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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 02, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, September 02, 2012Popular ReleasesThisismyusername's codeplex page.: HTML5 Multitouch Example - Fruit Ninja in HTML5: This is an example of how you could create a game such as Fruit Ninja using HTML5's multitouch capabilities. This example isn't responsive enough, so I will be working on that, and it doesn't have great graphics, either. If I had my own webpage, I could store some graphics and upload the game there and it might look halfway decent, but here the fruits are just circles. I hope you enjoy reading the source code anyway.GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixRuminate XNA 4.0 GUI: Release 1.1.1: Fixed bugs with Slider and TextBox. Added ComboBox.Confuser: Confuser build 76542: This is a build of changeset 76542.SharePoint Column & View Permission: SharePoint Column and View Permission v1.2: Version 1.2 of this project. If you will find any bugs please let me know at enti@zoznam.sk or post your findings in Issue TrackerMihmojsos OS: Mihmojsos OS 3 (Smart Rabbit): !Mihmojsos OS 3 Smart Rabbit Mihmojsos Smart Rabbit is now availableDotNetNuke Translator: 01.00.00 Beta: First release of the project.YNA: YNA 0.2 alpha: Wath's new since 0.1 alpha ? A lot of changes but there are the most interresting : StateManager is now better and faster Mouse events for all YnObjects (Sprites, Images, texts) A really big improvement for YnGroup Gamepad support And the news : Tiled Map support (need refactoring) Isometric tiled map support (need refactoring) Transition effect like "FadeIn" and "FadeOut" (YnTransition) Timers (YnTimer) Path management (YnPath, need more refactoring) Downloads All downloads...Audio Pitch & Shift: Audio Pitch And Shift 5.1.0.2: fixed several issues with streaming modeUrlPager: UrlPager 1.2: Fixed bug in which url parameters will lost after paging; ????????url???bug；Sofire Suite: Sofire v1.5.0.0: Sofire v1.5.0.0 ?? ???????? ?????： 1、?? 2、????EntLib.com????????: EntLib.com???????? v3.0: EntLib eCommerce Solution ???Microsoft .Net Framework?????????????????????。Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.Math.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...Christoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0.0901.1830 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install ...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3406 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants DateTime::modify(), DateTime::getOffset() TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode DateTime methods (WordPress posting fix) Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging ...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....New ProjectsATSV: this is a student project for making a new silverlight UI Bookmark Collector: This project is a best practice example of how to use content items in DotNetNuke. It allows you to quickly and easily manage a listing of external links.BPVotingmachine: BP Vote SystemClean My Space: Sort your files in a fun and fast! With Clean My Space you can!CutePlatform: CutePlatform is a platform game based around the PlanetCute graphics pack from Daniel cook, make him a visit in www.lostgardem.comDancTeX: This project is targeting the integration of LaTeX into VisusalStudio. Epi Info™ Companion for Android: A mobile companion to the Epi Info™ 7 desktop tool for epidemiologic data collection and analysis.Flucene: Object Document Mapper for Lucene.Netfluentserializer: FluentSerializer is a library for .NET usable to create serialize/deserialize data through its fluent interface. The methods it creates are compiled.hongjiapp: hongjiappidealthings educational comprehensive administration system: ?????????????????????????????????????????????.Java Accounting Library: The project aims at providing a Financial Accounting Java Library which may be integrated to any other Java Application independent of its Backend Database.mycnblogs: mycnblogsNETPack: Lightweight and flexible packer for .NETRandom Useful Code: This project is where I will store various useful classes I have built over time. Only the code will be provided, no Library or the like.Suleymaniye Tavimi: Namaz vakitleri hesaplama uygulamasidir. Istenilen yer için hesaplama yapar.

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• Getting your bearings and defining the project objective

  - by johndoucette

  I wrote this two years ago and thought it was worth posting… Some may think this is a daunting task and some may even say “what a waste of time” and want to open MS Project and start typing out tasks because someone asked for an estimate and a task list. Hell, maybe you even use Excel and pump out a spreadsheet with some real scientific formula for guessing how long it will take to code a bunch of classes. However, this short exercise will provide the basis for the entire project, whether small or large and be a great friend when communicating to anyone on your team or even your client. I call this the Project Brief. If you find yourself going beyond a single page, then you must decompose the sections and summarize your findings so there is a complete and clear picture of the project you are working on in a relatively short statement. Here is a great quote from the PMBOK (Project Management Body of Knowledge) relative to what a project is;   A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a unique product, service or result. With this in mind, the project brief should encompass the entirety (objective) of the endeavor in its explanation and what it will take (goals) to create the product, service or result (deliverables). Normally the process of identifying the project objective is done during the first stage of a project called the Project Kickoff, but you can perform this very important step anytime to help you get a bearing. There are many more parts to helping a project stay on course, but this is usually the foundation where it can be grounded on. Through a series of 3 exercises, you should be able to come up with the objective, goals and deliverables on your project. Follow these steps, and in no time (about &frac12; hour), you will have the foundation of your project plan. (See examples below) Exercise 1 – Objectives Begin with the end in mind. Think about your project in business terms with a couple things to help you understand the objective; Reference the business benefit in terms of cost, speed and / or quality, Provide a higher level of what the outcome will look like (future sense) It should be non-measurable, that’s what the goals are all about The output should be a single paragraph with three sentences and take 10 minutes to write. *Typically, agreement must be reached on the objectives of the project before you would proceed to the next steps of the project. Exercise 2 – Goals A project goal is a statement that answers questions about who, what, why, where and when. A good project goal statement; Answers the five “W” questions for the project Is measurable in each of its parts Is published and agreed on by all the owners This helps the Project Manager receive confirmation on defining the project target. Using the established project objective done in the first exercise, think about the things it will take to get the job done. Think about tangible activities which are the top level tasks in a typical Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). The overall goal statement plus all the deliverables (next exercise) can be seen as the project team’s contract with the project owners. Write 3 - 5 goals in about 10 minutes. You should not write the words “Who, what, why, where and when, but merely be able to answer the questions when you read a goal. Exercise 3 – Deliverables Every project creates some type of output and these outputs are called deliverables. There are two classes of deliverables; Internal – produced for project team members to meet their goals External – produced for project owners to meet their expectations The list you enter here provides a checklist for the team’s delivery and/or is a statement of all the expectations of the project owners. Here are some typical project deliverables; Product and product documentation End product/system Requirements/feature documents Installation guides Demo/prototype System design documents User guides/help files Plans Project plan Training plan Conversion/installation/delivery plan Test plans Documentation plan Communication plan Reports and general documentation Progress reports System acceptance tests Outstanding bug list Procedures Risk and issue logs Project history Deliverables should go with each of the goals. Have 3-5 deliverables for each goal. When you are done, you will have established a great foundation for the clarity of your project. This exercise can take some time, but with practice, you should be able to whip this one out in 10 minutes as well, especially if you are intimate with an ongoing project. Samples  Objective [Client] is implementing a series of MOSS sites to support external public (Internet), internal employee (Intranet) and an external secure (password protected Internet) applications. This project will focus on the public-facing web site and will provide [Client] with architectural recommendations based on the current design being done by their design partner [Partner] and the internal Content Team. In addition, it will provide [Client] with a development plan and confidence they need to deploy a world class public Internet website. Goals 1.  [Consultant] will provide technical guidance and set project team expectations for the implementation of the MOSS Internet site based on provided features/functions within three weeks. 2.  [Consultant] will understand phase 2 secure password-protected Internet site design and provide recommendations.   Deliverables 1.1  Public Internet (unsecure) Architectural Recommendation Plan 1.2  Physical Site construction Work Breakdown Structure and plan (Time, cost and resources needed) 2.1  Two Factor authentication recommendation document   Objective [Client] is currently using an application developed by [Consultant] many years ago called "XXX". This application, although functional, does not meet their new updated business requirements and contains a few defects which [Client] has developed work-around processes. [Client] would like to have a "new and improved" system to support their membership management needs by expanding membership and subscription capabilities, provide accounting integration with internal (GL) and external (VeriSign) systems, and implement hooks to the current CRM solution. This effort will take place through a series of phases, beginning with envisioning. Goals 1. Through discussions with users, [Consultant] will discover current issues/bugs which need to be resolved which must meet the current functionality requirements within three weeks. 2. [Consultant] will gather requirements from the users about what is "needed" vs. "what they have" for enhancements and provide a high level document supporting their needs. 3. [Consultant] will meet with the team members through a series of meetings and help define the overall project plan to deliver a new and improved solution. Deliverables 1.1 Prioritized list of Current application issues/bugs that need to be resolved 1.2 Provide a resolution plan on the issues/bugs identified in the current application 1.3 Risk Assessment Document 2.1 Deliver a Requirements Document showing high-level [Client] needs for the new XXX application. · New feature functionality not in the application today · Existing functionality that will remain in the new functionality 2.2 Reporting Requirements Document 3.1 A Project Plan showing the deliverables and cost for the next (second) phase of this project. 3.2 A Statement of Work for the next (second) phase of this project. 3.3 An Estimate of any work that would need to follow the second phase.

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• Premature-Optimization and Performance Anxiety

  - by James Michael Hare

  While writing my post analyzing the new .NET 4 ConcurrentDictionary class (here), I fell into one of the classic blunders that I myself always love to warn about.  After analyzing the differences of time between a Dictionary with locking versus the new ConcurrentDictionary class, I noted that the ConcurrentDictionary was faster with read-heavy multi-threaded operations.  Then, I made the classic blunder of thinking that because the original Dictionary with locking was faster for those write-heavy uses, it was the best choice for those types of tasks.  In short, I fell into the premature-optimization anti-pattern. Basically, the premature-optimization anti-pattern is when a developer is coding very early for a perceived (whether rightly-or-wrongly) performance gain and sacrificing good design and maintainability in the process.  At best, the performance gains are usually negligible and at worst, can either negatively impact performance, or can degrade maintainability so much that time to market suffers or the code becomes very fragile due to the complexity. Keep in mind the distinction above.  I'm not talking about valid performance decisions.  There are decisions one should make when designing and writing an application that are valid performance decisions.  Examples of this are knowing the best data structures for a given situation (Dictionary versus List, for example) and choosing performance algorithms (linear search vs. binary search).  But these in my mind are macro optimizations.  The error is not in deciding to use a better data structure or algorithm, the anti-pattern as stated above is when you attempt to over-optimize early on in such a way that it sacrifices maintainability. In my case, I was actually considering trading the safety and maintainability gains of the ConcurrentDictionary (no locking required) for a slight performance gain by using the Dictionary with locking.  This would have been a mistake as I would be trading maintainability (ConcurrentDictionary requires no locking which helps readability) and safety (ConcurrentDictionary is safe for iteration even while being modified and you don't risk the developer locking incorrectly) -- and I fell for it even when I knew to watch out for it.  I think in my case, and it may be true for others as well, a large part of it was due to the time I was trained as a developer.  I began college in in the 90s when C and C++ was king and hardware speed and memory were still relatively priceless commodities and not to be squandered.  In those days, using a long instead of a short could waste precious resources, and as such, we were taught to try to minimize space and favor performance.  This is why in many cases such early code-bases were very hard to maintain.  I don't know how many times I heard back then to avoid too many function calls because of the overhead -- and in fact just last year I heard a new hire in the company where I work declare that she didn't want to refactor a long method because of function call overhead.  Now back then, that may have been a valid concern, but with today's modern hardware even if you're calling a trivial method in an extremely tight loop (which chances are the JIT compiler would optimize anyway) the results of removing method calls to speed up performance are negligible for the great majority of applications.  Now, obviously, there are those coding applications where speed is absolutely king (for example drivers, computer games, operating systems) where such sacrifices may be made.  But I would strongly advice against such optimization because of it's cost.  Many folks that are performing an optimization think it's always a win-win.  That they're simply adding speed to the application, what could possibly be wrong with that?  What they don't realize is the cost of their choice.  For every piece of straight-forward code that you obfuscate with performance enhancements, you risk the introduction of bugs in the long term technical debt of the application.  It will become so fragile over time that maintenance will become a nightmare.  I've seen such applications in places I have worked.  There are times I've seen applications where the designer was so obsessed with performance that they even designed their own memory management system for their application to try to squeeze out every ounce of performance.  Unfortunately, the application stability often suffers as a result and it is very difficult for anyone other than the original designer to maintain. I've even seen this recently where I heard a C++ developer bemoaning that in VS2010 the iterators are about twice as slow as they used to be because Microsoft added range checking (probably as part of the 0x standard implementation).  To me this was almost a joke.  Twice as slow sounds bad, but it almost never as bad as you think -- especially if you're gaining safety.  The only time twice is really that much slower is when once was too slow to begin with.  Think about it.  2 minutes is slow as a response time because 1 minute is slow.  But if an iterator takes 1 microsecond to move one position and a new, safer iterator takes 2 microseconds, this is trivial!  The only way you'd ever really notice this would be in iterating a collection just for the sake of iterating (i.e. no other operations).  To my mind, the added safety makes the extra time worth it. Always favor safety and maintainability when you can.  I know it can be a hard habit to break, especially if you started out your career early or in a language such as C where they are very performance conscious.  But in reality, these type of micro-optimizations only end up hurting you in the long run. Remember the two laws of optimization.  I'm not sure where I first heard these, but they are so true: For beginners: Do not optimize. For experts: Do not optimize yet. This is so true.  If you're a beginner, resist the urge to optimize at all costs.  And if you are an expert, delay that decision.  As long as you have chosen the right data structures and algorithms for your task, your performance will probably be more than sufficient.  Chances are it will be network, database, or disk hits that will be your slow-down, not your code.  As they say, 98% of your code's bottleneck is in 2% of your code so premature-optimization may add maintenance and safety debt that won't have any measurable impact.  Instead, code for maintainability and safety, and then, and only then, when you find a true bottleneck, then you should go back and optimize further.

