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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 20, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, October 20, 2012Popular ReleasesP1 Port monitoring with Netduino Plus: V0.3 New release with new features: This V0.3 release that is made public on the 20th of October 2012 Third public version V0.3 A lot of work in better code, some parts are documented in the code S0 Pulse counter logic added for logging use or production of electricity Send data to PV Output for production of electricity Extra fields for COSM.com for more information Ability to enable or disable certain functionality before deploying to Netduino PlusMCEBuddy 2.x: MCEBuddy 2.3.3: 1. MCEBuddy now supports PIPE (2.2.15 style) and the newer remote TCP communication. This is to solve problems with faulty Ceton network drivers and some issues with older system related to load. When using LOCALHOST, MCEBuddy uses PIPE communication otherwise it uses TCP based communication. 2. UPnP is now disabled by Default since it interferes with some TV Tuner cards (CETON) that represent themselves as Network devices (bad drivers). Also as a security measure to avoid external connection...Pulse: Pulse 0.6.2.0: This is a roll-up of a bunch of features I've been working on for a while. I wasn't planning to release it but Wallbase.cc is broken in any version earlier then this! - Fixed Wallbase.cc provider - Multi-provider options. Now you can specify multiple input providers with different search options. - Providers have little icons now - More! Check it out and report any bugs! Having issues? Check the Known Errors page for solutions to commonly encountered problems. If you don't see the ...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.6 RC: RELEASE NOTES This is the Release Candidate version of Orchard 1.6. You should use this version to prepare your current developments to the upcoming final release, and report problems. Please read our release notes for Orchard 1.6 RC: http://docs.orchardproject.net/Documentation/Orchard-1-6-Release-Notes Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you wil...Rawr: Rawr 5.0.1: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr Addon (NOT UPDATED YET FOR MOP)We now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including ba...Yahoo! UI Library: YUI Compressor for .Net: Version 2.1.1.0 - Sartha (BugFix): - Revered back the embedding of the 2x assemblies.Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2.1 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide What is new? The Version Control specific discussions have been moved from the Branching and Merging Guide to the new Advanced Version Control Guide. The Branching and Merging Guide and the Advanced Version Control Guide have been ported to the new document style. See http://blogs.msdn.com/b/willy-peter_schaub/archive/2012/10/17/alm-rangers-raising-the-quality-bar-for-documentation-part-2.aspx for more information. Quality-Bar Details Documentatio...D3 Loot Tracker: 1.5.5: Compatible with 1.05.Common Data Parameters Module: CommonParam0.3H: Common Param has now been updated for VS2012 and NUnit 2.6.1. Conformance with the latest StyleCop has been maintained. If you need a version for VS2010, please use the previous version.????: ???_V2.0.0: ?????????????Write Once, Play Everywhere: MonoGame 3.0 (BETA): This is a beta release of the up coming MonoGame 3.0. It contains an Installer which will install a binary release of MonoGame on windows boxes with the following platforms. Windows, Linux, Android and Windows 8. If you need to build for iOS or Mac you will need to get the source code at this time as the installers for those platforms are not available yet. The installer will also install a bunch of Project templates for Visual Studio 2010 , 2012 and MonoDevleop. For those of you wish...WPUtils: WPUtils 1.3: Blend SDK for Silverlight provides a HyperlinkAction which is missing in Blend SDK for Windows Phone. This release adds such an action which makes use of WebBrowserTask to show web page. You can also bind the hyperlink to your view model. NOTE: Windows Phone SDK 7.1 or higher is required.Windawesome: Windawesome v1.4.1 x64: Fixed switching of applications across monitors Changed window flashing API (fix your config files) Added NetworkMonitorWidget (thanks to weiwen) Any issues/recommendations/requests for future versions? This is the 64-bit version of the release. Be sure to use that if you are on a 64-bit Windows. Works with "Required DLLs v3".CODE Framework: 4.0.21017.0: See change log in the Documentation section for details.Magelia WebStore Open-source Ecommerce software: Magelia WebStore 2.1: Add support for .net 4.0 to Magelia.Webstore.Client and StarterSite version 2.1.254.3 Scheduler Import & Export feature (for Professional and Entreprise Editions) UTC datetime and timezone support .net 4.5 and Visual Studio 2012 migration client magelia global refactoring release of a nugget package to help developers speed up development http://nuget.org/packages/Magelia.Webstore.Client optimization of the data update mechanism (a.k.a. "burst") Performance improvment of the d...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.2.2: JayData is a unified data access library for JavaScript to CRUD + Query data from different sources like OData, MongoDB, WebSQL, SqLite, HTML5 localStorage, Facebook or YQL. The library can be integrated with Knockout.js or Sencha Touch 2 and can be used on Node.js as well. See it in action in this 6 minutes video Sencha Touch 2 example app using JayData: Netflix browser. What's new in JayData 1.2.2 For detailed release notes check the release notes. Revitalized IndexedDB providerNow you c...VFPX: FoxcodePlus: FoxcodePlus - Visual Studio like extensions to Visual FoxPro IntelliSense.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.8 Beta: fixed the icon for packages on the desktop fixed the install dialog closing right when it starts removed the link to "set up the sdk for me" as this is no longer supported. fixed bug where the device selection dialog would show, even if there was only one device connected. fixed toolbar from having "gap" between other toolbar removed main menu items that do not have any menus Fiskalizacija za developere: FiskalizacijaDev 1.0: Prva verzija ovog projekta, još je uvijek oznacena kao BETA - ovo znaci da su naša testiranja prošla uspješno :) No, kako mi ne proizvodimo neki software za blagajne, tako sve ovo nije niti isprobano u "realnim" uvjetima - svaka je sugestija, primjedba ili prijava bug-a je dobrodošla. Za sve ovo koristite, molimo, Discussions ili Issue Tracker. U ovom trenutku runtime binary je raspoloživ kao Any CPU za .NET verzije 2.0. Javite ukoliko trebaju i verzije buildane za 32-bit/64-bit kao i za .N...Squiggle - A free open source LAN Messenger: Squiggle 3.2 (Development): NOTE: This is development release and not recommended for production use. This release is mainly for enabling extensibility and interoperability with other platforms. Support for plugins Support for extensions Communication layer and protocol is platform independent (ZeroMQ, ProtocolBuffers) Bug fixes New /invite command Edit the sent message Disable update check NOTE: This is development release and not recommended for production use.New ProjectsADFS 2.0 Attribute Store for SharePoint: ADFS 2.0 Attribute Store for SharePointALM Kickstarter: A simple Application Lifecycle Management Kickstart application written using ASP.NET MVC.Building iOS Apps with Team Foundation Server: An iPad sample project used for building iOS Xcode projects using a Team Foundation Server and the open source Jenkins build system. gyk-note: WTFHello World Fkollike: Test Project for fkollikeInnovacall ASP.net MVC 4 Azure Framework: Windows Azure Version of Innocacall ASP.net MVC 4 Framework. Intercom.Net: Intercom.Net is a C# library that provides easy tracking of customers to integration with the intercom.io CRM application. No need to learn yet another trackingjosephproject1: creating my first projectJust4Test: The project is just created for test.KBCruiser: KBCruiser helps developer to search reference or answers according to different resource categories: Forum/Blog/KB/Engine/Code/Downloadkp: store usernames/passwords from the commandline. ** Semi-secure, but by no means robust enough for production usage ** Troy Hunt would be disgusted.Neuron Operating System: Neuron Operating Systemnewelook: onesearch Pedestrian Simulation: Pedestrian simulationPTE: Using template Excel to generate UI for Prototyping.RequestModel: RequestModel is a simple implementation of typed access to a ASP.NET web forms request parametersSap: Sap is free, open-source web software that you can use to create a blog. Sap is made in ASP.NET MVC 4 (Razor). Sap is still pre-alpha and heavily in developmentSgart SharePoint 2010 Query Viewer: Windows application, based on the client object model of SharePoint 2010, that allows you to see the CAML query of a list view. Silverlight SuperLauncher: The Silverlight SuperLauncher project base on SL8.SL an Micosoft NESL.SL8.SL: The SL8.SL is a set of extension for silverlight. include mvvm,data validate,linq to sql, custom data page,oob helper etc. SL8.SL make easier to develop sl appSPDeployRetract: Easily Deploy and Retract SharePoint solutions using PowerShell. System Center Service Manager API: This API is for System Center Service Manager. It is written in C# and abstracts the more difficult aspects of service manager customization.TestingConf Utilities: This Framework will be helpful for testing and configuration purpose, so it has some methods that will be used as utilities that developers may need.The Veteran's Image Memory: his Project is been built for Educational purposes only . its not our Intention to offend anyone.Viking Effect: Viking Effect is a Brazilian website for the nerd people. We will offer news, tales and the Viking Scream, our take on the Podcast.Weather Report Widget: WPF-based application for displaying temperature, wind direction and speed for the selected city.WorldsCricket: WorldsCricket is a website which gives information on Cricket history with different cricket format, World’s cricketers, International Cricket Teams etc...XendApp - API: XendApp is a eco system for sending messages from a computer/application to a device. A device could be a phone or tablet for example.

