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• 10 Best Programming Podcast 2010 Edition

  - by mbcrump

  This list is in no particular order. Just the 10 best programming podcast that I have found so far. Stack Overflow Podcast -  Jeff Atwood (of codinghorror.com) and Joel Spolsky (of joelonsoftware.com) discuss the development of their new programming community, StackOverflow.com. [This Podcast hasn’t been updated in a while, but its always great to hear more from Jeff Atwood] Hanselminutes - Hanselminutes is a weekly audio talk show with noted web developer and technologist Scott Hanselman and hosted by Carl Franklin. Scott discusses utilities and tools, gives practical how-to advice, and discusses ASP.NET or Windows issues and workarounds. [This Podcast has recently started talking about random topics like diabetes, plane travel and geek relationship tips.  I am not sure if Scott is trying to move to a more mainstream audience or not] Herding Code - A weekly discussion featuring K. Scott Allen (odetocode.com), Kevin Dente, Scott Koon (lazycoder.com), and Jon Galloway. [Great all all-around podcast that I would recommend to all] Deep Fried Bytes - Deep Fried Bytes is an audio talk show with a Southern flavor hosted by technologists and developers Keith Elder and Chris Woodruff. The show discusses a wide range of topics including application development, operating systems and technology in general. Anything is fair game if it plugs into the wall or takes a battery. [This is one that just keeps getting better] Dot Net Rocks - .NET Rocks! is an Internet Audio Talk Show for Microsoft .NET Developers. [One of the first and usually very high quality content] Connected Show - Connected Show Podcast! A podcast covering new Microsoft technology for the developer community. The show is hosted by Dmitry Lyalin and Peter Laudati. [This and Polymorphic are one of my favorite podcast – Dmitry is a great host and would recommend this to all] Polymorphic Podcast - Object oriented development, architecture and best practices in .NET [Craig is a ASP.NET MVP and a great presenter. His podcast is great and it could only be better if he recorded it more often] ASP.NET Podcast - Wallace B. (Wally) McClure presents interviews and short technical talks on .NET Technologies. [Has great information on ASP.NET of course as well as iPhone Dev] Ruby on Rails Podcast - News and interviews about the Ruby language and the Rails website framework. [Even though I am not a Ruby programmer, I’ve found this podcast very interesting] Software Engineering Radio - Software Engineering Radio is a podcast targeted at the professional software developer. The goal is to be a lasting educational resource, not a newscast. Every ten days, a new episode is published that covers all topics software engineering. Episodes are either tutorials on a specific topic, or an interview with a well-known character from the software engineering world. All SE Radio episodes are original content ? we do not record conferences or talks given in other venues. Each episode comprises two speakers to ensure a lively listening experience. SE Radio is an independent and non-commercial organization. [Another excellent podcast – I would recommend any programmer add this to his/her drive home] If I have missed something, please feel free to email me and it might make the 2011 list. =)

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• Silverlight Cream for March 09, 2011 -- #1057

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Dennis Doomen, Peter Kuhn, Michael Crump, Joe McBride, Martin Krüger, Jeremy Likness, Manas Patnaik, Jesse Liberty(-2-), WindowsPhoneGeek(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A highlighting AutoCompleteBox in Silverlight" Peter Kuhn WP7: "WP7 WatermarkedTextBox custom control" WindowsPhoneGeek Training: "" Shoutouts: Karl Shifflett announced that he and Josh Smith have heard the developers and released a demo: Mole 2010 Demo Released This is a somewhat older post, but the material is good and I was reminded of it while talking to Josh Smith at the MVP summit last week: Advanced MVVM ... money well-spent From SilverlightCream.com: Introducing the Silverlight Cookbook Dennis Doomen unveils a Codeplex site "containing a Silverlight 4 app that includes most of the complexities you might run into" ... I'm tagging this in my WynApse outlookbar... great stuff, Dennis! A highlighting AutoCompleteBox in Silverlight Peter Kuhn took on a task in response to a forum query and created a highlighting AutoCompleteBox, and is giving it to us... this really looks cool, Peter, and great explanation. Taking a look at the Mindscape Phone Elements for WP7. Michael Crump takes a good look at the Mindscape Phone Elements for WP7... and if you read closely you might still be able to get a free license! Windows Phone – “Can’t connect to your phone. Disconnect it, Restart it, then try connecting again.” Joe McBride explains a way out of an issue that many should be seeing as we repave or replace machines... how to get our device recognized on the updated machine... without giving cryptic messages. How to: only with the full visibility of an application in the browser window start an action Martin Krüger continues his journey in starting storyboards and tackles the condition that the application is completely in the browser window prior to the storyboard starting. A Numeric Input Control for Windows Phone 7 Jeremy Likness came up with a great idea for numeric input for WP7 ... you'll smile when you see it, but what a great idea... and a NumericTextBox to go along with it. Performing CRUD on Relational Data (Multiple table) using RIA in SL4 Manas Patnaik has a post up that breaks the normal blog post or demo mold by having two tables with a relational constraint and doing CRUD operations on them. Plenty of diagrams and good information. Select Many: Reactive Extensions’ Mother Of All Operators [Chaining] Jesse Liberty has part 9 in his Rx series up, and is looking at SelectMany this time, and chaining calls. He's using WPF for the sample, but the goodness is all there for us Silverlight guys too. The Full Stack 8–Adding Search to the Phone Client Jesse Liberty and Jon Galloway have part 8 of their Full Stack series up ... this is the MVC3, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and WP7 app development series... this time out they're putting Search in the Phone client. All about ResourceDictionary in WP7 WindowsPhoneGeek is discussing ResourceDictionaries in this post... beginning with What is a ResourceDictionary and continuing out through creating and using one, plus a good comment on merging. WP7 WatermarkedTextBox custom control In his next post, WindowsPhoneGeek walks us through the creation of a WatermarkedTextBox for WP7 right from the derivation from TextBox... very nice tutorial and lots of code/examples. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• T-SQL Tuesday - the swag

  - by Rob Farley

  This month’s T-SQL Tuesday is hosted by Kendal van Dyke (@SQLDBA), and is on the topic of swag. He asks about the best SQL Server swag that we’ve ever received from a conference. I can’t say I ever focus on getting the swag at conferences, as I see some people doing. I know there are plenty of people that get around all the sponsors as soon as they’ve arrived, collecting whatever goodies they can, sometimes as token gifts for those at home, sometimes as giveaways for the user groups they attend. I remember a few years ago at my first PASS Summit, the SQLCAT team gave me a large pile of leftover SQL Server swag to give away to my user group – piles of branded things to stop your phone sliding off your car dashboard, and other things. The user group members thought it was great, and over the course of a few months, happily cleared me out of it all. I tend to consider swag to be something that you haven’t earned except by being at a conference, and there was no winning associated with it, it was simply a giveaway item at a sponsor booth. That means I don’t include the HP Mini laptop that was given away at TechEd Australia a few years ago to every attendee, or the SQL Server bag and Camelbak bottle that I was given as a thank-you for writing a guest blog post (which I use as my regular laptop bag and water bottle for work). I don’t even include the copy of Midtown Madness that I got as a door prize at my vey first TechEd event in 1999 (that was a really good game, and even meant that when I went to Chicago last year, I felt a strange familiarity about the place). I don’t want to include shirts in the mix either. I was given a nice SQL Server shirt about five years ago TechEd Australia. It’s a business shirt (buttons, cuffs, pocket on the chest), black with the SQL Server logo on it. It was such a nice shirt that I commented about it to the Product Marketing Manager for Australia (Christine, at the time), who unexpectedly arranged for me to get another one. That was certainly an improvement on the tent I was given at one of the MVP conference I attended. So when I consider these ‘rules’, two pieces of swag come to mind, and I think both were at PASS Summits (although I can’t be sure). One was a hand-warmer from HP, one of the “crystallisation-type” ones, which proved extremely popular when I got home, until one day when it didn’t survive being recharged – not overly SQL related, but still it was good swag. The other was an umbrella, from expressor, which was from the PASS Summit in 2010, my first PASS Summit. I remember it well – Blythe Morrow (now Gietz) (@blythemorrow) was working the booth, having stopped working for PASS some time before, but she’d been on my list of people to meet, as I’d had plenty of contact with her while she’d worked at PASS, my being a chapter leader and general volunteer. There had been an expressor dinner on one of the first evenings, which I’d been asked to be at, which is when I’d met lots of SQL people in person for the first time, including Ted Krueger (@onpnt), Jessica Moss (@jessicamoss) and Blythe. Anyway, at some point the next day I swung by their booth to say hello and thank them for the dinner, and Blythe says “Oh, we have the best swag – here!” and handed me an umbrella. And she was right. It’s excellent. @rob_farley

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• AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure

  - by jamiet

  Three days ago I tweeted this: Idea. MSFT could host read-only copies of all the [AdventureWorks] DBs up on #sqlazure for the SQL community to use. RT if agree #sqlfamily — Jamie Thomson (@jamiet) March 24, 2012 Evidently I wasn't the only one that thought this was a good idea because as you can see from the screenshot that tweet has, so far, been retweeted more than fifty times. Clearly there is a desire to see the AdventureWorks databases made available for the community to noodle around on so I am pleased to announce that as of today you can do just that - [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use* for their own means. *By use I mean "issue some SELECT statements". You don't have permission to issue INSERTs, UPDATEs, DELETEs or EXECUTEs I'm afraid - if you want to do that then you can get the bits and host it yourself. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected]: Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more that we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. OK, with the prickly subject of begging for cash out of the way let me share the details that you need to connect to [AdventureWorks2012] on SQL Azure: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly That user sqlfamily has all the permissions required to enable you to query away to your heart's content. Here is the code that I used to set it up: CREATE USER sqlfamily FOR LOGIN sqlfamily;CREATE ROLE sqlfamilyrole;EXEC sp_addrolemember 'sqlfamilyrole','sqlfamily';GRANT VIEW DEFINITION ON Database::AdventureWorks2012 TO sqlfamilyrole;GRANT VIEW DATABASE STATE ON Database::AdventureWorks2012 TO sqlfamilyrole;GRANT SHOWPLAN TO sqlfamilyrole;EXEC sp_addrolemember 'db_datareader','sqlfamilyrole'; You can connect to the database using SQL Server Management Studio (instructions to do that are provided at Walkthrough: Connecting to SQL Azure via the SSMS) or you can use the web interface at https://mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net: Lastly, just for a bit of fun I created a table up there called [dbo].[SqlFamily] into which you can leave a small calling card. Simply execute the following SQL statement (changing the values of course): INSERT [dbo].[SqlFamily]([Name],[Message],[TwitterHandle],[BlogURI])VALUES ('Your name here','Some Message','your twitter handle (optional)','Blog URI (optional)'); [Id] is an IDENTITY field and there is a default constraint on [DT] hence there is no need to supply a value for those. Note that you only have INSERT permissions, not UPDATE or DELETE so make sure you get it right first time! Any offensive or distasteful remarks will of course be deleted :) Thank you for reading this far and have fun using AdventureWorks on Azure. I hope it proves to be useful for some of you. @jamiet AdventureWorks on Azure - Provided by the SQL Server community, for the SQL Server community!

