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  • Task-It Webinar - Building a real-world application with RadControls for Silverlight 4

    Yesterday I held a live webinar on Building a real-world application with RadControls for Silverlight 4. Thank you to all of those that attended, but if you did not have a chance to catch it, you can watch a recorded version here: Building a real-world application with RadControls for Silverlight 4 I wasn't able to get too deep into the inner workings of the app because of time limitations, but over the upcoming weeks I will dig deeper in my blog posts, and potentially some videos. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • Subdomains vs. URL Path in shareable links

    - by Adam Matan
    I am building a web application for questions and answers. Each question/answer page has all the required metadata for Facebook and Twitter, and we encourage users to share these pages. I have a dilemma regarding the shared link structure: Option 1 - subdomains Use a questions.example.com and answers.example.com, followed by an ID and optional text. The text is ignored by the request, which only takes the id into account. http://questions.example.com/<question_id>/<question_text> http://questions.example.com/12345/how-long-is-the-queue # Example http://q.example.com/12345 # Example Option 2 - URL path This is the format used by stackoverflow.com and trello.com: http://example.com/questions/<question_id>/<question_text> http://example.com/questions12345/how-long-is-the-queue # Example http://example.com/q/12345 # Example Server-wise, I can easily do both - I have a wildcard SSL certificate and Apache/NGinx configuration is pretty straightforward. Which option - subdomains or URL path - is preferred for shareble links?