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• Are you a GPGPU developer? Participate in our UX study

  - by Daniel Moth

  You know that I work on the parallel debugger in Visual Studio and I've talked about GPGPU before and I have also mentioned UX. Below is a request from my UX colleagues that pulls all of it together. If you write and debug parallel code that uses GPUs for non-graphical, computationally intensive operations keep reading. The Microsoft Visual Studio Parallel Computing team is seeking developers for a 90-minute research study. The study will take place via LiveMeeting or at a usability lab in Redmond, depending on your preference. We will walk you through an example of debugging GPGPU code in Visual Studio with you giving us step-by-step feedback. ("Is this what you would you expect?", "Are we showing you the things that would help you?", "How would you improve this") The walkthrough utilizes a “paper” version of our current design. After the walkthrough, we would then show you some additional design ideas and seek your input on various design tradeoffs. Are you interested or know someone who might be a good fit? Let us know at this address: [email protected]. Those who participate (and those who referred them), will receive a gratuity item from a list of current Microsoft products. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Is there an established or defined best practice for source control branching between development and production builds?

  - by Matthew Patrick Cashatt

  Thanks for looking. I struggled in how to phrase my question, so let me give an example in hopes of making more clear what I am after: I currently work on a dev team responsible for maintaining and adding features to a web application. We have a development server and we use source control (TFS). Each day everyone checks in their code and when the code (running on the dev server) passes our QA/QC program, it goes to production. Recently, however, we had a bug in production which required an immediate production fix. The problem was that several of us developers had code checked in that was not ready for production so we had to either quickly complete and QA the code, or roll back everything, undo pending changes, etc. In other words, it was a mess. This made me wonder: Is there an established design pattern that prevents this type of scenario. It seems like there must be some "textbook" answer to this, but I am unsure what that would be. Perhaps a development branch of the code and a "release-ready" or production branch of the code?

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• Is SQL Azure a newbies springboard?

  - by jamiet

  Earlier today I was considering the various SQL Server platforms that are available today and I wondered aloud, wonder how long until the majority of #sqlserver newcomers use @sqlazure instead of installing locally Let me explain. My first experience of development was way back in the early 90s when I would crank open VBA in Access or Excel and start hammering out some code, usually by recording macros and looking at the code that they produced (sound familiar?). The reason was simple, Office was becoming ubiquitous so the barrier to entry was incredibly low and, save for a short hiatus at university, I’ve been developing on the Microsoft platform ever since. These days spend most of my time using SQL Server. I take a look at SQL Azure today I see a lot of similarities with those early experiences, the barrier to entry is low and getting lower. I don’t have to download some software or actually install anything other than a web browser in order to get myself a fully functioning SQL Server  database against which I can ostensibly start hammering out some code and I believe that to be incredibly empowering. Having said that there are still a few pretty high barriers, namely: I need to get out my credit card Its pretty useless without some development tools such as SQL Server Management Studio, which I do have to install. The second of those barriers will disappear pretty soon when Project Houston delivers a web-based admin and presentation tool for SQL Azure so that just leaves the matter of my having to use a credit card. If Microsoft have any sense at all then they will realise the huge potential of opening up a free, throttled version of SQL Azure for newbies to party on; they get to developers early (just like they did with me all those years ago) and it gives potential customers an opportunity to try-before-they-buy. Perhaps in 20 years time people will be talking about SQL Azure as being their first foray into the world of coding! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Netretail's online retail operation benefits from personal contact

  - by christopher.jones

  Hot on oracle.com is a snapshot of Netretail Holding B.V. profiling their use of PHP and Oracle technology such as Oracle RAC cluster database to become a leading online retailer across Central and Eastern Europe. We've also just refreshed our key PHP Scalability and High Availability whitepaper which talks about connection pooling (DRCP) and Fast Application Notification (FAN). We brought it up to date for 11gR2 and PHP 5.3. It now includes the new 11gR2 V$CPOOL_CONN_INFO view, the new columns for DBA_CPOOL_INFO, information about LOGOFF triggers, and information about the support for Client Result Caching with DRCP. Back to Netretail. Two of their secrets to success are keeping technically up to date, and networking. That is, networking in the business sense. I had the pleasure of meeting Michal Táborský (@whizz), the Chief System Architect, when he was in California for a Velocity conference. Michal took time to visit Oracle HQ and talk with our developers about his then current architecture and future needs. I also met his manager at last year's Oracle OpenWorld conference. Having built up a relationship with us, Netretail now has access to Oracle Development staff. While this will never bypass Oracle Support (which have tools, systems etc that are needed and useful for resolving issues), it makes communication easier for some classes of questions. It helps discussions that will let us improve Oracle products, and make Netretail stronger. I like this. And there's no reason why you can't talk with us too. You know where to email me.