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• How to raycast select a scaled OBB?

  - by user3254944

  I have the OBB picking code to select an OBB with code inspired from Real time Rendering 3 and opengl-tutorial.org. I can successfully select objects that have been moved or rotated. However, I cant correctly select an object that has been scaled. The bounding box scales right, but the I can only select the object in a thin strip on its center. How do I fix the checkForHits() function to allow it to read the scaling that I passed to it in the raycast matrix? void GLWidget::selectObjRaycast() { glm::vec2 mouse = (glm::vec2(mousePos.x(), mousePos.y()) / glm::vec2(this->width(), this->height())) * 2.0f - 1.0f; mouse.y *= -1; glm::mat4 toWorld = glm::inverse(ProjectionM * ViewM); glm::vec4 from = toWorld * glm::vec4(mouse, -1.0f, 1.0f); glm::vec4 to = toWorld * glm::vec4(mouse, 1.0f, 1.0f); from /= from.w; to /= to.w; fromAABB = glm::vec3(from); toAABB = glm::normalize(glm::vec3(to - from)); checkForHits(); } void GLWidget::checkForHits() { for (int i = 0; i < myWin.myEtc->allObj.size(); ++i) //check for hits on each obj's bb { bool miss = 0; float tMin = 0.0f; float tMax = 100000.0f; glm::vec3 bbPos(myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[3].x, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[3].y, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[3].z); glm::vec3 delta = bbPos - fromAABB; for (int j = 0; j < 3; ++j) { glm::vec3 axis(myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[j].x, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[j].y, myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->raycastM[j].z); float e = glm::dot(axis, delta); float f = glm::dot(toAABB, axis); if (fabs(f) > 0.001f) { float t1 = (e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMin[j]) / f; float t2 = (e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMax[j]) / f; if (t1 > t2) { float w = t1; t1 = t2; t2 = w; } if (t2 < tMax) tMax = t2; if (t1 > tMin) tMin = t1; if (tMax < tMin) miss = 1; } else { if (-e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMin[j] > 0.0f || -e + myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->bbMax[j] < 0.0f) miss = 1; } } if (miss == 0) { intersection_distance = tMin; myWin.myEtc->sel.push_back(myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]); myWin.myEtc->allObj[i]->highlight = myWin.myGLHelp->highlight; break; } } } void Object::render(glm::mat4 PV) { scaleM = glm::scale(glm::mat4(), s->val_3); r_quat = glm::quat(glm::radians(r->val_3)); rotationM = glm::toMat4(r_quat); translationM = glm::translate(glm::mat4(), t->val_3); transLocal1M = glm::translate(glm::mat4(), -rsPivot->val_3); transLocal2M = glm::translate(glm::mat4(), rsPivot->val_3); raycastM = translationM * transLocal2M * rotationM * scaleM * transLocal1M; // MVP = PV * translationM * transLocal2M * rotationM * scaleM * transLocal1M; }

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• First-Time GLSL Shadow Mapping Problems

  - by Locke

  I'm working on building out a 2.5D engine and having massive problems getting my shadows working. I'm at a point where I'm VERY close. So, let's see a picture to see what I have: As you can see above, the image has lighting -- but the shadow map is displaying incorrectly. The shadow map is shown in the bottom left hand side of the screen as a normal 2D texture, so we can see what it looks like at any given time. If you notice, it appears that the shadows are generating backwards in the wrong direction -- I think. But the problem is a little more deep -- I'm just plotting the shadow onto the screen, which I know is wrong -- I'm ignoring the actual test to see if we NEED to show a shadow. The incoming parameters all appear to be correct -- so there has to be something wrong with my shader code somewhere. Here's what my code looks like: VERTEX: uniform mat4 LightModelViewProjectionMatrix; varying vec3 Normal; // The eye-space normal of the current vertex. varying vec4 LightCoordinate; // The texture coordinate of the light of the current vertex. varying vec3 LightDirection; // The eye-space direction of the light. void main() { Normal = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_Normal); LightDirection = normalize(gl_NormalMatrix * gl_LightSource[0].position.xyz); LightCoordinate = LightModelViewProjectionMatrix * gl_Vertex; LightCoordinate.xy = ( LightCoordinate.xy * 0.5 ) + 0.5; gl_Position = ftransform(); gl_TexCoord[0] = gl_MultiTexCoord0; } FRAGMENT: uniform sampler2D DiffuseMap; uniform sampler2D ShadowMap; varying vec3 Normal; // The eye-space normal of the current vertex. varying vec4 LightCoordinate; // The texture coordinate of the light of the current vertex. varying vec3 LightDirection; // The eye-space direction of the light. void main() { vec4 Texel = texture2D(DiffuseMap, vec2(gl_TexCoord[0])); // Directional lighting //Build ambient lighting vec4 AmbientElement = gl_LightSource[0].ambient; //Build diffuse lighting float Lambert = max(dot(Normal, LightDirection), 0.0); //max(abs(dot(Normal, LightDirection)), 0.0); vec4 DiffuseElement = ( gl_LightSource[0].diffuse * Lambert ); vec4 LightingColor = ( DiffuseElement + AmbientElement ); LightingColor.r = min(LightingColor.r, 1.0); LightingColor.g = min(LightingColor.g, 1.0); LightingColor.b = min(LightingColor.b, 1.0); LightingColor.a = min(LightingColor.a, 1.0); LightingColor *= Texel; //Everything up to this point is PERFECT // Shadow mapping // ------------------------------ vec4 ShadowCoordinate = LightCoordinate / LightCoordinate.w; float DistanceFromLight = texture2D( ShadowMap, ShadowCoordinate.st ).z; float DepthBias = 0.001; float ShadowFactor = 1.0; if( LightCoordinate.w > 0.0 ) { ShadowFactor = DistanceFromLight < ( ShadowCoordinate.z + DepthBias ) ? 0.5 : 1.0; } LightingColor.rgb *= ShadowFactor; //gl_FragColor = LightingColor; //Yes, I know this is wrong, but the line above (gl_FragColor = LightingColor;) produces the wrong effect gl_FragColor = LightingColor * texture2D( ShadowMap, ShadowCoordinate.st ); } I wanted to make sure the coordinates were correct for the shadow map -- so that's why you see it applied to the image as it is below. But the depth for each point seems to be wrong -- the shadows SHOULD be opposite (look at how the image is -- the shaded areas from normal lighting are facing the opposite direction of the shadows). Maybe my matrices are bad or something going in? They're isolated and appear to be correct -- nothing else is going in unusual. When I view from the light's view and get the MVP matrices for it, they're correct. EDIT: Added an image so you can see what happens when I do the correct command at the end of the GLSL: That's the image when the last line is just glFragColor = LightingColor; Maybe someone has some idea of what I screwed up?

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• T-SQL Tuesday #025 &ndash; CHECK Constraint Tricks

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Allen White (blog | twitter), marathoner, SQL Server MVP and presenter, and all-around awesome author is hosting this month's T-SQL Tuesday on sharing SQL Server Tips and Tricks.  And for those of you who have attended my Revenge: The SQL presentation, you know that I have 1 or 2 of them.  You'll also know that I don't recommend using anything I talk about in a production system, and will continue that advice here…although you might be sorely tempted.  Suffice it to say I'm not using these examples myself, but I think they're worth sharing anyway. Some of you have seen or read about SQL Server constraints and have applied them to your table designs…unless you're a vendor ;)…and may even use CHECK constraints to limit numeric values, or length of strings, allowable characters and such.  CHECK constraints can, however, do more than that, and can even provide enhanced security and other restrictions. One tip or trick that I didn't cover very well in the presentation is using constraints to do unusual things; specifically, limiting or preventing inserts into tables.  The idea was to use a CHECK constraint in a way that didn't depend on the actual data: -- create a table that cannot accept data CREATE TABLE dbo.JustTryIt(a BIT NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, CONSTRAINT chk_no_insert CHECK (GETDATE()=GETDATE()+1)) INSERT dbo.JustTryIt VALUES(1)   I'll let you run that yourself, but I'm sure you'll see that this is a pretty stupid table to have, since the CHECK condition will always be false, and therefore will prevent any data from ever being inserted.  I can't remember why I used this example but it was for some vague and esoteric purpose that applies to about, maybe, zero people.  I come up with a lot of examples like that. However, if you realize that these CHECKs are not limited to column references, and if you explore the SQL Server function list, you could come up with a few that might be useful.  I'll let the names describe what they do instead of explaining them all: CREATE TABLE NoSA(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sa CHECK (SUSER_SNAME()<>'sa')) CREATE TABLE NoSysAdmin(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_sysadmin CHECK (IS_SRVROLEMEMBER('sysadmin')=0)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc CHECK (OBJECT_NAME(@@PROCID) IS NOT NULL)) CREATE TABLE NoAdHoc2(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_AdHoc2 CHECK (@@NESTLEVEL>0)) CREATE TABLE NoCursors(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_No_Cursors CHECK (@@CURSOR_ROWS=0)) CREATE TABLE ANSI_PADDING_ON(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_ANSI_PADDING_ON CHECK (@@OPTIONS & 16=16)) CREATE TABLE TimeOfDay(a int not null, CONSTRAINT CHK_TimeOfDay CHECK (DATEPART(hour,GETDATE()) BETWEEN 0 AND 1)) GO -- log in as sa or a sysadmin server role member, and try this: INSERT NoSA VALUES(1) INSERT NoSysAdmin VALUES(1) -- note the difference when using sa vs. non-sa -- then try it again with a non-sysadmin login -- see if this works: INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(1) GO -- then try this: CREATE PROCEDURE NotAdHoc @val1 int, @val2 int AS SET NOCOUNT ON; INSERT NoAdHoc VALUES(@val1) INSERT NoAdHoc2 VALUES(@val2) GO EXEC NotAdHoc 2,2 -- which values got inserted? SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc SELECT * FROM NoAdHoc2   -- and this one just makes me happy :) INSERT NoCursors VALUES(1) DECLARE curs CURSOR FOR SELECT 1 OPEN curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(2) CLOSE curs DEALLOCATE curs INSERT NoCursors VALUES(3) SELECT * FROM NoCursors   I'll leave the ANSI_PADDING_ON and TimeOfDay tables for you to test on your own, I think you get the idea.  (Also take a look at the NoCursors example, notice anything interesting?)  The real eye-opener, for me anyway, is the ability to limit bad coding practices like cursors, ad-hoc SQL, and sa use/abuse by using declarative SQL objects.  I'm sure you can see how and why this would come up when discussing Revenge: The SQL.;) And the best part IMHO is that these work on pretty much any version of SQL Server, without needing Policy Based Management, DDL/login triggers, or similar tools to enforce best practices. All seriousness aside, I highly recommend that you spend some time letting your mind go wild with the possibilities and see how far you can take things.  There are no rules! (Hmmmm, what can I do with rules?) #TSQL2sDay