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• Exception Handling Differences Between 32/64 Bit

  - by Alois Kraus

  I do quite a bit of debugging .NET applications but from time to time I see things that are impossible (at a first look). I may ask you dear reader what your mental exception handling model is. Exception handling is easy after all right? Lets suppose the following code:         private void F1(object sender, EventArgs e)         {             try             {                 F2();             }             catch (Exception ex)             {                 throw new Exception("even worse Exception");             }           }           private void F2()         {             try             {                 F3();             }             finally             {                 throw new Exception("other exception");             }         }           private void F3()         {             throw new NotImplementedException();         }   What will the call stack look like when you break into the catch(Exception) clause in Windbg (32 and 64 bit on .NET 3.5 SP1)? The mental model I have is that when an exception is thrown the stack frames are unwound until the catch handler can execute. An exception does propagate the call chain upwards.   So when F3 does throw an exception the control flow will resume at the finally handler in F2 which does throw another exception hiding the original one (that is nasty) and then the new Exception will be catched in F1 where the catch handler is executed. So we should see in the catch handler in F1 as call stack only the F1 stack frame right? Well lets try it out in Windbg. For this I created a simple Windows Forms application with one button which does execute the F1 method in its click handler. When you compile the application for 64 bit and the catch handler is reached you will find with the following commands in Windbg   Load sos extension from the same path where mscorwks was loaded in the current process .loadby sos mscorwks   Beak on clr exceptions sxe clr   Continue execution g   Dump mixed call stack container C++  and .NET Stacks interleaved 0:000> !DumpStack OS Thread Id: 0x1d8 (0) Child-SP         RetAddr          Call Site 00000000002c88c0 000007fefa68f0bd KERNELBASE!RaiseException+0x39 00000000002c8990 000007fefac42ed0 mscorwks!RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly+0x295 00000000002c8a60 000007ff005dd7f4 mscorwks!JIT_Throw+0x130 00000000002c8c10 000007fefa6942e1 WindowsFormsApplication1!WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F1(System.Object, System.EventArgs)+0xb4 00000000002c8c60 000007fefa661012 mscorwks!ExceptionTracker::CallHandler+0x145 00000000002c8d60 000007fefa711a72 mscorwks!ExceptionTracker::CallCatchHandler+0x9e 00000000002c8df0 0000000077b055cd mscorwks!ProcessCLRException+0x25e 00000000002c8e90 0000000077ae55f8 ntdll!RtlpExecuteHandlerForUnwind+0xd 00000000002c8ec0 000007fefa637c1a ntdll!RtlUnwindEx+0x539 00000000002c9560 000007fefa711a21 mscorwks!ClrUnwindEx+0x36 00000000002c9a70 0000000077b0554d mscorwks!ProcessCLRException+0x20d 00000000002c9b10 0000000077ae5d1c ntdll!RtlpExecuteHandlerForException+0xd 00000000002c9b40 0000000077b1fe48 ntdll!RtlDispatchException+0x3cb 00000000002ca220 000007fefdaeaa7d ntdll!KiUserExceptionDispatcher+0x2e 00000000002ca7e0 000007fefa68f0bd KERNELBASE!RaiseException+0x39 00000000002ca8b0 000007fefac42ed0 mscorwks!RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly+0x295 00000000002ca980 000007ff005dd8df mscorwks!JIT_Throw+0x130 00000000002cab30 000007fefa6942e1 WindowsFormsApplication1!WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F2()+0x9f 00000000002cab80 000007fefa71b5b3 mscorwks!ExceptionTracker::CallHandler+0x145 00000000002cac80 000007fefa70dcd0 mscorwks!ExceptionTracker::ProcessManagedCallFrame+0x683 00000000002caed0 000007fefa7119af mscorwks!ExceptionTracker::ProcessOSExceptionNotification+0x430 00000000002cbd90 0000000077b055cd mscorwks!ProcessCLRException+0x19b 00000000002cbe30 0000000077ae55f8 ntdll!RtlpExecuteHandlerForUnwind+0xd 00000000002cbe60 000007fefa637c1a ntdll!RtlUnwindEx+0x539 00000000002cc500 000007fefa711a21 mscorwks!ClrUnwindEx+0x36 00000000002cca10 0000000077b0554d mscorwks!ProcessCLRException+0x20d 00000000002ccab0 0000000077ae5d1c ntdll!RtlpExecuteHandlerForException+0xd 00000000002ccae0 0000000077b1fe48 ntdll!RtlDispatchException+0x3cb 00000000002cd1c0 000007fefdaeaa7d ntdll!KiUserExceptionDispatcher+0x2e 00000000002cd780 000007fefa68f0bd KERNELBASE!RaiseException+0x39 00000000002cd850 000007fefac42ed0 mscorwks!RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly+0x295 00000000002cd920 000007ff005dd968 mscorwks!JIT_Throw+0x130 00000000002cdad0 000007ff005dd875 WindowsFormsApplication1!WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F3()+0x48 00000000002cdb10 000007ff005dd786 WindowsFormsApplication1!WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F2()+0x35 00000000002cdb60 000007ff005dbe6a WindowsFormsApplication1!WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F1(System.Object, System.EventArgs)+0x46 00000000002cdbc0 000007ff005dd452 System_Windows_Forms!System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(System.EventArgs)+0x5a   Hm okaaay. I see my method F1 two times in this call stack. Looks like we did get some recursion bug. But that can´t be given the obvious code above. Let´s try the same thing in a 32 bit process.  0:000> !DumpStack OS Thread Id: 0x33e4 (0) Current frame: KERNELBASE!RaiseException+0x58 ChildEBP RetAddr  Caller,Callee 0028ed38 767db727 KERNELBASE!RaiseException+0x58, calling ntdll!RtlRaiseException 0028ed4c 68b9008c mscorwks!Binder::RawGetClass+0x20, calling mscorwks!Module::LookupTypeDef 0028ed5c 68b904ff mscorwks!Binder::IsClass+0x23, calling mscorwks!Binder::RawGetClass 0028ed68 68bfb96f mscorwks!Binder::IsException+0x14, calling mscorwks!Binder::IsClass 0028ed78 68bfb996 mscorwks!IsExceptionOfType+0x23, calling mscorwks!Binder::IsException 0028ed80 68bfbb1c mscorwks!RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly+0x2a8, calling KERNEL32!RaiseExceptionStub 0028eda8 68ba0713 mscorwks!Module::ResolveStringRef+0xe0, calling mscorwks!BaseDomain::GetStringObjRefPtrFromUnicodeString 0028edc8 68b91e8d mscorwks!SetObjectReferenceUnchecked+0x19 0028ede0 68c8e910 mscorwks!JIT_Throw+0xfc, calling mscorwks!RaiseTheExceptionInternalOnly 0028ee44 68c8e734 mscorwks!JIT_StrCns+0x22, calling mscorwks!LazyMachStateCaptureState 0028ee54 68c8e865 mscorwks!JIT_Throw+0x1e, calling mscorwks!LazyMachStateCaptureState 0028eea4 02ffaecd (MethodDesc 0x7af08c +0x7d WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F1(System.Object, System.EventArgs)), calling mscorwks!JIT_Throw 0028eeec 02ffaf19 (MethodDesc 0x7af098 +0x29 WindowsFormsApplication1.Form1.F2()), calling 06370634 0028ef58 02ffae37 (MethodDesc 0x7a7bb0 +0x4f System.Windows.Forms.Control.OnClick(System.EventArgs))   That does look more familar. The call stack has been unwound and we do see only some frames into the history where the debugger was smart enough to find out that we have called F2 from F1. The exception handling on 64 bit systems does work quite differently which seems to have the nice property to remember the called methods not only during the first pass of exception filter clauses (during first pass all catch handler are called if they are going to catch the exception which is about to be thrown)  but also when the actual stack unwind has taken place. This makes it possible to follow not only the call stack right at the moment but also to look into the “history” of the catch/finally clauses. In a 64 bit process you only need to look at the ExceptionTracker to find out if a catch or finally handler was called. The two frames ProcessManagedCallFrame/CallHandler does indicate a finally clause whereas CallCatchHandler/CallHandler indicates a catch clause. That was a interesting one. Oh and by the way if you manage to load the Microsoft symbols you can also find out the hidden exception which. When you encounter in the call stack a line 0016eb34 75b79617 KERNELBASE!RaiseException+0x58 ====> Exception Code e0434f4d cxr@16e850 exr@16e838 Then it is a good idea to execute .exr 16e838 !analyze –v to find out more. In the managed world it is even easier since we can dump the objects allocated on the stack which have not yet been garbage collected to look at former method parameters. The command !dso which is the abbreviation for dump stack objects will give you 0:000> !dso OS Thread Id: 0x46c (0) ESP/REG  Object   Name 0016dd4c 020737f0 System.Exception 0016dd98 020737f0 System.Exception 0016dda8 01f5c6cc System.Windows.Forms.Button 0016ddac 01f5d2b8 System.EventHandler 0016ddb0 02071744 System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs 0016ddc0 01f5d2b8 System.EventHandler 0016ddcc 01f5c6cc System.Windows.Forms.Button 0016dddc 020737f0 System.Exception 0016dde4 01f5d2b8 System.EventHandler 0016ddec 02071744 System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs 0016de40 020737f0 System.Exception 0016de80 02071744 System.Windows.Forms.MouseEventArgs 0016de8c 01f5d2b8 System.EventHandler 0016de90 01f5c6cc System.Windows.Forms.Button 0016df10 02073784 System.SByte[] 0016df5c 02073684 System.NotImplementedException 0016e2a0 02073684 System.NotImplementedException 0016e2e8 01ed69f4 System.Resources.ResourceManager From there it is easy to do 0:000> !pe 02073684 Exception object: 02073684 Exception type: System.NotImplementedException Message: Die Methode oder der Vorgang sind nicht implementiert. InnerException: <none> StackTrace (generated):     SP       IP       Function     0016ECB0 006904AD WindowsFormsApplication2!WindowsFormsApplication2.Form1.F3()+0x35     0016ECC0 00690411 WindowsFormsApplication2!WindowsFormsApplication2.Form1.F2()+0x29     0016ECF0 0069038F WindowsFormsApplication2!WindowsFormsApplication2.Form1.F1(System.Object, System.EventArgs)+0x3f StackTraceString: <none> HResult: 80004001 to see the former exception. That´s all for today.

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• Using SSIS to send a HTML E-Mail Message with built-in table of Counts.

  - by Kevin Shyr

  For the record, this can be just as easily done with a .NET class with a DLL call.  The two major reasons for this ending up as a SSIS package are: There are a lot of SQL resources for maintenance, but not as many .NET developers. There is an existing automated process that links up SQL Jobs (more on that in the next post), and this is part of that process.   To start, this is what the SSIS looks like: The first part of the control flow is just for the override scenario.   In the Execute SQL Task, it calls a stored procedure, which already formats the result into XML by using "FOR XML PATH('Row'), ROOT(N'FieldingCounts')".  The result XML string looks like this: <FieldingCounts>   <Row>     <CellId>M COD</CellId>     <Mailed>64</Mailed>     <ReMailed>210</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>274</TotalMail>     <EMailed>233</EMailed>     <TotalSent>297</TotalSent>   </Row>   <Row>     <CellId>M National</CellId>     <Mailed>11</Mailed>     <ReMailed>59</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>70</TotalMail>     <EMailed>90</EMailed>     <TotalSent>101</TotalSent>   </Row>   <Row>     <CellId>U COD</CellId>     <Mailed>91</Mailed>     <ReMailed>238</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>329</TotalMail>     <EMailed>291</EMailed>     <TotalSent>382</TotalSent>   </Row>   <Row>     <CellId>U National</CellId>     <Mailed>63</Mailed>     <ReMailed>286</ReMailed>     <TotalMail>349</TotalMail>     <EMailed>374</EMailed>     <TotalSent>437</TotalSent>   </Row> </FieldingCounts>  This result is saved into an internal SSIS variable with the following settings on the General tab and the Result Set tab:   Now comes the trickier part.  We need to use the XML Task to format the XML string result into an HTML table, and I used Direct input XSLT And here is the code of XSLT: <xsl:stylesheet version="1.0" xmlns:xsl="http://www.w3.org/1999/XSL/Transform"> <xsl:output method="html" indent="yes"/>   <xsl:template match="/ROOT">         <table border="1" cellpadding="6">           <tr>             <td></td>             <td>Mailed</td>             <td>Re-mailed</td>             <td>Total Mail (Mailed, Re-mailed)</td>             <td>E-mailed</td>             <td>Total Sent (Mailed, E-mailed)</td>           </tr>           <xsl:for-each select="FieldingCounts/Row">             <tr>               <xsl:for-each select="./*">                 <td>                   <xsl:value-of select="." />                 </td>               </xsl:for-each>             </tr>           </xsl:for-each>         </table>   </xsl:template> </xsl:stylesheet>    Then a script task is used to send out an HTML email (as we are all painfully aware that SSIS Send Mail Task only sends plain text) Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 using System; using System.Data; using Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime; using System.Windows.Forms; using System.Net.Mail; using System.Net;   namespace ST_b829a2615e714bcfb55db0ce97be3901.csproj {     [System.AddIn.AddIn("ScriptMain", Version = "1.0", Publisher = "", Description = "")]     public partial class ScriptMain : Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Tasks.ScriptTask.VSTARTScriptObjectModelBase     {           #region VSTA generated code         enum ScriptResults         {             Success = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Success,             Failure = Microsoft.SqlServer.Dts.Runtime.DTSExecResult.Failure         };         #endregion           public void Main()         {             String EmailMsgBody = String.Format("<HTML><BODY><P>{0}</P><P>{1}</P></BODY></HTML>"                                                 , Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_MessageSourceText"].Value.ToString()                                                 , Dts.Variables["InternalStr_CountResultAfterXSLT"].Value.ToString());             MailMessage EmailCountMsg = new MailMessage(Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_From"].Value.ToString().Replace(";", ",")                                                         , Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_Success_To"].Value.ToString().Replace(";", ",")                                                         , Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_SubjectLinePrefix"].Value.ToString() + " " + Dts.Variables["InternalStr_FieldingDate"].Value.ToString()                                                         , EmailMsgBody);             //EmailCountMsg.From.             EmailCountMsg.CC.Add(Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_Success_CC"].Value.ToString().Replace(";", ","));             EmailCountMsg.IsBodyHtml = true;               SmtpClient SMTPForCount = new SmtpClient(Dts.Variables["Config_SMTP_ServerAddress"].Value.ToString());             SMTPForCount.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultNetworkCredentials;               SMTPForCount.Send(EmailCountMsg);               Dts.TaskResult = (int)ScriptResults.Success;         }     } } Note on this code: notice the email list has Replace(";", ",").  This is only here because the list is configurable in the SQL Job Step at Set Values, which does not react well with colons as email separator, but system.Net.Mail only handles comma as email separator, hence the extra replace in the string. The result is a nicely formatted email message with count information:

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, August 22, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, August 22, 2014Popular ReleasesQuickMon: Version 3.22: This release add two important changes. 1. Config variables at the monitor pack level (global to entire monitor pack for all Collectors) 2. The QuickMon (Windows) service now automatically reloads monitor packs that have been changed since it was started. This means you don't have to restart the service for changes to take effect.SSIS ReportGeneratorTask: ReportGenerator Task 1.8: New version of the SSIS Report Generator Task that supports SQL Server 2008, 2012 and 2014. In addition to minor bug fixes Multi-Value Parameters and Execution Information were integrated. The complete variable and parameter assignment is now a string and can be set dynamically.Corefig for Windows Server 2012 Core and Hyper-V Server 2012: Corefig 1.1.2 ISO: FixesUpdated Hyper-V scripts to use version 2 of the WMI tree. Updated the Hyper-V check for saved VM to look for the proper identifier. Fixed text issues with the licensing tab (thanks to briangw for rooting this problem out). EnhancementsNew (and improved) version number in Corefig.psd1.Outlook 2013 Backup Add-In: Outlook Backup Add-In 1.3: Changelog for new version: Added button in config-window to reset the last backup-time (this will trigger the backup after closing outlook) Minimum interval set to 0 (backup at each closing of outlook) Catch exception when data store entry is corrupt Added two parameters (prefix and suffix) to automatically rename the backup file Updated VSTO-Runtime to 10.0.50325 Upgraded project to Visual Studio 2013 Added optional command to run after backup (e.g. pack backup files, ...) Add...babelua: 1.6.7.0: V1.6.7.0 - 2014.8.21New feature: add a file search window ( ctrl+1 or ALT+L ), like The file search in VC Assistant; Stability improvement: performance improvement when BabeLua load/unload; performance improvement when debugger load lua files;File Explorer for WPF: FileExplorer3_20August2014: Please see Aug14 Update.Open NFe: RDI Open NFe 3.0 (alpha): Atualização para o layout 3.10 da NFe.ODBC Connect: v1.0: ODBC Connect executables for both 32bit and 64bit ODBC data sourcesMSSQL Deployment Tool: Microsoft SQL Deploy Tool v1.3.1: MicrosoftSqlDeployTool: v1.3.1.38348 What's changed? Update namespace and assembly name. Bug fixing.SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool: SharePoint 2013 Search Query Tool v2.1: Layout improvements Bug fixes Stores auth method and user name Moved experimental settings to Advanced boxCtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.2.2.41183 Alpha: This alpha of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer provides some preliminary Oculus Rift DK2 support. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-2-2-41183-alpha Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or supported by Linden Lab, the makers of Second Life.HDD Guardian: HDD Guardian 0.6.1: New: package now include smartctl 6.3; Removed: standard notification e-mail. Now you have to set your mail server to send e-mail alerts; Bugfix: USB detection error; custom e-mail server settings issue; bottom panel displays a wrong ATA error count.VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: VG-Ripper 2.9.62: changes NEW: Added Support for 'MadImage.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgSpot.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgClick.net' links NEW: Added Support for 'Imaaage.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Image-Bugs.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'Pictomania.org' links NEW: Added Support for 'ImgDap.com' links NEW: Added Support for 'FileSpit.com' links FIXED: 'ImgSee.me' linksMagick.NET: Magick.NET 7.0.0.0001: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 7-Beta.CMake Tools for Visual Studio: CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.2: This release adds the following new features and bug fixes from CMake Tools for Visual Studio 1.1: Added support for CMake 3.0. Added support for word completion. Added IntelliSense support for the CMAKEHOSTSYSTEM_INFORMATION command. Fixed syntax highlighting for tokens beginning with escape sequences. Fixed issue uninstalling CMake Tools for Visual Studio after Visual Studio has been uninstalled.GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay: GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay 1.1: Overview1.1 is the second 'stable' release of the GW2 Personal Assistant Overlay. This version includes just a couple of very minor features and some minor bug fixes. For details regarding installation, setup, and general use, see Documentation. Note: If you were using a previous version, you will probably want to copy over the following user settings files: GW2PAO.DungeonSettings.xml GW2PAO.EventSettings.xml GW2PAO.WvWSettings.xml GW2PAO.ZoneCompletionSettings.xml New FeaturesAdded new "No...Fluentx: Fluentx v1.5.3: Added few more extension methods.fastJSON: v2.1.2: 2.1.2 - bug fix circular referencesJPush.NET: JPush Server SDK 1.2.1 (For JPush V3): Assembly: 1.2.1.24728 JPush REST API Version: v3 JPush Documentation Reference .NET framework: v4.0 or above. Sample: class: JPushClientV3 2014 Augest 15th.SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.043.008 Release 1: Changed ship/station names to use new DisplayName instead of Beacon/Antenna. Fixed issue with updated SE binaries 01.043.018 using new Voxel Material definitions.New Projects1thManage: GDT for erevery oneCreateProjectOnCodePlex: This is the first project for CoderCamps.HEAD FIRST C# LAB 1 : A DAY AT THE RACES: This has been provided for educational purposes and general discussion to improve coding practices associated with the resources detailed within Head First C#.Introduce Audit logging to your EF application using Repository & Unit of Work: Introduce Auditing in your application that uses Entity Framework by utilizing the Repository and Unit of Work design patterns.License Registration (C++): Allow to create demo version, activate or not a module.MS Word SharepointWiki Plugin: Scope of the Plugin is to enable a Post to a Sharepoint Wiki from within MS Word with Formatted Text and Images.Send My Zip: This app will help you to send the files were zipped then send the email about password information. This project is currently in setup mode and only availablewinhttp: this is a project for http/https download.Wix Builder: WixBuilder focusses on easily generating a WiX script from a project ouput, compile and link it into msi installer using the WiX Toolset.XiamiSig: ????????。

