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• Spawning BackgroundWorkers

  - by washtik

  We have a business case that would be perfect for multiple BackgroundWorkers. As an example, we have a form with a "Save" button on it. Normally we would run all the save commands (Save is an example) synchronously and then close the form. We would like to now split the work onto separate threads using backgroundworker. We will loop through each "Save" required (could be many and/or different number of commands that need executing) creating a BackgroundWorker for each command required. The question is ... how do we wait for ALL the BackgroundWorkers to complete before we close the form. We understand how to wait for a single BackgroundWorker to complete but when we have X number of BackgroundWorkers operating, how do we wait until all are complete before closing the UI form?

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• Inside Red Gate - Divisions

  - by Simon Cooper

  When I joined Red Gate back in 2007, there were around 80 people in the company. Now, around 3 years later, it's grown to more than 200. It's a constant battle against Dunbar's number; the maximum number of people you can keep track of in a social group, to try and maintain that 'small company' feel that attracted myself and so many others to apply in the first place. There are several strategies the company's developed over the years to try and mitigate the effects of Dunbar's number. One of the main ones has been divisionalisation. Divisions The first division, .NET, appeared around the same time that I started in 2007. This combined the development, sales, marketing and management of the .NET tools (then, ANTS Profiler v3) into a separate section of the office. The idea was to increase the cohesion and communication between the different people involved in the entire lifecycle of the tools; from initial product development, through to marketing, then to customer support, who would feed back to the development team. This was such a success that the other development teams were re-worked around this model in 2009. Nowadays there are 4 divisions - SQL Tools, DBA, .NET, and New Business. Along the way there have been various tweaks to the details - the sales teams have been merged into the divisions, marketing and product support have been (mostly) centralised - but the same basic model remains. So, how has this helped? As Red Gate has continued to grow over the years, divisionalisation has turned Red Gate from a monolithic software company into what one person described as a 'federation of small businesses'. Each division is free to structure itself as it sees fit, it's free to decide what to concentrate development work on, organise its own newsletters and webinars, decide its own release schedule. Each division is its own small business. In terms of numbers, the size of each division varies from 20 people (.NET) to 52 (SQL Tools); well below Dunbar's number. From a developer's perspective, this means organisational structure is very flat & wide - there's only 2 layers between myself and the CEOs (not that it matters much; everyone can go and have a chat to Neil or Simon, or anyone else inbetween, whenever they want. Provided you can catch them at their desk!). As Red Gate grows, and expands into new areas, new divisions will be created as needed, old ones merged or disbanded, but the division structure will help to maintain that small-company feel that keeps Red Gate working as it does.

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• AutoMapper a viable alternative to two way databinding using a FormView?

  - by tbone

  I've started using the FormView control to enable two way databinding in asp.net webforms. I liked that it saved me the trouble of writing loadForm and unloadForm routines on every page. So it seemed to work nicely at the start when I was just using textboxes everywhere....but when it came time to start converting some to DropDownLists, all hell broke lose. For example, see: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2435185/not-possible-to-load-dropdownlist-on-formview-from-code-behind ....and I had many additional problems after that. So I happened upon an article on AutoMapper, which I know very little about yet, but from the sounds of it, this might be a viable alternative to two-way databinding a form to an domain entity object? From what I understand, AutoMapper basically operates on naming convention, so, it will look for matched names properties(?) on the source and destination objects. So, basically, I have all my domain entities (ie: Person) with properties (FirstName, LastName, Address, etc)....what I would like to be able to do is declare my asp controls with those exact same names, and have automapper do the loading and unloading. One obvious caveat is that AutoMapper would have to know the proper property name for each control type, ie: Person.FirstName -- form.FirstName*.Text* Person.Country -- form.Country.SelectedValue Person.IsVerified -- form.IsVerified.Checked ....so it would have to have the smarts to find the control on the form, determine its type, and then load/unload between the domain object and the webform control into the proper property of the control. So if this worked, a person could just get rid of the cursed FormView control entirely, and it would be just one line of code each for binding and unbinding a webform. Possible?

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• Using the WinForms web browser control

  - by Khou

  Using the standard .NET web browser control how do you... 1)Auto POST (ie submit) a form 2) Detect form has been posted and the browser has been landed on the specified page (this is to check that the user has logged in) 3) detect form input value on a change event

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• I’m a SQL Server DBA, and I’m in Love with Powershell

  To learn PowerShell, Laerte suggests that you just start using it. To encourage you to start, he provides a series of tips on using PowerShell with SQL Server to solve various everyday problems. With a little patience, a good IDE, and a bit of help and advice, "the lion is dead".

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• When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

  - by Phil Factor

  You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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• What was missing from the Content Strategy Forum?