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  • Agile Development

    - by James Oloo Onyango
    Alot of literature has and is being written about agile developement and its surrounding philosophies. In my quest to find the best way to express the importance of agile methodologies, i have found Robert C. Martin's "A Satire Of Two Companies" to be both the most concise and thorough! Enjoy the read! Rufus Inc Project Kick Off Your name is Bob. The date is January 3, 2001, and your head still aches from the recent millennial revelry. You are sitting in a conference room with several managers and a group of your peers. You are a project team leader. Your boss is there, and he has brought along all of his team leaders. His boss called the meeting. "We have a new project to develop," says your boss's boss. Call him BB. The points in his hair are so long that they scrape the ceiling. Your boss's points are just starting to grow, but he eagerly awaits the day when he can leave Brylcream stains on the acoustic tiles. BB describes the essence of the new market they have identified and the product they want to develop to exploit this market. "We must have this new project up and working by fourth quarter October 1," BB demands. "Nothing is of higher priority, so we are cancelling your current project." The reaction in the room is stunned silence. Months of work are simply going to be thrown away. Slowly, a murmur of objection begins to circulate around the conference table.   His points give off an evil green glow as BB meets the eyes of everyone in the room. One by one, that insidious stare reduces each attendee to quivering lumps of protoplasm. It is clear that he will brook no discussion on this matter. Once silence has been restored, BB says, "We need to begin immediately. How long will it take you to do the analysis?" You raise your hand. Your boss tries to stop you, but his spitwad misses you and you are unaware of his efforts.   "Sir, we can't tell you how long the analysis will take until we have some requirements." "The requirements document won't be ready for 3 or 4 weeks," BB says, his points vibrating with frustration. "So, pretend that you have the requirements in front of you now. How long will you require for analysis?" No one breathes. Everyone looks around to see whether anyone has some idea. "If analysis goes beyond April 1, we have a problem. Can you finish the analysis by then?" Your boss visibly gathers his courage: "We'll find a way, sir!" His points grow 3 mm, and your headache increases by two Tylenol. "Good." BB smiles. "Now, how long will it take to do the design?" "Sir," you say. Your boss visibly pales. He is clearly worried that his 3 mms are at risk. "Without an analysis, it will not be possible to tell you how long design will take." BB's expression shifts beyond austere.   "PRETEND you have the analysis already!" he says, while fixing you with his vacant, beady little eyes. "How long will it take you to do the design?" Two Tylenol are not going to cut it. Your boss, in a desperate attempt to save his new growth, babbles: "Well, sir, with only six months left to complete the project, design had better take no longer than 3 months."   "I'm glad you agree, Smithers!" BB says, beaming. Your boss relaxes. He knows his points are secure. After a while, he starts lightly humming the Brylcream jingle. BB continues, "So, analysis will be complete by April 1, design will be complete by July 1, and that gives you 3 months to implement the project. This meeting is an example of how well our new consensus and empowerment policies are working. Now, get out there and start working. I'll expect to see TQM plans and QIT assignments on my desk by next week. Oh, and don't forget that your crossfunctional team meetings and reports will be needed for next month's quality audit." "Forget the Tylenol," you think to yourself as you return to your cubicle. "I need bourbon."   Visibly excited, your boss comes over to you and says, "Gosh, what a great meeting. I think we're really going to do some world shaking with this project." You nod in agreement, too disgusted to do anything else. "Oh," your boss continues, "I almost forgot." He hands you a 30-page document. "Remember that the SEI is coming to do an evaluation next week. This is the evaluation guide. You need to read through it, memorize it, and then shred it. It tells you how to answer any questions that the SEI auditors ask you. It also tells you what parts of the building you are allowed to take them to and what parts to avoid. We are determined to be a CMM level 3 organization by June!"   You and your peers start working on the analysis of the new project. This is difficult because you have no requirements. But from the 10-minute introduction given by BB on that fateful morning, you have some idea of what the product is supposed to do.   Corporate process demands that you begin by creating a use case document. You and your team begin enumerating use cases and drawing oval and stick diagrams. Philosophical debates break out among the team members. There is disagreement as to whether certain use cases should be connected with <<extends>> or <<includes>> relationships. Competing models are created, but nobody knows how to evaluate them. The debate continues, effectively paralyzing progress.   After a week, somebody finds the iceberg.com Web site, which recommends disposing entirely of <<extends>> and <<includes>> and replacing them with <<precedes>> and <<uses>>. The documents on this Web site, authored by Don Sengroiux, describes a method known as stalwart-analysis, which claims to be a step-by-step method for translating use cases into design diagrams. More competing use case models are created using this new scheme, but again, people can't agree on how to evaluate them. The thrashing continues. More and more, the use case meetings are driven by emotion rather than by reason. If it weren't for the fact that you don't have requirements, you'd be pretty upset by the lack of progress you are making. The requirements document arrives on February 15. And then again on February 20, 25, and every week thereafter. Each new version contradicts the previous one. Clearly, the marketing folks who are writing the requirements, empowered though they might be, are not finding consensus.   At the same time, several new competing use case templates have been proposed by the various team members. Each template presents its own particularly creative way of delaying progress. The debates rage on. On March 1, Prudence Putrigence, the process proctor, succeeds in integrating all the competing use case forms and templates into a single, all-encompassing form. Just the blank form is 15 pages long. She has managed to include every field that appeared on all the competing templates. She also presents a 159- page document describing how to fill out the use case form. All current use cases must be rewritten according to the new standard.   You marvel to yourself that it now requires 15 pages of fill-in-the-blank and essay questions to answer the question: What should the system do when the user presses Return? The corporate process (authored by L. E. Ott, famed author of "Holistic Analysis: A Progressive Dialectic for Software Engineers") insists that you discover all primary use cases, 87 percent of all secondary use cases, and 36.274 percent of all tertiary use cases before you can complete analysis and enter the design phase. You have no idea what a tertiary use case is. So in an attempt to meet this requirement, you try to get your use case document reviewed by the marketing department, which you hope will know what a tertiary use case is.   Unfortunately, the marketing folks are too busy with sales support to talk to you. Indeed, since the project started, you have not been able to get a single meeting with marketing, which has provided a never-ending stream of changing and contradictory requirements documents.   While one team has been spinning endlessly on the use case document, another team has been working out the domain model. Endless variations of UML documents are pouring out of this team. Every week, the model is reworked.   The team members can't decide whether to use <<interfaces>> or <<types>> in the model. A huge disagreement has been raging on the proper syntax and application of OCL. Others on the team just got back from a 5-day class on catabolism, and have been producing incredibly detailed and arcane diagrams that nobody else can fathom.   On March 27, with one week to go before analysis is to be complete, you have produced a sea of documents and diagrams but are no closer to a cogent analysis of the problem than you were on January 3. **** And then, a miracle happens.   **** On Saturday, April 1, you check your e-mail from home. You see a memo from your boss to BB. It states unequivocally that you are done with the analysis! You phone your boss and complain. "How could you have told BB that we were done with the analysis?" "Have you looked at a calendar lately?" he responds. "It's April 1!" The irony of that date does not escape you. "But we have so much more to think about. So much more to analyze! We haven't even decided whether to use <<extends>> or <<precedes>>!" "Where is your evidence that you are not done?" inquires your boss, impatiently. "Whaaa . . . ." But he cuts you off. "Analysis can go on forever; it has to be stopped at some point. And since this is the date it was scheduled to stop, it has been stopped. Now, on Monday, I want you to gather up all existing analysis materials and put them into a public folder. Release that folder to Prudence so that she can log it in the CM system by Monday afternoon. Then get busy and start designing."   As you hang up the phone, you begin to consider the benefits of keeping a bottle of bourbon in your bottom desk drawer. They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the analysis phase. BB gave a colon-stirring speech on empowerment. And your boss, another 3 mm taller, congratulated his team on the incredible show of unity and teamwork. Finally, the CIO takes the stage to tell everyone that the SEI audit went very well and to thank everyone for studying and shredding the evaluation guides that were passed out. Level 3 now seems assured and will be awarded by June. (Scuttlebutt has it that managers at the level of BB and above are to receive significant bonuses once the SEI awards level 3.)   As the weeks flow by, you and your team work on the design of the system. Of course, you find that the analysis that the design is supposedly based on is flawedno, useless; no, worse than useless. But when you tell your boss that you need to go back and work some more on the analysis to shore up its weaker sections, he simply states, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   So, you and your team hack the design as best you can, unsure of whether the requirements have been properly analyzed. Of course, it really doesn't matter much, since the requirements document is still thrashing with weekly revisions, and the marketing department still refuses to meet with you.     The design is a nightmare. Your boss recently misread a book named The Finish Line in which the author, Mark DeThomaso, blithely suggested that design documents should be taken down to code-level detail. "If we are going to be working at that level of detail," you ask, "why don't we simply write the code instead?" "Because then you wouldn't be designing, of course. And the only allowable activity in the design phase is design!" "Besides," he continues, "we have just purchased a companywide license for Dandelion! This tool enables 'Round the Horn Engineering!' You are to transfer all design diagrams into this tool. It will automatically generate our code for us! It will also keep the design diagrams in sync with the code!" Your boss hands you a brightly colored shrinkwrapped box containing the Dandelion distribution. You accept it numbly and shuffle off to your cubicle. Twelve hours, eight crashes, one disk reformatting, and eight shots of 151 later, you finally have the tool installed on your server. You consider the week your team will lose while attending Dandelion training. Then you smile and think, "Any week I'm not here is a good week." Design diagram after design diagram is created by your team. Dandelion makes it very difficult to draw these diagrams. There are dozens and dozens of deeply nested dialog boxes with funny text fields and check boxes that must all be filled in correctly. And then there's the problem of moving classes between packages. At first, these diagram are driven from the use cases. But the requirements are changing so often that the use cases rapidly become meaningless. Debates rage about whether VISITOR or DECORATOR design patterns should be used. One developer refuses to use VISITOR in any form, claiming that it's not a properly object-oriented construct. Someone refuses to use multiple inheritance, since it is the spawn of the devil. Review meetings rapidly degenerate into debates about the meaning of object orientation, the definition of analysis versus design, or when to use aggregation versus association. Midway through the design cycle, the marketing folks announce that they have rethought the focus of the system. Their new requirements document is completely restructured. They have eliminated several major feature areas and replaced them with feature areas that they anticipate customer surveys will show to be more appropriate. You tell your boss that these changes mean that you need to reanalyze and redesign much of the system. But he says, "The analysis phase is system. But he says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it."   You suggest that it might be better to create a simple prototype to show to the marketing folks and even some potential customers. But your boss says, "The analysis phase is over. The only allowable activity is design. Now get back to it." Hack, hack, hack, hack. You try to create some kind of a design document that might reflect the new requirements documents. However, the revolution of the requirements has not caused them to stop thrashing. Indeed, if anything, the wild oscillations of the requirements document have only increased in frequency and amplitude.   You slog your way through them.   On June 15, the Dandelion database gets corrupted. Apparently, the corruption has been progressive. Small errors in the DB accumulated over the months into bigger and bigger errors. Eventually, the CASE tool just stopped working. Of course, the slowly encroaching corruption is present on all the backups. Calls to the Dandelion technical support line go unanswered for several days. Finally, you receive a brief e-mail from Dandelion, informing you that this is a known problem and that the solution is to purchase the new version, which they promise will be ready some time next quarter, and then reenter all the diagrams by hand.   ****   Then, on July 1 another miracle happens! You are done with the design!   Rather than go to your boss and complain, you stock your middle desk drawer with some vodka.   **** They threw a party to celebrate the on-time completion of the design phase and their graduation to CMM level 3. This time, you find BB's speech so stirring that you have to use the restroom before it begins. New banners and plaques are all over your workplace. They show pictures of eagles and mountain climbers, and they talk about teamwork and empowerment. They read better after a few scotches. That reminds you that you need to clear out your file cabinet to make room for the brandy. You and your team begin to code. But you rapidly discover that the design is lacking in some significant areas. Actually, it's lacking any significance at all. You convene a design session in one of the conference rooms to try to work through some of the nastier problems. But your boss catches you at it and disbands the meeting, saying, "The design phase is over. The only allowable activity is coding. Now get back to it."   ****   The code generated by Dandelion is really hideous. It turns out that you and your team were using association and aggregation the wrong way, after all. All the generated code has to be edited to correct these flaws. Editing this code is extremely difficult because it has been instrumented with ugly comment blocks that have special syntax that Dandelion needs in order to keep the diagrams in sync with the code. If you accidentally alter one of these comments, the diagrams will be regenerated incorrectly. It turns out that "Round the Horn Engineering" requires an awful lot of effort. The more you try to keep the code compatible with Dandelion, the more errors Dandelion generates. In the end, you give up and decide to keep the diagrams up to date manually. A second later, you decide that there's no point in keeping the diagrams up to date at all. Besides, who has time?   Your boss hires a consultant to build tools to count the number of lines of code that are being produced. He puts a big thermometer graph on the wall with the number 1,000,000 on the top. Every day, he extends the red line to show how many lines have been added. Three days after the thermometer appears on the wall, your boss stops you in the hall. "That graph isn't growing quickly enough. We need to have a million lines done by October 1." "We aren't even sh-sh-sure that the proshect will require a m-million linezh," you blather. "We have to have a million lines done by October 1," your boss reiterates. His points have grown again, and the Grecian formula he uses on them creates an aura of authority and competence. "Are you sure your comment blocks are big enough?" Then, in a flash of managerial insight, he says, "I have it! I want you to institute a new policy among the engineers. No line of code is to be longer than 20 characters. Any such line must be split into two or more preferably more. All existing code needs to be reworked to this standard. That'll get our line count up!"   You decide not to tell him that this will require two unscheduled work months. You decide not to tell him anything at all. You decide that intravenous injections of pure ethanol are the only solution. You make the appropriate arrangements. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. You and your team madly code away. By August 1, your boss, frowning at the thermometer on the wall, institutes a mandatory 50-hour workweek.   Hack, hack, hack, and hack. By September 1st, the thermometer is at 1.2 million lines and your boss asks you to write a report describing why you exceeded the coding budget by 20 percent. He institutes mandatory Saturdays and demands that the project be brought back down to a million lines. You start a campaign of remerging lines. Hack, hack, hack, and hack. Tempers are flaring; people are quitting; QA is raining trouble reports down on you. Customers are demanding installation and user manuals; salespeople are demanding advance demonstrations for special customers; the requirements document is still thrashing, the marketing folks are complaining that the product isn't anything like they specified, and the liquor store won't accept your credit card anymore. Something has to give.    On September 15, BB calls a meeting. As he enters the room, his points are emitting clouds of steam. When he speaks, the bass overtones of his carefully manicured voice cause the pit of your stomach to roll over. "The QA manager has told me that this project has less than 50 percent of the required features implemented. He has also informed me that the system crashes all the time, yields wrong results, and is hideously slow. He has also complained that he cannot keep up with the continuous train of daily releases, each more buggy than the last!" He stops for a few seconds, visibly trying to compose himself. "The QA manager estimates that, at this rate of development, we won't be able to ship the product until December!" Actually, you think it's more like March, but you don't say anything. "December!" BB roars with such derision that people duck their heads as though he were pointing an assault rifle at them. "December is absolutely out of the question. Team leaders, I want new estimates on my desk in the morning. I am hereby mandating 65-hour work weeks until this project is complete. And it better be complete by November 1."   As he leaves the conference room, he is heard to mutter: "Empowermentbah!" * * * Your boss is bald; his points are mounted on BB's wall. The fluorescent lights reflecting off his pate momentarily dazzle you. "Do you have anything to drink?" he asks. Having just finished your last bottle of Boone's Farm, you pull a bottle of Thunderbird from your bookshelf and pour it into his coffee mug. "What's it going to take to get this project done? " he asks. "We need to freeze the requirements, analyze them, design them, and then implement them," you say callously. "By November 1?" your boss exclaims incredulously. "No way! Just get back to coding the damned thing." He storms out, scratching his vacant head.   A few days later, you find that your boss has been transferred to the corporate research division. Turnover has skyrocketed. Customers, informed at the last minute that their orders cannot be fulfilled on time, have begun to cancel their orders. Marketing is re-evaluating whether this product aligns with the overall goals of the company. Memos fly, heads roll, policies change, and things are, overall, pretty grim. Finally, by March, after far too many sixty-five hour weeks, a very shaky version of the software is ready. In the field, bug-discovery rates are high, and the technical support staff are at their wits' end, trying to cope with the complaints and demands of the irate customers. Nobody is happy.   In April, BB decides to buy his way out of the problem by licensing a product produced by Rupert Industries and redistributing it. The customers are mollified, the marketing folks are smug, and you are laid off.     Rupert Industries: Project Alpha   Your name is Robert. The date is January 3, 2001. The quiet hours spent with your family this holiday have left you refreshed and ready for work. You are sitting in a conference room with your team of professionals. The manager of the division called the meeting. "We have some ideas for a new project," says the division manager. Call him Russ. He is a high-strung British chap with more energy than a fusion reactor. He is ambitious and driven but understands the value of a team. Russ describes the essence of the new market opportunity the company has identified and introduces you to Jane, the marketing manager, who is responsible for defining the products that will address it. Addressing you, Jane says, "We'd like to start defining our first product offering as soon as possible. When can you and your team meet with me?" You reply, "We'll be done with the current iteration of our project this Friday. We can spare a few hours for you between now and then. After that, we'll take a few people from the team and dedicate them to you. We'll begin hiring their replacements and the new people for your team immediately." "Great," says Russ, "but I want you to understand that it is critical that we have something to exhibit at the trade show coming up this July. If we can't be there with something significant, we'll lose the opportunity."   "I understand," you reply. "I don't yet know what it is that you have in mind, but I'm sure we can have something by July. I just can't tell you what that something will be right now. In any case, you and Jane are going to have complete control over what we developers do, so you can rest assured that by July, you'll have the most important things that can be accomplished in that time ready to exhibit."   Russ nods in satisfaction. He knows how this works. Your team has always kept him advised and allowed him to steer their development. He has the utmost confidence that your team will work on the most important things first and will produce a high-quality product.   * * *   "So, Robert," says Jane at their first meeting, "How does your team feel about being split up?" "We'll miss working with each other," you answer, "but some of us were getting pretty tired of that last project and are looking forward to a change. So, what are you people cooking up?" Jane beams. "You know how much trouble our customers currently have . . ." And she spends a half hour or so describing the problem and possible solution. "OK, wait a second" you respond. "I need to be clear about this." And so you and Jane talk about how this system might work. Some of her ideas aren't fully formed. You suggest possible solutions. She likes some of them. You continue discussing.   During the discussion, as each new topic is addressed, Jane writes user story cards. Each card represents something that the new system has to do. The cards accumulate on the table and are spread out in front of you. Both you and Jane point at them, pick them up, and make notes on them as you discuss the stories. The cards are powerful mnemonic devices that you can use to represent complex ideas that are barely formed.   At the end of the meeting, you say, "OK, I've got a general idea of what you want. I'm going to talk to the team about it. I imagine they'll want to run some experiments with various database structures and presentation formats. Next time we meet, it'll be as a group, and we'll start identifying the most important features of the system."   A week later, your nascent team meets with Jane. They spread the existing user story cards out on the table and begin to get into some of the details of the system. The meeting is very dynamic. Jane presents the stories in the order of their importance. There is much discussion about each one. The developers are concerned about keeping the stories small enough to estimate and test. So they continually ask Jane to split one story into several smaller stories. Jane is concerned that each story have a clear business value and priority, so as she splits them, she makes sure that this stays true.   The stories accumulate on the table. Jane writes them, but the developers make notes on them as needed. Nobody tries to capture everything that is said; the cards are not meant to capture everything but are simply reminders of the conversation.   As the developers become more comfortable with the stories, they begin writing estimates on them. These estimates are crude and budgetary, but they give Jane an idea of what the story will cost.   At the end of the meeting, it is clear that many more stories could be discussed. It is also clear that the most important stories have been addressed and that they represent several months worth of work. Jane closes the meeting by taking the cards with her and promising to have a proposal for the first release in the morning.   * * *   The next morning, you reconvene the meeting. Jane chooses five cards and places them on the table. "According to your estimates, these cards represent about one perfect team-week's worth of work. The last iteration of the previous project managed to get one perfect team-week done in 3 real weeks. If we can get these five stories done in 3 weeks, we'll be able to demonstrate them to Russ. That will make him feel very comfortable about our progress." Jane is pushing it. The sheepish look on her face lets you know that she knows it too. You reply, "Jane, this is a new team, working on a new project. It's a bit presumptuous to expect that our velocity will be the same as the previous team's. However, I met with the team yesterday afternoon, and we all agreed that our initial velocity should, in fact, be set to one perfectweek for every 3 real-weeks. So you've lucked out on this one." "Just remember," you continue, "that the story estimates and the story velocity are very tentative at this point. We'll learn more when we plan the iteration and even more when we implement it."   Jane looks over her glasses at you as if to say "Who's the boss around here, anyway?" and then smiles and says, "Yeah, don't worry. I know the drill by now."Jane then puts 15 more cards on the table. She says, "If we can get all these cards done by the end of March, we can turn the system over to our beta test customers. And we'll get good feedback from them."   You reply, "OK, so we've got our first iteration defined, and we have the stories for the next three iterations after that. These four iterations will make our first release."   "So," says Jane, can you really do these five stories in the next 3 weeks?" "I don't know for sure, Jane," you reply. "Let's break them down into tasks and see what we get."   So Jane, you, and your team spend the next several hours taking each of the five stories that Jane chose for the first iteration and breaking them down into small tasks. The developers quickly realize that some of the tasks can be shared between stories and that other tasks have commonalities that can probably be taken advantage of. It is clear that potential designs are popping into the developers' heads. From time to time, they form little discussion knots and scribble UML diagrams on some cards.   Soon, the whiteboard is filled with the tasks that, once completed, will implement the five stories for this iteration. You start the sign-up process by saying, "OK, let's sign up for these tasks." "I'll take the initial database generation." Says Pete. "That's what I did on the last project, and this doesn't look very different. I estimate it at two of my perfect workdays." "OK, well, then, I'll take the login screen," says Joe. "Aw, darn," says Elaine, the junior member of the team, "I've never done a GUI, and kinda wanted to try that one."   "Ah, the impatience of youth," Joe says sagely, with a wink in your direction. "You can assist me with it, young Jedi." To Jane: "I think it'll take me about three of my perfect workdays."   One by one, the developers sign up for tasks and estimate them in terms of their own perfect workdays. Both you and Jane know that it is best to let the developers volunteer for tasks than to assign the tasks to them. You also know full well that you daren't challenge any of the developers' estimates. You know these people, and you trust them. You know that they are going to do the very best they can.   The developers know that they can't sign up for more perfect workdays than they finished in the last iteration they worked on. Once each developer has filled his or her schedule for the iteration, they stop signing up for tasks.   Eventually, all the developers have stopped signing up for tasks. But, of course, tasks are still left on the board.   "I was worried that that might happen," you say, "OK, there's only one thing to do, Jane. We've got too much to do in this iteration. What stories or tasks can we remove?" Jane sighs. She knows that this is the only option. Working overtime at the beginning of a project is insane, and projects where she's tried it have not fared well.   So Jane starts to remove the least-important functionality. "Well, we really don't need the login screen just yet. We can simply start the system in the logged-in state." "Rats!" cries Elaine. "I really wanted to do that." "Patience, grasshopper." says Joe. "Those who wait for the bees to leave the hive will not have lips too swollen to relish the honey." Elaine looks confused. Everyone looks confused. "So . . .," Jane continues, "I think we can also do away with . . ." And so, bit by bit, the list of tasks shrinks. Developers who lose a task sign up for one of the remaining ones.   The negotiation is not painless. Several times, Jane exhibits obvious frustration and impatience. Once, when tensions are especially high, Elaine volunteers, "I'll work extra hard to make up some of the missing time." You are about to correct her when, fortunately, Joe looks her in the eye and says, "When once you proceed down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."   In the end, an iteration acceptable to Jane is reached. It's not what Jane wanted. Indeed, it is significantly less. But it's something the team feels that can be achieved in the next 3 weeks.   And, after all, it still addresses the most important things that Jane wanted in the iteration. "So, Jane," you say when things had quieted down a bit, "when can we expect acceptance tests from you?" Jane sighs. This is the other side of the coin. For every story the development team implements,   Jane must supply a suite of acceptance tests that prove that it works. And the team needs these long before the end of the iteration, since they will certainly point out differences in the way Jane and the developers imagine the system's behaviour.   "I'll get you some example test scripts today," Jane promises. "I'll add to them every day after that. You'll have the entire suite by the middle of the iteration."   * * *   The iteration begins on Monday morning with a flurry of Class, Responsibilities, Collaborators sessions. By midmorning, all the developers have assembled into pairs and are rapidly coding away. "And now, my young apprentice," Joe says to Elaine, "you shall learn the mysteries of test-first design!"   "Wow, that sounds pretty rad," Elaine replies. "How do you do it?" Joe beams. It's clear that he has been anticipating this moment. "OK, what does the code do right now?" "Huh?" replied Elaine, "It doesn't do anything at all; there is no code."   "So, consider our task; can you think of something the code should do?" "Sure," Elaine said with youthful assurance, "First, it should connect to the database." "And thereupon, what must needs be required to connecteth the database?" "You sure talk weird," laughed Elaine. "I think we'd have to get the database object from some registry and call the Connect() method. "Ah, astute young wizard. Thou perceives correctly that we requireth an object within which we can cacheth the database object." "Is 'cacheth' really a word?" "It is when I say it! So, what test can we write that we know the database registry should pass?" Elaine sighs. She knows she'll just have to play along. "We should be able to create a database object and pass it to the registry in a Store() method. And then we should be able to pull it out of the registry with a Get() method and make sure it's the same object." "Oh, well said, my prepubescent sprite!" "Hay!" "So, now, let's write a test function that proves your case." "But shouldn't we write the database object and registry object first?" "Ah, you've much to learn, my young impatient one. Just write the test first." "But it won't even compile!" "Are you sure? What if it did?" "Uh . . ." "Just write the test, Elaine. Trust me." And so Joe, Elaine, and all the other developers began to code their tasks, one test case at a time. The room in which they worked was abuzz with the conversations between the pairs. The murmur was punctuated by an occasional high five when a pair managed to finish a task or a difficult test case.   As development proceeded, the developers changed partners once or twice a day. Each developer got to see what all the others were doing, and so knowledge of the code spread generally throughout the team.   Whenever a pair finished something significant whether a whole task or simply an important part of a task they integrated what they had with the rest of the system. Thus, the code base grew daily, and integration difficulties were minimized.   The developers communicated with Jane on a daily basis. They'd go to her whenever they had a question about the functionality of the system or the interpretation of an acceptance test case.   Jane, good as her word, supplied the team with a steady stream of acceptance test scripts. The team read these carefully and thereby gained a much better understanding of what Jane expected the system to do. By the beginning of the second week, there was enough functionality to demonstrate to Jane. She watched eagerly as the demonstration passed test case after test case. "This is really cool," Jane said as the demonstration finally ended. "But this doesn't seem like one-third of the tasks. Is your velocity slower than anticipated?"   You grimace. You'd been waiting for a good time to mention this to Jane but now she was forcing the issue. "Yes, unfortunately, we are going more slowly than we had expected. The new application server we are using is turning out to be a pain to configure. Also, it takes forever to reboot, and we have to reboot it whenever we make even the slightest change to its configuration."   Jane eyes you with suspicion. The stress of last Monday's negotiations had still not entirely dissipated. She says, "And what does this mean to our schedule? We can't slip it again, we just can't. Russ will have a fit! He'll haul us all into the woodshed and ream us some new ones."   You look Jane right in the eyes. There's no pleasant way to give someone news like this. So you just blurt out, "Look, if things keep going like they're going, we're not going to be done with everything by next Friday. Now it's possible that we'll figure out a way to go faster. But, frankly, I wouldn't depend on that. You should start thinking about one or two tasks that could be removed from the iteration without ruining the demonstration for Russ. Come hell or high water, we are going to give that demonstration on Friday, and I don't think you want us to choose which tasks to omit."   "Aw forchrisakes!" Jane barely manages to stifle yelling that last word as she stalks away, shaking her head. Not for the first time, you say to yourself, "Nobody ever promised me project management would be easy." You are pretty sure it won't be the last time, either.   Actually, things went a bit better than you had hoped. The team did, in fact, have to drop one task from the iteration, but Jane had chosen wisely, and the demonstration for Russ went without a hitch. Russ was not impressed with the progress, but neither was he dismayed. He simply said, "This is pretty good. But remember, we have to be able to demonstrate this system at the trade show in July, and at this rate, it doesn't look like you'll have all that much to show." Jane, whose attitude had improved dramatically with the completion of the iteration, responded to Russ by saying, "Russ, this team is working hard, and well. When July comes around, I am confident that we'll have something significant to demonstrate. It won't be everything, and some of it may be smoke and mirrors, but we'll have something."   Painful though the last iteration was, it had calibrated your velocity numbers. The next iteration went much better. Not because your team got more done than in the last iteration but simply because the team didn't have to remove any tasks or stories in the middle of the iteration.   By the start of the fourth iteration, a natural rhythm has been established. Jane, you, and the team know exactly what to expect from one another. The team is running hard, but the pace is sustainable. You are confident that the team can keep up this pace for a year or more.   The number of surprises in the schedule diminishes to near zero; however, the number of surprises in the requirements does not. Jane and Russ frequently look over the growing system and make recommendations or changes to the existing functionality. But all parties realize that these changes take time and must be scheduled. So the changes do not cause anyone's expectations to be violated. In March, there is a major demonstration of the system to the board of directors. The system is very limited and is not yet in a form good enough to take to the trade show, but progress is steady, and the board is reasonably impressed.   The second release goes even more smoothly than the first. By now, the team has figured out a way to automate Jane's acceptance test scripts. The team has also refactored the design of the system to the point that it is really easy to add new features and change old ones. The second release was done by the end of June and was taken to the trade show. It had less in it than Jane and Russ would have liked, but it did demonstrate the most important features of the system. Although customers at the trade show noticed that certain features were missing, they were very impressed overall. You, Russ, and Jane all returned from the trade show with smiles on your faces. You all felt as though this project was a winner.   Indeed, many months later, you are contacted by Rufus Inc. That company had been working on a system like this for its internal operations. Rufus has canceled the development of that system after a death-march project and is negotiating to license your technology for its environment.   Indeed, things are looking up!