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• Free Document/Content Management System Using SharePoint 2010

  - by KunaalKapoor

  That’s right, it’s true. You can use the free version of SharePoint 2010 to meet your document and content management needs and even run your public facing website or an internal knowledge bank.  SharePoint Foundation 2010 is free. It may not have all the features that you get in the enterprise license but it still has enough to cater to your needs to build a document management system and replace age old file shares or folders. I’ve built a dozen content management sites for internal and public use exploiting SharePoint. There are hundreds of web content management systems out there (see CMS Matrix).  On one hand we have commercial platforms like SharePoint, SiteCore, and Ektron etc. which are the most frequently used and on the other hand there are free options like WordPress, Drupal, Joomla, and Plone etc. which are pretty common popular as well. But I would be very surprised if anyone was able to find a single CMS platform that is all things to all people. Infact not a lot of people consider SharePoint’s free version under the free CMS side but its high time organizations benefit from this. Through this blog post I wanted to present SharePoint Foundation as an option for running a FREE CMS platform. Even if you knew that there is a free version of SharePoint, what most people don’t realize is that SharePoint Foundation is a great option for running web sites of all kinds – not just team sites. It is a great option for many reasons, but in reality it is supported by Microsoft, and above all it is FREE (yay!), and it is extremely easy to get started.  From a functionality perspective – it’s hard to beat SharePoint. Even the free version, SharePoint Foundation, offers simple data connectivity (through BCS), cross browser support, accessibility, support for Office Web Apps, blogs, wikis, templates, document support, health analyzer, support for presence, and MUCH more.I often get asked: “Can I use SharePoint 2010 as a document management system?” The answer really depends on ·          What are your specific requirements? ·          What systems you currently have in place for managing documents. ·          And of course how much money you have J Benefits? Not many large organizations have benefited from SharePoint yet. For some it has been an IT project to see what they can achieve with it, for others it has been used as a collaborative platform or in many cases an extended intranet. SharePoint 2010 has changed the game slightly as the improvements that Microsoft have made have been noted by organizations, and we are seeing a lot of companies starting to build specific business applications using SharePoint as the basis, and nearly every business process will require documents at some stage. If you require a document management system and have SharePoint in place then it can be a relatively straight forward decision to use SharePoint, as long as you have reviewed the considerations just discussed. The collaborative nature of SharePoint 2010 is also a massive advantage, as specific departmental or project sites can be created quickly and easily that allow workers to interact in a variety of different ways using one source of information.  This also benefits an organization with regards to how they manage the knowledge that they have, as if all of their information is in one source then it is naturally easier to search and manage. Is SharePoint right for your organization? As just discussed, this can only be determined after defining your requirements and also planning a longer term strategy for how you will manage your documents and information. A key factor to look at is how the users would interact with the system and how much value would it get for your organization. The amount of data and documents that organizations are creating is increasing rapidly each year. Therefore the ability to archive this information, whilst keeping the ability to know what you have and where it is, is vital to any organizations management of their information life cycle. SharePoint is best used for the initial life of business documents where they need to be referenced and accessed after time. It is often beneficial to archive these to overcome for storage and performance issues. FREE CMS – SharePoint, Really? In order to show some of the completely of what comes with this free version of SharePoint 2010, I thought it would make sense to use Wikipedia (since every one trusts it as a credible source). Wikipedia shows that a web content management system typically has the following components: Document Management:   -       CMS software may provide a means of managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction. SharePoint is king when it comes to document management.  Version history, exclusive check-out, security, publication, workflow, and so much more.  Content Virtualization:   -       CMS software may provide a means of allowing each user to work within a virtual copy of the entire Web site, document set, and/or code base. This enables changes to multiple interdependent resources to be viewed and/or executed in-context prior to submission. Through the use of versioning, each content manager can preview, publish, and roll-back content of pages, wiki entries, blog posts, documents, or any other type of content stored in SharePoint.  The idea of each user having an entire copy of the website virtualized is a bit odd to me – not sure why anyone would need that for anything but the simplest of websites. Automated Templates:   -       Create standard output templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, allowing the appearance of all content to be changed from one central place. Through the use of Master Pages and Themes, SharePoint provides the ability to change the entire look and feel of site.  Of course, the older brother version of SharePoint – SharePoint Server 2010 – also introduces the concept of Page Layouts which allows page template level customization and even switching the layout of an individual page using different page templates.  I think many organizations really think they want this but rarely end up using this bit of functionality.  Easy Edits:   -       Once content is separated from the visual presentation of a site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most WCMS software includes WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals to create and edit content. This is probably easier described with a screen cap of a vanilla SharePoint Foundation page in edit mode.  Notice the page editing toolbar, the multiple layout options…  It’s actually easier to use than Microsoft Word. Workflow management: -       Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator can submit a story, but it is not published until the copy editor cleans it up and the editor-in-chief approves it. Workflow, it’s in there. In fact, the same workflow engine is running under SharePoint Foundation that is running under the other versions of SharePoint.  The primary difference is that with SharePoint Foundation – you need to configure the workflows yourself.   Web Standards: -       Active WCMS software usually receives regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards. SharePoint is in the fourth major iteration under Microsoft with the 2010 release.  In addition to the innovation that Microsoft continuously adds, you have the entire global ecosystem available. Scalable Expansion:   -       Available in most modern WCMSs is the ability to expand a single implementation (one installation on one server) across multiple domains. SharePoint Foundation can run multiple sites using multiple URLs on a single server install.  Even more powerful, SharePoint Foundation is scalable and can be part of a multi-server farm to ensure that it will handle any amount of traffic that can be thrown at it. Delegation & Security:  -       Some CMS software allows for various user groups to have limited privileges over specific content on the website, spreading out the responsibility of content management. SharePoint Foundation provides very granular security capabilities. Read @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ee537811.aspx Content Syndication:  -       CMS software often assists in content distribution by generating RSS and Atom data feeds to other systems. They may also e-mail users when updates are available as part of the workflow process. SharePoint Foundation nails it.  With RSS syndication and email alerts available out of the box, content syndication is already in the platform. Multilingual Support: -       Ability to display content in multiple languages. SharePoint Foundation 2010 supports more than 40 languages. Read More Read more @ http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd776256(v=office.12).aspxYou can download the free version from http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=5970

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• The Future of Project Management is Social

  - by Natalia Rachelson

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size: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;} A guest post by Kazim Isfahani, Director, Product Marketing, Oracle Rapid Ascent. Breakneck Speed. Lightning Fast. Perhaps even overwhelming. No matter which set of adjectives we use to describe it, social media’s rise into the enterprise mainstream has been unprecedented. Indeed, the big 4 social media powerhouses (Facebook, Google+, LinkedIn, and Twitter), have nearly 2 Billion users between them. You may be asking (as you should really) “That’s all well and good for the consumer, but for me at my company, what’s your point? Beyond the fact that I can check and post updates, that is.” Good question, kind sir. Impact of Social and Collaboration on Project Management I’ll dovetail this discussion to the project management realm, since that’s what I’m writing about. Speed is a big challenge for project-driven organizations. Anything that can help speed up project delivery - be it a new product introduction effort or a geographical expansion project - fast is a good thing. So where does this whole social thing fit particularly since there are already a host of tools to help with traditional project execution? The fact is companies have seen improvements in their productivity by deploying departmental collaboration and other social-oriented solutions. McKinsey’s survey on social tools shows we have reached critical scale: 72% of respondents report that their companies use at least one and over 40% say they are using social networks and blogs. We don’t hear as much about the impact of social media technologies at the project and project manager level, but that does not mean there is none. Consider the new hire. The type of individual entering the workforce and executing on projects is a generation of worker expecting visually appealing, easy to use and easy to understand technology meshing hand-in-hand with business processes. Consider the project manager. The social era has enhanced the role that the project manager must play. Today’s project manager must be a supreme communicator, an influencer, a sympathizer, a negotiator, and still manage to keep all stakeholders in the loop on project progress. Social tools play a significant role in this effort. Now consider the impact to the project team. The way that a project team functions has changed, with newer, social oriented technologies making the process of information dissemination and team communications much more fluid. It’s clear that a shift is occurring where “social” is intersecting with project management. The Rise of Social Project Management We refer to the melding of project management and social networking as Social Project Management. Social Project Management is based upon the philosophy that the project team is one part of an integrated whole, and that valuable and unique abilities exist within the larger organization. For this reason, Social Project Management systems should be integrated into the collaborative platform(s) of an organization, allowing communication to proceed outside the project boundaries. What makes social project management "social" is an implicit awareness where distributed teams build connected links in ways that were previously restricted to teams that were co-located. Just as critical, Social Project Management embraces the vision of seamless online collaboration within a project team, but also provides for, (and enhances) the use of rigorous project management techniques. Social Project Management acknowledges that projects (particularly large projects) are a social activity - people doing work with people, for other people, with commitments to yet other people. The more people (larger projects), the more interpersonal the interactions, and the more social affects the project. The Epitome of Social - Fusion Project Portfolio Management If I take this one level further to discuss Fusion Project Portfolio Management, the notion of Social Project Management is on full display. With Fusion Project Portfolio Management, project team members have a single place for interaction on projects and access to any other resources working within the Fusion ERP applications. This allows team members the opportunity to be informed with greater participation and provide better information. The application’s the visual appeal, and highly graphical nature makes it easy to navigate information. The project activity stream adds to the intuitive user experience. The goal of productivity is pervasive throughout Fusion Project Portfolio Management. Field research conducted with Oracle customers and partners showed that users needed a way to stay in the context of their core transactions and yet easily access social networking tools. This is manifested in the application so when a user executes a business process, they not only have the transactional application at their fingertips, but also have things like e-mail, SMS, text, instant messaging, chat – all providing a number of different ways to interact with people and/or groups of people, both internal and external to the project and enterprise. But in the end, connecting people is relatively easy. The larger issue is finding a way to serve up relevant, system-generated, actionable information, in real time, which will allow for more streamlined execution on key business processes. Fusion Project Portfolio Management’s design concept enables users to create project communities, establish discussion threads, manage event calendars as well as deliver project based work spaces to organize communications within the context of a project – all within a secure business environment. We’d love to hear from you and get your thoughts and ideas about how Social Project Management is impacting your organization. To learn more about Oracle Fusion Project Portfolio Management, please visit this link

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• Big Visible Charts

  - by Robert May

  An important part of Agile is the concept of transparency and visibility. In proper functioning teams, stakeholders can look at any team at any time in the iteration or release and see how that team is doing by simply looking at what we call Big Visible Charts. If you’ve done Scrum, you’ve seen these charts. However, interpreting these charts can often be an art form. There are several different charts that can be useful. In this newsletter, I’ll focus on the Iteration Burndown and Cumulative Flow charts. I’ve included a copy of the spreadsheet that I used to create the charts, and if you don’t have a tool that creates them for you, you can use this spreadsheet to do so. Our preferred tool for managing Scrum projects is Rally. Rally creates all of these charts for you, saving you quite a bit of time. The Iteration Burndown and Cumulative Flow Charts This is the main chart that teams use. Although less useful to stakeholders, this chart is critical to the team and provides quite a bit of information to the team about how their iteration is going. Most charts are a combination of the charts below, so you may need to combine aspects of each section to understand what is happening in your iterations. Ideal Ah, isn’t that a pretty picture? Unfortunately, it’s also very unrealistic. I’ve seen iterations that come close to ideal, but never that match perfectly. If your iteration matches perfectly, chances are, someone is playing with the numbers. Reality is just too difficult to have a burndown chart that matches this exactly. Late Planning Iteration started, but the team didn’t. You can tell this by the fact that the real number of estimated hours didn’t appear until day two. In the cumulative flow, you can also see that nothing was defined in Day one and two. You want to avoid situations like this. You’ll note that the team had to burn faster than is ideal to meet the iteration because of the late planning. This often results in long weeks and days. Testing Starved Determining whether or not testing is starved is difficult without the cumulative flow. The pattern in the burndown could be nothing more that developers not completing stories early enough or could be caused by stories being too big. With the cumulative flow, however, you see that only small bites are in progress and stories were completed early, but testing didn’t start testing until the end of the iteration, and didn’t complete testing all stories in the iteration. When this happens, question whether or not your testing resources are sufficient for your team and whether or not acceptance is adequately defined. No Testing With this one, both graphs show the same thing; the team needs testers and testing! Without testing, what was completed cannot be verified to make sure that it is acceptable to the business. If you find yourself in this situation, review your testing practices and acceptance testing process and make changes today. Late Development With this situation, both graphs tell a story. In the top graph, you can see that the hours failed to burn down as quickly as the team expected. This could be caused by the team not correctly estimating their hours or the team could have had illness or some other issue that affected them. Often, when teams are tackling something that is more unknown, they’ll run into technical barriers that cause the burn down to happen slower than expected. In the cumulative flow graph, you can see that not much was completed in the first few days. This could be because of illness or technical barriers or simply poor estimation. Testing was able to keep up with everything that was completed, however. No Tool Updating When you see graphs that look like this, you can be assured that it’s because the team is not updating the tool that generates the graphs. Review your policy for when they are to update. On the teams that I run, I require that each team member updates the tool at least once daily. You should also check to see how well the team is breaking down stories into tasks. If they’re creating few large tasks, graphs can look similar to this. As a general rule, I never allow tasks, other than Unit Testing and Uncertainty, to be greater than eight hours in duration. Scope Increase I always encourage team members to enter in however much time they think they have left on a task, even if that means increasing the total amount of time left to do. You get a much better and more realistic picture this way. Increasing time remaining could explain the burndown graph, but by looking at the cumulative flow graph, we can see that stories were added to the iteration and scope was increased. Since planning should consume all of the hours in the iteration, this is almost always a bad thing. If the scope change happened late in the iteration and the hours remaining were well below the ideal burn, then increasing scope is probably o.k., but estimation needs to get better. However, with the charts above, that’s clearly not what happened and the team was required to do extra work to make the iteration. If you find this happening, your product owner and ScrumMasters need training. The team also needs to learn to say no. Scope Decrease Scope decreases are just as bad as scope increases. Usually, graphs above show that the team did a poor job of estimating their stories and part way through had to reduce scope to change the iteration. This will happen once in a while, but if you find it’s a pattern on your team, you need to re-evaluate planning. Some teams are hopelessly optimistic. In those cases, I’ll introduce a task I call “Uncertainty.” With Uncertainty, the team estimates how many hours they might need if things don’t go well with the tasks they’ve defined. They try to estimate things that could go poorly and increase the time appropriately. Having an Uncertainty task allows them to have a low and high estimate. Uncertainty should not just be an arbitrary buffer. It must correlate to real uncertainty in the tasks that have been defined. Stories are too Big Often, we see graphs like the ones above. Note that the burndown looks fairly good, other than the chunky acceptance of stories. However, when you look at cumulative flow, you can see that at one point, everything is in progress. This is a bad thing. When you see graphs like this, you’re in one of two states. You may just have a very small team and can only handle one or two stories in your iteration. If you have more than one or two people, then the most likely problem is that your stories are far too big. To combat this, break large high hour stories into smaller pieces that can be completed independently and accepted independently. If you don’t, you’ll likely be requiring your testers to do heroic things to complete testing on the last day of the iteration and you’re much more likely to have the entire iteration fail, because of the limited amount of things that can be completed. Summary There are other charts that can be useful when doing scrum. If you don’t have any big visible charts, you really need to evaluate your process and change. These charts can provide the team a wealth of information and help you write better software. If you have any questions about charts that you’re seeing on your team, contact me with a screen capture of the charts and I’ll tell you what I’m seeing in those charts. I always want this information to be useful, so please let me know if you have other questions. Technorati Tags: Agile