  - by Roger Hart

  In April, Paris hosted the first ever Content Strategy Forum. The event's website proudly proclaims: 170 attendees, 18 nationalities, 17 speakers, 1 volcano... Content Strategy Forum 2010 rocked the world! The volcano was in Iceland, and the closest we came to rocking the world was a cursory mention in the Huffington Post, but I'll grant the event was awesome. One thing missing from that list, however, is "94 companies" (Plus a couple of universities and freelancers, and what have you). A glance through the attendees directory reveals a fairly wide organisational turnout - 24 students from two Parisian universities, countless design and marketing agencies, a series of tech firms, small and large. Two delegates from IBM, two from ARM, an appearance from RIM, Skype, and Facebook; twelve from the various bits of eBay. Oh, and, err, nobody from Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Amazon, Play, Twitter, LinkedIn, Craigslist, the BBC, no banks I noticed, and I didn't spot a newspaper. You get the idea. Facebook notwithstanding, you have to scroll through a few pages to Alexa rankings to find company names from the attendee list. I find this interesting, and I'm not wholly sure what to make of it. Of the large, web-centric, content-rich organizations conspicuously absent, at least one of two things is true: They didn't know about the event They didn't care about the event Maybe these guys all have content strategy completely sorted, and it's an utterly naturalised part of their business process. Maybe nobody at say, Apple or Play.com ever publishes a single piece of content that isn't neatly tailored to their (clearly defined, of course) user and business goals. Wouldn't that be lovely? The thing is, in that rosy and beatific world, there's still a case for those folks to join the community. There are bound to be other perspectives, and things to learn. You see, the other thing achingly conspicuous by its absence was case studies. In her keynote address, Kristina Halvorson made the point that what content strategy really needs is some big, loud success stories. A point I'd firmly second as a content strategist working within an organisation. Sarah Cancilla's presentation on content strategy at Facebook included some very neat, specific examples, and was richer for it. It didn't hurt that the example was Facebook - you're getting impressively big numbers off base. What about the other big boys? Is there anybody out there with a perspective? Do we all just look very silly to you, fretting away over text and images and users and purposes? Is content validation and maintenance so accustomed a part of your business that calling attention to it is like sniffing the air and saying "Hmm, a lot of nitrogen about today."? And if it is, do you have any wisdom to share?

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• Tron: Legacy, 3D goggles, and embedded UA

  - by Roger Hart

  The 3D edition of Tron: Legacy opens with embedded user assistance. The film starts with an iconic white-on-black command-prompt message exhorting viewers to keep their 3D glasses on throughout. I can't quote it verbatim, and at the time of writing nor could anybody findable with 5 minutes of googling. But it was something like: "Although parts of the movie are 2D, it was shot in 3D, and glasses should be worn at all times. This is how it was intended to be viewed" Yeah - "intended". That part is verbatim. Wow. Now, I appreciate that even out of the small sub-set of readers who care a rat's ass for critical theory, few will be quite so gung-ho for the whole "death of the author" shtick as I tend to be. And yes, this is ergonomic rather than interpretive, but really - telling an audience how you expect them to watch a movie? That's up there with Big Steve's "you're holding it wrong" Even if it solves the problem, it's pretty arrogant. If anything, it's worse than RTFM. And if enough people are doing it wrong that you have to include the announcement, then maybe - just maybe - you've got a UX and/or design problem. Plus, current 3D glasses are like sitting in a darkened room, cosplaying the lovechild of Spider Jerusalem and Jarvis Cocker. Ok, so that observation was weirder than it was helpful; but seriously, nobody wants to wear the glasses if they don't have to. They ruin the visual experience of the non-3D sections, and personally, I find them pretty disruptive to the suspension of disbelief. This is an old, old, problem, and I'm carping on about it because Tron is enjoyable mass-market slush. It's easier for me to say "no, I can't just put some text on it. It's fundamentally broken, redesign it." in the middle of a small-ish, agile, software project than it would be for some beleaguered production assistant at the end of editing a $200 million movie. But lots of folks in software don't even get to do that. Way more people are going to see Tron, and be annoyed by this, than will ever read a technical communication blog. So hopefully, after two hours of being mildly annoyed, wanting to turn the brightness up, and slowly getting a headache, they'll realise something very, very important: you just can't document your way out of a shoddy UI.

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• Oi! What's going on with the .NET Reflector update mechanism?

  - by Bart Read

  Anyone who's been using .NET Reflector for any length of time will by now be used to its built-in update mechanism. Every 6 months or so it will ask you to upgrade to the latest version and, if you don't, will refuse to work after a few weeks have passed. Love it or hate it, it mostly works pretty well, unless your internet connection is down, in which case it can be a pain in the ass (we're discussing options to improve this situation at the moment because, if you haven't fired it up for a while,...(read more)

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• Creating a multi-step process with mysql and php