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  • Creating HTML5 Offline Web Applications with ASP.NET

    - by Stephen Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can create HTML5 Offline Web Applications when building ASP.NET web applications. I describe the method that I used to create an offline Web application when building the JavaScript Reference application. You can read about the HTML5 Offline Web Application standard by visiting the following links: Offline Web Applications Firefox Offline Web Applications Safari Offline Web Applications Currently, the HTML5 Offline Web Applications feature works with all modern browsers with one important exception. You can use Offline Web Applications with Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (including iPhone Safari). Unfortunately, however, Internet Explorer does not support Offline Web Applications (not even IE 9). Why Build an HTML5 Offline Web Application? The official reason to build an Offline Web Application is so that you do not need to be connected to the Internet to use it. For example, you can use the JavaScript Reference Application when flying in an airplane, riding a subway, or hiding in a cave in Borneo. The JavaScript Reference Application works great on my iPhone even when I am completely disconnected from any network. The following screenshot shows the JavaScript Reference Application running on my iPhone when airplane mode is enabled (notice the little orange airplane):   Admittedly, it is becoming increasingly difficult to find locations where you can’t get Internet access. A second, and possibly better, reason to create Offline Web Applications is speed. An Offline Web Application must be downloaded only once. After it gets downloaded, all of the files required by your Web application (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, Image) are stored persistently on your computer. Think of Offline Web Applications as providing you with a super browser cache. Normally, when you cache files in a browser, the files are cached on a file-by-file basis. For each HTML, CSS, image, or JavaScript file, you specify how long the file should remain in the cache by setting cache headers. Unlike the normal browser caching mechanism, the HTML5 Offline Web Application cache is used to specify a caching policy for an entire set of files. You use a manifest file to list the files that you want to cache and these files are cached until the manifest is changed. Another advantage of using the HTML5 offline cache is that the HTML5 standard supports several JavaScript events and methods related to the offline cache. For example, you can be notified in your JavaScript code whenever the offline application has been updated. You can use JavaScript methods, such as the ApplicationCache.update() method, to update the cache programmatically. Creating the Manifest File The HTML5 Offline Cache uses a manifest file to determine the files that get cached. Here’s what the manifest file looks like for the JavaScript Reference application: CACHE MANIFEST # v30 Default.aspx # Standard Script Libraries Scripts/jquery-1.4.4.min.js Scripts/jquery-ui-1.8.7.custom.min.js Scripts/jquery.tmpl.min.js Scripts/json2.js # App Scripts App_Scripts/combine.js App_Scripts/combine.debug.js # Content (CSS & images) Content/default.css Content/logo.png Content/ui-lightness/jquery-ui-1.8.7.custom.css Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_glass_65_ffffff_1x400.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_glass_100_f6f6f6_1x400.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_highlight-soft_100_eeeeee_1x100.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-icons_222222_256x240.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_glass_100_fdf5ce_1x400.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_diagonals-thick_20_666666_40x40.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-bg_gloss-wave_35_f6a828_500x100.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-icons_ffffff_256x240.png Content/ui-lightness/images/ui-icons_ef8c08_256x240.png Content/browsers/c8.png Content/browsers/es3.png Content/browsers/es5.png Content/browsers/ff3_6.png Content/browsers/ie8.png Content/browsers/ie9.png Content/browsers/sf5.png NETWORK: Services/EntryService.svc http://superexpert.com/resources/JavaScriptReference/ A Cache Manifest file always starts with the line of text Cache Manifest. In the manifest above, all of the CSS, image, and JavaScript files required by the JavaScript Reference application are listed. For example, the Default.aspx ASP.NET page, jQuery library, JQuery UI library, and several images are listed. Notice that you can add comments to a manifest by starting a line with the hash character (#). I use comments in the manifest above to group JavaScript and image files. Finally, notice that there is a NETWORK: section of the manifest. You list any file that you do not want to cache (any file that requires network access) in this section. In the manifest above, the NETWORK: section includes the URL for a WCF Service named EntryService.svc. This service is called to get the JavaScript entries displayed by the JavaScript Reference. There are two important things that you need to be aware of when using a manifest file. First, all relative URLs listed in a manifest are resolved relative to the manifest file. The URLs listed in the manifest above are all resolved relative to the root of the application because the manifest file is located in the application root. Second, whenever you make a change to the manifest file, browsers will download all of the files contained in the manifest (all of them). For example, if you add a new file to the manifest then any browser that supports the Offline Cache standard will detect the change in the manifest and download all of the files listed in the manifest automatically. If you make changes to files in the manifest (for example, modify a JavaScript file) then you need to make a change in the manifest file in order for the new version of the file to be downloaded. The standard way of updating a manifest file is to include a comment with a version number. The manifest above includes a # v30 comment. If you make a change to a file then you need to modify the comment to be # v31 in order for the new file to be downloaded. When Are Updated Files Downloaded? When you make changes to a manifest, the changes are not reflected the very next time you open the offline application in your web browser. Your web browser will download the updated files in the background. This can be very confusing when you are working with JavaScript files. If you make a change to a JavaScript file, and you have cached the application offline, then the changes to the JavaScript file won’t appear when you reload the application. The HTML5 standard includes new JavaScript events and methods that you can use to track changes and make changes to the Application Cache. You can use the ApplicationCache.update() method to initiate an update to the application cache and you can use the ApplicationCache.swapCache() method to switch to the latest version of a cached application. My heartfelt recommendation is that you do not enable your application for offline storage until after you finish writing your application code. Otherwise, debugging the application can become a very confusing experience. Offline Web Applications versus Local Storage Be careful to not confuse the HTML5 Offline Web Application feature and HTML5 Local Storage (aka DOM storage) feature. The JavaScript Reference Application uses both features. HTML5 Local Storage enables you to store key/value pairs persistently. Think of Local Storage as a super cookie. I describe how the JavaScript Reference Application uses Local Storage to store the database of JavaScript entries in a separate blog entry. Offline Web Applications enable you to store static files persistently. Think of Offline Web Applications as a super cache. Creating a Manifest File in an ASP.NET Application A manifest file must be served with the MIME type text/cache-manifest. In order to serve the JavaScript Reference manifest with the proper MIME type, I added two files to the JavaScript Reference Application project: Manifest.txt – This text file contains the actual manifest file. Manifest.ashx – This generic handler sends the Manifest.txt file with the MIME type text/cache-manifest. Here’s the code for the generic handler: using System.Web; namespace JavaScriptReference { public class Manifest : IHttpHandler { public void ProcessRequest(HttpContext context) { context.Response.ContentType = "text/cache-manifest"; context.Response.WriteFile(context.Server.MapPath("Manifest.txt")); } public bool IsReusable { get { return false; } } } } The Default.aspx file contains a reference to the manifest. The opening HTML tag in the Default.aspx file looks like this: <html manifest="Manifest.ashx"> Notice that the HTML tag contains a manifest attribute that points to the Manifest.ashx generic handler. Internet Explorer simply ignores this attribute. Every other modern browser will download the manifest when the Default.aspx page is requested. Seeing the Offline Web Application in Action The experience of using an HTML5 Web Application is different with different browsers. When you first open the JavaScript Reference application with Firefox, you get the following warning: Notice that you are provided with the choice of whether you want to use the application offline or not. Browsers other than Firefox, such as Chrome and Safari, do not provide you with this choice. Chrome and Safari will create an offline cache automatically. If you click the Allow button then Firefox will download all of the files listed in the manifest. You can view the files contained in the Firefox offline application cache by typing about:cache in the Firefox address bar: You can view the actual items being cached by clicking the List Cache Entries link: The Offline Web Application experience is different in the case of Google Chrome. You can view the entries in the offline cache by opening the Developer Tools (hit Shift+CTRL+I), selecting the Storage tab, and selecting Application Cache: Notice that you view the status of the Application Cache. In the screen shot above, the status is UNCACHED which means that the files listed in the manifest have not been downloaded and cached yet. The different possible values for the status are included in the HTML5 Offline Web Application standard: UNCACHED – The Application Cache has not been initialized. IDLE – The Application Cache is not currently being updated. CHECKING – The Application Cache is being fetched and checked for updates. DOWNLOADING – The files in the Application Cache are being updated. UPDATEREADY – There is a new version of the Application. OBSOLETE – The contents of the Application Cache are obsolete. Summary In this blog entry, I provided a description of how you can use the HTML5 Offline Web Application feature in the context of an ASP.NET application. I described how this feature is used with the JavaScript Reference Application to store the entire application on a user’s computer. By taking advantage of this new feature of the HTML5 standard, you can improve the performance of your ASP.NET web applications by requiring users of your web application to download your application once and only once. Furthermore, you can enable users to take advantage of your applications anywhere -- regardless of whether or not they are connected to the Internet.

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  • Seattle GiveCamp this Weekend

    - by Stephen.Walther
    Seattle GiveCamp is this weekend (October 19, 2012) on the Microsoft Campus. Donate your time and your programming skills to build software applications (mainly websites) for charities. We need you! Go to the following address and sign up to participate right now: http://seattlegivecamp.com/ We have more than 20 charities participating in this year’s GiveCamp and over 100 volunteers. We need people with all sorts of skills including WordPress, design, ASP.NET, SEO, Mobile, and Project Management skills. If you know how to tweak a WordPress theme or you know how to use Adobe Photoshop or you know Salesforce or Microsoft Access then we really, really need you this weekend. This is a great event to network with other developers, show off your ninja programming skills, and help some great charities. Be prepared to show up at Friday night and start working in a team to write some great code. You can stay until Sunday night for the full event or you can leave early (in previous events, some developers did marathon coding sessions for multiple days straight – but those guys are insane). My wife, Ruth Walther, is the director of this year’s GiveCamp. She’ll be there and I’ll be there. I hope to see you at GiveCamp!

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  • Can inbound links through template-based layouts result in penalties?