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• Deterministic/Consistent Unique Masking

  - by Dinesh Rajasekharan-Oracle

  One of the key requirements while masking data in large databases or multi database environment is to consistently mask some columns, i.e. for a given input the output should always be the same. At the same time the masked output should not be predictable. Deterministic masking also eliminates the need to spend enormous amount of time spent in identifying data relationships, i.e. parent and child relationships among columns defined in the application tables. In this blog post I will explain different ways of consistently masking the data across databases using Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting The readers of post should have minimal knowledge on Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Application Data Modeling, Data Masking concepts. For more information on these concepts, please refer to Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting document Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting 12c provides four methods using which users can consistently yet irreversibly mask their inputs. 1. Substitute 2. SQL Expression 3. Encrypt 4. User Defined Function SUBSTITUTE The substitute masking format replaces the original value with a value from a pre-created database table. As the method uses a hash based algorithm in the back end the mappings are consistent. For example consider DEPARTMENT_ID in EMPLOYEES table is replaced with FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID from FAKE_TABLE. The substitute masking transformation that all occurrences of DEPARTMENT_ID say ‘101’ will be replaced with ‘502’ provided same substitution table and column is used , i.e. FAKE_TABLE.FAKE_DEPARTMENT_ID. The following screen shot shows the usage of the Substitute masking format with in a masking definition: Note that the uniqueness of the masked value depends on the number of columns being used in the substitution table i.e. if the original table contains 50000 unique values, then for the masked output to be unique and deterministic the substitution column should also contain 50000 unique values without which only consistency is maintained but not uniqueness. SQL EXPRESSION SQL Expression replaces an existing value with the output of a specified SQL Expression. For example while masking an EMPLOYEES table the EMAIL_ID of an employee has to be in the format EMPLOYEE’s [email protected] while FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME are the actual column names of the EMPLOYEES table then the corresponding SQL Expression will look like %FIRST_NAME%||’.’||%LAST_NAME%||’@COMPANY.COM’. The advantage of this technique is that if you are masking FIRST_NAME and LAST_NAME of the EMPLOYEES table than the corresponding EMAIL ID will be replaced accordingly by the masking scripts. One of the interesting aspect’s of a SQL Expressions is that you can use sub SQL expressions, which means that you can write a nested SQL and use it as SQL Expression to address a complex masking business use cases. SQL Expression can also be used to consistently replace value with hashed value using Oracle’s PL/SQL function ORA_HASH. The following SQL Expression will help in the previous example for replacing the DEPARTMENT_IDs with a hashed number ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000) The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: ORA_HASH takes three arguments: 1. Expression which can be of any data type except LONG, LOB, User Defined Type [nested table type is allowed]. In the above example I used the Original value as expression. 2. Number of hash buckets which can be number between 0 and 4294967295. The default value is 4294967295. You can also co-relate the number of hash buckets to a range of numbers. In the above example above the bucket value is specified as 1000, so the end result will be a hashed number in between 0 and 1000. 3. Seed, can be any number which decides the consistency, i.e. for a given seed value the output will always be same. The default seed is 0. In the above SQL Expression a seed in not specified, so it to 0. If you have to use a non default seed then the function will look like. ORA_HASH (%DEPARTMENT_ID%, 1000, 1234 The uniqueness depends on the input and the number of hash buckets used. However as ORA_HASH uses a 32 bit algorithm, considering birthday paradox or pigeonhole principle there is a 0.5 probability of collision after 232-1 unique values. ENCRYPT Encrypt masking format uses a blend of 3DES encryption algorithm, hashing, and regular expression to produce a deterministic and unique masked output. The format of the masked output corresponds to the specified regular expression. As this technique uses a key [string] to encrypt the data, the same string can be used to decrypt the data. The key also acts as seed to maintain consistent outputs for a given input. The following screen shot shows the usage of encrypt masking format with in the masking definition: Regular Expressions may look complex for the first time users but you will soon realize that it’s a simple language. There are many resources in internet, oracle documentation, oracle learning library, my oracle support on writing a Regular Expressions, out of all the following My Oracle Support document helped me to get started with Regular Expressions: Oracle SQL Support for Regular Expressions[Video](Doc ID 1369668.1) USER DEFINED FUNCTION [UDF] User Defined Function or UDF provides flexibility for the users to code their own masking logic in PL/SQL, which can be called from masking Defintion. The standard format of an UDF in Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting is: Function udf_func (rowid varchar2, column_name varchar2, original_value varchar2) returns varchar2; Where • rowid is the row identifier of the column that needs to be masked • column_name is the name of the column that needs to be masked • original_value is the column value that needs to be masked You can achieve deterministic masking by using Oracle’s built in hash functions like, ORA_HASH, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD4, DBMS_CRYPTO.MD5, DBMS_UTILITY. GET_HASH_VALUE.Please refers to the Oracle Database Documentation for more information on the Oracle Hash functions. For example the following masking UDF generate deterministic unique hexadecimal values for a given string input: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUX (rid varchar2, column_name varchar2, orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2 (26); no_of_characters number(2); BEGIN no_of_characters:=6; stext:=substr(RAWTOHEX(DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH(UTL_RAW.CAST_TO_RAW(text),1)),0,no_of_characters); RETURN stext; END; The uniqueness depends on the input and length of the string and number of bits used by hash algorithm. In the above function MD4 hash is used [denoted by argument 1 in the DBMS_CRYPTO.HASH function which is a 128 bit algorithm which produces 2^128-1 unique hashed values , however this is limited by the length of the input string which is 6, so only 6^6 unique values will be generated. Also do not forget about the birthday paradox/pigeonhole principle mentioned earlier in this post. An another example is to consistently replace characters or numbers preserving the length and special characters as shown below: CREATE OR REPLACE FUNCTION RD_DUS(rid varchar2,column_name varchar2,orig_val VARCHAR2) RETURN VARCHAR2 DETERMINISTIC PARALLEL_ENABLE IS stext varchar2(26); BEGIN DBMS_RANDOM.SEED(orig_val); stext:=TRANSLATE(orig_val,'ABCDEFGHILKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('U',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz',DBMS_RANDOM.STRING('L',26)); stext:=TRANSLATE(stext,'0123456789',to_char(DBMS_RANDOM.VALUE(1,9))); stext:=REPLACE(stext,'.','0'); RETURN stext; END; The following screen shot shows the usage of an UDF with in a masking definition: To summarize, Oracle Data Masking and Subsetting helps you to consistently mask data across databases using one or all of the methods described in this post. It saves the hassle of identifying the parent-child relationships defined in the application table. Happy Masking

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• SQL SERVER – Create a Very First Report with the Report Wizard

  - by Pinal Dave

  This example is from the Beginning SSRS by Kathi Kellenberger. Supporting files are available with a free download from the www.Joes2Pros.com web site. What is the report Wizard? In today’s world automation is all around you. Henry Ford began building his Model T automobiles on a moving assembly line a century ago and changed the world. The moving assembly line allowed Ford to build identical cars quickly and cheaply. Henry Ford said in his autobiography “Any customer can have a car painted any color that he wants so long as it is black.” Today you can buy a car straight from the factory with your choice of several colors and with many options like back up cameras, built-in navigation systems and heated leather seats. The assembly lines now use robots to perform some tasks along with human workers. When you order your new car, if you want something special, not offered by the manufacturer, you will have to find a way to add it later. In computer software, we also have “assembly lines” called wizards. A wizard will ask you a series of questions, often branching to specific questions based on earlier answers, until you get to the end of the wizard. These wizards are used for many things, from something simple like setting up a rule in Outlook to performing administrative tasks on a server. Often, a wizard will get you part of the way to the end result, enough to get much of the tedious work out of the way. Once you get the product from the wizard, if the wizard is not capable of doing something you need, you can tweak the results. Create a Report with the Report Wizard Let’s get started with your first report!  Launch SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) from the Start menu under SQL Server 2012. Once SSDT is running, click New Project to launch the New Project dialog box. On the left side of the screen expand Business Intelligence and select Reporting Services. Configure the properties as shown in . Be sure to select Report Server Project Wizard as the type of report and to save the project in the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Project folder. Click OK and wait for the Report Wizard to launch. Click Next on the Welcome screen.  On the Select the Data Source screen, make sure that New data source is selected. Type JProCo as the data source name. Make sure that Microsoft SQL Server is selected in the Type dropdown. Click Edit to configure the connection string on the Connection Properties dialog box. If your SQL Server database server is installed on your local computer, type in localhost for the Server name and select the JProCo database from the Select or enter a database name dropdown. Click OK to dismiss the Connection Properties dialog box. Check Make this a shared data source and click Next. On the Design the Query screen, you can use the query builder to build a query if you wish. Since this post is not meant to teach you T-SQL queries, you will copy all queries from files that have been provided for you. In the C:\Joes2Pros\SSRSCompanionFiles\Chapter3\Resources folder open the sales by employee.sql file. Copy and paste the code from the file into the Query string Text Box. Click Next. On the Select the Report Type screen, choose Tabular and click Next. On the Design the Table screen, you have to figure out the groupings of the report. How do you do this? Well, you often need to know a bit about the data and report requirements. I often draw the report out on paper first to help me determine the groups. In the case of this report, I could group the data several ways. Do I want to see the data grouped by Year and Month? Do I want to see the data grouped by Employee or Category? The only thing I know for sure about this ahead of time is that the TotalSales goes in the Details section. Let’s assume that the CIO asked to see the data grouped first by Year and Month, then by Category. Let’s move the fields to the right-hand side. This is done by selecting Page > Group or Details >, as shown in, and click Next. On the Choose the Table Layout screen, select Stepped and check Include subtotals and Enable drilldown, as shown in. On the Choose the Style screen, choose any color scheme you wish (unlike the Model T) and click Next. I chose the default, Slate. On the Choose the Deployment Location screen, change the Deployment folder to Chapter 3 and click Next. At the Completing the Wizard screen, name your report Employee Sales and click Finish. After clicking Finish, the report and a shared data source will appear in the Solution Explorer and the report will also be visible in Design view. Click the Preview tab at the top. This report expects the user to supply a year which the report will then use as a filter. Type in a year between 2006 and 2013 and click View Report. Click the plus sign next to the Sales Year to expand the report to see the months, then expand again to see the categories and finally the details. You now have the assembly line report completed, and you probably already have some ideas on how to improve the report. Tomorrow’s Post Tomorrow’s blog post will show how to create your own data sources and data sets in SSRS. If you want to learn SSRS in easy to simple words – I strongly recommend you to get Beginning SSRS book from Joes 2 Pros. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL Tagged: Reporting Services, SSRS

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• Rapid Evolution of Society & Technology

  - by Michael Snow

  We caught up with Brian Solis on the phone the other day and Christie Flanagan had a chance to chat with him and learn a bit more about him and some of the concepts he'll be addressing in our Social Business Thought Leaders Webcast on Thursday 12/13/12. «--- Interview with Brian Solis  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii- mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast- mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi- mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Be sure and register for this week's webcast ---» ------------------- Guest post by Brian Solis. Reposted (Borrowed) from his posting of May 24, 2012 Dear [insert business name], what’s your promise? - Brian Solis You say you want to get closer to customers, but your actions are different than your words. You say you want to “surprise and delight” customers, but your product development teams are too busy building against a roadmap without consideration of the 5th P of marketing…people. Your employees are your number one asset, however the infrastructure of the organization has turned once optimistic and ambitious intrapreneurs into complacent cogs or worse, your greatest detractors. You question the adoption of disruptive technology by your internal champions yet you’ve not tried to find the value for yourself. You’re a change agent and you truly wish to bring about change, but you’ve not invested time or resources to answer “why” in your endeavors to become a connected or social business. If we are to truly change, we must find purpose. We must uncover the essence of our business and the value it delivers to traditional and connected consumers. We must rethink the spirit of today’s embrace and clearly articulate how transformation is going to improve customer and employee experiences and relationships now and over time. Without doing so, any attempts at evolution will be thwarted by reality. In an era of Digital Darwinism, no business is too big to fail or too small to succeed. These are undisciplined times which require alternative approaches to recognize and pursue new opportunities. But everything begins with acknowledging the 360 view of the world that you see today is actually a filtered view of managed and efficient convenience. Today, many organizations that were once inspired by innovation and engagement have fallen into a process of marketing, operationalizing, managing, and optimizing. That might have worked for the better part of the last century, but for the next 10 years and beyond, new vision, leadership and supporting business models will be written to move businesses from rigid frameworks to adaptive and agile entities. I believe that today’s executives will undergo a great test; a test of character, vision, intention, and universal leadership. It starts with a simple, but essential question…what is your promise? Notice, I didn’t ask about your brand promise. Nor did I ask for you to cite your mission and vision statements. This is much more than value propositions or manufactured marketing language designed to hook audiences and stakeholders. I asked for your promise to me as your consumer, stakeholder, and partner. This isn’t about B2B or B2C, but instead, people to people, person to person. It is this promise that will breathe new life into an organization that on the outside, could be misdiagnosed as catatonic by those who are disrupting your markets. A promise, for example, is meant to inspire. It creates alignment. It serves as the foundation for your vision, mission, and all business strategies and it must come from the top to mean anything. For without it, we cannot genuinely voice what it is we stand for or stand behind. Think for a moment about the definition of community. It’s easy to confuse a workplace or a market where everyone simply shares common characteristics. However, a community in this day and age is much more than belonging to something, it’s about doing something together that makes belonging matter The next few years will force a divide where companies are separated by intention as measured by actions and words. But, becoming a social business is not enough. Becoming more authentic and transparent doesn’t serve as a mantra for a renaissance. A promise is the ink that inscribes the spirit of the relationship between you and me. A promise serves as the words that influence change from within and change beyond the halls of our business. It is the foundation for a renewed embrace, one that must then find its way to every aspect of the organization. It’s the difference between a social business and an adaptive business. While an adaptive business can also be social, it is the culture of the organization that strives to not just use technology to extend current philosophies or processes into new domains, but instead give rise to a new culture where striving for relevance is among its goals. The tools and networks simply become enablers of a greater mission You are reading this because you believe in something more than what you’re doing today. While you fight for change within your organization, remember to aim for a higher purpose. Organizations that strive for innovation, imagination, and relevance will outperform those that do not. Part of your job is to lead a missionary push that unites the groundswell with a top down cascade. Change will only happen because you and other internal champions see what others can’t and will do what other won’t. It takes resolve. It takes the ability to translate new opportunities into business value. And, it takes courage. “This is a very noisy world, so we have to be very clear what we want them to know about us”-Steve Jobs ----------------------------------------------------------------- So -- where do you begin to evaluate the kind of experience you are delivering for your customers, partners, and employees?  Take a look at this White Paper: Creating a Successful and Meaningful Customer Experience on the Web and then have a cup of coffee while you listen to the sage advice of Guy Kawasaki in a short video below.   An interview with Guy Kawasaki on Maximizing Social Media Channels 