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• How views are changing in future versions of SQL

  - by Rob Farley

  April is here, and this weekend, SQL v11.0 (previous known as Denali, now known as SQL Server 2012) reaches general availability. And so I thought I’d share some news about what’s coming next. I didn’t hear this at the MVP Summit earlier this year (where there was lots of NDA information given, but I didn’t go), so I think I’m free to share it. I’ve written before about CTEs being query-scoped views. Well, the actual story goes a bit further, and will continue to develop in future versions. A CTE is a like a “temporary temporary view”, scoped to a single query. Due to globally-scoped temporary objects using a two-hashes naming style, and session-scoped (or ‘local’) temporary objects a one-hash naming style, this query-scoped temporary object uses a cunning zero-hash naming style. We see this implied in Books Online in the CREATE TABLE page, but as we know, temporary views are not yet supported in the SQL Server. However, in a breakaway from ANSI-SQL, Microsoft is moving towards consistency with their naming. We know that a CTE is a “common table expression” – this is proving to be a more strategic than you may have appreciated. Within the Microsoft product group, the term “Table Expression” is far more widely used than just CTEs. Anything that can be used in a FROM clause is referred to as a Table Expression, so long as it doesn’t actually store data (which would make it a Table, rather than a Table Expression). You can see this is not just restricted to the product group by doing an internet search for how the term is used without ‘common’. In the past, Books Online has referred to a view as a “virtual table” (but notice that there is no SQL 2012 version of this page). However, it was generally decided that “virtual table” was a poor name because it wasn’t completely accurate, and it’s typically accepted that virtualisation and SQL is frowned upon. That page I linked to says “or stored query”, which is slightly better, but when the SQL 2012 version of that page is actually published, the line will be changed to read: “A view is a stored table expression (STE)”. This change will be the first of many. During the SQL 2012 R2 release, the keyword VIEW will become deprecated (this will be SQL v11 SP1.5). Three versions later, in SQL 14.5, you will need to be in compatibility mode 140 to allow “CREATE VIEW” to work. Also consistent with Microsoft’s deprecation policy, the execution of any query that refers to an object created as a view (rather than the new “CREATE STE”), will cause a Deprecation Event to fire. This will all be in preparation for the introduction of Single-Column Table Expressions (to be introduced in SQL 17.3 SP6) which will finally shut up those people waiting for a decent implementation of Inline Scalar Functions. And of course, CTEs are “Common” because the Table Expression definition needs to be repeated over and over throughout a stored procedure. ...or so I think I heard at some point. Oh, and congratulations to all the new MVPs on this April 1st. @rob_farley

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• PASS summit 2013. We do not remember days. We remember moments.

  - by Maria Zakourdaev

    "Business or pleasure?" barked the security officer in the Charlotte International Airport. "I’m not sure, sir," I whimpered, immediately losing all courage. "I'm here for the database technologies summit called PASS”. "Sounds boring. Definitely a business trip." Boring?! He couldn’t have been more wrong. If he only knew about the countless meetings throughout the year where I waved my hands at my great boss and explained again and again how fantastic this summit is and how much I learned last year. One by one, the drops of water began eating away at the stone. He finally approved of my trip just to stop me from torturing him. Time moves as slow as a turtle when you are waiting for something. Time runs as fast as a cheetah when you are there. PASS has come...and passed. It’s been an amazing week. Enormous sqlenergy has filled the city, filled the convention center and the surrounding pubs and restaurants. There were awesome speakers, great content, and the chance to meet most inspiring database professionals from all over the world. Some sessions were unforgettable. Imagine a fully packed room with more than 500 people in awed silence, catching each and every one of Paul Randall's words. His tremendous energy and deep knowledge were truly thrilling. No words can describe Rob Farley's unique presentation style, captivating and engaging the audience. When the precious session minutes were over, I could tell that the many random puzzle pieces of information that his listeners knew had been suddenly combined into a clear, cohesive picture. I was amazed as always by Paul White's great sense of humor and his phenomenal ability to explain complicated concepts in a simple way. The keynote by the brilliant Dr. DeWitt from Microsoft in front of the full summit audience of 5000 deeply listening people was genuinely breathtaking. The entire conference throughout offered excellent speakers who inspired me to absorb the knowledge and use it when I got home. To my great surprise, I found that there are other people in this world who like replication as much I do. During the Birds of a Feather Luncheon, SQL Server MVP Ted Krueger was writing a script for replicating the food to other tables. I learned many things at PASS, and not all of them were about SQL. After three summits, this time I finally got the knack of networking. I actually went up and spoke to people, and believe me, that was not easy for an introvert. But this is what the summit is all about. Sqlpeople. They are the ones who make it such an exciting experience. I will be looking forward to the next year. Till then I have my notes and new ideas. How long was the summit? Thousands of unforgettable moments.

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• Working Towards Specialization? Your VAD Can Help You Score!

  - by Kristin Rose

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} TOUCH DOWN! That’s right folks, football is in full swing and what better way to kickoff football season than with a great Oracle play? Partners can now score big by side passing the ball to their VADs, enabling them to help in the process of becoming a Specialized partner. With the new functionality now available on the OPN Competency Center, Partner PRM Administrators can grant access to their VADs and have them assist in achieving their Specialization requirements. Here are the rules of the game: Partner Administrator must provide authorization Details do not include individual users data Access can be removed anytime Follow the steps below to grant your VAD access to your company Specialization progress reports. It’s as simple as 1,2,3…Go team go! Login to the OPN Competency Center and go to “My Preferences” on the top right corner of the screen. Under “My VAD”, select your Region, Country and Value Added Distributor name, then simple click in “ADD VAD”. Your VAD can now access your Specialization Tracker report! For those MVP’s who want to learn more, be sure to watch this 3 minute play by play video on the new OPN Competency Center VAD/VAR Specialization Tracker below, and click here before game day! 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} Are You Ready For Some Oracle Football? The OPN Communications Team 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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";}

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• Olympics data available for all on Windows Azure SQL Database and Power View

  - by jamiet

  Are you looking around for some decent test data for your BI demos? Well, if so, Microsoft have provided some data about all medals won at the Olympics Games (1900 to 2008) at OlympicsData workbook - Excel, SSIS, Azure sample; it provides analysis over athletes, countries, medal type, sport, discipline and various other dimensions. The data has been provided in an Excel workbook along with instructions on how to load the data into a Windows Azure SQL Database using SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS). Frankly though, the rigmarole of standing up your own Windows Azure SQL Database ok, SQL Azure database, is both costly (SQL Azure isn’t free) and time consuming (the provided instructions aren’t exactly an idiot’s guide and getting SSIS to work properly with Excel isn’t a barrel of laughs either). To ease the pain for all you BI folks out there that simply want to party on the data I have loaded it all into the SQL Azure database that I use for hosting AdventureWorks on Azure. You can read more about AdventureWorks on Azure below however I’ll summarise here by saying it is a SQL Azure database provided for the use of the SQL Server community and which is supported by voluntary donations. To view the data the credentials you need are: Server mhknbn2kdz.database.windows.net  Database AdventureWorks2012 User sqlfamily Password sqlf@m1ly Type those into SSMS and away you go, the data is provided in four tables [olympics].[Sport], [olympics].[Discipline], [olympics].[Event] & [olympics].[Medalist]: I figured this would be a good candidate for a Power View report so I fired up Excel 2013 and built such a report to slice’n’dice through the data – here are some screenshots that should give you a flavour of what is available: A view of all the available data Where do all the gymastics medals go? Which countries do top ten all-time medal winners come from? You get the idea. There is masses of information here and if you have Excel 2013 handy Power View provides a quick and easy way of surfing through it. To save you the bother of setting up the Power View report yourself you can have the one that I took these screenshots from, it is available on my SkyDrive at OlympicsAnalysis.xlsx so just hit the link and download to play to your heart’s content. Party on, people! As I said above the data is hosted on a SQL Azure database that I use for hosting “AdventureWorks on Azure” which I first announced in March 2013 at AdventureWorks2012 now available for all on SQL Azure. I’ll repeat the pertinent parts of that blog post here: I am pleased to announce that as of today … [AdventureWorks2012] now resides on SQL Azure and is available for anyone, absolutely anyone, to connect to and use for their own means. This database is free for you to use but SQL Azure is of course not free so before I give you the credentials please lend me your ears eyes for a short while longer. AdventureWorks on Azure is being provided for the SQL Server community to use and so I am hoping that that same community will rally around to support this effort by making a voluntary donation to support the upkeep which, going on current pricing, is going to be $119.88 per year. If you would like to contribute to keep AdventureWorks on Azure up and running for that full year please donate via PayPal to [email protected] Any amount, no matter how small, will help. If those 50+ people that retweeted me beforehand all contributed $2 then that would just about be enough to keep this up for a year. If the community contributes more than we need then there are a number of additional things that could be done: Host additional databases (Northwind anyone??) Host in more datacentres (this first one is in Western Europe) Make a charitable donation That last one, a charitable donation, is something I would really like to do. The SQL Community have proved before that they can make a significant contribution to charitable orgnisations through purchasing the SQL Server MVP Deep Dives book and I harbour hopes that AdventureWorks on Azure can continue in that vein. So please, if you think AdventureWorks on Azure is something that is worth supporting please make a contribution. I’d like to emphasize that last point. If my hosting this Olympics data is useful to you please support this initiative by donating. Thanks in advance. @Jamiet