  - by Paul Atkins

  Hi, I am working on a script which allows users to create a stepped process. The steps will consist of sending visitors to urls where they will fill out a form then be directed to the next step the user has created. Each user can create as many steps as they wish and the url for each step will be unique. I am not sure if I am doing this in the correct/most efficient way so I have a few questions about this. Before I begin here is a simple version of my table structure: step_id user_id step_url step_order 1 1 example.com?step=1 1 2 2 test.com?step=1 1 3 1 example.com?step=3 2 A visitor will be directed to step_url: example.com?step=1 by user_id: 1 On this page there will be a form which contains a hidden field with the value of the step_id like this: <input type="hidden" name="step_id" value="1"> Once the visitor has filled out this form it will be processed by my script at a url similar to: http://mysite.com/form-process.php Once the form has been submitted I then need to direct the visitor to the next step my user has created. I would currently do this using code similar to this: SELECT step_url FROM table WHERE step_order='$current_step_order'+1 Here are my questions about this: Is this the best most efficient way to accomplish this? Or is there a better way? As the step_id column is auto increment...how would I increment the order column by 1 each time a user inserts a new step? Thanks for taking the time to read this. Paul

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• How much will .NET Reflector Pro cost?

  - by Bart Read

  Somebody asked about this on our beta support forum earlier, so I thought I'd mirror the information I posted in my response here as well. We're going to make full pricing information available with the product is released, but for now I can say that .NET Reflector Pro will initially cost $195 for a single user license, with discounts available for multi-user licenses, which follows a similar pattern to our other products. .NET Reflector Pro will also be added to the .NET Developer Tools bundle,...(read more)

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• MVC moq unit test the object before RedirecToAction()

  - by Daoming Yang

  I want to test the data inside the "item" object before it redirect to another action. public ActionResult WebPageEdit(WebPage item, FormCollection form) { if (ModelState.IsValid) { item.Description = Utils.CrossSiteScriptingAttackCheck(item.Description); item.Content = Utils.CrossSiteScriptingAttackCheck(item.Content); item.Title = item.Title.Trim(); item.DateUpdated = DateTime.Now; // Other logic stuff here webPagesRepository.Save(item); return RedirectToAction("WebPageList"); } Here is my Test method: [Test] public void Admin_WebPageEdit_Save() { var controller = new AdminController(); controller.webPagesRepository = DataMock.WebPageDataInit(); controller.categoriesRepository = DataMock.WebPageCategoryDataInit(); FormCollection form = DataMock.CreateWebPageFormCollection(); RedirectToRouteResult actionResult = (RedirectToRouteResult)controller.WebPageEdit(webPagesRepository.Get(1), form); Assert.IsNotNull(actionResult); Assert.AreEqual("WebPageList", actionResult.RouteValues["action"]); var item = ((ViewResult)controller.WebPageEdit(webPagesRepository.Get(1), form)).ViewData.Model as WebPage; Assert.NotNull(item); Assert.AreEqual(2, item.CategoryID); } It failed at this line: var item = ((ViewResult)controller.WebPageEdit(webPagesRepository.Get(1), form)).ViewData.Model as WebPage; I am thinking about is there any ways to test the "item" object before it redirect to other actions?

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• Watching the oil slick

  - by fatherjack

  Having dominated the news for the last month or more BP's problems with one of their oil exploration endeavours is a problem that will affect the whole planet. Now I dont know the whole story, either how it all happened or what is being done to restore some sort of control (I have heard about shredded tyres and golf balls being pumped into the hole but am not sure if that was a satirical program mocking the situation or an actual event . golf balls . seriously!? ). I started wondering what the...(read more)

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• Red Gate .NET Tool Support for Visual Studio 2010

  - by Bart Read

  A *small* matter left unaddressed in my last post....(read more)

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• Do your good deed for the day: nominate an exceptional DBA

  - by Rebecca Amos

  Do you know an exceptional DBA? Think they deserve recognition at the world’s largest technical SQL Server conference? Nominate them for the Exceptional DBA Award 2011, and they could be accepting the prize at this year’s PASS Summit. Hard-working DBAs are crucial to the smooth-running of the companies they work for, so we want you to help us celebrate their achievements. Nominating someone for the Exceptional DBA Award simply involves answering a few questions about the nominee’s achievements and experience as a DBA, activities they’re involved in within the SQL Server community, and any mistakes they might have made along the way (we’ve all made them!), and how they handled them. They could win full conference registration to the PASS Summit (where the Award will be presented), and a copy of Red Gate’s SQL DBA Bundle. And you’ll have the feel-good satisfaction of knowing that you’ve helped a colleague or friend get the recognition they deserve (they’ll probably owe you a drink or two, too…). So do your good deed for the day: have a look at our website for all the info, and get started on your nomination: www.exceptionaldba.com

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• Get the currently saved object in a view in Django

  - by mridang

  Hi, I has a Django view which is accessed through an AJAX call. It's a pretty simple one — all it does is simply pass the request to a form object and save the data. Here's a snippet from my view: form = AddSiteForm(request.user, request.POST) if form.is_valid(): obj = form.save(commit=False) obj.user = request.user obj.save() data['status'] = 'success' data['html'] = render_to_string('site.html', locals(), context_instance=RequestContext(request)) return HttpResponse(simplejson.dumps(data), mimetype='application/json') How do I get the currently saved object (including the internally generated id column) and pass it to the template? Any help guys? Mridang