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• Apple Co-founder Wozniak: Windows Phone is more beautiful and intuitive than Android

  - by Gopinath

  It’s a great day for Microsoft and Nokia who are working hard to resurrect Windows Phone. Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple and gadget lover, has all praise for Windows Phone after using Nokia Lumia 900 for a while. He shared his experience of using Lumia powered by Windows Phone 7.5 in a interview and he is very impressed. Here are the few good quotes from the interview Just for looks and beauty, I definitely favor the Windows 7 Phone over Android. I’m kinda shocked how every screen is much more beautiful than the same apps on Android and iPhone. I’m just shocked, I haven’t seen anything yet that isn’t more beautiful than the other platforms. It’s more intuitive and beautiful. This is going to change the perception of Windows Phone  which is seen  as “not-so good” operating system for mobiles.  Along with these high profile endorsements, if Microsoft can manage to attract developers in building good apps then Windows Phone is going to be a fitting competitor to iOS and Android. via aNewDomain

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• Sponsor the Hottest .NET Community Event in Germany: dotnet Cologne 2011

  - by WeigeltRo

  The “dotnet Cologne” conference organized by the NET usergroups Bonn and Cologne quickly has become the .NET community event in Germany. So when we opened the registration for dotnet Cologne 2011 on Monday, we expected some interest. But we didn’t expect the 200 “early bird” seats to be gone in less than three hours! And the registrations at normal price keep coming in, so it looks like this event will sell out even earlier than last year. In December I wrote about sponsorship opportunities at the dotnet Cologne 2011 – and why it’s a good idea to be a sponsor at this particular conference. If you are interested in becoming a sponsor: We still offer a wide variety of sponsorship packages in different sizes. At our new, larger, event location, we still have space for exhibition booths. Last year’s exhibitors were very happy and had many interesting conversations with the attendees. And this year we planned for longer breaks between sessions, which means event more time for presenting your products. And yes, German developers understand English demos. But maybe a booth is a bit too much for you. With the Bronze package, you can make sure the attendees receive promotional material of your company in their bags – for a fraction of what you’d pay at a commercial conference. Or you could sponsor a couple of licenses of your product for the raffle at the end of the day. If you want to learn more, just send an email to Roland.Weigelt at dotnet-koelnbonn.de and I’ll send you our sponsor information.

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• SQLAuthority News – Download – Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0

  - by pinaldave

  Microsoft SQL Server Compact 4.0 is a free, embedded database that software developers can use for building ASP.NET websites and Windows desktop applications. SQL Server Compact 4.0 has a small footprint and supports private deployment of its binaries within the application folder, easy application development in Visual Studio and WebMatrix, and seamless migration of schema and data to SQL Server. You can download very small file of SQL Server CE from here. Books Online is the primary documentation for SQL Server Compact 4.0. Books Online includes the following types of information: Setup and upgrade instructions. Information about new features and backward compatibility. Conceptual descriptions of the technologies and features in SQL Server Compact 4.0. Procedural topics describing how to use the various features in SQL Server Compact 4.0. Tutorials that guide you through common tasks. Reference documentation for the graphical tools, programming languages, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that are supported by SQL Server Compact 4.0. You can download SQL Server CE Book Online here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Documentation, SQL Download, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• A better way to encourage contributions to OSS

  - by Daniel Cazzulino

  Currently in the .NET world, most OSS projects are available via a NuGet package. Users have a very easy path towards *using* the project right away. But let’s say they encounter some isssue (maybe a bug, maybe a potential improvement) with the library. At this point, going from user to contributor (of a fix, or a good bug repro or even a spike for a new feature) is a very steep and non trivial multi-step process of registering with some open source hosting site (codeplex, github, bitbucket, etc.), learning how to grab the latest sources, build the project, formulate a patch (or fork the code), learn the source control software they use (mercurial, git, svn, tfs), install whatever tools are needed for it, read about the contributors workflow for the project (do you fork &amp; send pull requests? do you just send a patch file? do you just send a snippet? a unit test? etc.), and on, and on, and on. Granted, you may be lucky and already know the source control system the project uses, but in really, I’d say the chances are pretty low. I believe most developers *using* OSS are far from familiar with them, much less with contributing back to various projects. We OSS devs like to be on the cutting edge all the time, ya’ know, always jumping on the new SCC system, the new hosting site, the new agile way of managing work items, bug tracking, code reviews, etc. etc. etc.. But most of our OSS users are largely the “... Read full article

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• How Google Web Starter Kit serves adaptive image for mobile?

  - by 5argon

  My website weirdly (in a good way) serves smaller images when viewed on mobile. I wanted to know what cause this? As far as I know this is not the default behaviour, so I think it must be Google Web Starter Kit's doing.Here is the debug information when debugging on device. All images became 231 B size no matter how large it actually is. (On desktop debugging the size varies.) I tried using Google Web Starter Kit (https://github.com/google/web-starter-kit) recently. The tools in it are made of Ruby, Node.js, SASS and Gulp to help you 'build' website. Pre-build you can enjoy automatic reload because the Gulp script will watch all files for you. When build it will run various tools to minify HTML,CSS and compress images. According to this page https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/tools/build/build_site the gulp-imagemin was used. So I guess the imagemin is doing the mobile optimization for me? What kind of compression can serve automatically resized image on mobile? And why is the size 231 B? Is this related to my screen size?

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• jQuery 2.0 drops support for legacy IE (IE6, IE7, IE8)

  - by Renso

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/renso/archive/2013/10/31/jquery-2.0-drops-support-for-legacy-ie-ie6-ie7-ie8.aspxjQuery upgrades may not be as reverse compatible as you may think. Starting from version 2 of jQuery, IE6, IE7 and yes also IE8 will no longer be supported. These are now considered legacy browsers. You will need to stop any upgrades to jQuery until your SLA states that IE8 is no longer supported and remain in jQuery 1.9.Some of the reasons for not supporting IE8 and before:- Remove all the code clutter in the jQuery library with code that has to deal with IE browser compatibility issues between IE6, 7 and 8 and the newer IE versions, the latter being more compliant.- IE6 and 7 may have fallen to below 2% generally, that does not mean that that is true for your client base. In the oil and gas industry some clients are years behind and you may have 50% or more of clients remain on IE8 or older for the foreseeable future.- The difference between browser engines has become almost negligible, as it should be. So one of the greatest goals of jQuery to abstract that out for developers is no longer needed, for most part anyway. - CSS3 features like animations basically replace the need for jQuery’s 2.0 animations and effects.If the need is still there to support IE8 or before, but you also want to upgrade, then use conditional comments:<!--[if lt IE 9]>    <script src="jQuery-1.9.0.js"></script><![endif]--><!--[if gte IE 9]><!-->    <script src="jQuery-2.0.0.js"><</script><!--<![endif]-->

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• How should Code Review be Carried Out?

  - by Graviton

  My previous question has to do with how to advance code review among the developers. Here I am interested in how the code review session should be carried out, so that both the reviewer and reviewed are feeling comfortable about it. I have done some code review before, but the experience sucks big time. My previous manager would come to us-- on an ad hoc basis-- and tell us to explain our code to him. Since he wasn't very familiar with the code base, I spent a huge amount of times explaining just the most basic structure of my code to him. This took a long time and by the time we were done, we were both exhausted. Then he would raise issues with my code. Most issues he raised were cosmetic in nature ( e.g, don't use region for this code block, change the variable name from xxx to yyy even though the later makes even less sense, and so on). We did this a few rounds, and the review session didn't derive much benefits for us, and we stopped. What do you have to do, in order to make code review a natural, enjoyable, thought stimulating, bug-fixing and mutual-learning experience?

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• I Admit I Misspoke

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  OK.  I admit it.  The last post I hade mentioned that we moved the XAF DSL to the Entity Framework.  This has caused a lot of confusion.  I meant to say that we have used the ADO.NET Entity Data Model extensions.  This is the design surface that can be tailored to create Entity Framework. We leveraged the code generation within the ADO.NET Entity Data Model (EDMX) file to generate XAF/XPO classes.  This allows you to visually create the entity model, set a few XAF properties and then generate the business objects from there.  I am presenting all these topics at the Kansas City Developers Conference on June 19th.  I will post the presentation after the conference.  I have a full presentation that will demonstrate the power of the ADO.NET Entity Data Model extensions, create a small project and then add the OData layer to XAF to connect to the PowerPivot in Excel 2010. The latest code can be found at http://efxaf.codeplex.com. More details to come soon.  Sorry for the confusion in the last post. Thanks again.