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• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Welcome to the first of our partner blog series. November Mondays are all about PricewaterhouseCoopers' perespective on Identity and R2. In this series, we have identity management experts from PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) share their perspective on (and experiences with) the recent identity management release, Oracle Identity Management R2. The purpose of the series is to discuss real world identity use cases that helped shape the innovations in the recent R2 release and the implementation strategies that customers are employing today with expertise from PwC. Part 1: Looking at R2 for Customer Organizations In this inaugural post, we will discuss some of the new features of the R2 release of Oracle Identity Manager that some of our customer organizations are implementing today and the business rationale for those. Oracle's R2 Security portfolio represents a solid step forward for a platform that is already market-leading.  Prior to R2, Oracle was an industry titan in security with reliable products, expansive compatibility, and a large customer base.  Oracle has taken their identity platform to the next level in their latest version, R2.  The new features include a customizable UI, a request catalog, flexible security, and enhancements for its connectors, and more. Oracle customers will be impressed by the new Oracle Identity Manager (OIM) business-friendly UI.  Without question, Oracle has invested significant time in responding to customer feedback about making access requests and related activities easier for non-IT users.  The flexibility to add information to screens, hide fields that are not important to a particular customer, and adjust web themes to suit a company's preference make Oracle's Identity Manager stand out among its peers.  Customers can also expect to carry UI configurations forward with minimal migration effort to future versions of OIM.  Oracle's flexible UI will benefit many organizations looking for a customized feel with out-of-the-box configurations. Organizations looking to extend their services to end users will benefit significantly from new usability features like OIM’s ‘Catalog.’  Customers familiar with Oracle Identity Analytics' 'Glossary' feature will be able to relate to the concept.  It will enable Roles, Entitlements, Accounts, and Resources to be requested through the out-of-the-box UI.  This is an industry-changing feature as customers can make the process to request access easier than ever.  For additional ease of use, Oracle has introduced a shopping cart style request interface that further simplifies the experience for end users.  Common requests can be setup as profiles to save time.  All of this is combined with the approval workflow engine introduced in R1 that provides the flexibility customers need to meet their compliance requirements. Enhanced security was also on the list of features Oracle wanted to deliver to its customers.  The new end-user UI provides additional granular access controls.  Common Help Desk use cases can be implemented with ease by updating the application profiles.  Access can be rolled out so that administrators can only manage a certain department or organization.  Further, OIM can be more easily configured to select which fields can be read-only vs. updated.  Finally, this security model can be used to limit search results for roles and entitlements intended for a particular department.  Every customer has a different need for access and OIM now matches this need with a flexible security model. One of the important considerations when selecting an Identity Management platform is compatibility.  The number of supported platform connectors and how well it can integrate with non-supported platforms is a key consideration for selecting an identity suite.  Oracle has a long list of supported connectors.  When a customer has a requirement for a platform not on that list, Oracle has a solution too.  Oracle is introducing a simplified architecture called Identity Connector Framework (ICF), which holds the potential to simplify custom connectors.  Finally, Oracle has introduced a simplified process to profile new disconnected applications from the web browser.  This is a useful feature that enables administrators to profile applications quickly as well as empowering the application owner to fulfill requests from their web browser.  Support will still be available for connectors based on previous versions in R2. Oracle Identity Manager's new R2 version has delivered many new features customers have been asking for.  Oracle has matured their platform with R2, making it a truly distinctive platform among its peers. In our next post, expect a deep dive into use cases for a customer considering R2 as their new Enterprise identity solution. In the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you about the specific challenges you are facing and your experience in solving those. Meet the Writers Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL). Jenny (Xiao) Zhang is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  She has consulted across multiple industries including financial services, entertainment and retail. Jenny has three years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which she has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past one and a half years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory  Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving.

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• Why We Should Learn to Stop Worrying and Love Millennials

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Christine Mellon Much is said and written about the new generations of employees entering our workforce, as though they are a strange specimen, a mysterious life form to be “figured out,” accommodated and engaged – at a safe distance, of course.  At its worst, this talk takes a critical and disapproving tone, with baby boomer employees adamantly refusing to validate this new breed of worker, let alone determine how to help them succeed and achieve their potential.   The irony of our baby-boomer resentments and suspicions is that they belie the fact that we created the very vision that younger employees are striving to achieve.  From our frustrations with empty careers that did not fulfill us, from our opposition to “the man,” from our sharp memories of our parents’ toiling for 30 years just for the right to retire, from the simple desire not to live our lives in a state of invisibility, came the seeds of hope for something better. One characteristic of Millennial workers that grew from these seeds is the desire to experience as much as possible.  They are the “Experiential Employee”, with a passion for growing in diverse ways and expanding personal and professional horizons.  Rather than rooting themselves in a single company for a career, or even in a single career path, these employees are committed to building a broad portfolio of experiences and capabilities that will enable them to make a difference and to leave a mark of significance in the world.  How much richer is the organization that nurtures and leverages this inclination?  Our curmudgeonly ways must be surrendered and our focus redirected toward building the next generation of talent ecosystems, if we are to optimize what future generations have to offer.   Accelerating Professional Development In spite of our Boomer grumblings about Millennials’ “unrealistic” expectations, the truth is that we have a well-matched set of circumstances.  We have executives-in-waiting who want to learn quickly and a concurrent, urgent need to ramp up their development time, based on anticipated high levels of retirement in the next 10+ years.  Since we need to rapidly skill up these heirs to the corporate kingdom, isn’t it a fortunate coincidence that they are hungry to learn, develop and move fluidly throughout our organizations??  So our challenge now is to efficiently operationalize the wisdom we have acquired about effective learning and development.   We have already evolved from classroom-based models to diverse instructional methods.  The next step is to find the best approaches to help younger employees learn quickly and apply new learnings in an impactful way.   Creating temporary or even permanent functional partnerships among Millennial employees is one way to maximize outcomes.  This might take the form of 2 or more employees owning aspects of what once fell under a single role.  While one might argue this would mean duplication of resources, it could be a short term cost while employees come up to speed.  And the potential benefits would be numerous:  leveraging and validating the inherent sense of community of new generations, creating cross-functional skills with broad applicability, yielding additional perspectives and approaches to traditional work outcomes, and accelerating the performance curve for incumbents through Cooperative Learning (Johnson, D. and Johnson R., 1989, 1999).  This well-researched teaching strategy, where students support each other in the absorption and application of new information, has been shown to deliver faster, more efficient learning, and greater retention. Alternately, perhaps short term contracts with exiting retirees, or former retirees, to help facilitate the development of following generations may have merit.  Again, a short term cost, certainly.  However, the gains realized in shortening the learning curve, and strengthening engagement are substantial and lasting. Ultimately, there needs to be creative thinking applied for each organization on how to accelerate the capabilities of our future leaders in unique ways that mesh with current culture. The manner in which performance is evaluated must finally shift as well.  Employees will need to be assessed on how well they have developed key skills and capabilities vs. end-to-end mastery of functional positions they have no interest in keeping for an entire career. As we become more comfortable in placing greater and greater weight on competencies vs. tasks, we will realize increased organizational agility via this new generation of workers, which will be further enhanced by their natural flexibility and appetite for change. Revisiting Succession  For many years, organizations have failed to deliver desired succession planning outcomes.  According to CEB’s 2013 research, only 28% of current leaders were pre-identified in a succession plan. These disappointing results, along with the entrance of the experiential, Millennial employee into the workforce, may just provide the needed impetus for HR to reinvent succession processes.   We have recognized that the best professional development efforts are not always linear, and the time has come to fully adopt this philosophy in regard to succession as well.  Paths to specific organizational roles will not look the same for newer generations who seek out unique learning opportunities, without consideration of a singular career destination.  Rather than charting particular jobs as precursors for key positions, the experiences and skills behind what makes an incumbent successful must become essential in succession mapping.  And the multitude of ways in which those experiences and skills may be acquired must be factored into the process, along with the individual employee’s level of learning agility. While this may seem daunting, it is necessary and long overdue.  We have talked about the criticality of competency-based succession, however, we have not lived up to our own rhetoric.  Many Boomers have experienced the same frustration in our careers; knowing we are capable of shining in a particular role, but being denied the opportunity due to how our career history lined up, on paper, with documented job requirements.  These requirements usually emphasized past jobs/titles and specific tasks, versus capabilities, drive and willingness (let alone determination) to learn new things.  How satisfying would it be for us to leave a legacy where such narrow thinking no longer applies and potential is amplified? Realizing Diversity Another bloom from the seeds we Boomers have tried to plant over the past decades is a completely evolved view of diversity.  Millennial employees assume a diverse workforce, and are startled by anything less.  Their social tolerance, nurtured by wide and diverse networks, is unprecedented.  College graduates expect a similar landscape in the “real world” to what they experienced throughout their lives.  They appreciate and seek out divergent points of view and experiences without needing any persuasion.  The face of our U.S. workforce will likely see dramatic change as Millennials apply their fresh take on hiring and building strong teams, with an inherent sense of inclusion.  This wonderful aspect of the Millennial wave should be celebrated and strongly encouraged, as it is the fulfillment of our own aspirations. Future Perfect The Experiential Employee is operating more as a free agent than a long term player, and their commitment will essentially last as long as meaningful organizational culture and personal/professional opportunities keep their interest.  As Boomers, we have laid the foundation for this new, spirited employment attitude, and we should take pride in knowing that.  Generations to come will challenge organizations to excel in how they identify, manage and nurture talent. Let’s support and revel in the future that we’ve helped invent, rather than lament what we think has been lost.  After all, the future is always connected to the past.  And as so eloquently phrased by Antoine Lavoisier, French nobleman, chemist and politico:  “Nothing is Lost, Nothing is Created, and Everything is Transformed.” Christine has over 25 years of diverse HR experience.  She has held HR consulting and corporate roles, including CHRO positions for Echostar in Denver, a 6,000+ employee global engineering firm, and Aepona, a startup software firm, successfully acquired by Intel. Christine is a resource to Oracle clients, to assist in Human Capital Management strategy development and implementation, compensation practices, talent development initiatives, employee engagement, global HR management, and integrated HR systems and processes that support the full employee lifecycle. 

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• BRE (Business Rules Engine) Data Services is out...!!!

  - by Vishal

  A few months ago we at Tellago had open sourced the BizTalk Data Services. We were meanwhile working on other artifacts which comes along with BizTalk Server like the “Business Rules Engine”.  We are happy to announce the first version of BRE Data Services. BRE Data Services is a same concept which we covered through BTS Data Services, providing a RESTFul OData – based API to interact with the Business Rules Engine via HTTP using ATOM Publishing Protocol or JSON as the encoding mechanism.   In the first version release, we mainly focused on the browsing, querying and searching BRE artifacts via a RESTFul interface. Also along with that we provide the functionality to execute Business Rules by inserting the Facts for policies via the IUpdatable implementation of WCF Data Services.   The BRE Data Services API provides a lightweight interface for managing Business Rules Engine artifacts such as Policies, Rules, Vocabularies, Conditions, Actions, Facts etc. The following are some examples which details some of the available features in the current version of the API.   Basic Querying: Querying BRE Policies http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies Querying BRE Rules http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules Querying BRE Vocabularies http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Vocabularies   Navigation: The BRE Data Services API also leverages WCF Data Services to enable navigation across related different BRE objects. Querying a specific Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies(‘PolicyName’) Querying a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules(‘RuleName’) Querying all Rules under a Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies('PolicyName')/Rules Querying all Facts under a Policy http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Policies('PolicyName')/Facts Querying all Actions for a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules('RuleName')/Actions Querying all Conditions for a specific Rule http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Rules('RuleName')/Actions Querying a specific Vocabulary: http://localhost/BREDataServices/BREMananagementService.svc/Vocabularies('VocabName')   Implementation: With the BRE Data Services, we also provide the functionality of executing a particular policy via HTTP. There are couple of ways you can do that though the API.   Ø First is though Service Operations feature of WCF Data Services in which you can execute the Facts by passing them in the URL itself. This is a very simple implementations of the executing the policies due to the limitations & restrictions (only primitive types of input parameters which can be passed) currently of the Service Operations of the WCF Data Services. Below is a code sample.                Below is a traced Request/Response message.                                 Ø Second is through the IUpdatable Interface of WCF Data Services. In this method, you can first query the rule which you want to execute and then inserts Facts for that particular Rules and finally when you perform the SaveChanges() call for the IUpdatable Interface API, it executes the policy with the facts which you inserted at runtime. Below is a sample of client side code. Due to the limitations of current version of WCF Data Services where there is no way you can return back the updates happening on the service side back to the client via the SaveChanges() method. Here we are executing the rule passing a serialized XML as Facts and there is no changes made to any data where we can query back to fetch the changes. This is overcome though the first way to executing the policies which is by executing it as a Service Operation call.     This actually generates a AtomPub message shown as below:   POST /Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/$batch HTTP/1.1 User-Agent: Microsoft ADO.NET Data Services DataServiceVersion: 1.0;NetFx MaxDataServiceVersion: 2.0;NetFx Accept: application/atom+xml,application/xml Accept-Charset: UTF-8 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7 Host: localhost:8080 Content-Length: 1481 Expect: 100-continue   --batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary=changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf   --changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf Content-Type: application/http Content-Transfer-Encoding: binary   MERGE http://localhost:8080/Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/Facts('TestPolicy') HTTP/1.1 Content-ID: 4 Content-Type: application/atom+xml;type=entry Content-Length: 927   <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" standalone="yes"?> <entry xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices" xmlns:m="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/metadata" font-size: x-small"http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom">   <category scheme="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ado/2007/08/dataservices/scheme" term="Tellago.BRE.REST.Resources.Fact" />   <title />   <author>     <name />   </author>   <updated>2011-01-31T20:09:15.0023982Z</updated>   <id>http://localhost:8080/Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost/BREMananagementService.svc/Facts('TestPolicy')</id>   <content type="application/xml">     <m:properties>       <d:FactInstance>&lt;ns0:LoanStatus xmlns:ns0="http://tellago.com"&gt;&lt;Age&gt;10&lt;/Age&gt;&lt;Status&gt;true&lt;/Status&gt;&lt;/ns0:LoanStatus&gt;</d:FactInstance>       <d:FactType>TestSchema</d:FactType>       <d:ID>TestPolicy</d:ID>     </m:properties>   </content> </entry> --changeset_184a8c59-a714-4ba9-bb3d-889a88fe24bf-- --batch_6b9a5ced-5ecb-4585-940a-9d5e704c28c7—     Installation: The installation of the BRE Data Services is pretty straight forward. ·         Create a new IIS website say BREDataServices. ·         Download the SourceCode from TellagoCodeplex and copy the content from Tellago.BRE.REST.ServiceHost to the physical location of the above created website.     ·         The appPool account running the website should have admin access to the BizTalkRuleEngineDb database. ·         TheRight click the BREManagementService.svc in the IIS ContentView for the website and wala..     Conclusion: The BRE Data Services API is an experiment intended to bring the capabilities of RESTful/OData based services to the Traditional BTS/BRE Solutions. The future releases will target on technologies like BAM, ESB Toolkit. This version has been tested with various version of BizTalk Server and we have uploaded the source code to our Tellago's DevLabs workspace at Codeplex. I hope you guys enjoy this release. Keep an eye on our new releases @ Tellago Codeplex. We are working on various other Biztalk Artifacts like BAM, ESB Toolkit.     Till than happy BizzRuling…!!!     Thanks,   Vishal Mody

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• HTG Explains: Why Does Rebooting a Computer Fix So Many Problems?