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• .NET Reflector & .NET Reflector Pro 6.1 have been released

  - by Bart Read

  .NET Reflector 6.1 and .NET Reflector Pro 6.1 have been released. You can download them from: http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/index.htm .NET Reflector is a class browser and disassembler for .NET assemblies. .NET Reflector Pro is a Visual Studio debugging extension that allows you to step through third party and framework assemblies, as if they were built from your own source code. This release fixes several problems that were present in the 6.0 release: Support for using a copy of Reflector.cfg stored alongside Reflector.exe has been re-enabled so users upgrading from 5.x releases will not lose their settings. Fixed unhandled exception on exit of Visual Studio when .NET Reflector add-in used in conjunction with TestDriven.NET add-in. Added better support for dealing with framework assemblies, which only contain meta-data, in the "Referenced Assemblies" folder. Fixed problem where attempted decompilation with CppCliLanguage add-in would lead to display of a page on the Red Gate website. Added option to activate .NET Reflector Pro to .NET Reflector menu in Visual Studio after receiving feedback from a number of users that it was hard to figure out how to activate the product. For more details about the products please visit: http://www.red-gate.com/products/reflector/index.htm

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• From NaN to Infinity...and Beyond!

  - by Tony Davis

  It is hard to believe that it was once possible to corrupt a SQL Server Database by storing perfectly normal data values into a table; but it is true. In SQL Server 2000 and before, one could inadvertently load invalid data values into certain data types via RPC calls or bulk insert methods rather than DML. In the particular case of the FLOAT data type, this meant that common 'special values' for this type, namely NaN (not-a-number) and +/- infinity, could be quite happily plugged into the database from an application and stored as 'out-of-range' values. This was like a time-bomb. When one then tried to query this data; the values were unsupported and so data pages containing them were flagged as being corrupt. Any query that needed to read a column containing the special value could fail or return unpredictable results. Microsoft even had to issue a hotfix to deal with failures in the automatic recovery process, caused by the presence of these NaN values, which rendered the whole database inaccessible! This problem is history for those of us on more current versions of SQL Server, but its ghost still haunts us. Recently, for example, a developer on Red Gate’s SQL Response team reported a strange problem when attempting to load historical monitoring data into a SQL Server 2005 database via the C# ADO.NET provider. The ratios used in some of their reporting calculations occasionally threw out NaN or infinity values, and the subsequent attempts to load these values resulted in a nasty error. It turns out to be a different manifestation of the same problem. SQL Server 2005 still does not fully support the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, in that the FLOAT data type still cannot handle NaN or infinity values. Instead, they just added validation checks that prevent the 'invalid' values from being loaded in the first place. For people migrating from SQL Server 2000 databases that contained out-of-range FLOAT (or DATETIME etc.) data, to SQL Server 2005, Microsoft have added to the latter's version of the DBCC CHECKDB (or CHECKTABLE) command a DATA_PURITY clause. When enabled, this will seek out the corrupt data, but won’t fix it. You have to do this yourself in what can often be a slow, painful manual process. Our development team, after a quizzical shrug of the shoulders, simply decided to represent NaN and infinity values as NULL, and move on, accepting the minor inconvenience of not being able to tell them apart. However, what of scientific, engineering and other applications that really would like the luxury of being able to both store and access these perfectly-reasonable floating point data values? The sticking point seems to be the stipulation in the IEEE 754 standard that, when NaN is compared to any other value including itself, the answer is "unequal" (i.e. FALSE). This is clearly different from normal number comparisons and has repercussions for such things as indexing operations. Even so, this hardly applies to infinity values, which are single definite values. In fact, there is some encouraging talk in the Connect note on this issue that they might be supported 'in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe'. If didn't happen; SQL 2008 doesn't support NaN or infinity values, though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, based on the MSDN documentation for the FLOAT type, which states that "The behavior of float and real follows the IEEE 754 specification on approximate numeric data types". However, the truth is revealed in the XPath documentation, which states that "…float (53) is not exactly IEEE 754. For example, neither NaN (Not-a-Number) nor infinity is used…". Is it really so hard to fix this problem the right way, and properly support in SQL Server the IEEE 754 standard for the floating point data type, NaNs, infinities and all? Oracle seems to have managed it quite nicely with its BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE types, so it is technically possible. We have an enterprise-class database that is marketed as being part of an 'integrated' Windows platform. Absurdly, we have .NET and XPath libraries that fully support the standard for floating point numbers, and we can't even properly store these values, let alone query them, in the SQL Server database! Cheers, Tony.

