HERE TO LISTEN >>>>>>>>>> CLICK ABOVE TO SHARPEN YOUR CLAYMORE

    Read the article

  • Clever memory usage through the years

    - by Ben Emmett
    A friend and I were recently talking about the really clever tricks people have used to get the most out of memory. I thought I’d share my favorites, and would love to hear yours too! Interleaving on drum memory Back in the ye olde days before I’d been born (we’re talking the 50s / 60s here), working memory commonly took the form of rotating magnetic drums. These would spin at a constant speed, and a fixed head would read from memory when the correct part of the drum passed it by, a bit like a primitive platter disk. Because each revolution took a few milliseconds, programmers took to manually arranging information non-sequentially on the drum, timing when an instruction or memory address would need to be accessed, then spacing information accordingly around the edge of the drum, thus reducing the access delay. Similar techniques were still used on hard disks and floppy disks into the 90s, but have become irrelevant with modern disk technologies. The Hashlife algorithm Conway’s Game of Life has attracted numerous implementations over the years, but Bill Gosper’s Hashlife algorithm is particularly impressive. Taking advantage of the repetitive nature of many cellular automata, it uses a quadtree structure to store the hashes of pieces of the overall grid. Over time there are fewer and fewer new structures which need to be evaluated, so it starts to run faster with larger grids, drastically outperforming other algorithms both in terms of speed and the size of grid which can be simulated. The actual amount of memory used is huge, but it’s used in a clever way, so makes the list . Elite’s procedural generation Ok, so this isn’t exactly a memory optimization – more a storage optimization – but it gets an honorable mention anyway. When writing Elite, David Braben and Ian Bell wanted to build a rich world which gamers could explore, but their 22K memory was something of a limitation (for comparison that’s about the size of my avatar picture at the top of this page). They procedurally generated all the characteristics of the 2048 planets in their virtual universe, including the names, which were stitched together using a lookup table of parts of names. In fact the original plans were for 2^52 planets, but it was decided that that was probably too many. Oh, and they did that all in assembly language. Other games of the time used similar techniques too – The Sentinel’s landscape generation algorithm being another example. Modern Garbage Collectors Garbage collection in managed languages like Java and .NET ensures that most of the time, developers stop needing to care about how they use and clean up memory as the garbage collector handles it automatically. Achieving this without killing performance is a near-miraculous feet of software engineering. Much like when learning chemistry, you find that every time you think you understand how the garbage collector works, it turns out to be a mere simplification; that there are yet more complexities and heuristics to help it run efficiently. Of course introducing memory problems is still possible (and there are tools like our memory profiler to help if that happens to you) but they’re much, much rarer. A cautionary note In the examples above, there were good and well understood reasons for the optimizations, but cunningly optimized code has usually had to trade away readability and maintainability to achieve its gains. Trying to optimize memory usage without being pretty confident that there’s actually a problem is doing it wrong. So what have I missed? Tell me about the ingenious (or stupid) tricks you’ve seen people use. Ben

    Read the article

  • ASP.NET 4.0 Features

    ASP.NET v4 is released with Visual studio 2010. Web developers are presented with a bewildering range of new features and so Ludmal De Silva has described what he considers to be the most important new features in ASP.NET V4