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Ask a geek how to fix a problem you’ve having with your Windows computer and they’ll likely ask “Have you tried rebooting it?” This seems like a flippant response, but rebooting a computer can actually solve many problems. So what’s going on here? Why does resetting a device or restarting a program fix so many problems? And why don’t geeks try to identify and fix problems rather than use the blunt hammer of “reset it”? This Isn’t Just About Windows Bear in mind that this soltion isn’t just limited to Windows computers, but applies to all types of computing devices. You’ll find the advice “try resetting it” applied to wireless routers, iPads, Android phones, and more. This same advice even applies to software — is Firefox acting slow and consuming a lot of memory? Try closing it and reopening it! Some Problems Require a Restart To illustrate why rebooting can fix so many problems, let’s take a look at the ultimate software problem a Windows computer can face: Windows halts, showing a blue screen of death. The blue screen was caused by a low-level error, likely a problem with a hardware driver or a hardware malfunction. Windows reaches a state where it doesn’t know how to recover, so it halts, shows a blue-screen of death, gathers information about the problem, and automatically restarts the computer for you . This restart fixes the blue screen of death. Windows has gotten better at dealing with errors — for example, if your graphics driver crashes, Windows XP would have frozen. In Windows Vista and newer versions of Windows, the Windows desktop will lose its fancy graphical effects for a few moments before regaining them. Behind the scenes, Windows is restarting the malfunctioning graphics driver. But why doesn’t Windows simply fix the problem rather than restarting the driver or the computer itself?  Well, because it can’t — the code has encountered a problem and stopped working completely, so there’s no way for it to continue. By restarting, the code can start from square one and hopefully it won’t encounter the same problem again. Examples of Restarting Fixing Problems While certain problems require a complete restart because the operating system or a hardware driver has stopped working, not every problem does. Some problems may be fixable without a restart, though a restart may be the easiest option. Windows is Slow: Let’s say Windows is running very slowly. It’s possible that a misbehaving program is using 99% CPU and draining the computer’s resources. A geek could head to the task manager and look around, hoping to locate the misbehaving process an end it. If an average user encountered this same problem, they could simply reboot their computer to fix it rather than dig through their running processes. Firefox or Another Program is Using Too Much Memory: In the past, Firefox has been the poster child for memory leaks on average PCs. Over time, Firefox would often consume more and more memory, getting larger and larger and slowing down. Closing Firefox will cause it to relinquish all of its memory. When it starts again, it will start from a clean state without any leaked memory. This doesn’t just apply to Firefox, but applies to any software with memory leaks. Internet or Wi-Fi Network Problems: If you have a problem with your Wi-Fi or Internet connection, the software on your router or modem may have encountered a problem. Resetting the router — just by unplugging it from its power socket and then plugging it back in — is a common solution for connection problems. In all cases, a restart wipes away the current state of the software . Any code that’s stuck in a misbehaving state will be swept away, too. When you restart, the computer or device will bring the system up from scratch, restarting all the software from square one so it will work just as well as it was working before. “Soft Resets” vs. “Hard Resets” In the mobile device world, there are two types of “resets” you can perform. A “soft reset” is simply restarting a device normally — turning it off and then on again. A “hard reset” is resetting its software state back to its factory default state. When you think about it, both types of resets fix problems for a similar reason. For example, let’s say your Windows computer refuses to boot or becomes completely infected with malware. Simply restarting the computer won’t fix the problem, as the problem is with the files on the computer’s hard drive — it has corrupted files or malware that loads at startup on its hard drive. However, reinstalling Windows (performing a “Refresh or Reset your PC” operation in Windows 8 terms) will wipe away everything on the computer’s hard drive, restoring it to its formerly clean state. This is simpler than looking through the computer’s hard drive, trying to identify the exact reason for the problems or trying to ensure you’ve obliterated every last trace of malware. It’s much faster to simply start over from a known-good, clean state instead of trying to locate every possible problem and fix it. Ultimately, the answer is that “resetting a computer wipes away the current state of the software, including any problems that have developed, and allows it to start over from square one.” It’s easier and faster to start from a clean state than identify and fix any problems that may be occurring — in fact, in some cases, it may be impossible to fix problems without beginning from that clean state. Image Credit: Arria Belli on Flickr, DeclanTM on Flickr     

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, September 06, 2012Popular Releasesmenu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.Active Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...BI System Monitor: v2.1: Data Audits report and supporting SQL, and SSIS package Environment Overview report enhancements, improving the appearance, addition of data audit finding indicators Note: SQL 2012 version coming soon.Hidden Capture (HC): Hidden Capture 1.1: Hidden Capture 1.1 by Mohsen E.Dawatgar http://Hidden-Capture.blogfa.comExt Spec: Ext Spec 0.2.1: Refined examples and improved distribution options.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine （0.2.0）: ????ISE?0.1.0??，?????，ISE?0.2.0?????????，???????，????????20???follow?ISE，????，??ISE??????????，??????????，?????????，?????????0.2.0??????，??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”，??????，?????????，???????，???????????????????，????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????： 1. ??“????” ??。??????????，?????????，???????????????????。??：????????，????????????，??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????，???????，???????????????，?????????????，????????，?0.2.0?，???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.DotNetNuke® Form and List: 06.00.04: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.04 Don't forget to backup your installation before upgrade. Changes in 06.00.04 Fix: Sql Scripts for 6.003 missed object qualifiers within stored procedures Fix: added missing resource "cmdCancel.Text" in form.ascx.resx Changes in 06.00.03 Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext Changes in 06.00.02 The scripts are now compatible with SQL Azure, tested in a ne...Coevery - Free CRM: Coevery 1.0.0.24: Add a sample database, and installation instructions.New ProjectsAny-Service: AnyService is a .net 4.0 Windows service shell. It hosts any windows application in non-gui mode to run as a service.BabyCloudDrives - the multi cloud drive desktop's application: wpf ????BLACK ORANGE: Download The HPAD TEXT EDITOR and use it Wisely.. CodePlex New Release Checker: CodePlex New Release Checker is a small library that makes it easy to add, "New Version Available!" functionality to your CodePlex project.Collect: ????????！CSVManager: CSV??CSV?????，????CSV??，??????Exam Project: My Exam Project. Computer Vision, C and OpenCV-FTP: Hey guys thanks for checking out my ftp!Haushaltsbuch: 1ModMaker.Lua: ModMaker.Lua is an open source .NET library that parses and executes Lua code.MyJabbr: MyJabbr netduinoscope: Design shield and software to use netduino as oscilloscopeNetSurveillance Web Application: Net Surveillance Web ApplicationNiconicoApiHelper: ????API?????????OStega: A simple library for encrypt text into an bmp or png image.OURORM: ormTFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit: The TFS Cloud Deployment Toolkit is a set of tools that integrate with TFS 2010 to help manage configuration and deployment to various remote environments.The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: A step-by-step guide for building Team Foundation Server 2012 environments that include SharePoint Server 2010, SQL Server 2012, Windows Server 2012 and more!WinRT LineChart: An attempt at creating an usable LineChart for everyone to use in his/her own Windows 8 Apps

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, August 11, 2014Popular ReleasesSpace Engineers Server Manager: SESM V1.15: V1.15 - Updated Quartz library - Correct a bug in the new mod managment - Added a warning if you have backup enabled on a server but no static map configuredAspose for Apache POI: Missing Features of Apache POI SS - v 1.2: Release contain the Missing Features in Apache POI SS SDK in comparison with Aspose.Cells What's New ? Following Examples: Create Pivot Charts Detect Merged Cells Sort Data Printing Workbooks Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.AngularGo (SPA Project Template): AngularGo.VS2013.vsix: First ReleaseTouchmote: Touchmote 1.0 beta 13: Changes Less GPU usage Works together with other Xbox 360 controls Bug fixesPublic Key Infrastructure PowerShell module: PowerShell PKI Module v3.0: Important: I would like to hear more about what you are thinking about the project? I appreciate that you like it (2000 downloads over past 6 months), but may be you have to say something? What do you dislike in the module? Maybe you would love to see some new functionality? Tell, what you think! Installation guide:Use default installation path to install this module for current user only. To install this module for all users — enable "Install for all users" check-box in installation UI ...Modern UI for WPF: Modern UI 1.0.6: The ModernUI assembly including a demo app demonstrating the various features of Modern UI for WPF. BREAKING CHANGE LinkGroup.GroupName renamed to GroupKey NEW FEATURES Improved rendering on high DPI screens, including support for per-monitor DPI awareness available in Windows 8.1 (see also Per-monitor DPI awareness) New ModernProgressRing control with 8 builtin styles New LinkCommands.NavigateLink routed command New Visual Studio project templates 'Modern UI WPF App' and 'Modern UI W...ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.74.0: Multiple thread safe improvements including AdjustToContents XLHelper XLColor_Static IntergerExtensions.ToStringLookup Exception now thrown when saving a workbook with no sheets, instead of creating a corrupt workbook Fix for hyperlinks with non-ASCII Characters Added basic workbook protection Fix for error thrown, when a spreadsheet contained comments and images Fix to Trim function Fix Invalid operation Exception thrown when the formula functions MAX, MIN, and AVG referenc...SEToolbox: SEToolbox 01.042.019 Release 1: Added RadioAntenna broadcast name to ship name detail. Added two additional columns for Asteroid material generation for Asteroid Fields. Added Mass and Block number columns to main display. Added Ellipsis to some columns on main display to reduce name confusion. Added correct SE version number in file when saving. Re-added in reattaching Motor when drag/dropping or importing ships (KeenSH have added RotorEntityId back in after removing it months ago). Added option to export and r...jQuery List DragSort: jQuery List DragSort 0.5.2: Fixed scrollContainer removing deprecated use of $.browser so should now work with latest version of jQuery. Added the ability to return false in dragEnd to revert sort order Project changes Added nuget package for dragsort https://www.nuget.org/packages/dragsort Converted repository from SVN to MercurialBraintree Client Library: Braintree 2.32.0: Allow credit card verification options to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Allow billingaddress parameters and billingaddress_id to be passed outside of the nonce for PaymentMethod.create Add Subscriptions to paypal accounts Add PaymentMethod.update Add failonduplicatepaymentmethod option to PaymentMethod.create Add support for dispute webhooksThe Mario Kart 8 App: V1.0.2.1: First Codeplex release. WINDOWS INSTALLER ONLYAspose Java for Docx4j: Aspose.Words vs Docx4j - v 1.0: Release contain the Code Comparison for Features in Docx4j SDK and Aspose.Words What's New ?Following Examples: Accessing Document Properties Add Bookmarks Convert to Formats Delete Bookmarks Working with Comments Feedback and Suggestions Many more examples are available at Aspose Docs. Raise your queries and suggest more examples via Aspose Forums or via this social coding site.File System Security PowerShell Module: NTFSSecurity 2.4.1: Add-Access and Remove-Access now take multiple accoutsYourSqlDba: YourSqlDba 5.2.1.: This version improves alert message that comes a while after you install the script. First it says to get it from YourSqlDba.CodePlex.com If you don't want to update now, just-rerun the script from your installed version. To get actual version running just execute install.PrintVersionInfo. . You can go to source code / history and click on change set 72957 to see changes in the script.Manipulator: Manipulator: manipulatorXNB filetype plugin for Paint.NET: Paint.NET XNB plugin v0.4.0.0: CHANGELOG Reverted old incomplete changes. Updated library for compatibility with Paint .NET 4. Updated project to NET 4.5. Updated version to 0.4.0.0. INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Extract the ZIP file to your Paint.NET\FileTypes folder.EdiFabric: Release 4.1: Changed MessageContextWix# (WixSharp) - managed interface for WiX: Release 1.0.0.0: Release 1.0.0.0 Custom UI Custom MSI Dialog Custom CLR Dialog External UIMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v3.2.0: Linear Algebra: Vector.Map2 (map2 in F#), storage-optimized Linear Algebra: fix RemoveColumn/Row early index bound check (was not strict enough) Statistics: Entropy ~Jeff Mastry Interpolation: use Array.BinarySearch instead of local implementation ~Candy Chiu Resources: fix a corrupted exception message string Portable Build: support .Net 4.0 as well by using profile 328 instead of 344. .Net 3.5: F# extensions now support .Net 3.5 as well .Net 3.5: NuGet package now contains pro...babelua: 1.6.5.1: V1.6.5.1 - 2014.8.7New feature: Formatting code; Stability improvement: fix a bug that pop up error "System.Net.WebResponse EndGetResponse";New ProjectsDouDou: a little project.Dynamic MVC: Dynamically generate views from your model objects for a data centric MVC application.EasyDb - Simple Data Access: EasyDb is a simple library for data access that allows you to write less code.ExpressToAbroad: just go!!!!!Full Silverlight Web Video/Voice Conferencing: The Goal of this project is to provide complete Open Source (Voice/Video Chatting Client/Server) Modules Using SilverlightGaia: Gaia is an app for Windows plataform, Gaia is like Siri and Google Now or Betty but Gaia use only text commands.pxctest: pxctestSTACS: Career Management System for MIT by Team "STACS"StrongWorld: StrongWorld.WebSuiteXevas Tools: Xevas is a professional coders group of 'Nimbuzz'. We make all tools for worldwide users of nimbuzz at free of cost.????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ????????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ????????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ???????????????: ???????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ??????????????: ????????????????: ?????????