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• Post parameters are becoming null (at random)

  - by Raghuram Duraisamy

  Hi, My web application is developed with Struts2 and it was working fine till recently. All of a sudden one of the modules has started malfunctioning. The malfunctioning module is 'Update Student details' page. This page has a lot of fields like 'schoolName', 'degreeName', etc . School 1: <input name="schoolName"> School 2: <input name="schoolName"> ..... School n: <input name="schoolName"> As mentioned earlier, the page was working perfectly fine till recently. Now, one/many of the values of 'schoolName', 'degreeName', etc are being received as "" (EMPTY STRING) on the server-side. For debugging, I used firebug and remote-debugging in eclipse. I find that the post-parameters are correct on the client-side. For instance, during one of the submissions the post-parameters were as below (i noted them from firebug). Content-Type: multipart/form-data; boundary=---------------------------2921238217421 Content-Length: 48893 <OTHER_PARAMETERS> <!--Truncated for clarity --> -----------------------------2921238217421 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="schoolName" ABC Institute -----------------------------2921238217421 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="schoolName" Test School -----------------------------2921238217421 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="schoolName" XYZ -----------------------------2921238217421 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="schoolName" Texas Institute -----------------------------2921238217421 Content-Disposition: form-data; name="schoolName" XXXX School -----------------------------2921238217421-- But on the server-side, the request params were as below: schoolName=[ABC Institute, Test School, XYZ, , XXXX School], "Texas Institute" was received as "" (EMPTY STRING) in this particular case. This is not happening consistently. The parameters that become NULL (or EMPTY STRING) seem random to me - during one instance, parameter schoolName[3] became null as illustrated above, parameter schoolName[2] became null during yet another submission, etc. At times, none of the parameters are nullified. The following is the list of the interceptors in the action definition. List of interceptors: ---------------------- FileUploadInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.FileUploadInterceptor ServletConfigInterceptor org.apache.struts2.interceptor.ServletConfigInterceptor StaticParametersInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.StaticParametersInterceptor ParametersInterceptor com.opensymphony.xwork2.interceptor.ParametersInterceptor MyCustomInterceptor com.xxxx.yyyy.interceptors.GetLoggedOnUserInterceptor This issue appears rather weird to me and I have not been able to zero-in on the exact cause of the issue. Any help in this regard would be highly appreciated. Thanks in advance. Thanks, Raghuram

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• New site – and a special offer

  - by Red Gate Software BI Tools Team

  SSAS Compare has a brand new website! The old page was thrown together in the way that most Red Gate labs sites tend to be — as experimental sites for experimental products. We’ve been developing SSAS Compare for a while now, so we decided it was time for something a bit prettier. The new site is mostly the work of Andrew, our marketing manager, who has all sorts of opinions about websites. One of the opinions Andrew has is that his photo should be on every site on the internet, or at least every Red Gate site on the internet, and that’s why his handsome visage now appears on the SSAS Compare page. Well, that isn’t quite true. According to Andrew, people download more software when they have photos of human beings to look at. We want as many people to try SSAS Compare as possible, so we got the team together for an intimate photoshoot directed by Red Gate’s resident recorder of light, Dom Reed (aka Mr Flibble). The photo will appear on the site as soon as Dom is finished photoshopping us into something more palatable, which is a big job. Until then, you’ll have to put up with Andrew. We’ve also used the new site to announce a special offer. Right now, SSAS Compare is still a free beta, but by signing up to our Early Access Program, you’ll get a 20% discount when we release SSAS Compare as a fully-fledged product. We’ll use your email address to send you news and updates about business intelligence tools from Red Gate (and nothing else). If that sounds good to you, go to the SSAS Compare site to sign up. By the way, the BI Tools team wasn’t the only thing Dom photographed last week. Remember Noemi’s blog about the flamenco dance? We’ll be at SQL Saturday in our home town of Cambridge this Saturday (8th September), handing out flyers of a distinctly Mediterranean flavour. If you’re attending, be sure to say hello!

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• Ad-hoc taxonomy: owning the chess set doesn't mean you decide how the little horsey moves

  - by Roger Hart

  There was one of those little laugh-or-cry moments recently when I heard an anecdote about content strategy failings at a major online retailer. The story goes a bit like this: successful company in a highly commoditized marketplace succeeds on price and largely ignores its content team. Being relatively entrepreneurial, the founders are still knocking around, and occasionally like to "take an interest". One day, they decree that clothing sold on the site can no longer be described as "unisex", because this sounds old fashioned. Sad now. Let me just reiterate for the folks at the back: large retailer, commoditized market place, differentiating on price. That's inherently unstable. Sooner or later, they're going to need one or both of competitive differentiation and significant optimization. I can't speak for the latter, since I'm hypothesizing off a raft of rumour, but one of the simpler paths to the former is to become - or rather acknowledge that they are - a content business. Regardless, they need highly-searchable terminology. Even in the face of tooth and claw resistance to noticing the fundamental position content occupies in driving sales (and SEO) on the web, there's a clear information problem here. Dilettante taxonomy is a disaster. Ok, so this is a small example, but that kind of makes it a good one. Unisex probably is the best way of describing clothing designed to suit either men or women interchangeably. It certainly takes less time to type (and read). It's established terminology, and as a single word, it's significantly better for web readability than a phrasal workaround. Something like "fits men or women" is short, by could fall foul of clause-level discard in web scanning. It's not an adjective, so for intuitive reading it's never going to be near the start of a title or description. It would also clutter up search results, and impose cognitive load in list scanning. Sorry kids, it's just worse. Even if "unisex" were an archaism (which it isn't), the only thing that would weigh against its being more usable and concise terminology would be evidence that this archaism were hurting conversions. Good luck with that. We once - briefly - called one of our products a "Can of worms". It was a bundle in a bug-tracking suite, and we thought it sounded terribly cool. Guess how well that sold. We have information and content professionals for a reason: to make sure that whatever we put in front of users is optimised to meet user and business goals. If that thinking doesn't inform style guides, taxonomy, messaging, title structure, and so forth, you might as well be finger painting.