    - by Liam Sorsby
    So obviously link building is encouraged as long as it is natural, organic and has meaningful links with content relevant to your site. Obviously with the constant release of new updates to algorithms, Google is flagging sites for unnatural links to their sites. My Question is: Can this be caused by templating systems? With WordPress for example, where you can add a link on the footer and it is repeated throughout the entire website generating thousands of links? If we don't add any links, Good Content will be re-posted and linked to, surely if your content is constantly linked to this will flag your site for "unnatural" content as it's difficult to see if someone has been paid to write an article on your content. Or does Google just simply want us to audit some of the links to show we are making an effort? As you can tell we have had a Manual action for: Unnatural links to your site—impacts links. However, this seems to impact our website as well. Edit: To clarify the question: Can you get penalised for paying for advertising on a site that uses a templated sidebar. So when they create a new blog/page ect your link is also added onto the page hence resulting in 1000's of links to one page on our site. I know that one effect maybe a 0 pagerank web page linking to your page dilutes the PR of our page. However the links are only inbound not reciprocal

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  • Building dynamic OLAP data marts on-the-fly

    - by DrJohn
    At the forthcoming SQLBits conference, I will be presenting a session on how to dynamically build an OLAP data mart on-the-fly. This blog entry is intended to clarify exactly what I mean by an OLAP data mart, why you may need to build them on-the-fly and finally outline the steps needed to build them dynamically. In subsequent blog entries, I will present exactly how to implement some of the techniques involved. What is an OLAP data mart? In data warehousing parlance, a data mart is a subset of the overall corporate data provided to business users to meet specific business needs. Of course, the term does not specify the technology involved, so I coined the term "OLAP data mart" to identify a subset of data which is delivered in the form of an OLAP cube which may be accompanied by the relational database upon which it was built. To clarify, the relational database is specifically create and loaded with the subset of data and then the OLAP cube is built and processed to make the data available to the end-users via standard OLAP client tools. Why build OLAP data marts? Market research companies sell data to their clients to make money. To gain competitive advantage, market research providers like to "add value" to their data by providing systems that enhance analytics, thereby allowing clients to make best use of the data. As such, OLAP cubes have become a standard way of delivering added value to clients. They can be built on-the-fly to hold specific data sets and meet particular needs and then hosted on a secure intranet site for remote access, or shipped to clients' own infrastructure for hosting. Even better, they support a wide range of different tools for analytical purposes, including the ever popular Microsoft Excel. Extension Attributes: The Challenge One of the key challenges in building multiple OLAP data marts based on the same 'template' is handling extension attributes. These are attributes that meet the client's specific reporting needs, but do not form part of the standard template. Now clearly, these extension attributes have to come into the system via additional files and ultimately be added to relational tables so they can end up in the OLAP cube. However, processing these files and filling dynamically altered tables with SSIS is a challenge as SSIS packages tend to break as soon as the database schema changes. There are two approaches to this: (1) dynamically build an SSIS package in memory to match the new database schema using C#, or (2) have the extension attributes provided as name/value pairs so the file's schema does not change and can easily be loaded using SSIS. The problem with the first approach is the complexity of writing an awful lot of complex C# code. The problem of the second approach is that name/value pairs are useless to an OLAP cube; so they have to be pivoted back into a proper relational table somewhere in the data load process WITHOUT breaking SSIS. How this can be done will be part of future blog entry. What is involved in building an OLAP data mart? There are a great many steps involved in building OLAP data marts on-the-fly. The key point is that all the steps must be automated to allow for the production of multiple OLAP data marts per day (i.e. many thousands, each with its own specific data set and attributes). Now most of these steps have a great deal in common with standard data warehouse practices. The key difference is that the databases are all built to order. The only permanent database is the metadata database (shown in orange) which holds all the metadata needed to build everything else (i.e. client orders, configuration information, connection strings, client specific requirements and attributes etc.). The staging database (shown in red) has a short life: it is built, populated and then ripped down as soon as the OLAP Data Mart has been populated. In the diagram below, the OLAP data mart comprises the two blue components: the Data Mart which is a relational database and the OLAP Cube which is an OLAP database implemented using Microsoft Analysis Services (SSAS). The client may receive just the OLAP cube or both components together depending on their reporting requirements.  So, in broad terms the steps required to fulfil a client order are as follows: Step 1: Prepare metadata Create a set of database names unique to the client's order Modify all package connection strings to be used by SSIS to point to new databases and file locations. Step 2: Create relational databases Create the staging and data mart relational databases using dynamic SQL and set the database recovery mode to SIMPLE as we do not need the overhead of logging anything Execute SQL scripts to build all database objects (tables, views, functions and stored procedures) in the two databases Step 3: Load staging database Use SSIS to load all data files into the staging database in a parallel operation Load extension files containing name/value pairs. These will provide client-specific attributes in the OLAP cube. Step 4: Load data mart relational database Load the data from staging into the data mart relational database, again in parallel where possible Allocate surrogate keys and use SSIS to perform surrogate key lookup during the load of fact tables Step 5: Load extension tables & attributes Pivot the extension attributes from their native name/value pairs into proper relational tables Add the extension attributes to the views used by OLAP cube Step 6: Deploy & Process OLAP cube Deploy the OLAP database directly to the server using a C# script task in SSIS Modify the connection string used by the OLAP cube to point to the data mart relational database Modify the cube structure to add the extension attributes to both the data source view and the relevant dimensions Remove any standard attributes that not required Process the OLAP cube Step 7: Backup and drop databases Drop staging database as it is no longer required Backup data mart relational and OLAP database and ship these to the client's infrastructure Drop data mart relational and OLAP database from the build server Mark order complete Start processing the next order, ad infinitum. So my future blog posts and my forthcoming session at the SQLBits conference will all focus on some of the more interesting aspects of building OLAP data marts on-the-fly such as handling the load of extension attributes and how to dynamically alter the structure of an OLAP cube using C#.

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  • ASP.NET and HTML5 Local Storage

    - by Stephen Walther
    My favorite feature of HTML5, hands-down, is HTML5 local storage (aka DOM storage). By taking advantage of HTML5 local storage, you can dramatically improve the performance of your data-driven ASP.NET applications by caching data in the browser persistently. Think of HTML5 local storage like browser cookies, but much better. Like cookies, local storage is persistent. When you add something to browser local storage, it remains there when the user returns to the website (possibly days or months later). Importantly, unlike the cookie storage limitation of 4KB, you can store up to 10 megabytes in HTML5 local storage. Because HTML5 local storage works with the latest versions of all modern browsers (IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari), you can start taking advantage of this HTML5 feature in your applications right now. Why use HTML5 Local Storage? I use HTML5 Local Storage in the JavaScript Reference application: http://Superexpert.com/JavaScriptReference The JavaScript Reference application is an HTML5 app that provides an interactive reference for all of the syntax elements of JavaScript (You can read more about the application and download the source code for the application here). When you open the application for the first time, all of the entries are transferred from the server to the browser (all 300+ entries). All of the entries are stored in local storage. When you open the application in the future, only changes are transferred from the server to the browser. The benefit of this approach is that the application performs extremely fast. When you click the details link to view details on a particular entry, the entry details appear instantly because all of the entries are stored on the client machine. When you perform key-up searches, by typing in the filter textbox, matching entries are displayed very quickly because the entries are being filtered on the local machine. This approach can have a dramatic effect on the performance of any interactive data-driven web application. Interacting with data on the client is almost always faster than interacting with the same data on the server. Retrieving Data from the Server In the JavaScript Reference application, I use Microsoft WCF Data Services to expose data to the browser. WCF Data Services generates a REST interface for your data automatically. Here are the steps: Create your database tables in Microsoft SQL Server. For example, I created a database named ReferenceDB and a database table named Entities. Use the Entity Framework to generate your data model. For example, I used the Entity Framework to generate a class named ReferenceDBEntities and a class named Entities. Expose your data through WCF Data Services. I added a WCF Data Service to my project and modified the data service class to look like this:   using System.Data.Services; using System.Data.Services.Common; using System.Web; using JavaScriptReference.Models; namespace JavaScriptReference.Services { [System.ServiceModel.ServiceBehavior(IncludeExceptionDetailInFaults = true)] public class EntryService : DataService<ReferenceDBEntities> { // This method is called only once to initialize service-wide policies. public static void InitializeService(DataServiceConfiguration config) { config.UseVerboseErrors = true; config.SetEntitySetAccessRule("*", EntitySetRights.All); config.DataServiceBehavior.MaxProtocolVersion = DataServiceProtocolVersion.V2; } // Define a change interceptor for the Products entity set. [ChangeInterceptor("Entries")] public void OnChangeEntries(Entry entry, UpdateOperations operations) { if (!HttpContext.Current.Request.IsAuthenticated) { throw new DataServiceException("Cannot update reference unless authenticated."); } } } }     The WCF data service is named EntryService. Notice that it derives from DataService<ReferenceEntitites>. Because it derives from DataService<ReferenceEntities>, the data service exposes the contents of the ReferenceEntitiesDB database. In the code above, I defined a ChangeInterceptor to prevent un-authenticated users from making changes to the database. Anyone can retrieve data through the service, but only authenticated users are allowed to make changes. After you expose data through a WCF Data Service, you can use jQuery to retrieve the data by performing an Ajax call. For example, I am using an Ajax call that looks something like this to retrieve the JavaScript entries from the EntryService.svc data service: $.ajax({ dataType: "json", url: “/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries”, success: function (result) { var data = callback(result["d"]); } });     Notice that you must unwrap the data using result[“d”]. After you unwrap the data, you have a JavaScript array of the entries. I’m transferring all 300+ entries from the server to the client when the application is opened for the first time. In other words, I transfer the entire database from the server to the client, once and only once, when the application is opened for the first time. The data is transferred using JSON. Here is a fragment: { "d" : [ { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries(1)", "type": "ReferenceDBModel.Entry" }, "Id": 1, "Name": "Global", "Browsers": "ff3_6,ie8,ie9,c8,sf5,es3,es5", "Syntax": "object", "ShortDescription": "Contains global variables and functions", "FullDescription": "<p>\nThe Global object is determined by the host environment. In web browsers, the Global object is the same as the windows object.\n</p>\n<p>\nYou can use the keyword <code>this</code> to refer to the Global object when in the global context (outside of any function).\n</p>\n<p>\nThe Global object holds all global variables and functions. For example, the following code demonstrates that the global <code>movieTitle</code> variable refers to the same thing as <code>window.movieTitle</code> and <code>this.movieTitle</code>.\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar movieTitle = \"Star Wars\";\nconsole.log(movieTitle === this.movieTitle); // true\nconsole.log(movieTitle === window.movieTitle); // true\n</pre>\n", "LastUpdated": "634298578273756641", "IsDeleted": false, "OwnerId": null }, { "__metadata": { "uri": "http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries(2)", "type": "ReferenceDBModel.Entry" }, "Id": 2, "Name": "eval(string)", "Browsers": "ff3_6,ie8,ie9,c8,sf5,es3,es5", "Syntax": "function", "ShortDescription": "Evaluates and executes JavaScript code dynamically", "FullDescription": "<p>\nThe following code evaluates and executes the string \"3+5\" at runtime.\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar result = eval(\"3+5\");\nconsole.log(result); // returns 8\n</pre>\n<p>\nYou can rewrite the code above like this:\n</p>\n<pre>\nvar result;\neval(\"result = 3+5\");\nconsole.log(result);\n</pre>", "LastUpdated": "634298580913817644", "IsDeleted": false, "OwnerId": 1 } … ]} I worried about the amount of time that it would take to transfer the records. According to Google Chome, it takes about 5 seconds to retrieve all 300+ records on a broadband connection over the Internet. 5 seconds is a small price to pay to avoid performing any server fetches of the data in the future. And here are the estimated times using different types of connections using Fiddler: Notice that using a modem, it takes 33 seconds to download the database. 33 seconds is a significant chunk of time. So, I would not use the approach of transferring the entire database up front if you expect a significant portion of your website audience to connect to your website with a modem. Adding Data to HTML5 Local Storage After the JavaScript entries are retrieved from the server, the entries are stored in HTML5 local storage. Here’s the reference documentation for HTML5 storage for Internet Explorer: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc197062(VS.85).aspx You access local storage by accessing the windows.localStorage object in JavaScript. This object contains key/value pairs. For example, you can use the following JavaScript code to add a new item to local storage: <script type="text/javascript"> window.localStorage.setItem("message", "Hello World!"); </script>   You can use the Google Chrome Storage tab in the Developer Tools (hit CTRL-SHIFT I in Chrome) to view items added to local storage: After you add an item to local storage, you can read it at any time in the future by using the window.localStorage.getItem() method: <script type="text/javascript"> window.localStorage.setItem("message", "Hello World!"); </script>   You only can add strings to local storage and not JavaScript objects such as arrays. Therefore, before adding a JavaScript object to local storage, you need to convert it into a JSON string. In the JavaScript Reference application, I use a wrapper around local storage that looks something like this: function Storage() { this.get = function (name) { return JSON.parse(window.localStorage.getItem(name)); }; this.set = function (name, value) { window.localStorage.setItem(name, JSON.stringify(value)); }; this.clear = function () { window.localStorage.clear(); }; }   If you use the wrapper above, then you can add arbitrary JavaScript objects to local storage like this: var store = new Storage(); // Add array to storage var products = [ {name:"Fish", price:2.33}, {name:"Bacon", price:1.33} ]; store.set("products", products); // Retrieve items from storage var products = store.get("products");   Modern browsers support the JSON object natively. If you need the script above to work with older browsers then you should download the JSON2.js library from: https://github.com/douglascrockford/JSON-js The JSON2 library will use the native JSON object if a browser already supports JSON. Merging Server Changes with Browser Local Storage When you first open the JavaScript Reference application, the entire database of JavaScript entries is transferred from the server to the browser. Two items are added to local storage: entries and entriesLastUpdated. The first item contains the entire entries database (a big JSON string of entries). The second item, a timestamp, represents the version of the entries. Whenever you open the JavaScript Reference in the future, the entriesLastUpdated timestamp is passed to the server. Only records that have been deleted, updated, or added since entriesLastUpdated are transferred to the browser. The OData query to get the latest updates looks like this: http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries?$filter=(LastUpdated%20gt%20634301199890494792L) If you remove URL encoding, the query looks like this: http://superexpert.com/javascriptreference/Services/EntryService.svc/Entries?$filter=(LastUpdated gt 634301199890494792L) This query returns only those entries where the value of LastUpdated > 634301199890494792 (the version timestamp). The changes – new JavaScript entries, deleted entries, and updated entries – are merged with the existing entries in local storage. The JavaScript code for performing the merge is contained in the EntriesHelper.js file. The merge() method looks like this:   merge: function (oldEntries, newEntries) { // concat (this performs the add) oldEntries = oldEntries || []; var mergedEntries = oldEntries.concat(newEntries); // sort this.sortByIdThenLastUpdated(mergedEntries); // prune duplicates (this performs the update) mergedEntries = this.pruneDuplicates(mergedEntries); // delete mergedEntries = this.removeIsDeleted(mergedEntries); // Sort this.sortByName(mergedEntries); return mergedEntries; },   The contents of local storage are then updated with the merged entries. I spent several hours writing the merge() method (much longer than I expected). I found two resources to be extremely useful. First, I wrote extensive unit tests for the merge() method. I wrote the unit tests using server-side JavaScript. I describe this approach to writing unit tests in this blog entry. The unit tests are included in the JavaScript Reference source code. Second, I found the following blog entry to be super useful (thanks Nick!): http://nicksnettravels.builttoroam.com/post/2010/08/03/OData-Synchronization-with-WCF-Data-Services.aspx One big challenge that I encountered involved timestamps. I originally tried to store an actual UTC time as the value of the entriesLastUpdated item. I quickly discovered that trying to work with dates in JSON turned out to be a big can of worms that I did not want to open. Next, I tried to use a SQL timestamp column. However, I learned that OData cannot handle the timestamp data type when doing a filter query. Therefore, I ended up using a bigint column in SQL and manually creating the value when a record is updated. I overrode the SaveChanges() method to look something like this: public override int SaveChanges(SaveOptions options) { var changes = this.ObjectStateManager.GetObjectStateEntries( EntityState.Modified | EntityState.Added | EntityState.Deleted); foreach (var change in changes) { var entity = change.Entity as IEntityTracking; if (entity != null) { entity.LastUpdated = DateTime.Now.Ticks; } } return base.SaveChanges(options); }   Notice that I assign Date.Now.Ticks to the entity.LastUpdated property whenever an entry is modified, added, or deleted. Summary After building the JavaScript Reference application, I am convinced that HTML5 local storage can have a dramatic impact on the performance of any data-driven web application. If you are building a web application that involves extensive interaction with data then I recommend that you take advantage of this new feature included in the HTML5 standard.