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• SQL Server Interview Questions

  - by Rodney Vinyard

  User-Defined Functions Scalar User-Defined Function A Scalar user-defined function returns one of the scalar data types. Text, ntext, image and timestamp data types are not supported. These are the type of user-defined functions that most developers are used to in other programming languages. Table-Value User-Defined Function An Inline Table-Value user-defined function returns a table data type and is an exceptional alternative to a view as the user-defined function can pass parameters into a T-SQL select command and in essence provide us with a parameterized, non-updateable view of the underlying tables. Multi-statement Table-Value User-Defined Function A Multi-Statement Table-Value user-defined function returns a table and is also an exceptional alternative to a view as the function can support multiple T-SQL statements to build the final result where the view is limited to a single SELECT statement. Also, the ability to pass parameters into a T-SQL select command or a group of them gives us the capability to in essence create a parameterized, non-updateable view of the data in the underlying tables. Within the create function command you must define the table structure that is being returned. After creating this type of user-defined function, I can use it in the FROM clause of a T-SQL command unlike the behavior found when using a stored procedure which can also return record sets.

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• Business Analyst role in development process

  - by Ryan

  I work as a business analyst and I currently oversee much of the development efforts of an internal project. I'm responsible for the requirements, specs, and overall testing. I work closely with the developers (onshore and offshore). The offshore team produces all of the reports. Version 1.0 had a 9 month development cycle and I had about 4-5 months to test all the reports. There was the usual back and forth to get the implementation right. Version 2.0 had a much shorter development cycle (3 months). I received the first version of the reports about 3 weeks ago and noticed a lot of things wrong with it. Many of the requirements were wrong and the performance of the queries was horrendous at 5x - 6x longer than it should have been. The onshore lead developer was out and did not supervise the offshore development team in generating the reports. Without consulting management, I took a look at the SQL in the reports and was able to improve performance greatly (by a factor of 6x) which is acceptable for this version. I sent the updated queries as guidelines to the offshore team and told them they should look at doing X instead of Y to improve performance and also to fix some specific logic issues. I then spoke to my managers about this because it doesn't feel right that I was developing SQL queries, but given our time crunch I saw no other way. We were able to fix the issue quite fast which I'm happy with. Current situation: the onshore managers aren't too pleased that the offshore team did not code for performance. I know there are some things I could have done better throughout this process and I do not in any way consider myself a programmer. My question is, if an offshore team that works apart from the onshore project resources fails to deliver an acceptable release, is it appropriate to clean up their work to meet a deadline? What kind of problems could this create in the future?

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• Quoting people for website dev. work

  - by Jason

  Hi All, I have recently given some quotes to a few people. And I need some advice about how things should be done... Q1: I've seen, heard of and read about a lot of developers using free resource sites online to obtain free Privacy Policy, Disclaimers etc for their/customers websites. A customer I quoted the other day expected me to write/get a disclaimer for their site. Who in their right mind would expect a document like that from a Web Developer? I just told them that they need to sort that stuff out themselves with a Lawyer or something, and then to send it to me so I can paste it on a webpage for them. Q2: If you're charging per hour, and you estimate that the project would take 1week to finish (including testing/releasing), but you soon realise that you'll require more time, do you RE-quote them? Or do you just finish off the site at the original quote price? Q3: How do you figure out how much you will charge your customers? Do you charge per-feature, or per hour, or per day, or all of the above? Thanks :)

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• Developing a feature which sole purpose to be taken out?