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• Why won't Javascript assembled Iframe load in IE6 over HTTPS although it will over HTTP?

  - by Lauren

  The issue: The iframe won't load inside the tags on the review and submit page here: https://checkout.netsuite.com/s.nl/c.659197/sc.4/category.confirm/.f Login:[email protected] pass:test03 To produce problem: - Where it says "Your Third Party Shipper Numbers (To enter one, click here.)", click "here" to see the form that won't load in IE6. It seems to load in every other modern browser. The same form works fine on this page (you have to click on the "order sample" button to see the link to the same form): http://www.avaline.com/R3000_3 Here's the HTML: <div style="border-color: rgb(255, 221, 221);" id="itmSampl"> <div id="placeshipnum" style="display: none;"></div> <div id="sampAdd"> <strong>Your Third Party Shipper Numbers</strong> (To enter one, click <a rel="nofollow" href="javascript:;" onclick="enterShipNum()">here</a>.) <ul style="list-style: none outside none; padding-left: 20px;"> <li><span class="bold">UPS #</span>: 333333</li> <li><span class="bold">FedEx #</span>: 777888999</li> </ul> </div> </div> Upon clicking the "to enter one, click here" link this is the iframe HTML in all browsers except IE6 (in IE6, the "shipnum" div element is assembled, but that's it): <div id="placeshipnum" style="display: block;"> <div id="shipnum" style="background: none repeat scroll 0% 0% rgb(255, 255, 255);"> <div class="wrapper-x"> <a title="close window" class="linkfooter" href="javascript:;" onclick="enterShipNum()"> <img height="11" width="11" alt="close window" src="/c.659197/site/av-template/x-image-browser.gif"> </a> </div> <iframe scrolling="no" height="240" frameborder="0" width="190" src="https://forms.netsuite.com/app/site/crm/externalleadpage.nl?compid=659197&amp;formid=56&amp;h=9b260d2f9bca0fd9c300&amp;[email protected]&amp;firstname=Test&amp;lastname=Account&amp;ck=Q1BnzaRXAe_RfjhE&amp;vid=Q1BnzaRXAd3Rfik7&amp;cktime=87919&amp;cart=5257&amp;promocode=SAMPLE&amp;chrole=1014&amp;cjsid=0a0102621f435ef0d0d4b3cd49ab8b2db4e253c671eb" allowtransparency="true" border="0" onload="hideShipLoadImg()" style="display: block;"></iframe></div></div> This is the relevant Javascript: // Allow for shipper number update var shipNumDisplay=0; function enterShipNum() { if (shipNumDisplay == 0){ //odrSampl(); document.getElementById('placeshipnum').style.display="block"; document.getElementById('placeshipnum').innerHTML='<div id="shipnum"><div class="wrapper-x"> <a onclick="enterShipNum()" href="javascript:;" class="linkfooter" title="close window"> <img height="11" width="11" src="/c.659197/site/av-template/x-image-browser.gif" alt="close window" /> </a> </div><iframe onload="hideShipLoadImg()" scrolling="no" height="240" frameborder="0" width="190" border="0" allowtransparency="true" src="https://forms.netsuite.com/app/site/crm/externalleadpage.nl?compid=659197&formid=56&h=9b260d2f9bca0fd9c300&[email protected]&firstname=Test&lastname=Account&ck=Q1BnzaRXAe_RfjhE&vid=Q1BnzaRXAd3Rfik7&cktime=87919&cart=5257&promocode=SAMPLE&chrole=1014&cjsid=0a0102621f435ef0d0d4b3cd49ab8b2db4e253c671eb"></iframe></div>'; shipNumDisplay=1; } else { document.getElementById('placeshipnum').style.display="none"; document.getElementById('shipnum').parentNode.removeChild(document.getElementById('shipnum')); shipNumDisplay=0; } } function hideShipLoadImg(){ var shipiframe= document.getElementById('shipnum').getElementsByTagName('iframe')[0]; shipiframe.style.display = 'block'; shipiframe.parentNode.style.background = '#fff'; } This is most of the form inside the iframe although I don't think it's relevant: <form style="margin: 0pt;" onsubmit="return ( window.isinited &amp;&amp; window.isvalid &amp;&amp; save_record( true ) )" action="/app/site/crm/externalleadpage.nl" enctype="multipart/form-data" method="POST" name="main_form" id="main_form"> <div