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  • Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review-again.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Windows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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  • Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video Review by Diethard Steiner, Packt Publishing

    - by Compudicted
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/Compudicted/archive/2014/06/01/building-a-data-mart-with-pentaho-data-integration-video-review.aspx The Building a Data Mart with Pentaho Data Integration Video by Diethard Steiner from Packt Publishing is more than just a course on how to use Pentaho Data Integration, it also implements and uses the principals of the Data Warehousing (and I even heard the name of Ralph Kimball in the video). Indeed, a video watcher should be familiar with its concepts as the Star Schema, Slowly Changing Dimension types, etc. so I suggest prior to watching this course to consider skimming through the Data Warehouse concepts (if unfamiliar) or even better, read the excellent Ralph’s The Data Warehouse Tooolkit. By the way, the author expands beyond using Pentaho along to MySQL and MonetDB which is a real icing on the cake! Indeed, I even suggest the name of the course should be ‘Building a Data Warehouse with Pentaho’. To successfully complete the course one needs to know some Linux (Ubuntu used in the course), the VI editor and the Bash command shell, but it seems that similar requirements would also apply to the Weindows OS. Additionally, knowing some basic SQL would not hurt. As I had said, MonetDB is used in this course several times which seems to be not anymore complex than say MySQL, but based on what I read is very well suited for fast querying big volumes of data thanks to having a columnstore (vertical data storage). I don’t see what else can be a barrier, the material is very digestible. On this note, I must add that the author does not cover how to acquire the software, so here is what I found may help: Pentaho: the free Community Edition must be more than anyone needs to learn it. Or even go into a POC. MonetDB can be downloaded (exists for both, Linux and Windows) from http://goo.gl/FYxMy0 (just see the appropriate link on the left). The author seems to be using Eclipse to run SQL code, one can get it from http://goo.gl/5CcuN. To create, or edit database entities and/or schema otherwise one can use a universal tool called SQuirreL, get it from http://squirrel-sql.sourceforge.net.   Next, I must confess Diethard is very knowledgeable in what he does and beyond. However, there will be some accent heard to the user of the course especially if one’s mother tongue language is English, but it I got over it in a few chapters. I liked the rate at which the material is being presented, it makes me feel I paid for every second Eventually, my impressions are: Pentaho is an awesome ETL offering, it is worth learning it very much (I am an ETL fan and a heavy user of SSIS) MonetDB is nice, it tickles my fancy to know it more Data Warehousing, despite all the BigData tool offerings (Hive, Scoop, Pig on Hadoop), using the traditional tools still rocks Chapters 2 to 6 were the most fun to me with chapter 8 being the most difficult.   In terms of closing, I highly recommend this video to anyone who needs to grasp Pentaho concepts quick, likewise, the course is very well suited for any developer on a “supposed to be done yesterday” type of a project. It is for a beginner to intermediate level ETL/DW developer. But one would need to learn more on Data Warehousing and Pentaho, for such I recommend the 5 star Pentaho Data Integration 4 Cookbook. Enjoy it! Disclaimer: I received this video from the publisher for the purpose of a public review.

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  • High CPU usage with Team Speak 3.0.0-rc2