  - by adib

  What is the name of the pattern in which individual contributors (programmers/designers) developed an artifact for the sole purpose is to serve as a diversion so that management can remove that feature in the final product? This is a folklore I heard from an ex-colleague who used to work at a large game development company. At that company, it is well known that middle management is pressurized to "give inputs" and "make changes" to the product otherwise they risk being seen as not contributing to the project. This situation have delayed many projects because of these superfluous "management inputs". In one project at the above company, the artists and developers created a supernumerary animated character that appears in every cutscene and sticks out like a sore thumb. They designed it in such a way that it can be easily removed before the game is shipped (this was when games were still sold in physical media and not a downloadable product). Obviously the management then voted to remove the animation. On the positive side, management didn't introduced any unnecessary changes that would have delayed the project because they have shown that they provided constructive inputs to the product. This process pattern has a name among game programmers that work in corporates, but I forgot what was the actual name. I believe it's duck-something. Anybody can help pointing out the name and perhaps some rather credible reference to how the pattern develops?.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, June 24, 2013Popular ReleasesVG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.43: changes NEW: Added Support for "ImageJumbo.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImgTiger.com" links NEW: Added Support for "ImageDax.net" links NEW: Added Support for "HosterBin.com" links FIXED: "ImgServe.net" linksWPF Composites: Version 4.3.0: In this Beta release, I broke my code out into two separate projects. There is a core FasterWPF.dll with the minimal required functionality. This can run with only the Aero.dll and the Rx .dll's. Then, I have a FasterWPFExtras .dll that requires and supports the Extended WPF Toolkit™ Community Edition V 1.9.0 (including Xceed DataGrid) and the Thriple .dll. This is for developers who want more . . . Finally, you may notice the other OPTIONAL .dll's available in the download such as the Dyn...Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SSTA.WinForms 1.0.0: Latest stable releaseAscend 3D: Ascend 2.0: Release notes: Implemented bone/armature animation Refactored class hierarchy and naming Addressed high CPU usage issue during animation Updated the Blender exporter and Ascend model format (now XML) Created AscendViewer, a tool for viewing Ascend modelsIndent Guides for Visual Studio: Indent Guides v13: ImportantThis release does not support Visual Studio 2010. The latest stable release for VS 2010 is v12.1. Version History Changed in v13 Added page width guide lines Added guide highlighting options Fixed guides appearing over collapsed blocks Fixed guides not appearing in newly opened files Fixed some potential crashes Fixed lines going through pragma statements Various updates for VS 2012 and VS 2013 Removed VS 2010 support Changed in v12.1: Fixed crash when unable to start...Fluent Ribbon Control Suite: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d: Fluent Ribbon Control Suite 2.1.0 - Prerelease d(supports .NET 3.5, 4.0 and 4.5) Includes: Fluent.dll (with .pdb and .xml) Showcase Application Samples (not for .NET 3.5) Foundation (Tabs, Groups, Contextual Tabs, Quick Access Toolbar, Backstage) Resizing (ribbon reducing & enlarging principles) Galleries (Gallery in ContextMenu, InRibbonGallery) MVVM (shows how to use this library with Model-View-ViewModel pattern) KeyTips ScreenTips Toolbars ColorGallery *Walkthrough (do...Magick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.5.1001: Magick.NET compiled against ImageMagick 6.8.5.10. Breaking changes: - MagickNET.Initialize has been made obsolete because the ImageMagick files in the directory are no longer necessary. - MagickGeometry is no longer IDisposable. - Renamed dll's so they include the platform name. - Image profiles can now only be accessed and modified with ImageProfile classes. - Renamed DrawableBase to Drawable. - Removed Args part of PathArc/PathCurvetoArgs/PathQuadraticCurvetoArgs classes. The...Three-Dimensional Maneuver Gear for Minecraft: TDMG 1.1.0.0 for 1.5.2: CodePlex???(????????) ?????????(???1/4) ??????????? ?????????? ???????????(??????????) ??????????????????????? ↑????、?????????????????????(???????) ???、??????????、?????????????????????、????????1.5?????????? Shift+W(????)??????????????????10°、?10°(?????????)???Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012: HyperVMPE2012 (v1.0.1.126): Hyper-V Management Pack Extensions 2012 Beta ReleaseOutlook 2013 Add-In: Email appointments: This new version includes the following changes: - Ability to drag emails to the calendar to create appointments. Will gather all the recipients from all the emails and create an appointment on the day you drop the emails, with the text and subject of the last selected email (if more than one selected). - Increased maximum of numbers to display appointments to 30. You will have to uninstall the previous version (add/remove programs) if you had installed it before. Before unzipping the file...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.5.2: v1.5.2 - This is a service release. We've fixed a number of issues with Tasks and IoC. We've made some consistency improvements across platforms and fixed a number of minor bugs. See changes.txt for details. Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro inversion of control container (IoC); source code...SQL Compact Query Analyzer: 1.0.1.1511: Beta build of SQL Compact Query Analyzer Bug fixes: - Resolved issue where the application crashes when loading a database that contains tables without a primary key Features: - Displays database information (database version, filename, size, creation date) - Displays schema summary (number of tables, columns, primary keys, identity fields, nullable fields) - Displays the information schema views - Displays column information (database type, clr type, max length, allows null, etc) - Support...CODE Framework: 4.0.30618.0: See change notes in the documentation section for details on what's new. Note: If you download the class reference help file with, you have to right-click the file, pick "Properties", and then unblock the file, as many browsers flag the file as blocked during download (for security reasons) and thus hides all content.Toolbox for Dynamics CRM 2011: XrmToolBox (v1.2013.6.18): XrmToolbox improvement Use new connection controls (use of Microsoft.Xrm.Client.dll) New display capabilities for tools (size, image and colors) Added prerequisites check Added Most Used Tools feature Tools improvementNew toolSolution Transfer Tool (v1.0.0.0) developed by DamSim Updated toolView Layout Replicator (v1.2013.6.17) Double click on source view to display its layoutXml All tools list Access Checker (v1.2013.6.17) Attribute Bulk Updater (v1.2013.6.18) FetchXml Tester (v1.2013.6.1...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.570b: New* Movie - using XBMC TMDB - now renames movies if option selected. * Movie - using Xbmc Tmdb - Actor images saved from TMDb if option selected. Fixed* Movie - Checks for poster.jpg against missing poster filter * Movie - Fixed continual scraping of vob movie file (not DVD structure) * Both - Correctly display audio channels * Both - Correctly populate audio info in nfo's if multiple audio tracks. * Both - added icons and checked for DTS ES and Dolby TrueHD audio tracks. * Both - Stream d...Document.Editor: 2013.24: What's new for Document.Editor 2013.24: Improved Video Editing support Improved Link Editing support Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsExtJS based ASP.NET Controls: FineUI v3.3.0: ??FineUI ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET ???。 FineUI??? ?? No JavaScript，No CSS，No UpdatePanel，No ViewState，No WebServices ???????。 ?????? IE 7.0、Firefox 3.6、Chrome 3.0、Opera 10.5、Safari 3.0+ ???? Apache License v2.0 ?：ExtJS ?? GPL v3 ?????(http://www.sencha.com/license)。 ???? ??：http://fineui.com/bbs/ ??：http://fineui.com/demo/ ??：http://fineui.com/doc/ ??：http://fineui.codeplex.com/ FineUI???? ExtJS ?????????，???? ExtJS ?。 ????? FineUI ? ExtJS ?：http://fineui.com/bbs/forum.php?mod=viewthrea...BarbaTunnel: BarbaTunnel 8.0: Check Version History for more information about this release.ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler v1.5: [+] added Start time, End time event columns [+] added SP:StmtStarting, SP:StmtCompleted events [*] fixed bug with Audit:Logout eventpatterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance Drop4 2013.06.17: Drop 4New ProjectsActivity Injector: Activity Injector is mainly used in unit testing workflow activities.Application Starter Tremens: Application for starting ApplicationaAudiwikiREF: This project is created to finish my referral assignment because i faced many problems with the previous one where i couldn't connect the project and commit. AVTS GLUCK ANTIVIRUS SYSTEM: AVTS Gluck AntiVirus System - the best antivirus made by young developers from Ukraine. It was writed in C#, C++, VB.NET, Excutable files, PHP DS, .and more....Base64 File Converter: File converting tool that converts any file into Base64 TXT file and vice versa just by drag-and-drop gesture.Basket Builders Umbraco bootstrap packages: Our umbraco packages to speed up project Bugzy Bug Tracking and Work Management: Creating Bug Tracking and Work Managment system while helping the JSON-RPC standard become as strong as the Bloated XML-RPC(SOAP)Dalmatian Build Script: Dalmatian allows you to automate your build using C# of VB.NETDécouverte Majeure MISN Chrono-courses: Chronocourses projectDocToolTip Library: DocToolTip library allows creating screenshots of winform forms with the name and type of component controls.DotaPick: SummaryHiUpdateTools - easy publish and update your app: HiUpdateTools is a easy tools to use publish new version of your application Kinect Skeleton Recorder: Records and shows XBox 360 Kinect skeleton data using windows forms. Saves the data as XML that can be read by other applications for use in animation.MARIT (BETA): MARIT is a simple drawing app for Android. More features are on the todo-list so stay tuned! Feedback and requests are appreciated. MvcToolbox: MVC Toolbox is a library which contains lots of usefull methods which will help developer to write less code and to be more productive.PrototypeRef: list of testing toolsSmartPlay: SmartPlaySolid Geometry Simulation: Implements a simple fur/hair dynamic engine using physBAM. This package includes a semi-implicit solver for hair simulation and plugins for maya/houdini.Windows.Forms.Controls Revisited (SSTA.WinForms): SearchableListBox control built on the Window,Form.ListBox renders a list box items with multiple search terms highlighted.YiLeSystem: This is a dining system.

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• Java Spotlight Episode 102: Freescale on Embedded Java and Java Embedded @ JavaOne

  - by Roger Brinkley

  An interview with Michael O'Donnell of Freescale on Embedded Java and Embedded Java @ JavaOne. Part of this podcast was recorded live at the JavaOne 2012 Glassfish Party at the Thirsty Bear. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News Oracle Java ME Embedded 3.2 Java Embedded Server 7.0 Events Oct 3-4, Java Embedded @ JavaONE, San Francisco Oct 15-17, JAX London Oct 30-Nov 1, Arm TechCon, Santa Clara Oct 22-23, Freescale Technology Forum - Japan, Tokyo Oct 31, JFall, Netherlands Nov 2-3, JMagreb, Morocco Nov 13-17, Devoxx, Belgium Feature InterviewFreescale is the global leader in embedded processing solutions, advancing the automotive, consumer, industrial and networking markets. From microprocessors and microcontrollers to sensors, analog ICs and connectivity – our technologies are the foundation to the innovations that make our world greener, safer, healthier and more connected. Michael O'Donnell, is the Director of Software Ecosystem Alliances. The upcoming Freescale Technology Forum - Japan in Tokyo, Japan is an excellent way for developers to learn more about Freescale and Java. What’s Cool Glassfish Party - 6th year Geek Bike Ride