class="field name"> <label for="firstname">First Name <span class="required">*</span></label> <span class="input" id="firstname_fs"><span class="input" id="firstname_val">Test</span></span><input type="hidden" id="firstname" name="firstname" value="Test" onchange="nlapiFieldChanged(null,'firstname');"> </div> <div class="field name"> <label for="lastname">Last Name <span class="required">*</span></label> <span class="input" id="lastname_fs"><span class="input" id="lastname_val">Account</span></span><input type="hidden" id="lastname" name="lastname" value="Account" onchange="nlapiFieldChanged(null,'lastname');"> </div> <div id="ups" class="field"> <label for="custentity4">UPS # </label> <span id="custentity4_fs" style="white-space: nowrap;"><input type="text" id="custentity4" onblur="if (this.checkvalid == true) {this.isvalid=(validate_field(this,'text',false,false) &amp;&amp; nlapiValidateField(null,'custentity4'));} if (this.isvalid == false) { selectAndFocusField(this); return this.isvalid;}" name="custentity4" size="25" onfocus="if (this.isvalid == true || this.isvalid == false) this.checkvalid=true;" onchange="setWindowChanged(window, true);this.isvalid=(validate_field(this,'text',true,false) &amp;&amp; nlapiValidateField(null,'custentity4'));this.checkvalid=false;if (this.isvalid) {nlapiFieldChanged(null,'custentity4');;}if (this.isvalid) this.isvalid=validate_textfield_maxlen(this,6,true,true);if (!this.isvalid) { selectAndFocusField(this);}return this.isvalid;" class="input" maxlength="6"></span> </div> <div id="fedex" class="field"> <label for="custentity9">FedEx # </label> <span id="custentity9_fs" style="white-space: nowrap;"><input type="text" id="custentity9" onblur="if (this.checkvalid == true) {this.isvalid=(validate_field(this,'text',false,false) &amp;&amp; nlapiValidateField(null,'custentity9'));} if (this.isvalid == false) { selectAndFocusField(this); return this.isvalid;}" name="custentity9" size="25" onfocus="if (this.isvalid == true || this.isvalid == false) this.checkvalid=true;" onchange="setWindowChanged(window, true);this.isvalid=(validate_field(this,'text',true,false) &amp;&amp; nlapiValidateField(null,'custentity9'));this.checkvalid=false;if (this.isvalid) {nlapiFieldChanged(null,'custentity9');;}if (this.isvalid) this.isvalid=validate_textfield_maxlen(this,9,true,true);if (!this.isvalid) { selectAndFocusField(this);}return this.isvalid;" class="input" maxlength="9"></span> </div> <div class="field hidden"><input type="hidden" id="email" name="email" value="[email protected]"></div> <div class="field"><label class="submit" for="submitbutton"><span class="required">*</span> Indicates required fields.</label></div> <input type="submit" id="submitbutton" value="submit"> <!-- REQUIRED HIDDEN FIELDS FOR HTML ONLINE FORM --> <input type="hidden" value="659197" name="compid"><input type="hidden" value="56" name="formid"><input type="hidden" value="" name="id"><input type="hidden" value="9b260d2f9bca0fd9c300" name="h"><input type="hidden" value="-1" name="rectype"><input type="hidden" value="" name="nlapiPI"><input type="hidden" value="" name="nlapiSR"><input type="hidden" value="ShipValidateField" name="nlapiVF"><input type="hidden" value="" name="nlapiFC"><input type="hidden" value="/app/site/crm/externalleadpage.nl?compid=659197&amp;formid=56&amp;h=9b260d2f9bca0fd9c300&amp;[email protected]&amp;firstname=Test&amp;lastname=Account&amp;ck=Q1BnzaRXAe_RfjhE&amp;vid=Q1BnzaRXAd3Rfik7&amp;cktime=87919&amp;cart=5257&amp;promocode=SAMPLE&amp;chrole=1014&amp;cjsid=0a0102621f435ef0d0d4b3cd49ab8b2db4e253c671eb" name="whence"><input type="hidden" name="submitted"> <iframe height="0" style="visibility: hidden;" name="server_commands" id="server_commands" src="javascript:false"></iframe> <!-- END OF REQUIRED HIDDEN FIELDS FOR HTML ONLINE FORM --> </form>

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• Subterranean IL: Filter exception handlers