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• Cloud Adoption Challenges

  - by Herve Roggero

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/hroggero/archive/2013/11/07/cloud-adoption-challenges.aspxWhile cloud computing makes sense for most organizations and countless projects, I have seen customers significantly struggle with cloud adoption challenges. This blog post is not an attempt to provide a generic assessment of cloud adoption; rather it is an account of personal experiences in the field, some of which may or may not apply to your organization. Cloud First, Burst? In the rush to cloud adoption some companies have made the decision to redesign their core system with a cloud first approach. However a cloud first approach means that the system may not work anymore on-premises after it has been redesigned, specifically if the system depends on Platform as a Service (PaaS) components (such as Azure Tables). While PaaS makes sense when your company is in a position to adopt the cloud exclusively, it can be difficult to leverage with systems that need to work in different clouds or on-premises. As a result, some companies are starting to rethink their cloud strategy by designing for on-premises first, and modify only the necessary components to burst when needed in the cloud. This generally means that the components need to work equally well in any environment, which requires leveraging Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) or additional investments for PaaS applications, or both.  What’s the Problem? Although most companies can benefit from cloud computing, not all of them can clearly identify a business reason for doing so other than in very generic terms. I heard many companies claim “it’s cheaper”, or “it allows us to scale”, without any specific metric or clear strategy behind the adoption decision. Other companies have a very clear strategy behind cloud adoption and can precisely articulate business benefits, such as “we have a 500% increase in traffic twice a year, so we need to burst in the cloud to avoid doubling our network and server capacity”. Understanding the problem being solved through by adopting cloud computing can significantly help organizations determine the optimum path and timeline to adoption. Performance or Scalability? I stopped counting the number of times I heard “the cloud doesn’t scale; our database runs faster on a laptop”.  While performance and scalability are related concepts, they are nonetheless different in nature. Performance is a measure of response time under a given load (meaning with a specific number of users), while scalability is the performance curve over various loads. For example one system could see great performance with 100 users, but timeout with 1,000 users, in which case the system wouldn’t scale. However another system could have average performance with 100 users, but display the exact same performance with 1,000,000 users, in which case the system would scale. Understanding that cloud computing does not usually provide high performance, but instead provides the tools necessary to build a scalable system (usually using PaaS services such as queuing and data federation), is fundamental to proper cloud adoption. Uptime? Last but not least, you may want to read the Service Level Agreement of your cloud provider in detail if you haven’t done so. If you are expecting 99.99% uptime annually you may be in for a surprise. Depending on the component being used, there may be no associated SLA at all! Other components may be restarted at any time, or services may experience failover conditions weekly ( or more) based on current overall conditions of the cloud service provider, most of which are outside of your control. As a result, for PaaS cloud environments (and to a certain extent some IaaS systems), applications need to assume failure and gracefully retry to be successful in the cloud in order to provide service continuity to end users. About Herve Roggero Herve Roggero, Windows Azure MVP, is the founder of Blue Syntax Consulting (http://www.bluesyntax.net). Herve's experience includes software development, architecture, database administration and senior management with both global corporations and startup companies. Herve holds multiple certifications, including an MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD. He also holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Indiana University. Herve is the co-author of "PRO SQL Azure" and “PRO SQL Server 2012 Practices” from Apress, a PluralSight author, and runs the Azure Florida Association.

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• SQL SERVER – Retrieve and Explore Database Backup without Restoring Database – Idera virtual databas

  - by pinaldave

  I recently downloaded Idera’s SQL virtual database, and tested it. There are a few things about this tool which caught my attention. My Scenario It is quite common in real life that sometimes observing or retrieving older data is necessary; however, it had changed as time passed by. The full database backup was 40 GB in size, and, to restore it on our production server, it usually takes around 16 to 22 minutes, depending on the load server that is usually present. This range in time varies from one server to another as per the configuration of the computer. Some other issues we used to have are the following: When we try to restore a large 40-GB database, we needed at least that much space on our production server. Once in a while, we even had to make changes in the restored database, and use the said changed and restored database for our purpose, making it more time-consuming. My Solution I have heard a lot about the Idera’s SQL virtual database tool.. Well, right after we started to test this tool, we found out that it really delivers what it promises. Using this software was very easy and we were able to restore our database from backup in less than 2 minutes, sparing us from the usual longer time of 16–22 minutes. The needful was finished in a total of 10 minutes. Another interesting observation is that there is no need to have an additional space for restoring the database. For complete database restoration, the single additional MB on the drive is not required anymore. We can use the database in the same way as our regular database, and there is no need for any additional configuration and setup. Let us look at the most relevant points of this product based on my initial experience: Quick restoration of the database backup No additional space required for database restoration virtual database has no physical .MDF or .LDF The database which is restored is, in fact, the backup file converted in the virtual database. DDL and DML queries can be executed against this virtually restored database. Regular backup operation can be implemented against virtual database, creating a physical .bak file that can be used for future use. There was no observed degradation in performance on the original database as well the restored virtual database. Additional T-SQL queries can be let off on the virtual database. Well, this summarizes my quick review. And, as I was saying, I am very impressed with the product and I plan to explore it more. There are many features that I have noticed in this tool, which I think can be very useful if properly understood. I had taken a few screenshots using my demo database afterwards. Let us see what other things this tool can do besides the mentioned activities. I am surprised with its performance so I want to know how exactly this feature works, specifically in the matter of why it does not create any additional files and yet, it still allows update on the virtually restored database. I guess I will have to send an e-mail to the developers of Idera and try to figure this out from them. I think this tool is very useful, and it delivers a high level of performance way more than what I expected. Soon, I will write a review for additional uses of SQL virtual database.. If you are using SQL virtual database in your production environment, I am eager to learn more about it and your experience while using it. The ‘Virtual’ Part of virtual database When I set out to test this software, I thought virtual database had something to do with Hyper-V or visualization. In fact, the virtual database is a kind of database which shows up in your SQL Server Management Studio without actually restoring or even creating it. This tool creates a database in SSMS from the backup of the same database. The backup, however, works virtually the same way as original database. Potential Usage of virtual database: As soon as I described this tool to my teammate, I think his very first reaction was, “hey, if we have this then there is no need for log shipping.” I find his comment very interesting as log shipping is something where logs are moved to another server. In fact, there are no updates on the database from log; I would rather compare it with Snapshot Replication. In fact, whatever we use, snapshot replicated database can be similarly used and configured with virtual database. I totally believe that we can use it for reporting purpose. In fact, after this database was configured, I think the uses of this tool are unlimited. I will have to spend some more time studying it and will get back to you. Click on images to see larger images. virtual database Console Harddrive Space before virtual database Setup Attach Full Backup Screen Backup on Harddrive Attach Full Backup Screen with Settings virtual database Setup – less than 60 sec virtual database Setup – Online Harddrive Space after virtual database Setup Point in Time Recovery Option – Timeline View virtual database Summary No Performance Difference between Regular DB vs Virtual DB Please note that all SQL Server MVP gets free license of this software. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com), Idera (virtual database) Filed under: Database, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Add-On, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Data Storage, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Idera