    Read the article

  • .NET Security Part 4

    - by Simon Cooper
    Finally, in this series, I am going to cover some of the security issues that can trip you up when using sandboxed appdomains. DISCLAIMER: I am not a security expert, and this is by no means an exhaustive list. If you actually are writing security-critical code, then get a proper security audit of your code by a professional. The examples below are just illustrations of the sort of things that can go wrong. 1. AppDomainSetup.ApplicationBase The most obvious one is the issue covered in the MSDN documentation on creating a sandbox, in step 3 – the sandboxed appdomain has the same ApplicationBase as the controlling appdomain. So let’s explore what happens when they are the same, and an exception is thrown. In the sandboxed assembly, Sandboxed.dll (IPlugin is an interface in a partially-trusted assembly, with a single MethodToDoThings on it): public class UntrustedPlugin : MarshalByRefObject, IPlugin { // implements IPlugin.MethodToDoThings() public void MethodToDoThings() { throw new EvilException(); } } [Serializable] internal class EvilException : Exception { public override string ToString() { // show we have read access to C:\Windows // read the first 5 directories Console.WriteLine("Pwned! Mwuahahah!"); foreach (var d in Directory.EnumerateDirectories(@"C:\Windows").Take(5)) { Console.WriteLine(d.FullName); } return base.ToString(); } } And in the controlling assembly: // what can possibly go wrong? AppDomainSetup appDomainSetup = new AppDomainSetup { ApplicationBase = AppDomain.CurrentDomain.SetupInformation.ApplicationBase } // only grant permissions to execute // and to read the application base, nothing else PermissionSet restrictedPerms = new PermissionSet(PermissionState.None); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new SecurityPermission(SecurityPermissionFlag.Execution)); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); restrictedPerms.AddPermission( new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.pathDiscovery, appDomainSetup.ApplicationBase); // create the sandbox AppDomain sandbox = AppDomain.CreateDomain("Sandbox", null, appDomainSetup, restrictedPerms); // execute UntrustedPlugin in the sandbox // don't crash the application if the sandbox throws an exception IPlugin o = (IPlugin)sandbox.CreateInstanceFromAndUnwrap("Sandboxed.dll", "UntrustedPlugin"); try { o.MethodToDoThings() } catch (Exception e) { Console.WriteLine(e.ToString()); } And the result? Oops. We’ve allowed a class that should be sandboxed to execute code with fully-trusted permissions! How did this happen? Well, the key is the exact meaning of the ApplicationBase property: The application base directory is where the assembly manager begins probing for assemblies. When EvilException is thrown, it propagates from the sandboxed appdomain into the controlling assembly’s appdomain (as it’s marked as Serializable). When the exception is deserialized, the CLR finds and loads the sandboxed dll into the fully-trusted appdomain. Since the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory contains the sandboxed assembly, the CLR finds and loads the assembly into a full-trust appdomain, and the evil code is executed. So the problem isn’t exactly that the sandboxed appdomain’s ApplicationBase is the same as the controlling appdomain’s, it’s that the sandboxed dll was in such a place that the controlling appdomain could find it as part of the standard assembly resolution mechanism. The sandbox then forced the assembly to load in the controlling appdomain by throwing a serializable exception that propagated outside the sandbox. The easiest fix for this is to keep the sandbox ApplicationBase well away from the ApplicationBase of the controlling appdomain, and don’t allow the sandbox permissions to access the controlling appdomain’s ApplicationBase directory. If you do this, then the sandboxed assembly can’t be accidentally loaded into the fully-trusted appdomain, and the code can’t be executed. If the plugin does try to induce the controlling appdomain to load an assembly it shouldn’t, a SerializationException will be thrown when it tries to load the assembly to deserialize the exception, and no damage will be done. 2. Loading the sandboxed dll into the application appdomain As an extension of the previous point, you shouldn’t directly reference types or methods in the sandboxed dll from your application code. That loads the assembly into the fully-trusted appdomain, and from there code in the assembly could be executed. Instead, pull out methods you want the sandboxed dll to have into an interface or class in a partially-trusted assembly you control, and execute methods via that instead (similar to the example above with the IPlugin interface). If you need to have a look at the assembly before executing it in the sandbox, either examine the assembly using reflection from within the sandbox, or load the assembly into the Reflection-only context in the application’s appdomain. The code in assemblies in the reflection-only context can’t be executed, it can only be reflected upon, thus protecting your appdomain from malicious code. 3. Incorrectly asserting permissions You should only assert permissions when you are absolutely sure they’re safe. For example, this method allows a caller read-access to any file they call this method with, including your documents, any network shares, the C:\Windows directory, etc: [SecuritySafeCritical] public static string GetFileText(string filePath) { new FileIOPermission(FileIOPermissionAccess.Read, filePath).Assert(); return File.ReadAllText(filePath); } Be careful when asserting permissions, and ensure you’re not providing a loophole sandboxed dlls can use to gain access to things they shouldn’t be able to. Conclusion Hopefully, that’s given you an idea of some of the ways it’s possible to get past the .NET security system. As I said before, this post is not exhaustive, and you certainly shouldn’t base any security-critical applications on the contents of this blog post. What this series should help with is understanding the possibilities of the security system, and what all the security attributes and classes mean and what they are used for, if you were to use the security system in the future.

    Read the article

  • Implementing Cluster Continuous Replication, Part 3

    Cluster continuous replication (CCR) uses log shipping and failover to provide a more resilient email system with faster recovery. Once it is installed, a clustered server requires different management routines. These are done either with a GUI tool, The Failover Cluster Management Console, or the Exchange Management Shell. You can use Powershell as well for some tasks. Confused? Not for long, since Brien Posey is once more here to help.

    Read the article

  • A weekend with the Samsung Galaxy Tab

    - by Richard Mitchell
    This weekend I took one of the Samsung Galaxy Tabs we have lying around the office here home to see how I got on with it as I've been thinking of buying one. Initial impressions The look and feel of the Tab is quite nice. It's a lot smaller than an iPad but that is no bad thing as I imagine they are targeted at different markets. The Tab fits into my inside coat pocket nicely and doesn't feel like it's weighing me down too much. Connecting up the Tab to the network at work was fine, typing in...(read more)

    Read the article

  • Building Performance Metrics into ASP.NET MVC Applications

    When you're instrumenting an ASP.NET MVC or Web API application to monitor its performance while it is running, it makes sense to use custom performance counters.There are plenty of tools available that read performance counter data, report on it and create alerts based on it. You can then plot application metrics against all sorts of server and workstation metrics.This way, there will always be the right data to guide your tuning efforts.

    Read the article

  • Sunshine after the iCloud release?