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• Using the OAM Mobile & Social SDK to secure native mobile apps - Part 2 : OAM Mobile & Social Server configuration

  - by kanishkmahajan

  Objective  In the second part of this blog post I'll now cover configuration of OAM to secure our sample native apps developed using the iOS SDK. First, here are some key server side concepts: Application Profiles: An application profile is a logical representation of your application within OAM server. It could be a web (html/javascript) or native (iOS or Android) application. Applications may have different requirements for AuthN/AuthZ, and therefore each application that interacts with OAM Mobile & Social REST services must be uniquely defined. Service Providers: Service providers represent the back end services that are accessed by applications. With OAM Mobile & Social these services are in the areas of authentication, authorization and user profile access. A Service Provider then defines a type or class of service for authentication, authorization or user profiles. For example, the JWTAuthentication provider performs authentication and returns JWT (JSON Web Tokens) to the application. In contrast, the OAMAuthentication also provides authentication but uses OAM SSO tokens Service Profiles:  A Service Profile is a logical envelope that defines a service endpoint URL for a service provider for the OAM Mobile & Social Service. You can create multiple service profiles for a service provider to define token capabilities and service endpoints. Each service provider instance requires atleast one corresponding service profile.The  OAM Mobile & Social Service includes a pre-configured service profile for each pre-configured service provider. Service Domains: Service domains bind together application profiles and service profiles with an optional security handler. So now let's configure the OAM server. Additional details are in the OAM Documentation and this post simply provides an outline of configuration tasks required to configure OAM for securing native apps.  Configuration  Create The Application Profile Log on to the Oracle Access Management console and from System Configuration -> Mobile and Social -> Mobile Services, select "Create" under Application Profiles. You would do this  step twice - once for each of the native apps - AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler. Enter the parameters for the new Application profile: Name:  The application name. In this example we use 'InventoryApp' for the AvitekInventory app and 'SchedulerApp' for the AvitekScheduler app. The application name configured here must match the application name in the settings for the deployed iOS application. BaseSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM server.  Mobile Configuration: Enable this checkbox for any mobile applications. This enables the SDK to collect and send Mobile specific attributes to the OAM server.  Webview: Controls the type of browser that the iOS application will use. The embedded browser (default) will render the browser within the application. External will use the system standalone browser. External can sometimes be preferable for debugging URLScheme: The URL scheme associated with the iOS apps that is also used as a custom URL scheme to register O/S handlers that will take control when OAM transfers control to device. For the AvitekInventory and the AvitekScheduler apps I used osa:// and client:// respectively. You set this scheme in Xcode while developing your iOS Apps under Info->URL Types.  Bundle Identifier : The fully qualified name of your iOS application. You typically set this when you create a new Xcode project or under General->Identity in Xcode. For the AvitekInventory and AvitekScheduler apps these were com.us.oracle.AvitekInventory and com.us.oracle.AvitekScheduler respectively.  Create The Service Domain Select create under Service domains. Create a name for your domain (AvitekDomain is what I've used). The name configured must match the service domain set in the iOS application settings. Under "Application Profile Selection" click the browse button. Choose the application profiles that you created in the previous step one by one. Set the InventoryApp as the SSO agent (with an automatic priority of 1) and the SchedulerApp as the SSO client. This associates these applications with this service domain and configures them in a 'circle of trust'.  Advance to the next page of the wizard to configure the services for this domain. For this example we will use the following services:  Authentication:   This will use the JWT (JSON Web Token) format authentication provider. The iOS application upon successful authentication will receive a signed JWT token from OAM Mobile & Social service. This token will be used in subsequent calls to OAM. Use 'MobileOAMAuthentication' here. Authorization:  The authorization provider. The SDK makes calls to this provider endpoint to obtain authorization decisions on resource requests. Use 'OAMAuthorization' here. User Profile Service:  This is the service that provides user profile services (attribute lookup, attribute modification). It can be any directory configured as a data source in OAM.  And that's it! We're done configuring our native apps. In the next section, let's look at some additional features that were mentioned in the earlier post that are automated by the SDK for the app developer i.e. these are areas that require no additional coding by the app developer when developing with the SDK as they only require server side configuration: Additional Configuration  Offline Authentication Select this option in the service domain configuration to allow users to log in and authenticate to the application locally. Clear the box to block users from authenticating locally. Strong Authentication By simply selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin while configuring mobile related Service Domains, the OAM Mobile&Social service allows sophisticated device and client application registration logic as well as the advanced risk and fraud analysis logic found in OAAM to be applied to mobile authentication. Let's look at some scenarios where the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin gets used. First, when we configure OAM and OAAM to integrate together using the TAP scheme, then that integration kicks off by selecting the OAAMSecurityHandlerPlugin in the mobile service domain. This is how the mobile device is now prompted for KBA,OTP etc depending on the TAP scheme integration and the OAM users registered in the OAAM database. Second, when we configured the service domain, there were claim attributes there that are already pre-configured in OAM Mobile&Social service and we simply accepted the default values- these are the set of attributes that will be fetched from the device and passed to the server during registration/authentication as device profile attributes. When a mobile application requests a token through the Mobile Client SDK, the SDK logic will send the Device Profile attributes as a part of an HTTP request. This set of Device Profile attributes enhances security by creating an audit trail for devices that assists device identification. When the OAAM Security Plug-in is used, a particular combination of Device Profile attribute values is treated as a device finger print, known as the Digital Finger Print in the OAAM Administration Console. Each finger print is assigned a unique fingerprint number. Each OAAM session is associated with a finger print and the finger print makes it possible to log (and audit) the devices that are performing authentication and token acquisition. Finally, if the jail broken option is selected while configuring an application profile, the SDK detects a device is jail broken based on configured policy and if the OAAM handler is configured the plug-in can allow or block access to client device depending on the OAAM policy as well as detect blacklisted, lost or stolen devices and send a wipeout command that deletes all the mobile &social relevant data and blocks the device from future access. 1024x768 Social Logins Finally, let's complete this post by adding configuration to configure social logins for mobile applications. Although the Avitek sample apps do not demonstrate social logins this would be an ideal exercise for you based on the sample code provided in the earlier post. I'll cover the server side configuration here (with Facebook as an example) and you can retrofit the code to accommodate social logins by following the steps outlined in "Invoking Authentication Services" and add code in LoginViewController and maybe create a new delegate - AvitekRPDelegate based on the description in the previous post. So, here all you will need to do is configure an application profile for social login, configure a new service domain that uses the social login application profile, register the app on Facebook and finally configure the Facebook OAuth provider in OAM with those settings. Navigate to Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and create a new application profile. Here are the relevant parameters for the new application profile (-also we're not registering the social user in OAM with this configuration below, however that is a key feature as well): Name:  The application name. This must match the name of the of mobile application profile created for your application under Mobile Services. We used InventoryApp for this example. SharedSecret: Enter a password here. This does not need to match any existing password. It is used as an encryption key between the client and the OAM Mobile and Social service.  Mobile Application Return URL: After the Relying Party (social) login, the OAM Mobile & Social service will redirect to the iOS application using this URI. This is defined under Info->URL type and we used 'osa', so we define this here as 'osa://' Login Type: Choose to allow only internet identity authentication for this exercise. Authentication Service Endpoint : Make sure that /internetidentityauthentication is selected. Login to http://developers.facebook.com using your Facebook account and click on Apps and register the app as InventoryApp. Note that the consumer key and API secret gets generated automatically by the Facebook OAuth server. Navigate back to OAM and under Mobile and Social, click on "Internet Identity Services" and edit the Facebook OAuth Provider. Add the consumer key and API secret from the Facebook developers site to the Facebook OAuth Provider: Navigate to Mobile Services. Click on New to create a new service domain. In this example we call the domain "AvitekDomainRP". The type should be 'Mobile Application' and the application credential type 'User Token'. Add the application "InventoryApp" to the domain. Advance the next page of the wizard. Select the  default service profiles but ensure that the Authentication Service is set to 'InternetIdentityAuthentication'. Finish the creation of the service domain.