    - by AlexTheBird
    The CPU usage is always around 40 percent. I use push-to-talk and I had uninstalled pulseaudio. Now I use Alsa. I don't even have to connect to a Server. By simply starting TS the cpu usage goes up 40 percent and stays there. The CPU usage of 3.0.0-rc1 [Build: 14468] is constantly 14 percent. This is the output of top, mpstat and ps aux while I am running TS3 ... of course: alexandros@alexandros-laptop:~$ top top - 18:20:07 up 2:22, 3 users, load average: 1.02, 0.85, 0.77 Tasks: 163 total, 1 running, 162 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 5.3%us, 1.9%sy, 0.1%ni, 91.8%id, 0.7%wa, 0.1%hi, 0.1%si, 0.0%st Mem: 2061344k total, 964028k used, 1097316k free, 69116k buffers Swap: 3997688k total, 0k used, 3997688k free, 449032k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ COMMAND 2714 alexandr 20 0 206m 31m 24m S 37 1.6 0:12.78 ts3client_linux 868 root 20 0 47564 27m 10m S 8 1.4 3:21.73 Xorg 1 root 20 0 2804 1660 1204 S 0 0.1 0:00.53 init 2 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kthreadd 3 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.01 migration/0 4 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.45 ksoftirqd/0 5 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/0 6 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 migration/1 7 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.08 ksoftirqd/1 8 root RT 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 watchdog/1 9 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:01.17 events/0 10 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.81 events/1 11 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 cpuset 12 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khelper 13 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 async/mgr 14 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 pm 16 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 sync_supers 17 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 bdi-default 18 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/0 19 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kintegrityd/1 20 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.05 kblockd/0 21 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.02 kblockd/1 22 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpid 23 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_notify 24 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 kacpi_hotplug 25 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.99 ata/0 26 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.92 ata/1 27 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ata_aux 28 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 ksuspend_usbd 29 root 20 0 0 0 0 S 0 0.0 0:00.00 khubd alexandros@alexandros-laptop:~$ mpstat Linux 2.6.32-32-generic (alexandros-laptop) 16.06.2011 _i686_ (2 CPU) 18:20:15 CPU %usr %nice %sys %iowait %irq %soft %steal %guest %idle 18:20:15 all 5,36 0,09 1,91 0,68 0,07 0,06 0,00 0,00 91,83 alexandros@alexandros-laptop:~$ ps aux USER PID %CPU %MEM VSZ RSS TTY STAT START TIME COMMAND root 1 0.0 0.0 2804 1660 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 /sbin/init root 2 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kthreadd] root 3 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [migration/0] root 4 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ksoftirqd/0] root 5 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [watchdog/0] root 6 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [migration/1] root 7 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ksoftirqd/1] root 8 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [watchdog/1] root 9 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:01 [events/0] root 10 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [events/1] root 11 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [cpuset] root 12 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [khelper] root 13 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [async/mgr] root 14 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [pm] root 16 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [sync_supers] root 17 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [bdi-default] root 18 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kintegrityd/0] root 19 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kintegrityd/1] root 20 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kblockd/0] root 21 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kblockd/1] root 22 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kacpid] root 23 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kacpi_notify] root 24 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kacpi_hotplug] root 25 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ata/0] root 26 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ata/1] root 27 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ata_aux] root 28 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ksuspend_usbd] root 29 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [khubd] root 30 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kseriod] root 31 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kmmcd] root 34 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [khungtaskd] root 35 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kswapd0] root 36 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? SN 15:58 0:00 [ksmd] root 37 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [aio/0] root 38 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [aio/1] root 39 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ecryptfs-kthrea] root 40 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [crypto/0] root 41 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [crypto/1] root 48 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:03 [scsi_eh_0] root 50 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [scsi_eh_1] root 53 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kstriped] root 54 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kmpathd/0] root 55 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kmpathd/1] root 56 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kmpath_handlerd] root 57 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ksnapd] root 58 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:03 [kondemand/0] root 59 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:02 [kondemand/1] root 60 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kconservative/0] root 61 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kconservative/1] root 213 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [scsi_eh_2] root 222 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [scsi_eh_3] root 234 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [scsi_eh_4] root 235 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:01 [usb-storage] root 255 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [jbd2/sda5-8] root 256 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ext4-dio-unwrit] root 257 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ext4-dio-unwrit] root 290 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [flush-8:0] root 318 0.0 0.0 2316 888 ? S 15:58 0:00 upstart-udev-bridge --daemon root 321 0.0 0.0 2616 1024 ? S<s 15:58 0:00 udevd --daemon root 526 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [kpsmoused] root 528 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [led_workqueue] root 650 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [radeon/0] root 651 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [radeon/1] root 652 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [ttm_swap] root 654 0.0 0.0 2612 984 ? S< 15:58 0:00 udevd --daemon root 656 0.0 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:00 [hd-audio0] root 657 0.0 0.0 2612 916 ? S< 15:58 0:00 udevd --daemon root 674 0.6 0.0 0 0 ? S 15:58 0:57 [phy0] syslog 715 0.0 0.0 34812 1776 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 rsyslogd -c4 102 731 0.0 0.0 3236 1512 ? Ss 15:58 0:02 dbus-daemon --system --fork root 740 0.0 0.1 19088 3380 ? Ssl 15:58 0:00 gdm-binary root 744 0.0 0.1 18900 4032 ? Ssl 15:58 0:01 NetworkManager avahi 749 0.0 0.0 2928 1520 ? S 15:58 0:00 avahi-daemon: running [alexandros-laptop.local] avahi 752 0.0 0.0 2928 544 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 avahi-daemon: chroot helper root 753 0.0 0.1 4172 2300 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/sbin/modem-manager root 762 0.0 0.1 20584 3152 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/sbin/console-kit-daemon --no-daemon root 836 0.0 0.1 20856 3864 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-simple-slave --display-id /org/gnome/DisplayManager/Display1 root 856 0.0 0.1 4836 2388 ? S 15:58 0:00 /sbin/wpa_supplicant -u -s root 868 2.3 1.3 36932 27924 tty7 Rs+ 15:58 3:22 /usr/bin/X :0 -nr -verbose -auth /var/run/gdm/auth-for-gdm-a46T4j/database -nolisten root 891 0.0 0.0 1792 564 tty4 Ss+ 15:58 0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty4 root 901 0.0 0.0 1792 564 tty5 Ss+ 15:58 0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty5 root 908 0.0 0.0 1792 564 tty2 Ss+ 15:58 0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty2 root 910 0.0 0.0 1792 568 tty3 Ss+ 15:58 0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty3 root 913 0.0 0.0 1792 564 tty6 Ss+ 15:58 0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty6 root 917 0.0 0.0 2180 1072 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 acpid -c /etc/acpi/events -s /var/run/acpid.socket daemon 924 0.0 0.0 2248 432 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 atd root 927 0.0 0.0 2376 900 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 cron root 950 0.0 0.0 11736 1372 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 /usr/sbin/winbindd root 958 0.0 0.0 11736 1184 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/sbin/winbindd root 974 0.0 0.1 6832 2580 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 /usr/sbin/cupsd -C /etc/cups/cupsd.conf root 1078 0.0 0.0 1792 564 tty1 Ss+ 15:58 0:00 /sbin/getty -8 38400 tty1 gdm 1097 0.0 0.0 3392 772 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session root 1112 0.0 0.1 19216 3292 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gdm/gdm-session-worker root 1116 0.0 0.1 5540 2932 ? S 15:58 0:01 /usr/lib/upower/upowerd root 1131 0.0 0.1 6308 3824 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/policykit-1/polkitd 108 1163 0.0 0.2 16788 4360 ? Ssl 15:58 0:01 /usr/sbin/hald root 1164 0.0 0.0 3536 1300 ? S 15:58 0:00 hald-runner root 1188 0.0 0.0 3612 1256 ? S 15:58 0:00 hald-addon-input: Listening on /dev/input/event6 /dev/input/event5 /dev/input/event2 root 1194 0.0 0.0 3612 1224 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-rfkill-killswitch root 1200 0.0 0.0 3608 1240 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-generic-backlight root 1202 0.0 0.0 3616 1236 ? S 15:58 0:02 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sr0 (every 2 sec) root 1204 0.0 0.0 3616 1236 ? S 15:58 0:00 hald-addon-storage: polling /dev/sdb (every 2 sec) root 1211 0.0 0.0 3624 1220 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/hal/hald-addon-cpufreq 108 1212 0.0 0.0 3420 1200 ? S 15:58 0:00 hald-addon-acpi: listening on acpid socket /var/run/acpid.socket 1000 1222 0.0 0.1 24196 2816 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-keyring-daemon --daemonize --login 1000 1240 0.0 0.3 28228 7312 ? Ssl 15:58 0:00 gnome-session 1000 1274 0.0 0.0 3284 356 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 /usr/bin/ssh-agent /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session gnome-session 1000 1277 0.0 0.0 3392 772 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/bin/dbus-launch --exit-with-session gnome-session 1000 1278 0.0 0.0 3160 1652 ? Ss 15:58 0:00 /bin/dbus-daemon --fork --print-pid 5 --print-address 7 --session 1000 1281 0.0 0.2 8172 4636 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/libgconf2-4/gconfd-2 1000 1287 0.0 0.5 24228 10896 ? Ss 15:58 0:03 /usr/lib/gnome-settings-daemon/gnome-settings-daemon 1000 1290 0.0 0.1 6468 2364 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd 1000 1293 0.0 0.6 38104 13004 ? S 15:58 0:03 metacity 1000 1296 0.0 0.1 30280 2628 ? Ssl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs//gvfs-fuse-daemon /home/alexandros/.gvfs 1000 1301 0.0 0.0 3344 988 ? S 15:58 0:03 syndaemon -i 0.5 -k 1000 1303 0.0 0.1 8060 3488 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gdu-volume-monitor root 1306 0.0 0.1 15692 3104 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/udisks/udisks-daemon 1000 1307 0.4 1.0 50748 21684 ? S 15:58 0:34 python -u /usr/share/screenlets/DigiClock/DigiClockScreenlet.py 1000 1308 0.0 0.9 35608 18564 ? S 15:58 0:00 python /usr/share/screenlets-manager/screenlets-daemon.py 1000 1309 0.0 0.3 19524 6468 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/policykit-1-gnome/polkit-gnome-authentication-agent-1 1000 1311 0.0 0.5 37412 11788 ? S 15:58 0:01 gnome-power-manager 1000 1312 0.0 1.0 50772 22628 ? S 15:58 0:03 gnome-panel 1000 1313 0.1 1.5 102648 31184 ? Sl 15:58 0:10 nautilus root 1314 0.0 0.0 5188 996 ? S 15:58 0:02 udisks-daemon: polling /dev/sdb /dev/sr0 1000 1315 0.0 0.6 51948 12464 ? SL 15:58 0:01 nm-applet --sm-disable 1000 1317 0.0 0.1 16956 2364 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-afc-volume-monitor 1000 1318 0.0 0.3 20164 7792 ? S 15:58 0:00 bluetooth-applet 1000 1321 0.0 0.1 7260 2384 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfs-gphoto2-volume-monitor 1000 1323 0.0 0.5 37436 12124 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/notify-osd/notify-osd 1000 1324 0.0 1.9 197928 40456 ? Ssl 15:58 0:06 /home/alexandros/.dropbox-dist/dropbox 1000 1329 0.0 0.3 20136 7968 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/bin/gnome-screensaver --no-daemon 1000 1331 0.0 0.1 7056 3112 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-trash --spawner :1.6 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/0 root 1340 0.0 0.0 2236 1008 ? S 15:58 0:00 /sbin/dhclient -d -sf /usr/lib/NetworkManager/nm-dhcp-client.action -pf /var/run/dhcl 1000 1348 0.0 0.1 42252 3680 ? Ssl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/bonobo-activation/bonobo-activation-server --ac-activate --ior-output-fd=19 1000 1384 0.0 1.7 80244 35480 ? Sl 15:58 0:02 /usr/bin/python /usr/lib/deskbar-applet/deskbar-applet/deskbar-applet --oaf-activate- 1000 1388 0.0 0.5 26196 11804 ? S 15:58 0:01 /usr/lib/gnome-panel/wnck-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Wncklet_Factory --oa 1000 1393 0.1 0.5 25876 11548 ? S 15:58 0:08 /usr/lib/gnome-applets/multiload-applet-2 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_MultiLoadAp 1000 1394 0.0 0.5 25600 11140 ? S 15:58 0:03 /usr/lib/gnome-applets/cpufreq-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_CPUFreqApplet_F 1000 1415 0.0 0.5 39192 11156 ? S 15:58 0:01 /usr/lib/gnome-power-manager/gnome-inhibit-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Inh 1000 1417 0.0 0.7 53544 15488 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-applets/mixer_applet2 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_MixerApplet_Fact 1000 1419 0.0 0.4 23816 9068 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-panel/notification-area-applet --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Notific 1000 1488 0.0 0.3 20964 7548 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-disk-utility/gdu-notification-daemon 1000 1490 0.0 0.1 6608 2484 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-burn --spawner :1.6 /org/gtk/gvfs/exec_spaw/1 1000 1510 0.0 0.1 6348 2084 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gvfs/gvfsd-metadata 1000 1531 0.0 0.3 19472 6616 ? S 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/gnome-user-share/gnome-user-share 1000 1535 0.0 0.4 77128 8392 ? Sl 15:58 0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/evolution-data-server-2.28 --oaf-activate-iid=OAFIID:GNOME_Evoluti 1000 1601 0.0 0.5 69576 11800 ? Sl 15:59 0:00 /usr/lib/evolution/2.28/evolution-alarm-notify 1000 1604 0.0 0.7 33924 15888 ? S 15:59 0:00 python /usr/share/system-config-printer/applet.py 1000 1701 0.0 0.5 37116 11968 ? S 15:59 0:00 update-notifier 1000 1892 4.5 7.0 406720 145312 ? Sl 17:11 3:09 /opt/google/chrome/chrome 1000 1896 0.0 0.1 69812 3680 ? S 17:11 0:02 /opt/google/chrome/chrome 1000 1898 0.0 0.6 91420 14080 ? S 17:11 0:00 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=zygote 1000 1916 0.2 1.3 140780 27220 ? Sl 17:11 0:12 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=extension --disable-client-side-phishing-detection - 1000 1918 0.7 1.8 155720 37912 ? Sl 17:11 0:31 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=extension --disable-client-side-phishing-detection - 1000 1921 0.0 1.0 135904 21052 ? Sl 17:11 0:02 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=extension --disable-client-side-phishing-detection - 1000 1927 6.5 3.6 194604 74960 ? Sl 17:11 4:32 /opt/google/chrome/chrome --type=renderer --disable-client-side-phishing-detection -- 1000 2156 0.4 0.7 48344 14896 ? Rl 18:03 0:04 gnome-terminal 1000 2157 0.0 0.0 1988 712 ? S 18:03 0:00 gnome-pty-helper 1000 2158 0.0 0.1 6504 3860 pts/0 Ss 18:03 0:00 bash 1000 2564 0.2 0.1 6624 3984 pts/1 Ss+ 18:17 0:00 bash 1000 2711 0.0 0.0 4208 1352 ? S 18:19 0:00 /bin/bash /home/alexandros/Programme/TeamSpeak3-Client-linux_x86_back/ts3client_runsc 1000 2714 36.5 1.5 210872 31960 ? SLl 18:19 0:18 ./ts3client_linux_x86 1000 2743 0.0 0.0 2716 1068 pts/0 R+ 18:20 0:00 ps aux Output of vmstat: alexandros@alexandros-laptop:~$ vmstat procs -----------memory---------- ---swap-- -----io---- -system-- ----cpu---- r b swpd free buff cache si so bi bo in cs us sy id wa 0 0 0 1093324 69840 449496 0 0 27 10 476 667 6 2 91 1 Output of lsusb alexandros@alexandros-laptop:~$ lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 671MX 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge 00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS968 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 01) 00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01) 00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f) 00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f) 00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller 00:05.0 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SATA Controller / IDE mode (rev 03) 00:06.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge 00:07.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] PCI-to-PCI bridge 00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10) 00:0f.0 Audio device: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Azalia Audio Controller 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Mobility Radeon X2300 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR5001 Wireless Network Adapter (rev 01) The Team Speak log file : 2011-06-19 19:04:04.223522|INFO | | | Logging started, clientlib version: 3.0.0-rc2 [Build: 14642] 2011-06-19 19:04:04.761149|ERROR |SoundBckndIntf| | /home/alexandros/Programme/TeamSpeak3-Client-linux_x86_back/soundbackends/libpulseaudio_linux_x86.so error: NOT_CONNECTED 2011-06-19 19:04:05.871770|INFO |ClientUI | | Failed to init text to speech engine 2011-06-19 19:04:05.894623|INFO |ClientUI | | TeamSpeak 3 client version: 3.0.0-rc2 [Build: 14642] 2011-06-19 19:04:05.895421|INFO |ClientUI | | Qt version: 4.7.2 2011-06-19 19:04:05.895571|INFO |ClientUI | | Using configuration location: /home/alexandros/.ts3client/ts3clientui_qt.conf 2011-06-19 19:04:06.559596|INFO |ClientUI | | Last update check was: Sa. Jun 18 00:08:43 2011 2011-06-19 19:04:06.560506|INFO | | | Checking for updates... 2011-06-19 19:04:07.357869|INFO | | | Update check, my version: 14642, latest version: 14642 2011-06-19 19:05:52.978481|INFO |PreProSpeex | 1| Speex version: 1.2rc1 2011-06-19 19:05:54.055347|INFO |UIHelpers | | setClientVolumeModifier: 10 -8 2011-06-19 19:05:54.057196|INFO |UIHelpers | | setClientVolumeModifier: 11 2 Thanks for taking the time to read my message. UPDATE: Thanks to nickguletskii's link I googled for "alsa cpu usage" (without quotes) and it brought me to a forum. A user wrote that by directly selecting the hardware with "plughw:x.x" won't impact the performance of the system. I have selected it in the TS 3 configuration and it worked. But this solution is not optimal because now no other program can access the sound output. If you need any further information or my question is unclear than please tell me.

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  • Is it OK to have a team with same abilities but different skill levels?

    - by A. Karimi
    I believe that in an ideal team, members should have different but complementary abilities. But is that true about software development teams? As an example we are a small team of 5. We almost have the same abilities and interests but with different levels of skills. Regarding such situation I think we don't cover our teammates' weaknesses. Is there any pattern to follow to manage and improve such team? Should I setup a team with different abilities and interests to maximize the performance and productivity? -- EDIT -- Our current team has a specific lifetime. We work together in a per-project manner. In another word we may change the team arrangement for each project depending on the project and developers situation. Actually we've provided a sort of floating situation. In short, we are a network of developers rather than a fixed-size development team.

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  • Building a regex builder

    - by i.h4d35
    I am a beginner in programming in general and web development in particular. I am especially bad at regular expressions. Recently I was involved in building a couple of cPanel plugins(Perl-CGI) and that's when I realized how bad I am in regex. As a result, I have decided to build an online regex builder - this will help me to learn regex and help other struggling with regex. I have checked out GSkinner, Rubular and a couple of others like regexpal. It seemed to be a little difficult to use, hence i thought of writing another one. I do not know which tool is best suited for the job. should I write it in Perl or Python? My skill level is between beginner and intermediate in both those languages. What would be a good starting point - building it for the CLI or for the browser? I plan to get a string as an input, ask if the user want to search or search and replace, enter the search string (and the replace string where applicable) and then generate a regex. Would this be the right way to go?

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  • Building services with .Net Part 1

    - by Allan Rwakatungu
    On the 26th of May 2010 , I made a presentation to the .NET user group meeting (thanks to Malisa Ncube for organizing this event every month … ). If you missed my presentation , we talked about why we should all be building services … better still using the .NET framework. This blog post is an introduction to services , why you would want to build services and how you can build services using the .NET framework. What is a service? OASIS defines service as "a mechanism to enable access to one or more capabilities, where the access is provided using a prescribed interface and is exercised consistent with constraints and policies as specified by the service description." [1]. If the above definition sounds to academic , you can also define a service as loosely coupled units of functionality that have no calls to each other embedded in the. Instead of services embedding calls to each other in their service code they use defined protocols that describe how services pass and parse messages. This is a good way to think about services if you’re from an objected oriented background. While in object oriented programming functions make calls to each other, in service oriented programming, functions pass messages between each other. Why would you want to use services? 1. If your enterprise architecture looks like this   Services are the building blocks for SOA . With SOA you can move away from the sphaggetti infrastructure that is common in most enterprises. The complexity or lack of visibility of the integration points in your enterprises makes it difficult and costly to implement new initiatives and changes into the business - and even impossible in some cases - as it is not possible to identify the impact a change in one system might have to other systems. With services you can move to an architecture like this Your building blocks from Spaghetti infrastructure to something that is more well-defined and manageable to achieve cost efficiency and not least business agility - enabling you to react to changes in the market with speed and achieve operational efficiency and control are services. 2. If you want to become the Gates or Zuckerburger. Have you heard about Web 2.0 ? Mashups? Software as a service (SAAS) ? Cloud computing ?   They all offer you the opportunity to have scalable but low cost business models and they built using services.  Some of my favorite companies that leverage services for their business models include  https://www.salesforce.com/ (cloud CRM) http://www. twitter.com (more people use twitter clients built by 3rd parties than their official clients) http://www.kayak.com/ (compares data from other travel sites to give information to users in one location) Services with the .NET framework      If you are a .NET developer and you want to develop services, Windows Communication Framework (WCF) is the tool for you. WCF is Microsoft’s unified programming model (service model) for building service oriented applications. ( Before .NET 3.0 you had several models for programming services in .NET including .NET remoting, Web services (ASMX), COM +, Microsoft Messaging queuing (MSMQ) etc, after .NET 3.0 the programming model was unified into one i.e. WCF ). Windows Communication Framework (WCF) provides you 1. An Software Development Kit (SDK) for creating SOA applications 2. A runtime for running services on the Windows platform Why should you use Windows Communication Foundation if you’re programming services?   1. It supports interoperable and open standards e.g. WS* protocols for programming SOAP services 2. It has a unified programming model. Whether you use TCP or Http or Pipes or transmitting using Messaging Queues, programmers need to learn just one way to program. Previously you had .NET remoting, MSMQ, Web services, COM+ and they were all done differently 3. Productive programming model You don’t have to worry about all the plumbing involved to write services. You have a rich declarative programming model to add stuff like logging, transactions, and reliable messages in-built in the Windows Communication Framework. Understanding services in WCF The basic principles of WCF are as easy as ABC A – Address This is where the service is located B- Binding This describes how you communicate with the service e.g. Use TCP, HTTP or both. How to exchange security information with the service etc. C – Contract This defines what the service can do. E.g. Pay water bill, Make a phone call A - Addresses In WCF, an address is a combination of transport, server name, port and path Example addresses may include http://localhost:8001 net.tcp://localhost:8002/MyService net.pipe://localhost/MyPipe net.msmq://localhost/private/MyService net.msmq://localhost/MyService B- Binding   There are numerous ways to communicate with services , different ways that a message can be formatted/sent/secured, that allows you to tailor your service for the compatibility/performance you require for your solution. Transport You can use HTTP TCP MSMQ , Named pipes, Your own custom transport etc Message You  can send a plain text binary, Message Transmission Optimization Mechanism (MTOM) message Communication security No security Transport security Message security Authenticating and authorizing callers etc Behaviour You service can support Transactions Be reliable Use queues Support ajax etc C - Contract You define what your service can do using Service contracts :- Define operations that your service can do, communications and behaviours Data contracts :- Define the messages that are passed from and into your service and how they are formatted Fault contracts :- Defines errors types in your service   As an example, suppose your service service shows money. You define your service contract using a interface [ServiceContract] public interface IShowMeTheMoney {   [OperationContract]    Money Show(); } You define the data contract by annotating a class it with the Data Contract attribute and fields you want to pass in the message as Data Members. (Note:- In the latest versions of WCF you dont have to use attributes if you passing all the objects properties in the message) [DataContract] public Money {   [DataMember]   public string Currency { get; set; }   [DataMember]   public Decimal Amount { get; set; }   public string Comment { get; set; } } Features of Windows Communication Foundation Windows Communication Foundation is not only simple but feature rich , offering you several options to tweak your service to fit your business requirements. Some of the features of WCF include 1. Workflow services You can combine WCF with Windows WorkFlow Foundation (WWF) to write workflow type services 2. Control how your data (messages) are transferred and serialized e.g. you can serialize your business objects as XML or binary 3. control over session management , instance creation and concurrency management without writing code if you like 4. Queues and reliable sessions. You can store messages from the sending client and later forward them to the receiving application. You can also guarantee that messages will arrive at their destincation. 5.Transactions:  You can have different services participate in a transaction operations that can be rolled back if needed 6. Security. WCF has rich features for authorization and authentication  as well as keep audit trails 7. Web programming model. WCF allows developers to expose services as non SOAP endpoints 8. Inbuilt features that you can use to write JSON and services that support AJAX applications And lots more In my next blog I will show you how you can use WCF features to write a real world business service.               Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 ]] /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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  • Introducing Kiddo: A Ruby DSL for building simple WPF and Silverlight applications