    - by Laila
    "Why should I believe them? They're the ones that brought us MobileMe? It was not our finest hour, but we learned a lot." Steve Jobs June 6th 2011 Apple's new cloud service has been met with uncritical excitement by industry commentators.  It is wonderful what a rename can do.  Apple has had a 'cloud' offering for three years called MobileMe, successor to .MAC and  iTools, so iCloud is now the fourth internet service Apple have attempted. If this had been Microsoft, there would have been catcalls all around the blogosphere.  I'll admit that there is a lot more functionality announced for iCloud than MobileMe has ever managed to achieve, but then almost anything has more functionality than MobileMe.  It's an expensive service (£120 a year in the UK, $90 in the states), launched as far back as  June 9, 2008, that has delivered very little and suffered a string of technical problems; the documentation was mainly  a community effort, built up gradually by the frustrated and angry users. It was supposed to synchronise PC Outlook calendars but couldn't manage Microsoft Exchange (Google could, of course). It used WebDAV to allow Windows users to attach to the filestore, but didn't document how to do it. The method for downloading and uploading files to the cloud-based filestore was ridiculously clunky. It allowed you to post photos on a public site, but forgot to include a way of deleting photos. I could go on with the list, but you can explore the many sites that have flourished to inhabit the support-vacuum left by Apple. MobileMe should have had all the bright new clever things announced for iCloud. Apple dropped the ball, and allowed services such as Flickr to fill the void. However, their PR skills are such that, a name-change later (the .ME.com email address remains), it has turned a rout into a victory, and hundreds of earnest bloggers have been extolling Apple's expertise in cloud matters. This must be frustrating for the other cloud providers who have quietly got the technology working right. I wish iCloud well, even though I resent the expensive mess they made of MobileMe. Apple promise that iCloud will sync files, apps, app data, and media across all the different iOS5 devices, Macs, and PCs. It also hopes to sync music across devices, but not video content. They've offered existing MobileMe users free use of the MobileMe service for a year as the product is morphed, and they will be able to transfer to iCloud when it is launched in the autumn.  On June 30, 2012, MobileMe will die, and Apple's iWeb is also soon to join iTools and .MAC in the hereafter. So why get excited about iCloud? That all depends on the level of PC integration. Whereas iOS5 machines will be full participants in the new world of data-sharing (Sorry iPod Touch users) what about .NET libraries? There is talk of synchronising 'My Pictures' libraries with iOS5 and iMac machines, but little more detail as yet. Apple has a lot to prove with iCloud and anyone with actual experience of their past attempts to get into cloud services will be wary.

    Read the article

  • SQLBeat Podcast Episode 3 – Buck Woody – Former Nun and Windows Azooray Solutioner

    - by SQLBeat
    So here it is after so many anticpated months, Episode 3. I almost feel like like having an Amercian-style hot dog in a jar to celebrate. Buck Woody and I talk about that. And we talk about moms and a Woody tattoo,  Jehova’s Witness insurance salesmen, the proper pronunciation of Azure and character. We are in England, a country with so many names and very few ice cold beverages.  We find ourselves and our wives and yungins (we can say that cause we are from Florida) in the first SQL Saturday in the U.K., Cambridge.  Though I have spent some time with Buck over the years, this trip stood out as being one where we really bonded. And I have the audio and pictures to prove it. So without further annoying text intro, I give you 30 minutes of Buck Woody…and me asking dumb questions and saying "When I was grown up."  Enjoy. Download the MP3

    Read the article

  • What the Hekaton?

    - by Tony Davis
    Hekaton, the power behind SQL Server 2014′s In-Memory OLTP technology, is intended to make data operations run orders of magnitude faster on SQL Server. This works its magic partly by serving database workloads entirely from main memory, using memory-optimized table structures. It replaces the relational engine’s standard locking model with an optimistic concurrency model based on time-stamped row versions. Deeper down the Hekaton engine uses new, ‘latch free’ data structures. So far, so good, but performance improvements on this scale require a compromise, and the compromise is that these aren’t tables as we understand them. For the database developer, these differences are painful because they involve sacrificing some very important bits of the relational model. Most importantly, Hekaton tables don’t currently support FOREIGN KEY constraints or CHECK constraints, and you can’t put the checks in triggers because there aren’t any DML triggers either. Constraints allow a relational designer to enforce relational integrity and data integrity. Without them, of course, ‘bad data’ can get into our Hekaton tables. There is no easy way of preventing it. For several classes of database and data, this is a show-stopper. One may regard all these restrictions regretfully, seeing limited opportunity to try out Hekaton with current databases, but perhaps there is also a sudden glow of recognition. Isn’t this how we all originally imagined table variables were going to be, back in SQL 2005? And they have much the same restrictions. Maybe, instead of pretending that a currently-designed database can be ‘Hekatonized’ with a few mouse clicks, we should redesign databases for SQL 2014 to replace table variables with Hekaton tables, exploiting this technology for fast intermediate processing, and for the most part forget, for now, the idea of trying to convert our base relational tables into Hekaton tables. Few database developers would be averse to having their working tables running an order of magnitude faster, as long as it didn’t compromise the integrity of the data in the base tables.

    Read the article

< Previous Page | 170 171 172 173 174 175 176 177 178 179 180 181  | Next Page >