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• Probation is Over: PASS Board Year 1, Q2

  - by Denise McInerney

  Though it's not always official every job begins with a probation period. You start out with lots of questions and every day you find out how much more you have to learn. Usually after a few months you discover that you can actually answer some questions and have at least an idea of what you are supposed to be doing. Now at the end of my second quarter on the "job" of serving on the PASS Board I have reached that point. My probation period is over. The last three months were busy for the entire Board with the budget process, an in-person meeting and moving forward with PASS Global Growth plans. I had also set a specific goal for myself for my 2nd quarter: to see the Board to adopt a Code of Conduct for the PASS Summit. Code of Conduct When I ran for the Board I included my desire to see PASS establish a code of conduct in my campaign platform.  I was motivated to do this for a few reasons. Other technical conferences have had incidents of harassment. Most of these did not have a policy in place prior to having a problem, though several conference organizers have since adopted anti-harassment policies or codes of conduct. I felt it would be in PASS' interest to establish a policy so we would be prepared should there be an incident.   "This is Community" Adopting a code of conduct would reinforce our community orientation and send a message about the positive character of the Summit. PASS is a leader among technical organizations for its promotion and support of women. Adopting a code of conduct would further demonstrate our leadership in this area. After researching similar polices from other organizations I published a first draft in April. I solicited feedback from the Board, HQ staff and some PASS members. Incorporating that feedback I presented version 4 at the May Board meeting, where we had a good discussion. You can read the meeting minutes for details. I incorporated points from  the Board discussion as well as feedback from a legal review to produce a final version which has been submitted to the Board. It will be discussed at the Board meeting July 12. You can read the full text at the end of this post. Virtual Chapters In the first quarter we started ramping up marketing support for the Virtual Chapters. Since then each edition of the Connector has highlighted a different VC to help get out the message about the variety of eductional opporutnities that are offered. These VC profiles will continue in the coming months. I was very pleased to welcome the new DBA Fundamentals VC which is geared toward new DBAs, people who are considering entering the field and those transitioning from a different IT role. Thanks to the contributions of Erin Stellato, Michelle Nalliah and Karla Landrum we published a "Virtual Chapter Guidebook". This document includes great advice on how to build and promote a VC. It's also a reference for how things work, from budgets to webinar hosting. I think this document will be extremely valuable to all our VC leaders and am grateful to those who put it together. Board Meeting/SQL Rally The Board met in May in Dallas. Among the items discussed were Global Growth, the budget, future events and the upcoming elections. We covered a lot of ground in two days and I will again refer you to the meeting minutes for details. The meeting schedule allowed us to participate in the SQL Rally networking events and one full day of the conference. I enjoyed having the opportunity to meet and talk with many PASS members. And my hat is off to the SQL Rally organizers who put on an outstanding event. Global Growth PASS has undertaken a major intitiative to reach and engage SQL Server professionals around the world. This Global Growth plan is ambitious and will have a significant impact on the strategic direction of the organization. We have been reaching out to the community for feedback, including hosting Twitter chats and live Town Hall meetings. I co-hosted two of these events and appreciated hearing the different perspectives of the people who participated If you have not done so I encourage you to read about the Global Growth vision and proposed governance changes  and submit your feedback. FY13 Budget July 1 is the beginning of PASS' fiscal year, which makes the end of June the deadline for approving a budget. Each director submits a budget for his or her portfolio. For the Virtual Chapter portfolio I focused on how we can allocate resources to grow the VCs. Budgeting is a give-and-take process, and while I didn't get everything I asked for I'm pleased the FY13 budget includes a significant increase in financial support for the Virtual Chapters. Many people put a lot of work into the budget, but no two people deserve credit more than VP of Finance Douglas McDowell and Accounting Manager Sandy Cherry. Thanks to both of them for getting us across the goal line on time. SQL Saturday I attended SQL Saturdays in Orange Co. CA and Phoenix. It's always inspiring to see the enthusiasm in the community for learning and networking. These events are successful due to the hard work of many volunteers. Thanks to the organizers in both cities for all your efforts. Next Up This quarter we'll be gearing up plans for the VCs at the Summit and exploring ways the VCs can best support PASS' Global Growth work. I'll also be wrapping up work on the Code of Conduct and attending a Board meeting in September. And I will be at SQL Saturday #144 in Sacramento later this month. Here is the language of the Code of Conduct I have submitted to the Board for consideration: PASS Code of Conduct The PASS Summit provides database professionals from a variety of backgrounds with an opportunity to connect, share and learn.  We value the strong sense of community that characterizes this event and we seek to foster an inclusive, professional atmosphere. We are dedicated to providing a harassment-free conference experience for everyone, regardless of gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion or any other protected classification.  Everyone at the Summit is expected to follow the Code of Conduct. This includes but is not limited to: PASS Staff, Exhibitors, Speakers, Attendees and anyone affiliated with the event. Participants are expected to follow the Code of Conduct at all Summit events, including PASS-sponsored social events. Participant behavior Harassment includes, but is not limited to, offensive verbal comments related to gender, race, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, religion, or any other protected classification.  Intimidation, threats, stalking, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact and unwelcome attention will also be considered harassment. Similarly, sexual, racist, derogatory, threatening or other inappropriate language and imagery are not appropriate for any conference venue, including sessions.  Recourse If a participant engages in any conduct that is prohibited under this Code of Conduct, the conference organizers may take any action they deem appropriate, including warning the offender or expelling the offender from the conference. No refunds will be granted to attendees expelled from the Summit due to violations of the Code of Conduct. If you are being harassed, witness harassment, or have any other concerns, please contact a member of conference staff immediately. Conference staff can be identified by their “Headquarters/Staff” shirts and are trained to handle the situation appropriately. A Code of Conduct Committee (CCC) made up of the Executive Manager and three members of the Board of Directors designated by the President will be authorized to take action in response to an incident or behavior that violates the Code of Conduct.

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• Enable wireless on Dell Inspiron 1300

  - by Simon

  As per subject, I've looked at various resources and attempted ndiswrapper solutions, found a one-click solution that lead to a 404 and this but none works. I've run all updates. Once I managed to lose my wired connection as well and had to reinstall. This is my first hour with Linux. iwconfig gives this before I do anything: lo no wireless extensions. wlan0 IEEE 802.11bg ESSID:off/any Mode:Managed Access Point: Not-Associated Tx-Power=0 dBm Retry long limit:7 RTS thr:off Fragment thr:off Power Management:on eth0 no wireless extens Thanks for responding lspci returns 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/PM/GMS/910GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort+ >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: agpgart-intel 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16 Region 0: Memory at dff00000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] Region 1: I/O ports at eff8 [size=8] Region 2: Memory at c0000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=256M] Region 3: Memory at dfec0000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256K] Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: i915 Kernel modules: intelfb, i915 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 915GM/GMS/910GML Express Graphics Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Region 0: Memory at dff80000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=512K] Capabilities: <access denied> 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 03) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 42 Region 0: Memory at dfebc000 (64-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: snd_hda_intel Kernel modules: snd-hda-intel 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Bus: primary=00, secondary=0b, subordinate=0b, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 00002000-00002fff Memory behind bridge: 30000000-301fffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 0000000030200000-00000000303fffff Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- <SERR- <PERR- BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR+ NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B- PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn- Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Normal decode]) Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx+ Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0, Cache Line Size: 64 bytes Bus: primary=00, secondary=0c, subordinate=0d, sec-latency=0 I/O behind bridge: 0000d000-0000dfff Memory behind bridge: dfc00000-dfdfffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000d0000000-00000000d01fffff Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- <SERR- <PERR- BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR+ NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B- PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn- Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: pcieport Kernel modules: shpchp 00:1d.0 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16 Region 4: I/O ports at bf80 [size=32] Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.1 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 17 Region 4: I/O ports at bf60 [size=32] Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.2 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin C routed to IRQ 18 Region 4: I/O ports at bf40 [size=32] Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.3 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [UHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin D routed to IRQ 19 Region 4: I/O ports at bf20 [size=32] Kernel driver in use: uhci_hcd 00:1d.7 USB controller: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 20 [EHCI]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16 Region 0: Memory at b0000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=1K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: ehci_hcd 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev d3) (prog-if 01 [Subtractive decode]) Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Bus: primary=00, secondary=02, subordinate=02, sec-latency=32 I/O behind bridge: 0000f000-00000fff Memory behind bridge: dfb00000-dfbfffff Prefetchable memory behind bridge: 00000000fff00000-00000000000fffff Secondary status: 66MHz- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort+ <SERR- <PERR- BridgeCtl: Parity- SERR+ NoISA- VGA- MAbort- >Reset- FastB2B- PriDiscTmr- SecDiscTmr- DiscTmrStat- DiscTmrSERREn- Capabilities: <access denied> 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801FBM (ICH6M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Kernel modules: iTCO_wdt, intel-rng 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) IDE Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 8a [Master SecP PriP]) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 0 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 16 Region 0: I/O ports at 01f0 [size=8] Region 1: I/O ports at 03f4 [size=1] Region 2: I/O ports at 0170 [size=8] Region 3: I/O ports at 0374 [size=1] Region 4: I/O ports at bfa0 [size=16] Kernel driver in use: ata_piix 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) Subsystem: Dell Device 01c9 Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap+ 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 64 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 18 Region 0: Memory at dfbfc000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Capabilities: <access denied> Kernel driver in use: b44 Kernel modules: b44 02:03.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02) Subsystem: Dell Wireless 1370 WLAN Mini-PCI Card Control: I/O- Mem+ BusMaster+ SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR+ FastB2B- DisINTx- Status: Cap- 66MHz- UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=fast >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR- INTx- Latency: 64 Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 17 Region 0: Memory at dfbfe000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=8K] Kernel driver in use: b43-pci-bridge Kernel modules: ssb and the rfkill shows 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no Just checking addtional drivers. Says no additional driver installed in this system

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 16, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 16, 2012Popular ReleasesCosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): Release 92560: Prerequisites Visual Studio 2010 - Any version including Express. Express users must also install Visual Studio 2010 Integrated Shell runtime VMWare - Cosmos can run on real hardware as well as other virtualization environments but our default debug setup is configured for VMWare. VMWare Player (Free). or Workstation VMWare VIX API 1.11AutoUpdaterdotNET : Autoupdate for VB.NET and C# Developer: AutoUpdater.NET 1.1: Release Notes *New feature added that allows user to select remind later interval.Sumzlib: API document: API documentMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script: Install AdventureWorks2008 OLTP database from script The AdventureWorks database can be created by running the instawdb.sql DDL script contained in the AdventureWorks 2008 OLTP Script.zip file. The instawdb.sql script depends on two path environment variables: SqlSamplesDatabasePath and SqlSamplesSourceDataPath. The SqlSamplesDatabasePath environment variable is set to the default Microsoft ® SQL Server 2008 path. You will need to change the SqlSamplesSourceDataPath environment variable to th...HigLabo: HigLabo_20120613: Bug fix HigLabo.Mail Decode header encoded by CP1252Jasc (just another script compressor): 1.3.1: Updated Ajax Minifier to 4.55.WipeTouch, a jQuery touch plugin: 1.2.0: Changes since 1.1.0: New: wipeMove event, triggered while moving the mouse/finger. New: added "source" to the result object. Bug fix: sometimes vertical wipe events would not trigger correctly. Bug fix: improved tapToClick handler. General code refactoring. Windows Phone 7 is not supported, yet! Its behaviour is completely broken and would require some special tricks to make it work. Maybe in the future...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3026 (June 2012): Fixes: round( 0.0 ) local TimeZone name TimeZone search compiling multi-script-assemblies PhpString serialization DocDocument::loadHTMLFile() token_get_all() parse_url()BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.4: 2012.06.13 Ver5.6.4 　(1) Web???????、???POST??????????????????Yahoo! UI Library: YUI Compressor for .Net: Version 2.0.0.0 - Ferret: - Merging both 3.5 and 2.0 codebases to a single .NET 2.0 assembly. - MSBuild Task. - NAnt Task.Bumblebee: Version 0.3.1: Changed default config values to decent ones. Restricted visibility of Hive.fs to internal. Added some XML documentation. Added Array.shuffle utility. The dll is also available on NuGet My apologies, the initial source code referenced was missing one file which prevented it from building The source code contains two examples, one in C#, one in F#, illustrating the usage of the framework on the Travelling Salesman Problem: Source CodeSharePoint XSL Templates: SPXSLT 0.0.9: Added new template FixAmpersands. Fixed the contents of the MultiSelectValueCheck.xsl file, which was missing the stylesheet wrapper.ExcelFileEditor: .CS File: nothingBizTalk Scheduled Task Adapter: Release 4.0: Works with BizTalk Server 2010. Compiled in .NET Framework 4.0. In this new version are available small improvements compared to the current version (3.0). We can highlight the following improvements or changes: 24 hours support in “start time” property. Previous versions had an issue with setting the start time, as it shown 12 hours watch but no AM/PM. Daily scheduler review. Solved a small bug on Daily Properties: unable to switch between “Every day” and “on these days” Installation e...Weapsy - ASP.NET MVC CMS: 1.0.0 RC: - Upgrade to Entity Framework 4.3.1 - Added AutoMapper custom version (by nopCommerce Team) - Added missed model properties and localization resources of Plugin Definitions - Minor changes - Fixed some bugsXenta Framework - extensible enterprise n-tier application framework: Xenta Framework 1.8.0 Beta: Catalog and Publication reviews and ratings Store language packs in data base Improve reporting system Improve Import/Export system A lot of WebAdmin app UI improvements Initial implementation of the WebForum app DB indexes Improve and simplify architecture Less abstractions Modernize architecture Improve, simplify and unify API Simplify and improve testing A lot of new unit tests Codebase refactoring and ReSharpering Utilize Castle Windsor Utilize NHibernate ORM ...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.55: Properly handle IE extension to CSS3 grammar that allows for multiple parameters to functional pseudo-class selectors. add new switch -braces:(new|same) that affects where opening braces are placed in multi-line output. The default, "new" puts them on their own new line; "same" outputs them at the end of the previous line. add new optional values to the -inline switch: -inline:(force|noforce), which can be combined with the existing boolean value via comma-separators; value "force" (which...Microsoft Media Platform: Player Framework: MMP Player Framework 2.7 (Silverlight and WP7): Additional DownloadsSMFv2.7 Full Installer (MSI) - This will install everything you need in order to develop your own SMF player application, including the IIS Smooth Streaming Client. It only includes the assemblies. If you want the source code please follow the link above. Smooth Streaming Sample Player - This is a pre-built player that includes support for IIS Smooth Streaming. You can configure the player to playback your content by simplying editing a configuration file - no need to co...Liberty: v3.2.1.0 Release 10th June 2012: Change Log -Added -Liberty is now digitally signed! If the certificate on Liberty.exe is missing, invalid, or does not state that it was developed by "Xbox Chaos, Open Source Developer," your copy of Liberty may have been altered in some (possibly malicious) way. -Reach Mass biped max health and shield changer -Fixed -H3/ODST Fixed all of the glitches that users kept reporting (also reverted the changes made in 3.2.0.2) -Reach Made some tag names clearer and more consistent between m...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.503b: It has been a while, so it's about time we release another build! Major effort has been for fixing trailer downloads, plus a little bit of work for episode guide tag in TV show NFOs.New Projects.NinJa (dotNinja): An extensive JavaScript Framework revolving around principles found in .NET and aiming to integrate full Intellisense support. bab-rizg: solve unemployment problemBizTalk Multi-part Message Attachments Zipper Pipeline Component: This pipeline component replaces all attachments of a multi-part message, in a send pipeline, for its zipped equivalent.Boggle.Net: A basic implementation of Boggle for WPF.CFScript: CFScript is an ANT-like scripting system for Compact Framework. Tasks like copying files, setting registry values o install CAB files can be done with CFScript.Diablo3: Diablo3Dygraphs.NET: Dygraphs.NETDynamics CRM plugin for nopCommerce: This plugins is a bridge between nopCommerce and Dynamics CRM. nms.gaming: Place holderProject Bright Star: Project Bright Star. Deal with it.RDFSharp: RDFSharp is a library designed to ease the development of .NET applications based on the RDF and Semantic Web data model.SlamCMS: An application framework that allows you to build content managed sites leveraging SharePoint 2010 for publishing with tools to query and manifest your data.test02: no

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• Behavior Driven Development (BDD) and DevExpress XAF