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• XNA Notes 007

  - by George Clingerman

  Every week I keep wondering if there’s going to be enough activity in the community to keep doing these notes on a weekly basis and every week I’m reminded of just how awesome and active the XNA community is. There’s engines being made, tutorials being created, games being crafted. There’s information being shared, questions being answered and then there’s another whole community around the Xbox LIVE Indie Games themselves. It’s really incredibly to just watch all that’s going on and I’m glad I’m playing a small part in all of this. So here’s what I noticed happening in the XNA community last week. If there’s things I’m missing, always feel free to let me know. I love learning about new corners of the XNA community that I wasn’t aware of or just have been missing! XNA Developers: Uditha Bandara held an XNA Game Development Workshops at Singapore Universities http://uditha.wordpress.com/2011/02/18/xna-game-development-workshops-at-singapore-universities-event-update/ Binary Tweed gives his talks about Indie City and gives his opinion on the false promise of digital distribution http://www.develop-online.net/news/37053/OPINION-The-false-promise-of-digital-distribution Kris Steele posts his Trivia or Die postmortem http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=246 @MadNinjaSkills (James Johnston) posts his feelings on testing for XBLIG http://www.ezmuze.co.uk/101 Simon (@DDReaper) posts hints and tips for XNA developers to help get the size of their projects down http://twitter.com/#!/DDReaper/status/38279440924545024 http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/17/look-at-the-size-of-that-thing.aspx Michael B. McLaughlin proving why he should be an XNA MVP posts the list of commonly used value types in XNA games http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/17/list-of-commonly-used-value-types-in-xna-games.aspx http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/38166541354811392 Paul Powell (@ITSligoPaul) posts about a common sprite batch as a game service http://itspaulsblog.blogspot.com/2011/02/xna-common-sprite-batch-as-game-service.html @SigilXNA (John Defenbaugh) posts his new level editor video for the sequel to Opac’s Journey http://twitter.com/SigilXNA/statuses/36548174373982209 http://twitter.com/#!/SigilXNA/status/36548174373982209 http://youtu.be/QHbmxB_2AW8 @jwatte updates kW Animation for XNA 4.0 http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-animation @DSebJ posts Blender to SunBurn http://twitter.com/#!/DSebJ/status/36564920224976896 http://dsebj.evolvingsoftware.com/?p=187 Ads and WP7 Games - @mechaghost shares his revenue data for his ad based games http://www.occasionalgamer.com/2011/02/09/ads-and-wp7-games/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Steven Hurdle posts day 100 of his quest to find a fantastic XBLIG purchase every day http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/2011/02/17/day-100-radiangames-ballistic/ Xbox 360 Indie Game Buying Guide - 12 games for $60 including several Xbox LIVE Indie games! (although if the XNA community was asked we could have recommended 60 games for $60...) http://www.indiegamemag.com/xbox360-indie-games-buying-guide/ The best selling Xbox LIVE Indie games of 2010 http://www.1up.com/news/xbox-live-most-popular-games I’d buy that for a dollar! - the California Literary Review points out a few gems on the XBLIG marketplace (and other places) where you can game on the cheap. http://calitreview.com/14125 Armless Octopus Episode 39 - The Indie Gem Octocast http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/17/armless-octocast-episode-39-the-indie-gem-octocast/ Ska Studios posts a plethora of updates http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/11/good-morning-gato-49/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/14/vampire-smile-valentines/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/16/the-dishwasher-vs-finds-a-home/ Kotaku posts about the Xbox LIVE Indie Game that makes you go Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew Pew http://kotaku.com/#!5760632/the-game-that-makes-you-go-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew-pew GameMarx continues to be active and doing a ton for the XBLIG community reviews and Top 5 indie games of the week 2/4-2/10 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/22/ep-9-february-11-2010.aspx a new podcast Xbox Indie New Releases http://twitter.com/#!/gamemarx/status/36888849107910656 http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/13/a-new-podcast-xbox-indie-new-releases.aspx @MasterBlud uploads Indocalypse XBLIG Collections #2 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uzCZSv075mc&feature=youtu.be&a http://twitter.com/#!/MasterBlud/status/37100029697064960 Just Press Start interviews Michael Hicks from MichaelArts, 18 year old creator of Honor in Vengeance http://justpressstart.net/?p=465 Achievement Locked interviews Kris Steele of FunInfused Games http://xboxindies.wordpress.com/2011/02/11/interview-fun-infused-games/ XNA Game Development: XNA -UK launches their XAP test service to help the XNA community http://xna-uk.net/blogs/news/archive/2011/02/18/xna-uk-xap-test-service-now-live.aspx Transmute shows off a video of the standard character editor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qqH6gErG948&feature=youtu.be Microsoft Tech Student introduces their first tech student of the month.  Meet Daniel Van Tassel from the University of Utah and learn how he created an Xbox LIVE Indie Game using XNA Studio http://blogs.msdn.com/b/techstudent/archive/2010/12/22/introducing-our-first-tech-student-of-the-month-daniel-van-tassel.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 3 - Animation (transforms) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx XNA for Silverlight Developers Part 4 - Animation (frame based) http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-4-Animation-frame-based.aspx @suhinini tweets about an XNA Sprite Font generation tool http://twitter.com/#!/suhinini/status/36841370131890176 http://www.nubik.com/SpriteFont/ XNATouch 1.5 is out and in it’s words is faster, simpler, more reliable and has the XNA 4.0 API http://monogame.codeplex.com/releases/view/60815 IndieCity is hosting marketing workshops for Indie Developers (UK and US) http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/75197/457654.aspx#457654 New York Students - Learn XNA and Silverlight for Xbox 360 and Windows Phone 7 http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/72753/456964.aspx#456964 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/learn-to-build-your-own-games-for-xbox-360-and-windows-phone-7.aspx http://blogs.msdn.com/b/andrewparsons/archive/2011/01/13/build-a-game-in-48-hours-win-a-kinect-or-windows-phone-7.aspx Extra Credits: Videogame Music http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2019-Videogame-Music Steve Pavlina posts an article with useful information for all XNA/XBLIG developers http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2011/02/completion-vs-perfection/

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• The ASP.NET Daily Community Spotlight - How posts get there, and how to make it your Visual Studio Start Page

  - by Jon Galloway

  One really cool part of my job is selecting the articles for the Daily Community Spotlight, on the home page of the ASP.NET website. The spotlight highlights a new post about ASP.NET development every day from a member of the ASP.NET community. You can find it on the home page of the ASP.NET site, at http://asp.net These posts aren't automatically drawn from a pool of RSS feeds or anything - I pick a new post for each day of the year. How I pick the posts I have a few important selection criteria: Interesting to well rounded ASP.NET developers The ASP.NET website has a lot of material for all skill and experience levels, from download / get started to advanced. I try to select community spotlight posts to round that out with fresh and timely information that working ASP.NET developers can really use. Posts highlight solutions to common problems, clever projects and code that helps you leverage ASP.NET, and important announcements about things you can use today. As part of that, I try to mix between ASP.NET MVC, Web Forms, and Web Pages (a.k.a. WebMatrix). As a professional developer, I want to keep on top of all of my options for ASP.NET development, and the common platform base they all share generally means that good ASP.NET code is good ASP.NET code. Exposing new and non-Microsoft community members as much as possible The exercise of selecting good ASP.NET community posts every day of the year has made me think about what the community is. Given the choice, I'll always favor non-Microsoft employees, but since Microsoft often hires ASP.NET community members and MVP's (myself included), I really think that the ASP.NET community includes developers who are using and writing about ASP.NET, both inside and outside of Microsoft. I'm especially excited about the opportunity to highlight new and lesser known bloggers. Usually being featured on the ASP.NET Community Spotlight gives a pretty good traffic bump, and I love being able to both provide great content to the community and encourage lesser known community members by giving them some (much deserved) attention. Announcements only when they're useful to working developers - not marketing Some of the posts are announcements about new releases, such as Scott Hanselman's post on ASP.NET Universal Providers for Session, Memebership, and Roles. I include those when I think they're interesting and of immediate use to you on projects. I occasionally get asked to link to new content from a team at Microsoft; if it's useful and timely content I'll ask them to point me to a blog post by an actual person rather than a faceless team. How the posts are managed This feed used to be managed by an internal spreadsheet on a Sharepoint site, which was painful for a lot of reasons. I took a cue from Jon Udell, who uses of a public Delicious feed feed for his Elm City project, and we moved the management of these posts over to a Delicious feed as well. You can hear more about Jon's use of Delicious in Elm City in our Herding Code interview - still one of my favorite interviews. We ended up with a simpler scenario, but Note: I watched the Yahoo/Delicious news over the past year and was happy to see that Delicious was recently acquired by the founders of YouTube. I investigated several other Delicious competitors, but am happy with Delicious for now. My Delicious feed here: http://www.delicious.com/jon_galloway You can also browse through this past year's ASP.NET Community Spotlight posts using the (pretty cool) Delicious Browse Bar Submitting articles I'm always on the lookout for new articles to feature. The best way to get them to me is to share them via Delicious. It's pretty easy - sign up for an account, then you can add a post and share it to me. Alternatively, you can send them to me via Twitter (@jongalloway) or e-mail (). If you do e-mail me, it helps to include a short description and your full name so I can credit you. Way too many developer blogs don't include names and pictures; if I can't find them I can't feature the post. Subscribing to the Community Spotlight feed The Community Spotlight is available as an RSS feed, so you might want to subscribe to it: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight Setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight feed as your Visual Studio start page If you're an ASP.NET developer, you might consider setting the ASP.NET Community Spotlight as the content for your Visual Studio Start Page. It's really easy - here's how to do it in Visual Studio 2010: Display the Visual Studio Start Page if it's not already showing (View / Start Page) Click on the Latest News tab and enter the following RSS URL: http://www.asp.net/rss/spotlight If you didn't previously have RSS feeds enabled for your start page, click the Enable RSS Feed button Now, every time you start up Visual Studio you'll see great content from members of the ASP.NET community: You can also configure - and disable, if you'd like - the Visual Studio start page in the Tools / Options / Environment / Startup dialog. Credits I'll do a follow-up highlighting some places I commonly find great content for the feed, but I'd like to specifically point out two of them: Elijah Manor posts a lot of great content, which is available in his Twitter feed at @elijahmanor, on his Delicious feed, and on a dedicated website - Web Dev Tweets Chris Alcock's The Morning Brew is a must-read blog which highlights each day's best blog posts across the .NET community. He's an absolute machine, and no matter how obscure the post I find, I can guarantee he'll find it as well if he hasn't already. Did I say must read?

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• On Life and TechEd&hellip;

  - by MOSSLover

  I haven’t been writing here I know.  I am very sorry, but I am just too busy trying to make my personal life just as good as my SharePoint life.  So I was at TechEd again helping with the hands on labs, but I had a very long couple of weeks.  I will have a long week again.  I started out going to my friend, Randy Walker’s, wedding and I ended up at my grandmother’s condo in Fort Lauderdale.  It was a very trying week.  I had to drive 5 1/2 hours to the wedding from St. Louis and back.  So Randy is an awesome person.  He is a great guy and he was the first person ever to nominate me for MVP.  I knew it probably wasn’t going anywhere, but it was the thought that count.  I met Randy in 2008 at Tulsa Techfest.  We had fun jamming out to Rockband.  I knew he was good people back then.  He has let me vent and I have let him vent over countless personal problems.  He has always been a great friend.  So it was a no brainer when I decided to go to his wedding no matter how much driving or stress or lack of sleep it was worth it.  I am incredibly happy for him to finally find a diamond amongst a lot of coal.  To take part in his celebration was so awesome.  I thank him again for letting me participate in this ceremony. Now after Randy’s wedding I drove 5 1/2 hours landed in St. Louis, fed a cat an asthma pill hidden in wet cat food, and slept for 4 hours.  I immediately saw my best friend who dropped me off at the airport and proceeded to TechEd.  I slept 1 hour on each flight, then ended up working a 3 hour shift at TechEd.  The rest of the week was a haze of connecting with people and sleeping very little.  I got to see my friend Tasha and her husband Casey plus a billion other people.  It was a great week and then I got a call from my grandmother.  It turns out her husband was admitted to the hospital. My grandparents on my dad's side have been divorced since the 60s, which means I never got to see them together.  I always felt like they never cliqued.  When I was a kid we would always spend half our time in Chicago at grandma’s and half our time at grandpa’s houses.  We would hang out with my grandpa’s wife Bobbi and my grandma’s husband Leo.  My cousin’s always called Leo by Pappa and my brother and I would use Leo.  My cousins lived in Chicago up until my cousin Gavi was born then they moved to Philadelphia.  I remember complaining to my dad that we never visited anywhere cool just Chicago and Kansas City.  I also remember Leo teaching me and my brother, Sam, how to climb a tree and play tennis on the back of the apartment wall.  My grandfather’s was kind of stuffy and boring, but we always enjoyed my grandmother’s.  She had games and Disney Movies and toys.  Leo always made it a ton of fun to visit.  I’m not sure a lot of people knew this fact, but when I was 16 years old I saw my grandfather on my mother’s side slowly die of congestive heart failure in a nursing home.  When I was 18 I saw my grandmother on my mother’s side slowly die of an infection over a 30 day period.  I hate hospitals and I hate nursing homes, but sometimes you have to suck in your gut and be strong.  I tried to do that this weekend and I hope I did an ok job.  I really hope things get better, but if they don’t I really appreciate everything he has given me in life.  I am a terrible tennis player and I haven’t climbed a tree in ages, but they both encouraged me when encouragement from my parents was lacking.  It was Father’s Day today and I have to at least pay tribute to Leo Morris, because he has been a good person to me all my life.  Technorati Tags: TechEd,Grandparents,Father's Day