    - by fdumlao
    Read the original article here... As a long time Ruby lover and deep rooted .NET supporter, I was probably more psyched than anyone I knew when IronRuby 1.0 was finally released. I immediately grabbed and started building some apps with it to see where the boundaries were going to lie between IronRuby and ruby.exe, and so far I've been pleasantly surprised by how many things just work as I'd expect. I then started to try out some of my favorite libs that I was sure would not work with IronRuby, and I wasn't surprised at all when _why's amazing Shoes library didn't work. Being somewhat familiar with Shoes (it's a great DSL for building simple UIs in Ruby) I felt it wouldn't be that difficult to port it over and as it turned out, someone else had already started the work. As cool as this was, I was never quite satisfied with good 'ol shoes. While it was quite complete, it lacked simple extensibility points, and although easy, it wasn't quite "kid friendly". At the same time on the .NET side of the fence, IronRuby could easily compile XAML to create WPF and Silverlight UIs, but trying to do it declaratively in plain Ruby was no fun at all. And so, the Shoes-inspired, WPF/Silverlight GUI DSL was born. (and it lives here: http://bitbucket.org/fdumlao/kiddo/src) Introducing Kiddo Tell you what. Let's start with a quick code example first. We'll build a useful app that we can use to quickly reverse strings whenever we need it. Read the complete article here...

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  • Error building main Guest Additions Module while installing VirtualBox guest additions

    - by Praveen Sripati
    I have installed Ubuntu 12.10 Guest on Ubuntu 12.04 Host using VirtualBox. Everything is from repository and no direct install. When I install the guest additions, the below error is shown in the console. Before running the command I mapped the VBoxGuestAdditions.iso in the Guest. The closest I could get is this article which says to install the latest version of VirtualBox (not the one from the repository). Is there any alternate solution? sudo ./VBoxLinuxAdditions.run Verifying archive integrity... All good. Uncompressing VirtualBox 4.1.12 Guest Additions for Linux......... VirtualBox Guest Additions installer Removing installed version 4.1.12 of VirtualBox Guest Additions... Removing existing VirtualBox DKMS kernel modules ...done. Removing existing VirtualBox non-DKMS kernel modules ...done. Building the VirtualBox Guest Additions kernel modules The headers for the current running kernel were not found. If the following module compilation fails then this could be the reason. Building the main Guest Additions module ...fail! (Look at /var/log/vboxadd-install.log to find out what went wrong) Doing non-kernel setup of the Guest Additions ...done. Installing the Window System drivers Warning: unknown version of the X Window System installed. Not installing X Window System drivers. Installing modules ...done. Installing graphics libraries and desktop services components ...done.

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  • How does your team work together in a remote setup?

    - by Carl Rosenberger
    Hi, we are a distributed team working on the object database db4o. The way we work: We try to program in pairs only. We use Skype and VNC or SharedView to connect and work together. In our online Tuesday meeting every week (usually about 1 hour) we talk about the tasks done last week we create new pairs for the next week with a random generator so knowledge and friendship distribute evenly we set the priority for any new tasks or bugs that have come in each team picks the tasks it likes to do from the highest prioritized ones. From Tuesday to Wednesday we estimate tasks. We have a unit of work we call "Ideal Developer Session" (IDS), maybe 2 or 3 hours of working together as a pair. It's not perfectly well defined (because we know estimation always is inaccurate) but from our past shared experience we have a common sense of what an IDS is. If we can't estimate a task because it feels too long for a week we break it down into estimatable smaller tasks. During a short meeting on Wednesday we commit to a workload we feel is well doable in a week. We commit to complete. If a team runs out of committed tasks during the week, it can pick new ones from the prioritized queue we have in Jira. When we started working this way, some of us found that remote pair programming takes a lot of energy because you are so focussed. If you pair program for more than 5 or 6 hours per day, you get drained. On the other hand working like this has turned out to be very efficient. The knowledge about our codebase is evenly distributed and we have really learnt lots from eachother. I would be very interested to hear about the experiences from other teams working in a similar way. Things like: How often do you meet? Have you tried different sprint lengths (one week, two week, longer) ? Which tools do you use? Which issue tracker do you use? What do you do about time zone differences? How does it work for you to integrate new people into the team? How many hours do you usually work per week? How does your management interact with the way you are working? Do you get put on a waterfall with hard deadlines? What's your unit of work? What is your normal velocity? (units of work done per week) Programming work should be fun and for us it usually is great fun. I would be happy about any new ideas how to make it even more fun and/or more efficient.

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  • Announcing the June 2012 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I’m excited to announce the June 2012 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit. You can download the new release by visiting http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com or (better) download the new release with NuGet: Install-Package AjaxControlToolkit The Ajax Control Toolkit continues to be super popular. The previous release (May 2012) had over 87,000 downloads from CodePlex.com and over 16,000 downloads from NuGet. That’s over 100,000 downloads in less than 2 months. Security Improvements for the HtmlEditorExtender Unfortunately, in the previous release, we made the HtmlEditorExtender too secure! We upgraded the version of the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library included in the Ajax Control Toolkit to the latest version (version 4.2.1) and the latest version turned out to be way too aggressive about stripping HTML. It not only strips dangerous tags such as <script> tags, it also strips innocent tags such as <b> tags. When the latest version of the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library is used with the HtmlEditorExtender, the library strips all rich content from the HtmlEditorExtender control which defeats the purpose of using the control. Therefore, we had to find a replacement for the Microsoft Anti-Cross Site Scripting Library. In this release, we’ve created a new HTML sanitizer built on the HTML Agility Pack. If you were using the AntiXssSanitizerProvider then you will need to substitute the HtmlAgilityPackSanitizerProvider. In particular, you need to modify the sanitizer sections in your Web.config file like this: <configuration> <configSections> <sectionGroup name="system.web"> <section name="sanitizer" requirePermission="false" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.ProviderSanitizerSection, AjaxControlToolkit" /> </sectionGroup> </configSections> <system.web> <sanitizer defaultProvider="HtmlAgilityPackSanitizerProvider"> <providers> <add name="HtmlAgilityPackSanitizerProvider" type="AjaxControlToolkit.Sanitizer.HtmlAgilityPackSanitizerProvider"></add> </providers> </sanitizer> </system.web> </configuration> We made one other backwards-breaking change to improve the security of the HtmlEditorExtender. We want to make sure that users don’t accidently use the HtmlEditorExtender without an HTML sanitizer by accident. Therefore, if you don’t configure a HTML sanitizer provider in the web.config file then you’ll get the following error: If you really want to use the HtmlEditorExtender without using an HTML sanitizer – for example, you are using the HtmlEditorExtender for an Intranet application and you trust all of your fellow employees – then you can explicitly indicate that you don’t want to enable HTML sanitization by setting the EnableSanitization property to false like this: <ajaxToolkit:HtmlEditorExtender TargetControlID="txtComments" EnableSanitization="false" runat="server" /> Please don’t ever set the EnableSanitization property to false for a public website. If you disable HTML sanitization then you are making your website an easy target for Cross-Site Scripting attacks. Lots of Fixes for the ComboBox Control In the latest release, we also made several important bug fixes and feature enhancements to the ComboBox control. Here’s the list of issues that we fixed: 22930 — ComboBox doesn’t close its drop down list when losing input focus to another ComboBox control 23140 — ComboBox Issues – Delete, Backspace, Period 23142 — ComboxBox SelectedIndex = -1 does not clear text 24440 — ComboBox postback on enter 25295 — ComboBox problems when container is hidden at page load 25469 — ComboBox – MaxLength ignored 26686 — Backspace and Delete exception when optionList is null 27148 — Combobox breaks if ClientIDMode is static Fixes to Other Controls In this release, we also made bug fixes and enhancements to the UpdatePanelAnimation, Tabs, and Seadragon controls: 21310 — OnUpdated animation starts before OnUpdating has finished 26690 — Seadragon Control’s openTileSource() method doesn’t work (with fix) Title is required We also fixed an issue with the Tabs control which would result in an InvalidOperation exception. Summary I want to thank the Superexpert team for the hard work that they put into this release. In particular, I want to thank them for their effort in researching, building, and writing unit tests for the HtmlAgilityPack HTML sanitizer.

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  • Book &ldquo;Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter&rdquo; published!

    - by Jakob Ehn
    During the summer and fall this year, me and my colleague Terje Sandstrøm has worked together on a book project that has now finally hit the stores! The title of the book is Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter and is published by Packt Publishing. You can find it at http://www.packtpub.com/team-foundation-server-2012-starter/book or from Amazon http://www.amazon.com/dp/1849688389                          The book is part of a concept that Packt have with starter-books, intended for people new to Team Foundation Server 2012 and who want a quick guideline to get it up and working. It covers the fundamentals, from installing and configuring it, and how to use it with source control, work items and builds. It is done as a step-by-step guide, but also includes best practices advice in the different areas. It covers the use of both the on-premises and the TFS Services version. It also has a list of links and references in the end to the most relevant Visual Studio 2012 ALM sites. Our good friend and fellow ALM MVP Mathias Olausson have done the review of the book, thanks again Mathias! We hope the book fills the gap between the different online guide sites and the more advanced books that are out. Check it out and please let us know what you think of the book! Book Description Your quick start guide to TFS 2012, top features, and best practices with hands on examples Overview Install TFS 2012 from scratch Get up and running with your first project Streamline release cycles for maximum productivity In Detail Team Foundation Server 2012 is Microsoft's leading ALM tool, integrating source control, work item and process handling, build automation, and testing. This practical "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide" will provide you with clear step-by-step exercises covering all major aspects of the product. This is essential reading for anyone wishing to set up, organize, and use TFS server. This hands-on guide looks at the top features in Team Foundation Server 2012, starting with a quick installation guide and then moving into using it for your software development projects. Manage your team projects with Team Explorer, one of the many new features for 2012. Covering all the main features in source control to help you work more efficiently, including tools for branching and merging, we will delve into the Agile Planning Tools for planning your product and sprint backlogs. Learn to set up build automation, allowing your team to become faster, more streamlined, and ultimately more productive with this "Team Foundation Server 2012 Starter Guide". What you will learn from this book Install TFS 2012 on premise Access TFS Services in the cloud Quickly get started with a new project with product backlogs, source control, and build automation Work efficiently with source control using the top features Understand how the tools for branching and merging in TFS 2012 help you isolate work and teams Learn about the existing process templates, such as Visual Studio Scrum 2.0 Manage your product and sprint backlogs using the Agile planning tools Approach This Starter guide is a short, sharp introduction to Team Foundation Server 2012, covering everything you need to get up and running. Who this book is written for If you are a developer, project lead, tester, or IT administrator working with Team Foundation Server 2012 this guide will get you up to speed quickly and with minimal effort.