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• How do I structure code and builds for continuous delivery of multiple applications in a small team?

  - by kingdango

  Background: 3-5 developers supporting (and building new) internal applications for a non-software company. We use TFS although I don't think that matters much for my question. I want to be able to develop a deployment pipeline and adopt continuous integration / deployment techniques. Here's what our source tree looks like right now. We use a single TFS Team Project. $/MAIN/src/ $/MAIN/src/ApplicationA/VSSOlution.sln $/MAIN/src/ApplicationA/ApplicationAProject1.csproj $/MAIN/src/ApplicationA/ApplicationAProject2.csproj $/MAIN/src/ApplicationB/... $/MAIN/src/ApplicationC $/MAIN/src/SharedInfrastructureA $/MAIN/src/SharedInfrastructureB My Goal (a pretty typical promotion pipeline) When a code change is made to a given application I want to be able to build that application and auto-deploy that change to a DEV server. I may also need to build dependencies on Shared Infrastructure Components. I often also have some database scripts or changes as well If developer testing passes I want to have an manually triggered but automated deploy of that build on a STAGING server where end-users will review new functionality. Once it's approved by end users I want to a manually triggered auto-deploy to production Question: How can I best adopt continuous deployment techniques in a multi-application environment? A lot of the advice I see is more single-application-specific, how is that best applied to multiple applications? For step 1, do I simply setup a separate Team Build for each application? What's the best approach to accomplishing steps 2 and 3 of promoting latest build to new environments? I've seen this work well with web apps but what about database changes

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• Open source clone for Starcraft

  - by sinekonata

  Two questions about a SC:Broodwar clone. Is there one yet? How likely is legal pursuit? Since almost all games I usually play now have an FOS alternative from alpha to way polished, I was wondering why can't I find one for SC, one of the biggest titans of the gaming community? So my first question is, is there a game that was made with the intention to emulate SC? Is it that I didn't look well enough? Could it really be that no one tackled what seems like a small effort compared to the creation of a game engine like Spring or games like Rigs of Rod or Minetest? And since SC is not being maintained at all shouldn't the incentive to see a bug free modable balanced version huge? What am I not getting here? In the event that there is none, is it a legal problem? Could it be that people expect Blizzard to release sources themselves? Or that developers don't see the point in having SC mechanics without the patented lore and aesthetics? And the trickier question, if I were to make SC an open source game, a total clone of it for the purposes of maintenance, modability, etc. Would Blizzard really sue a team of developer fans that just do them a favour knowing they don't lose any money from Korea broadcasts? Or would they do it not to set precedents. So thanks for reading all that, hope I'm not the only one to think it's weird that no one talks about it. See you.

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• Free Windows Store and Phone Developer Accounts for MSDN Subscribers

  - by Clint Edmonson

  If you are a member/subscriber to any of the following programs you are eligible to receive one-time, 12-month Windows Store and Windows Phone developer accounts.  Visual Studio Professional with MSDN Visual Studio Test Professional with MSDN Visual Studio Premium with MSDN Visual Studio Ultimate with MSDN BizSpark On September 11, 2012 Microsoft announced that Windows Store is open to individual developers (Company only registration became available on August 1st). This means that eligible MSDN subscribers will be able to select between an individual and company account when registering for their developer account benefit.   New or existing subscribers will see developer accounts listed as a benefit on the Getting Started page as well as various MSDN overview pages. Now that you have this benefit why not get started.  To activate this benefit, subscribers are provided with a unique token for each of the developer accounts. The tokens will work for both individual and company registration. To acquire and redeem the token: 1. Log into My Account. 2. Click on ‘Get Code’. A unique token will be delivered to each subscriber. 3. Click on ‘How to Register’ (link will appear once code is claimed). A developer account details page will display that includes an overview of the benefit, token and registration information. 4. Click on the link to ‘Register your code’.  This launches the developer account registration process. Ready to start developing?  Head over to Generation App to get started.