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• Some New .NET Toys (Repost)

  - by Kevin Grossnicklaus

  Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit. It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft. The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of. The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today. Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1. You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)? Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox). With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target. Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks. Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment. This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight. You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model. Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here. You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/. This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform. If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs. You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others. Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies. By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done. Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need. I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities. Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results. First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from. For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings. All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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• A Quick Primer on SharePoint Customization

  - by PeterBrunone

  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:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman","serif";} This one goes out to all the people who have been asked to change the way a SharePoint site looks.  Management wants to know how long it will take, and you can whip that out by tomorrow, right?  If you don't have time to prepare a treatise on what's involved, or if you just want to lend some extra weight to your case by quoting a blogger who was an MVP for seven years, then dive right in; this post is for you. There are three main components of SharePoint visual customization:   1)       Theme – A theme encompasses all the standardized text formatting and coloring (borders, fonts, etc), including the background images of various sections. All told, there could be around 50 images involved, and a few hundred CSS (style) classes.  Installing a theme once it’s been created is no great feat.  Given the number of pieces, of course, creating a new theme could take anywhere from a day to a week… once decisions have been made about the desired appearance. 2)      Master Page – A master page provides the framework for page layout.  This includes all the top and side menus, where content shows up, et cetera.  Master pages have been around for a long time in ASP.NET (Microsoft’s web development platform), and they do require some .NET programming knowledge.  Beyond that, in SharePoint, there are a few dozen controls which the system expects find on a given page.  They’re not all used at once, but if they’re not there when they’re needed, chaos ensues.  Estimating a custom master page is difficult, as it depends on the level of customization.  I’ve been on projects where I was brought in simply to fix some problems and add a few finishing touches, and it took 2-3 weeks.  Master page customization requires a large amount of testing time to make sure that the HTML, JavaScript, CSS, and control placement all work well together. 3)      Individual page layout – Each page (ideally) uses a master page for its template, but within the content areas defined by the master page, web parts can be added, removed, and configured from within the browser.  The wireframe that Brent provided could most likely be completed simply by manipulating the content on the home page in this fashion, and we had allowed about a day of effort for the task.  If needed, further functionality can be provided by an experienced ASP.NET developer; custom forms are a common example.  This of course is a bit more in-depth than simple content manipulation and could take several days per page (or more; there’s really no way to quantify this without a set of requirements).   That’s basically it.  To recap:  Fonts and coloring are done with themes, and can take anywhere from a day to a week to create (not counting creative time); required technical skills include HTML, CSS, and image manipulation.  Templated layout is done with master pages, and generally requires a developer familiar with both ASP.NET and SharePoint in particular; it can have far-reaching consequences depending on the complexity of the changes, and could add weeks or months to a project.  Page layout can be as simple as content manipulation in the web browser, taking a few hours per page, or it can involve more detail, like custom forms, and can require programming expertise and significantly more development time.

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• SQL SERVER – Powershell – Importing CSV File Into Database – Video

  - by pinaldave

  Laerte Junior is my very dear friend and Powershell Expert. On my request he has agreed to share Powershell knowledge with us. Laerte Junior is a SQL Server MVP and, through his technology blog and simple-talk articles, an active member of the Microsoft community in Brasil. He is a skilled Principal Database Architect, Developer, and Administrator, specializing in SQL Server and Powershell Programming with over 8 years of hands-on experience. He holds a degree in Computer Science, has been awarded a number of certifications (including MCDBA), and is an expert in SQL Server 2000 / SQL Server 2005 / SQL Server 2008 technologies. Let us read the blog post in his own words. I was reading an excellent post from my great friend Pinal about loading data from CSV files, SQL SERVER – Importing CSV File Into Database – SQL in Sixty Seconds #018 – Video,   to SQL Server and was honored to write another guest post on SQL Authority about the magic of the PowerShell. The biggest stuff in TechEd NA this year was PowerShell. Fellows, if you still don’t know about it, it is better to run. Remember that The Core Servers to SQL Server are the future and consequently the Shell. You don’t want to be out of this, right? Let’s see some PowerShell Magic now. To start our tour, first we need to download these two functions from Powershell and SQL Server Master Jedi Chad Miller.Out-DataTable and Write-DataTable. Save it in a module and add it in your profile. In my case, the module is called functions.psm1. To have some data to play, I created 10 csv files with the same content. I just put the SQL Server Errorlog into a csv file and created 10 copies of it. #Just create a CSV with data to Import. Using SQLErrorLog [reflection.assembly]::LoadWithPartialName(“Microsoft.SqlServer.Smo”) $ServerInstance=new-object (“Microsoft.SqlServer.Management.Smo.Server“) $Env:Computername $ServerInstance.ReadErrorLog() | export-csv-path“c:\SQLAuthority\ErrorLog.csv”-NoTypeInformation for($Count=1;$Count-le 10;$count++)  {       Copy-Item“c:\SQLAuthority\Errorlog.csv”“c:\SQLAuthority\ErrorLog$($count).csv” } Now in my path c:\sqlauthority, I have 10 csv files : Now it is time to create a table. In my case, the SQL Server is called R2D2 and the Database is SQLServerRepository and the table is CSV_SQLAuthority. CREATE TABLE [dbo].[CSV_SQLAuthority]( [LogDate] [datetime] NULL, [Processinfo] [varchar](20) NULL, [Text] [varchar](MAX) NULL ) Let’s play a little bit. I want to import synchronously all csv files from the path to the table: #Importing synchronously $DataImport=Import-Csv-Path ( Get-ChildItem“c:\SQLAuthority\*.csv”) $DataTable=Out-DataTable-InputObject$DataImport Write-DataTable-ServerInstanceR2D2-DatabaseSQLServerRepository-TableNameCSV_SQLAuthority-Data$DataTable Very cool, right? Let’s do it asynchronously and in background using PowerShell  Jobs: #If you want to do it to all asynchronously Start-job-Name‘ImportingAsynchronously‘ ` -InitializationScript  {IpmoFunctions-Force-DisableNameChecking} ` -ScriptBlock {    ` $DataImport=Import-Csv-Path ( Get-ChildItem“c:\SQLAuthority\*.csv”) $DataTable=Out-DataTable-InputObject$DataImport Write-DataTable   -ServerInstance“R2D2″`                   -Database“SQLServerRepository“`                   -TableName“CSV_SQLAuthority“`                   -Data$DataTable             } Oh, but if I have csv files that are large in size and I want to import each one asynchronously. In this case, this is what should be done: Get-ChildItem“c:\SQLAuthority\*.csv” | % { Start-job-Name“$($_)” ` -InitializationScript  {IpmoFunctions-Force-DisableNameChecking} ` -ScriptBlock { $DataImport=Import-Csv-Path$args[0]                $DataTable=Out-DataTable-InputObject$DataImport                Write-DataTable-ServerInstance“R2D2″`                               -Database“SQLServerRepository“`                               -TableName“CSV_SQLAuthority“`                               -Data$DataTable             } -ArgumentList$_.fullname } How cool is that? Let’s make the funny stuff now. Let’s schedule it on an SQL Server Agent Job. If you are using SQL Server 2012, you can use the PowerShell Job Step. Otherwise you need to use a CMDexec job step calling PowerShell.exe. We will use the second option. First, create a ps1 file called ImportCSV.ps1 with the script above and save it in a path. In my case, it is in c:\temp\automation. Just add the line at the end: Get-ChildItem“c:\SQLAuthority\*.csv” | % { Start-job-Name“$($_)” ` -InitializationScript  {IpmoFunctions-Force-DisableNameChecking} ` -ScriptBlock { $DataImport=Import-Csv-Path$args[0]                $DataTable=Out-DataTable-InputObject$DataImport                Write-DataTable-ServerInstance“R2D2″`                               -Database“SQLServerRepository“`                               -TableName“CSV_SQLAuthority“`                               -Data$DataTable             } -ArgumentList$_.fullname } Get-Job | Wait-Job | Out-Null Remove-Job -State Completed Why? See my post Dooh PowerShell Trick–Running Scripts That has Posh Jobs on a SQL Agent Job Remember, this trick is for  ALL scripts that will use PowerShell Jobs and any kind of schedule tool (SQL Server agent, Windows Schedule) Create a Job Called ImportCSV and a step called Step_ImportCSV and choose CMDexec. Then you just need to schedule or run it. I did a short video (with matching good background music) and you can see it at: That’s it guys. C’mon, join me in the #PowerShellLifeStyle. You will love it. If you want to check what we can do with PowerShell and SQL Server, don’t miss Laerte Junior LiveMeeting on July 18. You can have more information in : LiveMeeting VC PowerShell PASS–Troubleshooting SQL Server With PowerShell–English Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology, Video Tagged: Powershell