  - by Simon Cooper

  Filter handlers are the second type of exception handler that aren't accessible from C#. Unlike the other handler types, which have defined conditions for when the handlers execute, filter lets you use custom logic to determine whether the handler should be run. However, similar to a catch block, the filter block does not get run if control flow exits the block without throwing an exception. Introducing filter blocks An example of a filter block in IL is the following: .try { // try block } filter { // filter block endfilter }{ // filter handler } or, in v1 syntax, TryStart: // try block TryEnd: FilterStart: // filter block HandlerStart: // filter handler HandlerEnd: .try TryStart to TryEnd filter FilterStart handler HandlerStart to HandlerEnd In the v1 syntax there is no end label specified for the filter block. This is because the filter block must come immediately before the filter handler; the end of the filter block is the start of the filter handler. The filter block indicates to the CLR whether the filter handler should be executed using a boolean value on the stack when the endfilter instruction is run; true/non-zero if it is to be executed, false/zero if it isn't. At the start of the filter block, and the corresponding filter handler, a reference to the exception thrown is pushed onto the stack as a raw object (you have to manually cast to System.Exception). The allowed IL inside a filter block is tightly controlled; you aren't allowed branches outside the block, rethrow instructions, and other exception handling clauses. You can, however, use call and callvirt instructions to call other methods. Filter block logic To demonstrate filter block logic, in this example I'm filtering on whether there's a particular key in the Data dictionary of the thrown exception: .try { // try block } filter { // Filter starts with exception object on stack // C# code: ((Exception)e).Data.Contains("MyExceptionDataKey") // only execute handler if Contains returns true castclass [mscorlib]System.Exception callvirt instance class [mscorlib]System.Collections.IDictionary [mscorlib]System.Exception::get_Data() ldstr "MyExceptionDataKey" callvirt instance bool [mscorlib]System.Collections.IDictionary::Contains(object) endfilter }{ // filter handler // Also starts off with exception object on stack callvirt instance string [mscorlib]System.Object::ToString() call void [mscorlib]System.Console::WriteLine(string) } Conclusion Filter exception handlers are another exception handler type that isn't accessible from C#, however, just like fault handlers, the behaviour can be replicated using a normal catch block: try { // try block } catch (Exception e) { if (!FilterLogic(e)) throw; // handler logic } So, it's not that great a loss, but it's still annoying that this functionality isn't directly accessible. Well, every feature starts off with minus 100 points, so it's understandable why something like this didn't make it into the C# compiler ahead of a different feature.

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• Google, typography, and cognitive fluency for persuasion

  - by Roger Hart

  Cognitive fluency is - roughly - how easy it is to think about something. Mere Exposure (or familiarity) effects are basically about reacting more favourably to things you see a lot. Which is part of why marketers in generic spaces like insipid mass-market lager will spend quite so much money on getting their logo daubed about the place; or that guy at the bus stop starts to look like a dating prospect after a month or two. Recent thinking suggests that exposure effects likely spin off cognitive fluency. We react favourably to things that are easier to think about. I had to give tech support to an older relative recently, and suggested they Google the problem. They were confused. They could not, apparently, Google the problem, because part of it was that their Google toolbar had mysteriously vanished. Once I'd finished trying not to laugh, I started thinking about typography. This is going somewhere, I promise. Google is a ubiquitous brand. Heck, it's a verb, and their recent, jaw-droppingly well constructed Paris advert is more or less about that ubiquity. It trades on Google's integration into any information-seeking behaviour. But, as my tech support encounter suggests, people settle into comfortable patterns of thinking about things. They build schemas, and altering them can take work. Maybe the ubiquity even works to cement that. Alongside their online effort, Google is running billboard campaigns to advertise Chrome, a free product in a crowded space. They are running these ads in some kind of kooky Calibri / Comic Sans hybrid. Now, at first it seems odd that one of the world's more ubiquitous brands needs to run a big print campaign in public places - surely they have all the fluency they need? Well, not so much. Chrome, after all, is not the same as their core product, so there's some basic awareness work to do, and maybe a whole new batch of exposure effect to try and grab. But why the typeface? It's heavily foregrounded, and the ads are extremely textual. Plus, don't we all know that jovial, off-beat fonts look unprofessional, or something? There's a whole bunch of people who want (often rightly) to ban Comic Sans I wonder, though. Are Google trying to subtly disrupt cognitive fluency? There's an interesting paper (pdf) about - among other things - the effects of typography on they way people answer survey questions. Participants given the slightly harder to read question gave more abstract answers. The paper references other work suggesting that generally speaking, less-fluent question framing elicits more considered answers. The Chrome ad typeface is less fluent for print. Reactions may therefore be more considered, abstract, and disruptive. Is that, in fact, what Google need? They have brand ubiquity, but they want here to change accustomed behaviour, to get people to think about changing their browser. Is this actually a very elegant piece of persuasive information design? If you think about their "what is a browser?" vox pop research video, there's certainly a perceptual barrier they're going to have to tackle somehow.

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• jquery ui dialog modal in asp.net

  - by Abu Hamzah

  i have a form with a button called "add person" so when the user clicks on it i want to open a jquery ui dialgo modal form with and once the use enter the detail (first name, last name etc...) and click submit the form than i want to update the data enter back to gridview.

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