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• Code Reuse is (Damn) Hard

  - by James Michael Hare

  Being a development team lead, the task of interviewing new candidates was part of my job.  Like any typical interview, we started with some easy questions to get them warmed up and help calm their nerves before hitting the hard stuff. One of those easier questions was almost always: “Name some benefits of object-oriented development.”  Nearly every time, the candidate would chime in with a plethora of canned answers which typically included: “it helps ease code reuse.”  Of course, this is a gross oversimplification.  Tools only ease reuse, its developers that ultimately can cause code to be reusable or not, regardless of the language or methodology. But it did get me thinking…  we always used to say that as part of our mantra as to why Object-Oriented Programming was so great.  With polymorphism, inheritance, encapsulation, etc. we in essence set up the concepts to help facilitate reuse as much as possible.  And yes, as a developer now of many years, I unquestionably held that belief for ages before it really struck me how my views on reuse have jaded over the years.  In fact, in many ways Agile rightly eschews reuse as taking a backseat to developing what's needed for the here and now.  It used to be I was in complete opposition to that view, but more and more I've come to see the logic in it.  Too many times I've seen developers (myself included) get lost in design paralysis trying to come up with the perfect abstraction that would stand all time.  Nearly without fail, all of these pieces of code become obsolete in a matter of months or years. It’s not that I don’t like reuse – it’s just that reuse is hard.  In fact, reuse is DAMN hard.  Many times it is just a distraction that eats up architect and developer time, and worse yet can be counter-productive and force wrong decisions.  Now don’t get me wrong, I love the idea of reusable code when it makes sense.  These are in the few cases where you are designing something that is inherently reusable.  The problem is, most business-class code is inherently unfit for reuse! Furthermore, the code that is reusable will often fail to be reused if you don’t have the proper framework in place for effective reuse that includes standardized versioning, building, releasing, and documenting the components.  That should always be standard across the board when promoting reusable code.  All of this is hard, and it should only be done when you have code that is truly reusable or you will be exerting a large amount of development effort for very little bang for your buck. But my goal here is not to get into how to reuse (that is a topic unto itself) but what should be reused.  First, let’s look at an extension method.  There’s many times where I want to kick off a thread to handle a task, then when I want to reign that thread in of course I want to do a Join on it.  But what if I only want to wait a limited amount of time and then Abort?  Well, I could of course write that logic out by hand each time, but it seemed like a great extension method: 1: public static class ThreadExtensions 2: { 3: public static bool JoinOrAbort(this Thread thread, TimeSpan timeToWait) 4: { 5: bool isJoined = false; 6:  7: if (thread != null) 8: { 9: isJoined = thread.Join(timeToWait); 10:  11: if (!isJoined) 12: { 13: thread.Abort(); 14: } 15: } 16: return isJoined; 17: } 18: } 19:  When I look at this code, I can immediately see things that jump out at me as reasons why this code is very reusable.  Some of them are standard OO principles, and some are kind-of home grown litmus tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The only reason this extension method need change is if the Thread class itself changes (one responsibility). Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method only depends on classes that are more stable than it is (System.Threading.Thread), and in itself is very stable, hence other classes may safely depend on it. It is also not dependent on any business domain, and thus isn't subject to changes as the business itself changes. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is inherently closed to change. Small and Stable Problem Domain – This method only cares about System.Threading.Thread. All-or-None Usage – A user of a reusable class should want the functionality of that class, not parts of that functionality.  That’s not to say they most use every method, but they shouldn’t be using a method just to get half of its result. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – since this class is highly stable and minimally complex, we can offer it up for reuse very cheaply by promoting it as “ready-to-go” and already unit tested (important!) and available through a standard release cycle (very important!). Okay, all seems good there, now lets look at an entity and DAO.  I don’t know about you all, but there have been times I’ve been in organizations that get the grand idea that all DAOs and entities should be standardized and shared.  While this may work for small or static organizations, it’s near ludicrous for anything large or volatile. 1: namespace Shared.Entities 2: { 3: public class Account 4: { 5: public int Id { get; set; } 6:  7: public string Name { get; set; } 8:  9: public Address HomeAddress { get; set; } 10:  11: public int Age { get; set;} 12:  13: public DateTime LastUsed { get; set; } 14:  15: // etc, etc, etc... 16: } 17: } 18:  19: ... 20:  21: namespace Shared.DataAccess 22: { 23: public class AccountDao 24: { 25: public Account FindAccount(int id) 26: { 27: // dao logic to query and return account 28: } 29:  30: ... 31:  32: } 33: } Now to be fair, I’m not saying there doesn’t exist an organization where some entites may be extremely static and unchanging.  But at best such entities and DAOs will be problematic cases of reuse.  Let’s examine those same tests: Single Responsibility Principle (SRP) – The reasons to change for these classes will be strongly dependent on what the definition of the account is which can change over time and may have multiple influences depending on the number of systems an account can cover. Stable Dependencies Principle (SDP) – This method depends on the data model beneath itself which also is largely dependent on the business definition of an account which can be very inherently unstable. Open-Closed Principle (OCP) – This class is not really closed for modification.  Every time the account definition may change, you’d need to modify this class. Small and Stable Problem Domain – The definition of an account is inherently unstable and in fact may be very large.  What if you are designing a system that aggregates account information from several sources? All-or-None Usage – What if your view of the account encompasses data from 3 different sources but you only care about one of those sources or one piece of data?  Should you have to take the hit of looking up all the other data?  On the other hand, should you have ten different methods returning portions of data in chunks people tend to ask for?  Neither is really a great solution. Cost of Reuse vs. Cost to Recreate – DAOs are really trivial to rewrite, and unless your definition of an account is EXTREMELY stable, the cost to promote, support, and release a reusable account entity and DAO are usually far higher than the cost to recreate as needed. It’s no accident that my case for reuse was a utility class and my case for non-reuse was an entity/DAO.  In general, the smaller and more stable an abstraction is, the higher its level of reuse.  When I became the lead of the Shared Components Committee at my workplace, one of the original goals we looked at satisfying was to find (or create), version, release, and promote a shared library of common utility classes, frameworks, and data access objects.  Now, of course, many of you will point to nHibernate and Entity for the latter, but we were looking at larger, macro collections of data that span multiple data sources of varying types (databases, web services, etc). As we got deeper and deeper in the details of how to manage and release these items, it quickly became apparent that while the case for reuse was typically a slam dunk for utilities and frameworks, the data access objects just didn’t “smell” right.  We ended up having session after session of design meetings to try and find the right way to share these data access components. When someone asked me why it was taking so long to iron out the shared entities, my response was quite simple, “Reuse is hard...”  And that’s when I realized, that while reuse is an awesome goal and we should strive to make code maintainable, often times you end up creating far more work for yourself than necessary by trying to force code to be reusable that inherently isn’t. Think about classes the times you’ve worked in a company where in the design session people fight over the best way to implement a class to make it maximally reusable, extensible, and any other buzzwordable.  Then think about how quickly that design became obsolete.  Many times I set out to do a project and think, “yes, this is the best design, I can extend it easily!” only to find out the business requirements change COMPLETELY in such a way that the design is rendered invalid.  Code, in general, tends to rust and age over time.  As such, writing reusable code can often be difficult and many times ends up being a futile exercise and worse yet, sometimes makes the code harder to maintain because it obfuscates the design in the name of extensibility or reusability. So what do I think are reusable components? Generic Utility classes – these tend to be small classes that assist in a task and have no business context whatsoever. Implementation Abstraction Frameworks – home-grown frameworks that try to isolate changes to third party products you may be depending on (like writing a messaging abstraction layer for publishing/subscribing that is independent of whether you use JMS, MSMQ, etc). Simplification and Uniformity Frameworks – To some extent this is similar to an abstraction framework, but there may be one chosen provider but a development shop mandate to perform certain complex items in a certain way.  Or, perhaps to simplify and dumb-down a complex task for the average developer (such as implementing a particular development-shop’s method of encryption). And what are less reusable? Application and Business Layers – tend to fluctuate a lot as requirements change and new features are added, so tend to be an unstable dependency.  May be reused across applications but also very volatile. Entities and Data Access Layers – these tend to be tuned to the scope of the application, so reusing them can be hard unless the abstract is very stable. So what’s the big lesson?  Reuse is hard.  In fact it’s damn hard.  And much of the time I’m not convinced we should focus too hard on it. If you’re designing a utility or framework, then by all means design it for reuse.  But you most also really set down a good versioning, release, and documentation process to maximize your chances.  For anything else, design it to be maintainable and extendable, but don’t waste the effort on reusability for something that most likely will be obsolete in a year or two anyway.

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• OWB/ODI Users: Last Chance to Submit and Vote On Sessions for OpenWorld 2010

  - by antonio romero

  Now is the last chance for OWB and ODI users to propose new ETL/DW/DI sessions for OpenWorld! Oracle OpenWorld 2010 "Suggest a Session" lets members of the Oracle Mix community submit and vote on papers/talks for OpenWorld. The most popular session proposals will be included in the conference program. One promising OWB-related topic has already been submitted: Case Study: Real-Time Data Warehousing and Fraud Detection with Oracle 11gR2 Dr. Holger Friedrich and consultants from sumIT AG in Switzerland built a real-time data warehouse and accompanying BI system for real-time online fraud detection with very limited resources and a short schedule. His presentation will cover: How sumIT AG efficiently loads complex data feeds in real time in Oracle 11gR2 using, among others, Advanced Queues and XML DB How they lowered costs and sped up development, by leveraging the DBs development features including Oracle Warehouse Builder How they delivered a production-ready solution in a few short months using only three part-time developers Come vote for this proposal, on Oracle Mix: https://mix.oracle.com/oow10/proposals/10566-case-study-real-time-data-warehousing-and-fraud-detection-with-oracle-11gr2  I have already invited members of the OWB/ODI Linkedin group (with over 1400 members) to come vote on topics like this one and propose their own. If enough of us vote on a few topics, we are sure to get some on the agenda!  And if you have your own topics, using the Suggest-a-Session instructions here: http://wiki.oracle.com/page/Oracle+OpenWorld+2010+Suggest-a-Session If you propose a topic, don't forget to come to Linkedin and promote it! I have already sent the members of the Linkedin group an email announcement about this, and I will send another in a week, with links to all topics submitted. Thanks, all!

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