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• Data Mining Resources

  - by Dejan Sarka

  There are many different types of analyses, each one with its own pros and cons. Relational reports have a predefined structure, and end users cannot change it. They are simple to use for end users. Reports can use real-time data and snapshots of data to show the state of a report at specific points in time. One of the drawbacks is that report authoring is limited to IT pros and advanced users. Any kind of dynamic restructuring is very limited. If real-time data is used for a report, the report has a negative impact on the performance of the source system. Processing of the reports might be slow because the data comes from relational database management systems, which are not optimized for reporting only. If you create a semantic model of your data, your end users can create ad-hoc report structures. However, the development is more complex because a developer is needed to create these semantic models. For OLAP, you typically use specialized database management systems. You get lightning speed of analyses. End users can use rich and thin clients to interactively change the structure of the report. Typically, they do it graphically. However, the development of an OLAP system is many times quite complex. It involves the preparation and maintenance of an enterprise data warehouse and OLAP cubes. In order to exploit the possibility of real-time restructuring of reports, the users must be both active and educated. The data is usually stale, as it is loaded into data warehouses and OLAP cubes with a scheduled process. With data mining, a structure is not selected in advance; it searches for the structure. As a result, data mining can give you the most valuable results because you can discover patterns you did not expect. A data mining model structure is limited only by the attributes that you use to train the model. One of the drawbacks is that a lot of knowledge is needed for a successful data mining project. End users have to understand the results. Subject matter experts and IT professionals need to understand business problem thoroughly. The development might be sometimes even more complex than the development of OLAP cubes. Each type of analysis has its own place in an enterprise system. SQL Server has tools for all kinds of analyses. However, data mining is the most advanced way of analyzing the data; this is the “I” in BI. In order to get the most out of it, you need to learn quite a lot. In this blog post, I am gathering together resources for learning, including forthcoming events. Books Multiple authors: SQL Server MVP Deep Dives – I wrote an introductory data mining chapter there. Erik Veerman, Teo Lachev and Dejan Sarka: MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit (Exam 70-448): Microsoft SQL Server 2008 - Business Intelligence Development and Maintenance – you can find a good overview of a complete BI solution, including data mining, in this book. Jamie MacLennan, ZhaoHui Tang, and Bogdan Crivat: Data Mining with Microsoft SQL Server 2008 – can’t miss this book if you want to mine your data with SQL Server tools. Michael Berry, Gordon Linoff: Mastering Data Mining: The Art and Science of Customer Relationship Management – data mining from both, business and technical perspective. Dorian Pyle: Data Preparation for Data Mining – an in-depth book about data preparation. Thomas and Ronald Wonnacott: Introductory Statistics – if you thought that you could get away without statistics, then you are not serious about data mining. Jiawei Han and Micheline Kamber: Data Mining Concepts and Techniques – in-depth explanation of the most popular data mining algorithms. Michael Berry and Gordon Linoff: Data Mining Techniques – another book that explains data mining algorithms, more fro a business perspective. Paolo Guidici: Applied Data Mining – very mathematical book, only if you enjoy statistics and mathematics in general. Forthcoming presentations I am presenting two data mining related sessions during the PASS Summit in Charlotte, NC: Wednesday, October 16th, 2013 - Fraud Detection: Notes from the Field – I am showing how to use data mining for a specific business problem. The presentation is based on real-life projects. Friday, October 18th: Excel 2013 Advanced Analytics – I am focusing on Excel Data Mining Add-ins, and how to use them together with Power Pivot and other add-ins. This is the most you can get out of Excel. Sinergija 2013, Belgrade, Serbia Tuesday, October 22nd: Excel 2013 Analytics to the Max – another presentation focusing on the most advanced analytics you can get in Excel. SQL Rally Amsterdam, Netherlands Thursday, November 7th: Advanced Analytics in Excel 2013 – and again I am presenting about data mining in Excel. Why three different titles for the same presentation? I don’t know, I guess I forgot the name I proposed every time right after I sent the proposal. Courses Data Mining with SQL Server 2012 – I wrote a 3-day course for SolidQ. If you are interested in this course, which I could also deliver in a shorter seminar way, you can contact your closes SolidQ subsidiary, or, of course, me directly on addresses [email protected] or [email protected]. This course could also complement the existing courseware portfolio of training providers, which are welcome to contact me as well. OK, now you know: no more excuses, start learning data mining, get the most out of your data

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• SUPINFO International University in Mauritius

  Since a while I'm considering to pick up my activities as a student and I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science. Personal motivation I mean after all this years as a professional software (and database) developer I have the personal urge to complete this part of my education. Having various certifications by Microsoft and being awarded as an Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (MVP) twice looks pretty awesome on a resume but having a "proper" degree would just complete my package. During the last couple of years I already got in touch with C-SAC (local business school with degree courses), the University of Mauritius and BCS, the Chartered Institute for IT to check the options to enroll as an experienced software developer. Quite frankly, it was kind of alienating to receive that feedback: Start from scratch! No seriously? Spending x amount of years to sit for courses that might be outdated and form part of your daily routine? Probably being in an awkward situation in which your professional expertise might exceed the lecturers knowledge? I don't know... but if that's path to walk... Well, then I might have to go for it. SUPINFO International University Some weeks ago I was contacted by the General Manager, Education Recruitment and Development of Medine Education Village, Yamal Matabudul, to have a chat on how the local IT scene, namely the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community (MSCC), could assist in their plans to promote their upcoming campus. Medine went into partnership with the French-based SUPINFO International University and Mauritius will be the 36th location world-wide for SUPINFO. Actually, the concept of SUPINFO is very likely to the common understanding of an apprenticeship in Germany. Not only does a student enroll into the programme but will also be placed into various internships as part of the curriculum. It's a big advantage in my opinion as the person stays in touch with the daily procedures and workflows in the real world of IT. Statements like "We just received a 'crash course' of information and learned new technology which is equivalent to 1.5 months of lectures at the university" wouldn't form part of the experience of such an education. Open Day at the Medine Education Village Last Saturday, Medine organised their Open Day and it was the official inauguration of the SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. It's now listed on their website, too - but be warned, the site is mainly in French language although the courses are all done in English. Not only was it a big opportunity to "hang out" on the campus of Medine but it was great to see the first professional partners for their internship programme, too. Oh, just for the records, IOS Indian Ocean Software Ltd. will also be among the future employers for SUPINFO students. More about that in an upcoming blog entry. Open Day at Medine Education Village - SUPINFO International University in Mauritius Mr Alick Mouriesse, President of SUPINFO, arrived the previous day and he gave all attendees a great overview of the roots of SUPINFO, the general development of the educational syllabus and their high emphasis on their partnerships with local IT companies in order to assist their students to get future jobs but also feel the heartbeat of technology live. Something which is completely missing in classic institutions of tertiary education in Computer Science. And since I was on tour with my children, as usual during weekends, he also talked about the outlook of having a SUPINFO campus in Mauritius. Apart from the close connection to IT companies and providing internships to students, SUPINFO clearly works on an international level. Meaning students of SUPINFO can move around the globe and can continue their studies seamlessly. For example, you might enroll for your first year in France, then continue to do 2nd and 3rd year in Canada or any other country with a SUPINFO campus to earn your bachelor degree, and then live and study in Mauritius for the next 2 years to achieve a Master degree. Having a chat with Dale Smith, Expand Technologies, after his interesting session on Technological Entrepreneurship - TechPreneur More questions by other craftsmen of the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community And of course, this concept works in any direction, giving Mauritian students a huge (!) opportunity to live, study and work abroad. And thanks to this, Medine already announced that there will be new facilities near Cascavelle to provide dormitories and other facilities to international students coming to our island. Awesome! Okay, but why SUPINFO? Well, coming back to my original statement - I'd like to get a degree in Computer Science - SUPINFO has a process called Validation of Acquired Experience (VAE) which is tailor-made for employees in the field of IT, and allows you to enroll in their course programme. I already got in touch with their online support chat but was only redirected to some FAQs on their website, unfortunately. So, during the Open Day I seized the opportunity to have an one-on-one conversation with Alick Mouriesse, and he clearly encouraged me to gather my certifications and working experience. SUPINFO does an individual evaluation prior to their assignment regarding course level, and hopefully my chances of getting some modules ahead of studies are looking better than compared to the other institutes. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to go down the easy route but why should someone sit for "Database 101" or "Principles of OOP" when applying and preaching database normalisation and practicing Clean Code Developer are like flesh and blood? Anyway, I'll be off to get my transcripts of certificates together with my course assignments from the old days at the university. Yes, I studied Applied Chemistry for a couple of years before intersecting into IT and software development particularly... ;-)

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• First time shadow mapping problems