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  • Solaris 11.1 changes building of code past the point of __NORETURN

    - by alanc
    While Solaris 11.1 was under development, we started seeing some errors in the builds of the upstream X.Org git master sources, such as: "Display.c", line 65: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler "hostx.c", line 341: Function has no return statement : x_io_error_handler from functions that were defined to match a specific callback definition that declared them as returning an int if they did return, but these were calling exit() instead of returning so hadn't listed a return value. These had been generating warnings for years which we'd been ignoring, but X.Org has made enough progress in cleaning up code for compiler warnings and static analysis issues lately, that the community turned up the default error levels, including the gcc flag -Werror=return-type and the equivalent Solaris Studio cc flags -v -errwarn=E_FUNC_HAS_NO_RETURN_STMT, so now these became errors that stopped the build. Yet on Solaris, gcc built this code fine, while Studio errored out. Investigation showed this was due to the Solaris headers, which during Solaris 10 development added a number of annotations to the headers when gcc was being used for the amd64 kernel bringup before the Studio amd64 port was ready. Since Studio did not support the inline form of these annotations at the time, but instead used #pragma for them, the definitions were only present for gcc. To resolve this, I fixed both sides of the problem, so that it would work for building new X.Org sources on older Solaris releases or with older Studio compilers, as well as fixing the general problem before it broke more software building on Solaris. To the X.Org sources, I added the traditional Studio #pragma does_not_return to recognize that functions like exit() don't ever return, in patches such as this Xserver patch. Adding a dummy return statement was ruled out as that introduced unreachable code errors from compilers and analyzers that correctly realized you couldn't reach that code after a return statement. And on the Solaris 11.1 side, I updated the annotation definitions in <sys/ccompile.h> to enable for Studio 12.0 and later compilers the annotations already existing in a number of system headers for functions like exit() and abort(). If you look in that file you'll see the annotations we currently use, though the forms there haven't gone through review to become a Committed interface, so may change in the future. Actually getting this integrated into Solaris though took a bit more work than just editing one header file. Our ELF binary build comparison tool, wsdiff, actually showed a large number of differences in the resulting binaries due to the compiler using this information for branch prediction, code path analysis, and other possible optimizations, so after comparing enough of the disassembly output to be comfortable with the changes, we also made sure to get this in early enough in the release cycle so that it would get plenty of test exposure before the release. It also required updating quite a bit of code to avoid introducing new lint or compiler warnings or errors, and people building applications on top of Solaris 11.1 and later may need to make similar changes if they want to keep their build logs similarly clean. Previously, if you had a function that was declared with a non-void return type, lint and cc would warn if you didn't return a value, even if you called a function like exit() or panic() that ended execution. For instance: #include <stdlib.h> int callback(int status) { if (status == 0) return status; exit(status); } would previously require a never executed return 0; after the exit() to avoid lint warning "function falls off bottom without returning value". Now the compiler & lint will both issue "statement not reached" warnings for a return 0; after the final exit(), allowing (or in some cases, requiring) it to be removed. However, if there is no return statement anywhere in the function, lint will warn that you've declared a function returning a value that never does so, suggesting you can declare it as void. Unfortunately, if your function signature is required to match a certain form, such as in a callback, you not be able to do so, and will need to add a /* LINTED */ to the end of the function. If you need your code to build on both a newer and an older release, then you will either need to #ifdef these unreachable statements, or, to keep your sources common across releases, add to your sources the corresponding #pragma recognized by both current and older compiler versions, such as: #pragma does_not_return(exit) #pragma does_not_return(panic) Hopefully this little extra work is paid for by the compilers & code analyzers being able to better understand your code paths, giving you better optimizations and more accurate errors & warning messages.

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  • 10 Essential Tools for building ASP.NET Websites

    - by Stephen Walther
    I recently put together a simple public website created with ASP.NET for my company at Superexpert.com. I was surprised by the number of free tools that I ended up using to put together the website. Therefore, I thought it would be interesting to create a list of essential tools for building ASP.NET websites. These tools work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Performance Tools After reading Steve Souders two (very excellent) books on front-end website performance High Performance Web Sites and Even Faster Web Sites, I have been super sensitive to front-end website performance. According to Souders’ Performance Golden Rule: “Optimize front-end performance first, that's where 80% or more of the end-user response time is spent” You can use the tools below to reduce the size of the images, JavaScript files, and CSS files used by an ASP.NET application. 1. Sprite and Image Optimization Framework CSS sprites were first described in an article written for A List Apart entitled CSS sprites: Image Slicing’s Kiss of Death. When you use sprites, you combine multiple images used by a website into a single image. Next, you use CSS trickery to display particular sub-images from the combined image in a webpage. The primary advantage of sprites is that they reduce the number of requests required to display a webpage. Requesting a single large image is faster than requesting multiple small images. In general, the more resources – images, JavaScript files, CSS files – that must be moved across the wire, the slower your website. However, most people avoid using sprites because they require a lot of work. You need to combine all of the images and write just the right CSS rules to display the sub-images. The Microsoft Sprite and Image Optimization Framework enables you to avoid all of this work. The framework combines the images for you automatically. Furthermore, the framework includes an ASP.NET Web Forms control and an ASP.NET MVC helper that makes it easy to display the sub-images. You can download the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework from CodePlex at http://aspnet.codeplex.com/releases/view/50869. The Sprite and Image Optimization Framework was written by Morgan McClean who worked in the office next to mine at Microsoft. Morgan was a scary smart Intern from Canada and we discussed the Framework while he was building it (I was really excited to learn that he was working on it). Morgan added some great advanced features to this framework. For example, the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework supports something called image inlining. When you use image inlining, the actual image is stored in the CSS file. Here’s an example of what image inlining looks like: .Home_StephenWalther_small-jpg { width:75px; height:100px; background: url(data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAEsAAABkCAIAAABB1lpeAAAAB GdBTUEAALGOfPtRkwAAACBjSFJNAACHDwAAjA8AAP1SAACBQAAAfXkAAOmLAAA85QAAGcxzPIV3AAAKL s+zNfREAAAAASUVORK5CYII=) no-repeat 0% 0%; } The actual image (in this case a picture of me that is displayed on the home page of the Superexpert.com website) is stored in the CSS file. If you visit the Superexpert.com website then very few separate images are downloaded. For example, all of the images with a red border in the screenshot below take advantage of CSS sprites: Unfortunately, there are some significant Gotchas that you need to be aware of when using the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework. There are workarounds for these Gotchas. I plan to write about these Gotchas and workarounds in a future blog entry. 2. Microsoft Ajax Minifier Whenever possible you should combine, minify, compress, and cache with a far future header all of your JavaScript and CSS files. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier makes it easy to minify JavaScript and CSS files. Don’t confuse minification and compression. You need to do both. According to Souders, you can reduce the size of a JavaScript file by an additional 20% (on average) by minifying a JavaScript file after you compress the file. When you minify a JavaScript or CSS file, you use various tricks to reduce the size of the file before you compress the file. For example, you can minify a JavaScript file by replacing long JavaScript variables names with short variables names and removing unnecessary white space and comments. You can minify a CSS file by doing such things as replacing long color names such as #ffffff with shorter equivalents such as #fff. The Microsoft Ajax Minifier was created by Microsoft employee Ron Logan. Internally, this tool was being used by several large Microsoft websites. We also used the tool heavily on the ASP.NET team. I convinced Ron to publish the tool on CodePlex so that everyone in the world could take advantage of it. You can download the tool from the ASP.NET Ajax website and read documentation for the tool here. I created the installer for the Microsoft Ajax Minifier. When creating the installer, I also created a Visual Studio build task to make it easy to minify all of your JavaScript and CSS files whenever you do a build within Visual Studio automatically. Read the Ajax Minifier Quick Start to learn how to configure the build task. 3. ySlow The ySlow tool is a free add-on for Firefox created by Yahoo that enables you to test the front-end of your website. For example, here are the current test results for the Superexpert.com website: The Superexpert.com website has an overall score of B (not perfect but not bad). The ySlow tool is not perfect. For example, the Superexpert.com website received a failing grade of F for not using a Content Delivery Network even though the website using the Microsoft Ajax Content Delivery Network for JavaScript files such as jQuery. Uptime After publishing a website live to the world, you want to ensure that the website does not encounter any issues and that it stays live. I use the following tools to monitor the Superexpert.com website now that it is live. 4. ELMAH ELMAH stands for Error Logging Modules and Handlers for ASP.NET. ELMAH enables you to record any errors that happen at your website so you can review them in the future. You can download ELMAH for free from the ELMAH project website. ELMAH works great with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. You can configure ELMAH to store errors in a number of different stores including XML files, the Event Log, an Access database, a SQL database, an Oracle database, or in computer RAM. You also can configure ELMAH to email error messages to you when they happen. By default, you can access ELMAH by requesting the elmah.axd page from a website with ELMAH installed. Here’s what the elmah page looks like from the Superexpert.com website (this page is password-protected because secret information can be revealed in an error message): If you click on a particular error message, you can view the original Yellow Screen ASP.NET error message (even when the error message was never displayed to the actual user). I installed ELMAH by taking advantage of the new package manager for ASP.NET named NuGet (originally named NuPack). You can read the details about NuGet in the following blog entry by Scott Guthrie. You can download NuGet from CodePlex. 5. Pingdom I use Pingdom to verify that the Superexpert.com website is always up. You can sign up for Pingdom by visiting Pingdom.com. You can use Pingdom to monitor a single website for free. At the Pingdom website, you configure the frequency that your website gets pinged. I verify that the Superexpert.com website is up every 5 minutes. I have the Pingdom service verify that it can retrieve the string “Contact Us” from the website homepage. If your website goes down, you can configure Pingdom so that it sends an email, Twitter, SMS, or iPhone alert. I use the Pingdom iPhone app which looks like this: 6. Host Tracker If your website does go down then you need some way of determining whether it is a problem with your local network or if your website is down for everyone. I use a website named Host-Tracker.com to check how badly a website is down. Here’s what the Host-Tracker website displays for the Superexpert.com website when the website can be successfully pinged from everywhere in the world: Notice that Host-Tracker pinged the Superexpert.com website from 68 locations including Roubaix, France and Scranton, PA. Debugging I mean debugging in the broadest possible sense. I use the following tools when building a website to verify that I have not made a mistake. 7. HTML Spell Checker Why doesn’t Visual Studio have a built-in spell checker? Don’t know – I’ve always found this mysterious. Fortunately, however, a former member of the ASP.NET team wrote a free spell checker that you can use with your ASP.NET pages. I find a spell checker indispensible. It is easy to delude yourself that you are capable of perfect spelling. I’m always super embarrassed when I actually run the spell checking tool and discover all of my spelling mistakes. The fastest way to add the HTML Spell Checker extension to Visual Studio is to select the menu option Tools, Extension Manager within Visual Studio. Click on Online Gallery and search for HTML Spell Checker: 8. IIS SEO Toolkit If people cannot find your website through Google then you should not even bother to create it. Microsoft has a great extension for IIS named the IIS Search Engine Optimization Toolkit that you can use to identify issue with your website that would hurt its page rank. You also can use this tool to quickly create a sitemap for your website that you can submit to Google or Bing. You can even generate the sitemap for an ASP.NET MVC website. Here’s what the report overview for the Superexpert.com website looks like: Notice that the Sueprexpert.com website had plenty of violations. For example, there are 65 cases in which a page has a broken hyperlink. You can drill into these violations to identity the exact page and location where these violations occur. 9. LinqPad If your ASP.NET website accesses a database then you should be using LINQ to Entities with the Entity Framework. Using LINQ involves some magic. LINQ queries written in C# get converted into SQL queries for you. If you are not careful about how you write your LINQ queries, you could unintentionally build a really badly performing website. LinqPad is a free tool that enables you to experiment with your LINQ queries. It even works with Microsoft SQL CE 4 and Azure. You can use LinqPad to execute a LINQ to Entities query and see the results. You also can use it to see the resulting SQL that gets executed against the database: 10. .NET Reflector I use .NET Reflector daily. The .NET Reflector tool enables you to take any assembly and disassemble the assembly into C# or VB.NET code. You can use .NET Reflector to see the “Source Code” of an assembly even when you do not have the actual source code. You can download a free version of .NET Reflector from the Redgate website. I use .NET Reflector primarily to help me understand what code is doing internally. For example, I used .NET Reflector with the Sprite and Image Optimization Framework to better understand how the MVC Image helper works. Here’s part of the disassembled code from the Image helper class: Summary In this blog entry, I’ve discussed several of the tools that I used to create the Superexpert.com website. These are tools that I use to improve the performance, improve the SEO, verify the uptime, or debug the Superexpert.com website. All of the tools discussed in this blog entry are free. Furthermore, all of these tools work with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC. Let me know if there are any tools that you use daily when building ASP.NET websites.

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  • Building a formset dynamically

    - by vorpyg
    I initially wrote code to build a form dynamically, based on data from the DB, similar to what I described in my previous SO post. As SO user Daniel Roseman points out, he would use a formset for this, and now I've come to the realization that he must be completely right. :) My approach works, basically, but I can't seem to get validation across the entire form to be working properly (I believe it's possible, but it's getting quite complex, and there has to be a smarter way of doing it = Formsets!). So now my question is: How can I build a formset dynamically? Not in an AJAX way, I want each form's label to be populated with an FK value (team) from the DB. As I have a need for passing parameters to the form, I've used this technique from a previous SO post. With the former approach, my view code is (form code in previous link): def render_form(request): teams = Team.objects.filter(game=game) form_collection = [] for team in teams: f = SuggestionForm(request.POST or None, team=team, user=request.user) form_collection.append(f) Now I want to do something like: def render_form(request): teams = Team.objects.filter(game=game) from django.utils.functional import curry from django.forms.formsets import formset_factory formset = formset_factory(SuggestionForm) for team in teams: formset.form.append(staticmethod(curry(SuggestionForm, request.POST or None, team=team, user=request.user))) But the append bit doesn't work. What's the proper way of doing this? Thanks!

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  • Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment

    - by Scott Elvington
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Oracle just published Best Practices for Building a Virtualized SPARC Computing Environment, a white paper that provides guidance on the complete hardware and software stack for deploying and managing your physical and virtual SPARC infrastructure. The solution is based on Oracle SPARC T4 servers, Oracle Solaris 11 with Oracle VM for SPARC 2.2, Sun ZFS storage appliances, Sun 10GbE 72 port switches and Oracle Enterprise Manager Ops Center 12c. The paper emphasizes the value and importance of planning the resources (compute, network and storage) that will comprise the virtualized environment to achieve the desired capacity, performance and availability characteristics. The document also details numerous operational best practices that will help you deliver on those characteristics with unique capabilities provided by Enterprise Manager Ops Center including policy-based guest placement, pool resource balancing and automated guest recovery in the event of server failure. Plenty of references to supplementary documentation are included to help point you to additional resources. Whether you’re building the first stages of your private cloud or a general-purpose virtualized SPARC computing environment, these documented best practices will help ensure success. Please join Phil Bullinger and Steve Wilson from Oracle to learn more about breakthrough efficiency in private cloud infrastructure and how SPARC based virtualization can help you get started on your cloud journey. Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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  • Get Visitors to Your Website Using Website Building Tips

    Before building a website there are many things that you need to take in mind. For example, how are you going to design your website, what is it going to cost you, how long will it take you to build, etc. All of these things mentioned are important aspects to consider when designing a website, but there is no point in doing all of this if you can't get visitors to your website afterward.

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