  - by user1294203

  I have implemented basic shadow mapping for the first time in OpenGL using shaders and I'm facing some problems. Below you can see an example of my rendered scene: The process of the shadow mapping I'm following is that I render the scene to the framebuffer using a View Matrix from the light point of view and the projection and model matrices used for normal rendering. In the second pass, I send the above MVP matrix from the light point of view to the vertex shader which transforms the position to light space. The fragment shader does the perspective divide and changes the position to texture coordinates. Here is my vertex shader, #version 150 core uniform mat4 ModelViewMatrix; uniform mat3 NormalMatrix; uniform mat4 MVPMatrix; uniform mat4 lightMVP; uniform float scale; in vec3 in_Position; in vec3 in_Normal; in vec2 in_TexCoord; smooth out vec3 pass_Normal; smooth out vec3 pass_Position; smooth out vec2 TexCoord; smooth out vec4 lightspace_Position; void main(void){ pass_Normal = NormalMatrix * in_Normal; pass_Position = (ModelViewMatrix * vec4(scale * in_Position, 1.0)).xyz; lightspace_Position = lightMVP * vec4(scale * in_Position, 1.0); TexCoord = in_TexCoord; gl_Position = MVPMatrix * vec4(scale * in_Position, 1.0); } And my fragment shader, #version 150 core struct Light{ vec3 direction; }; uniform Light light; uniform sampler2D inSampler; uniform sampler2D inShadowMap; smooth in vec3 pass_Normal; smooth in vec3 pass_Position; smooth in vec2 TexCoord; smooth in vec4 lightspace_Position; out vec4 out_Color; float CalcShadowFactor(vec4 lightspace_Position){ vec3 ProjectionCoords = lightspace_Position.xyz / lightspace_Position.w; vec2 UVCoords; UVCoords.x = 0.5 * ProjectionCoords.x + 0.5; UVCoords.y = 0.5 * ProjectionCoords.y + 0.5; float Depth = texture(inShadowMap, UVCoords).x; if(Depth < (ProjectionCoords.z + 0.001)) return 0.5; else return 1.0; } void main(void){ vec3 Normal = normalize(pass_Normal); vec3 light_Direction = -normalize(light.direction); vec3 camera_Direction = normalize(-pass_Position); vec3 half_vector = normalize(camera_Direction + light_Direction); float diffuse = max(0.2, dot(Normal, light_Direction)); vec3 temp_Color = diffuse * vec3(1.0); float specular = max( 0.0, dot( Normal, half_vector) ); float shadowFactor = CalcShadowFactor(lightspace_Position); if(diffuse != 0 && shadowFactor > 0.5){ float fspecular = pow(specular, 128.0); temp_Color += fspecular; } out_Color = vec4(shadowFactor * texture(inSampler, TexCoord).xyz * temp_Color, 1.0); } One of the problems is self shadowing as you can see in the picture, the crate has its own shadow cast on itself. What I have tried is enabling polygon offset (i.e. glEnable(POLYGON_OFFSET_FILL), glPolygonOffset(GLfloat, GLfloat) ) but it didn't change much. As you see in the fragment shader, I have put a static offset value of 0.001 but I have to change the value depending on the distance of the light to get more desirable effects , which not very handy. I also tried using front face culling when I render to the framebuffer, that didn't change much too. The other problem is that pixels outside the Light's view frustum get shaded. The only object that is supposed to be able to cast shadows is the crate. I guess I should pick more appropriate projection and view matrices, but I'm not sure how to do that. What are some common practices, should I pick an orthographic projection? From googling around a bit, I understand that these issues are not that trivial. Does anyone have any easy to implement solutions to these problems. Could you give me some additional tips? Please ask me if you need more information on my code. Here is a comparison with and without shadow mapping of a close-up of the crate. The self-shadowing is more visible.

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• High Jinks, Hi Jacks, Exceptional DBA Awards and PASS

  - by Rodney

  The countdown to PASS has counted down.  The day after tomorrow I will board a plane, like many others, on my way for the 4th year in a row to SQL PASS Summit.  The anticipation has been excruciating but luckily I have this little thing called a day job as a DBA that has kept me busy and not thinking too much about the event. Well that is not exactly true since my beautiful wife works for PASS so we get to talk about SQL from the time we wake up until late in the evening. I would not have it any other way and I feel very fortunate to be a part of this great event and to have been chosen as the Exceptional DBA Award judge also for the 4th year in a row.  This year, I will have been again tasked with presenting the award to the winner, Mr. Jeff Moden and it will be a true honor to meet him in person as I have read many of his articles on SSC and have attended his session at PASS previously.  The speech is all ready but one item remains, which will be a surprise to all who attend the party on Tuesday night in Seattle (see links below).  Let's face it, Exceptional DBAs everywhere work very hard protecting our data stores, tuning queries, mentoring, saving money, installing clusters, etc and once in a while there is time to be exceptionally non-professional and have a bit of fun. Once incident that happened this year that falls under the High Jinks category was when my network admin asked if I could Telnet into a SQL instance and see if I could make the connection through the firewall that he had just configured. I was able to establish a connection on port 1433 and it occurred to me that it would be very interesting if I could actually run T-SQL queries via a Telnet session much like you might do with an SMTP server. With that thought, I proceeded to demonstrate this could be possible by convincing my senior DBA Shawn McGehee that I was able to do so. At first he did not believe me. It shook his world view.  It was inconceivable.  What I had done, behind the scenes, of course, was to copy and rename SQLCMD.exe to Telnet.exe and used it to connect and run a simple, "Select * from sys.databases" on the SQL instance. I think if it had been anyone other than Shawn I could have extended this ruse indefinitely but he caught on within 30 seconds. It was a fun thirty seconds though. On the High Jacks side of the house, which is really merged to be SQL HACKS, I finally, after several years of struggling with how to connect to an untrusted domain like in a DMZ with a windows account in SSMS, I stumbled upon a solution that does away with the requirement to use SQL Authentication.  While "Runas" is a great command to use to run an application with a higher privileged account, I had not previously been able to figure out how to connect to the remote domain with SSMS and "Runsas". It never connected and caused a login failure every time for the remote windows domain account. Then I ran across an option for "Runas",   "/netonly".  This option postpones the login until a connection is made and only then passes the remote login you supply when you first launch SSMS with the "Runas" command. So a typical shortcut would look like: "C:\Windows\System32\runas.exe /netonly /user:remotedomain.com\rodlandrum "C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\100\Tools\Binn\VSShell\Common7\IDE\Ssms.exe" You will want to make sure the passwords are synced between the two domains, your local domain and the remote domain, otherwise you may have account lockout issues, but I have found in weeks of testing this is a stable solution. Now it is time to get ready to head for Seattle. Please, if you see me (@SQLBeat) or my wife (@Karlakay22) please run up and high five me (wait..High Jinks.High Jacks.High Fives.Need to change the title) or give me a big bear hug if you are strong enough to lift me off the ground. And if you do actually do that, I will think you are awesome and will not embarrass you by crying out for help or complaining of a broken back or sciatic nerve damage. And now the links to others who have all of the details. First, for the MVP Deep Dives 2, of which, like John, I was lucky enough to be able to participate in this year. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/johnm/archive/2011/09/29/103577.aspx And the details of the SSC party where the Exceptional DBA of 2011, Jeff Moden, will be awarded. http://www.simple-talk.com/community/blogs/rebecca_amos/archive/2011/10/05/103661.aspx   Cheers! Rodney

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• Some New .NET Downloads and Resources

  - by Kevin Grossnicklaus

  Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit.  It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft.  The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of.  The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today.  Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1.  You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)?  Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox).   With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target.  Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks.  Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment.  This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight.  You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model.   Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here.  You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/.   This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform.  If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs.  You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others.  Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies.  By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done.  Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need.  I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities.  Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results.  First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from.  For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings.  All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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• When is my View too smart?

  - by Kyle Burns

  In this posting, I will discuss the motivation behind keeping View code as thin as possible when using patterns such as MVC, MVVM, and MVP.  Once the motivation is identified, I will examine some ways to determine whether a View contains logic that belongs in another part of the application.  While the concepts that I will discuss are applicable to most any pattern which favors a thin View, any concrete examples that I present will center on ASP.NET MVC. Design patterns that include a Model, a View, and other components such as a Controller, ViewModel, or Presenter are not new to application development.  These patterns have, in fact, been around since the early days of building applications with graphical interfaces.  The reason that these patterns emerged is simple – the code running closest to the user tends to be littered with logic and library calls that center around implementation details of showing and manipulating user interface widgets and when this type of code is interspersed with application domain logic it becomes difficult to understand and much more difficult to adequately test.  By removing domain logic from the View, we ensure that the View has a single responsibility of drawing the screen which, in turn, makes our application easier to understand and maintain. I was recently asked to take a look at an ASP.NET MVC View because the developer reviewing it thought that it possibly had too much going on in the view.  I looked at the .CSHTML file and the first thing that occurred to me was that it began with 40 lines of code declaring member variables and performing the necessary calculations to populate these variables, which were later either output directly to the page or used to control some conditional rendering action (such as adding a class name to an HTML element or not rendering another element at all).  This exhibited both of what I consider the primary heuristics (or code smells) indicating that the View is too smart: Member variables – in general, variables in View code are an indication that the Model to which the View is being bound is not sufficient for the needs of the View and that the View has had to augment that Model.  Notable exceptions to this guideline include variables used to hold information specifically related to rendering (such as a dynamically determined CSS class name or the depth within a recursive structure for indentation purposes) and variables which are used to facilitate looping through collections while binding. Arithmetic – as with member variables, the presence of arithmetic operators within View code are an indication that the Model servicing the View is insufficient for its needs.  For example, if the Model represents a line item in a sales order, it might seem perfectly natural to “normalize” the Model by storing the quantity and unit price in the Model and multiply these within the View to show the line total.  While this does seem natural, it introduces a business rule to the View code and makes it impossible to test that the rounding of the result meets the requirement of the business without executing the View.  Within View code, arithmetic should only be used for activities such as incrementing loop counters and calculating element widths. In addition to the two characteristics of a “Smart View” that I’ve discussed already, this View also exhibited another heuristic that commonly indicates to me the need to refactor a View and make it a bit less smart.  That characteristic is the existence of Boolean logic that either does not work directly with properties of the Model or works with too many properties of the Model.  Consider the following code and consider how logic that does not work directly with properties of the Model is just another form of the “member variable” heuristic covered earlier: @if(DateTime.Now.Hour < 12) {     <div>Good Morning!</div> } else {     <div>Greetings</div> } This code performs business logic to determine whether it is morning.  A possible refactoring would be to add an IsMorning property to the Model, but in this particular case there is enough similarity between the branches that the entire branching structure could be collapsed by adding a Greeting property to the Model and using it similarly to the following: <div>@Model.Greeting</div> Now let’s look at some complex logic around multiple Model properties: @if (ModelPageNumber + Model.NumbersToDisplay == Model.PageCount         || (Model.PageCount != Model.CurrentPage             && !Model.DisplayValues.Contains(Model.PageCount))) {     <div>There's more to see!</div> } In this scenario, not only is the View code difficult to read (you shouldn’t have to play “human compiler” to determine the purpose of the code), but it also complex enough to be at risk for logical errors that cannot be detected without executing the View.  Conditional logic that requires more than a single logical operator should be looked at more closely to determine whether the condition should be evaluated elsewhere and exposed as a single property of the Model.  Moving the logic above outside of the View and exposing a new Model property would simplify the View code to: @if(Model.HasMoreToSee) {     <div>There’s more to see!</div> } In this posting I have briefly discussed some of the more prominent heuristics that indicate a need to push code from the View into other pieces of the application.  You should now be able to recognize these symptoms when building or maintaining Views (or the Models that support them) in your applications.

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