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  So in my previous posts I showed you how I used EDMX to quickly build my business objects within XPO and XAF.  But how do you test whether your business objects are actually doing what you want and verify that your business logic is correct?  Well I was reading my monthly MSDN magazine last last year and came across an article about using SpecFlow and WatiN to build BDD tests.  So why not use these same techniques to write SpecFlow style scripts and have them generate EasyTest scripts for use with XAF.  Let me outline and show a few things below.  I plan on releasing this code in a short while, I just wanted to preview what I was thinking. Before we begin… First, if you have not read the article in MSDN, here is the link to the article that I found my inspiration.  It covers the overview of BDD vs. TDD, how to write some of the SpecFlow syntax and how use the “Steps” logic to create your own tests. Second, if you have not heard of EasyTest from DevExpress I strongly recommend you review it here.  It basically takes the power of XAF and the beauty of your application and allows you to create text based files to execute automated commands within your application. Why would we do this?  Because as you will see below, the cucumber syntax is easier for business analysts to interpret and digest the business rules from.  You can find most of the information you will need on Cucumber syntax within The Secret Ninja Cucumber Scrolls located here.  The basics of the syntax are that Given X When Y Then Z.  For example, Given I am at the login screen When I enter my login credentials Then I expect to see the home screen.  Pretty easy syntax to follow. Finally, we will need to download and install SpecFlow.  You can find it on their website here.  Once you have this installed then let’s write our first test. Let’s get started… So where to start.  Create a new testing project within your solution.  I typically call this with a similar naming convention as used by XAF, my project name .FunctionalTests (i.e.  AlbumManager.FunctionalTests).  Remove the basic test that is created for you.  We will not use the default test but rather create our own SpecFlow “Feature” files.  Add a new item to your project and select the SpecFlow Feature file under C#.  Name your feature file as you do your class files after the test they are performing. Now you can crack open your new feature file and write the actual test.  Make sure to have your Ninja Scrolls from above as it provides valuable resources on how to write your test syntax.  In this test below you can see how I defined the documentation in the Feature section.  This is strictly for our purposes of readability and do not effect the test.  The next section is the Scenario Outline which is considered a test template.  You can see the brackets <> around the fields that will be filled in for each test.  So in the example below you can see that Given I am starting a new test and the application is open.  This means I want a new EasyTest file and the windows application generated by XAF is open.  Next When I am at the Albums screen tells XAF to navigate to the Albums list view.  And I click the New:Album button, tells XAF to click the new button on the list grid.  And I enter the following information tells XAF which fields to complete with the mapped values.  And I click the Save and Close button causes the record to be saved and the detail form to be closed.  Then I verify results tests the input data against what is visible in the grid to ensure that your record was created. The Scenarios section gives each test a unique name and then fills in the values for each test.  This way you can use the same test to make multiple passes with different data. Almost there.  Now we must save the feature file and the BDD tests will be written using standard unit test syntax.  This is all handled for you by SpecFlow so just save the file.  What you will see in your Test List Editor is a unit test for each of the above scenarios you just built. You can now use standard unit testing frameworks to execute the test as you desire.  As you would expect then, these BDD SpecFlow tests can be automated into your build process to ensure that your business requirements are satisfied each and every time. How does it work? What we have done is to intercept the testing logic at runtime to interpret the SpecFlow syntax into EasyTest syntax.  This is the basic StepDefinitions that we are working on now.  We expect to put these on CodePlex within the next few days.  You can always override and make your own rules as you see fit for your project.  Follow the MSDN magazine above to start your own.  You can see part of our implementation below. As you can gather from the MSDN article and the code sample below, we have created our own common rules to build the above syntax. The code implementation for these rules basically saves your information from the feature file into an EasyTest file format.  It then executes the EasyTest file and parses the XML results of the test.  If the test succeeds the test is passed.  If the test fails, the EasyTest failure message is logged and the screen shot (as captured by EasyTest) is saved for your review. Again we are working on getting this code ready for mass consumption, but at this time it is not ready.  We will post another message when it is ready with all details about usage and setup. Thanks

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• DBA Best Practices - A Blog Series: Episode 1 - Backups

  - by Argenis

    This blog post is part of the DBA Best Practices series, on which various topics of concern for daily database operations are discussed. Your feedback and comments are very much welcome, so please drop by the comments section and be sure to leave your thoughts on the subject. Morning Coffee When I was a DBA, the first thing I did when I sat down at my desk at work was checking that all backups had completed successfully. It really was more of a ritual, since I had a dual system in place to check for backup completion: 1) the scheduled agent jobs to back up the databases were set to alert the NOC in failure, and 2) I had a script run from a central server every so often to check for any backup failures. Why the redundancy, you might ask. Well, for one I was once bitten by the fact that database mail doesn't work 100% of the time. Potential causes for failure include issues on the SMTP box that relays your server email, firewall problems, DNS issues, etc. And so to be sure that my backups completed fine, I needed to rely on a mechanism other than having the servers do the taking - I needed to interrogate the servers and ask each one if an issue had occurred. This is why I had a script run every so often. Some of you might have monitoring tools in place like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) or similar 3rd party products that would track all these things for you. But at that moment, we had no resort but to write our own Powershell scripts to do it. Now it goes without saying that if you don't have backups in place, you might as well find another career. Your most sacred job as a DBA is to protect the data from a disaster, and only properly safeguarded backups can offer you peace of mind here. "But, we have a cluster...we don't need backups" Sadly I've heard this line more than I would have liked to. You need to understand that a cluster is comprised of shared storage, and that is precisely your single point of failure. A cluster will protect you from an issue at the Operating System level, and also under an outage of any SQL-related service or dependent devices. But it will most definitely NOT protect you against corruption, nor will it protect you against somebody deleting data from a table - accidentally or otherwise. Backup, fine. How often do I take a backup? The answer to this is something you will hear frequently when working with databases: it depends. What does it depend on? For one, you need to understand how much data your business is willing to lose. This is what's called Recovery Point Objective, or RPO. If you don't know how much data your business is willing to lose, you need to have an honest and realistic conversation about data loss expectations with your customers, internal or external. From my experience, their first answer to the question "how much data loss can you withstand?" will be "zero". In that case, you will need to explain how zero data loss is very difficult and very costly to achieve, even in today's computing environments. Do you want to go ahead and take full backups of all your databases every hour, or even every day? Probably not, because of the impact that taking a full backup can have on a system. That's what differential and transaction log backups are for. Have I answered the question of how often to take a backup? No, and I did that on purpose. You need to think about how much time you have to recover from any event that requires you to restore your databases. This is what's called Recovery Time Objective. Again, if you go ask your customer how long of an outage they can withstand, at first you will get a completely unrealistic number - and that will be your starting point for discussing a solution that is cost effective. The point that I'm trying to get across is that you need to have a plan. This plan needs to be practiced, and tested. Like a football playbook, you need to rehearse the moves you'll perform when the time comes. How often is up to you, and the objective is that you feel better about yourself and the steps you need to follow when emergency strikes. A backup is nothing more than an untested restore Backups are files. Files are prone to corruption. Put those two together and realize how you feel about those backups sitting on that network drive. When was the last time you restored any of those? Restoring your backups on another box - that, by the way, doesn't have to match the specs of your production server - will give you two things: 1) peace of mind, because now you know that your backups are good and 2) a place to offload your consistency checks with DBCC CHECKDB or any of the other DBCC commands like CHECKTABLE or CHECKCATALOG. This is a great strategy for VLDBs that cannot withstand the additional load created by the consistency checks. If you choose to offload your consistency checks to another server though, be sure to run DBCC CHECKDB WITH PHYSICALONLY on the production server, and if you're using SQL Server 2008 R2 SP1 CU4 and above, be sure to enable traceflags 2562 and/or 2549, which will speed up the PHYSICALONLY checks further - you can read more about this enhancement here. Back to the "How Often" question for a second. If you have the disk, and the network latency, and the system resources to do so, why not backup the transaction log often? As in, every 5 minutes, or even less than that? There's not much downside to doing it, as you will have to clear the log with a backup sooner than later, lest you risk running out space on your tlog, or even your drive. The one drawback to this approach is that you will have more files to deal with at restore time, and processing each file will add a bit of extra time to the entire process. But it might be worth that time knowing that you minimized the amount of data lost. Again, test your plan to make sure that it matches your particular needs. Where to back up to? Network share? Locally? SAN volume? This is another topic where everybody has a favorite choice. So, I'll stick to mentioning what I like to do and what I consider to be the best practice in this regard. I like to backup to a SAN volume, i.e., a drive that actually lives in the SAN, and can be easily attached to another server in a pinch, saving you valuable time - you wouldn't need to restore files on the network (slow) or pull out drives out a dead server (been there, done that, it’s also slow!). The key is to have a copy of those backup files made quickly, and, if at all possible, to a remote target on a different datacenter - or even the cloud. There are plenty of solutions out there that can help you put such a solution together. That right there is the first step towards a practical Disaster Recovery plan. But there's much more to DR, and that's material for a different blog post in this series.

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• Why do we (really) program to interfaces?

  - by Kyle Burns

  One of the earliest lessons I was taught in Enterprise development was "always program against an interface".  This was back in the VB6 days and I quickly learned that no code would be allowed to move to the QA server unless my business objects and data access objects each are defined as an interface and have a matching implementation class.  Why?  "It's more reusable" was one answer.  "It doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" a slightly more knowing answer.  And let's not forget the discussion ending "it's a standard".  The problem with these responses was that senior people didn't really understand the reason we were doing the things we were doing and because of that, we were entirely unable to realize the intent behind the practice - we simply used interfaces and had a bunch of extra code to maintain to show for it. It wasn't until a few years later that I finally heard the term "Inversion of Control".  Simply put, "Inversion of Control" takes the creation of objects that used to be within the control (and therefore a responsibility of) of your component and moves it to some outside force.  For example, consider the following code which follows the old "always program against an interface" rule in the manner of many corporate development shops: 1: ICatalog catalog = new Catalog(); 2: Category[] categories = catalog.GetCategories(); In this example, I met the requirement of the rule by declaring the variable as ICatalog, but I didn't hit "it doesn't tie you to a specific implementation" because I explicitly created an instance of the concrete Catalog object.  If I want to test the functionality of the code I just wrote I have to have an environment in which Catalog can be created along with any of the resources upon which it depends (e.g. configuration files, database connections, etc) in order to test my functionality.  That's a lot of setup work and one of the things that I think ultimately discourages real buy-in of unit testing in many development shops. So how do I test my code without needing Catalog to work?  A very primitive approach I've seen is to change the line the instantiates catalog to read: 1: ICatalog catalog = new FakeCatalog();   once the test is run and passes, the code is switched back to the real thing.  This obviously poses a huge risk for introducing test code into production and in my opinion is worse than just keeping the dependency and its associated setup work.  Another popular approach is to make use of Factory methods which use an object whose "job" is to know how to obtain a valid instance of the object.  Using this approach, the code may look something like this: 1: ICatalog catalog = CatalogFactory.GetCatalog();   The code inside the factory is responsible for deciding "what kind" of catalog is needed.  This is a far better approach than the previous one, but it does make projects grow considerably because now in addition to the interface, the real implementation, and the fake implementation(s) for testing you have added a minimum of one factory (or at least a factory method) for each of your interfaces.  Once again, developers say "that's too complicated and has me writing a bunch of useless code" and quietly slip back into just creating a new Catalog and chalking any test failures up to "it will probably work on the server". This is where software intended specifically to facilitate Inversion of Control comes into play.  There are many libraries that take on the Inversion of Control responsibilities in .Net and most of them have many pros and cons.  From this point forward I'll discuss concepts from the standpoint of the Unity framework produced by Microsoft's Patterns and Practices team.  I'm primarily focusing on this library because it questions about it inspired this posting. At Unity's core and that of most any IoC framework is a catalog or registry of components.  This registry can be configured either through code or using the application's configuration file and in the most simple terms says "interface X maps to concrete implementation Y".  It can get much more complicated, but I want to keep things at the "what does it do" level instead of "how does it do it".  The object that exposes most of the Unity functionality is the UnityContainer.  This object exposes methods to configure the catalog as well as the Resolve<T> method which is used to obtain an instance of the type represented by T.  When using the Resolve<T> method, Unity does not necessarily have to just "new up" the requested object, but also can track dependencies of that object and ensure that the entire dependency chain is satisfied. There are three basic ways that I have seen Unity used within projects.  Those are through classes directly using the Unity container, classes requiring injection of dependencies, and classes making use of the Service Locator pattern. The first usage of Unity is when classes are aware of the Unity container and directly call its Resolve method whenever they need the services advertised by an interface.  The up side of this approach is that IoC is utilized, but the down side is that every class has to be aware that Unity is being used and tied directly to that implementation. Many developers don't like the idea of as close a tie to specific IoC implementation as is represented by using Unity within all of your classes and for the most part I agree that this isn't a good idea.  As an alternative, classes can be designed for Dependency Injection.  Dependency Injection is where a force outside the class itself manipulates the object to provide implementations of the interfaces that the class needs to interact with the outside world.  This is typically done either through constructor injection where the object has a constructor that accepts an instance of each interface it requires or through property setters accepting the service providers.  When using dependency, I lean toward the use of constructor injection because I view the constructor as being a much better way to "discover" what is required for the instance to be ready for use.  During resolution, Unity looks for an injection constructor and will attempt to resolve instances of each interface required by the constructor, throwing an exception of unable to meet the advertised needs of the class.  The up side of this approach is that the needs of the class are very clearly advertised and the class is unaware of which IoC container (if any) is being used.  The down side of this approach is that you're required to maintain the objects passed to the constructor as instance variables throughout the life of your object and that objects which coordinate with many external services require a lot of additional constructor arguments (this gets ugly and may indicate a need for refactoring). The final way that I've seen and used Unity is to make use of the ServiceLocator pattern, of which the Patterns and Practices team has also provided a Unity-compatible implementation.  When using the ServiceLocator, your class calls ServiceLocator.Retrieve in places where it would have called Resolve on the Unity container.  Like using Unity directly, it does tie you directly to the ServiceLocator implementation and makes your code aware that dependency injection is taking place, but it does have the up side of giving you the freedom to swap out the underlying IoC container if necessary.  I'm not hugely concerned with hiding IoC entirely from the class (I view this as a "nice to have"), so the single biggest problem that I see with the ServiceLocator approach is that it provides no way to proactively advertise needs in the way that constructor injection does, allowing more opportunity for difficult to track runtime errors. This blog entry has not been intended in any way to be a definitive work on IoC, but rather as something to spur thought about why we program to interfaces and some ways to reach the intended value of the practice instead of having it just complicate your code.  I hope that it helps somebody begin or continue a journey away from being a "Cargo Cult Programmer".

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• How I Work: Staying Productive Whilst Traveling

  - by BuckWoody

  I travel a lot. Not like some folks that are gone every week, mind you, although in the last month I’ve been to: Cambridge, UK; Anchorage, AK; San Jose, CA; Copenhagen, DK, Boston, MA; and I’m currently en-route to Anaheim, CA.  While this many places in a month is a bit unusual for me, I would say I travel frequently. I’ve travelled most of my 28+ years in IT, and at one time was a consultant traveling weekly.   With that much time away from my primary work location, I have to find ways to stay productive. Some might say “just rest – take a nap!” – but I’m not able to do that. For one thing, I’m a very light sleeper and I’ve never slept on a plane - even a 30+ hour trip to New Zealand in Business Class - so that just isn’t option. I also am not always in the plane, of course. There’s the hotel, the taxi/bus/train, the airport and then all that over again when I arrive. Since my regular jobs have many demands, I have to get work done.   Note: No, I’m not always focused on work. I need downtime just like everyone else. Sometimes I just think, watch a movie or listen to tunes – and I give myself permission to do that anytime – sometimes the whole trip. I have too fewheartbeats left in life to only focus on work – it’s just not that important, and neither am I. Some of these tasks are letters to friends and family, or other personal things. What I’m talking about here is a plan, not some task list I have to follow. When I get to the location I’m traveling to, I always build in as much time as I can to ensure I enjoy those sights and the people I’m with. I would find traveling to be a waste if not for that.   The Unrealistic Expectation As I would evaluate the trip I was taking – say a 6-8 hour flight – I would expect to get 10-12 hours of work done. After all, there’s the time at the airport, the taxi and so on, and then of course the time in the air with all of the room, power, internet and everything else I needed to get my work done. I would pile up tasks at home, pack my bags, and head happily to the magical land of the TSA.   Right. On return from the trip, I had accomplished little, had more e-mails and other work that had piled up, and I was tired, hungry, and unorganized. This had to change. So, I decided to do three things: Segment my work Set realistic expectations Plan accordingly  Segmenting By Available Resources The first task was to decide what kind of work I could do in each location – if any. I found that I was dependent on a few things to get work done, such as power, the Internet, and a place to sit down. Before I fly, I take some time at home to get all of the work I’d like to accomplish while away segmented into these areas, and print that out on paper, which goes in my suit-coat pocket along with a mechanical pencil. I print my tickets, and I’m all set for the adventure ahead. Then I simply do each kind of work whenever I’m in that situation. No power There are certain times when I don’t have power available. But not only that, I might not even be able to use most of my electronics. So I now schedule as many phone calls as I can for the taxi/bus/train ride and the airports as I can. I have a paper notebook (Moleskine, of course) and a pencil and I print out any notes or numbers I need prior to the trip. Once I’m airborne or at the airport, I work on my laptop. I check and respond to e-mails, create slides, write code, do architecture, whatever I can.  If I can’t use any electronics, or once the power runs out, I schedule time for reading. I can read at the airport or anywhere, actually, even in-flight or any other transport. I “read with a pencil”, meaning I take a lot of notes, which I liketo put in OneNote, but since in most cases I don’t have power, I use the Moleskine to do that. Speaking of which, sometimes as I’m thinking I come up with new topics, ideas, blog posts, or things to teach in my classes. Once again I take out the notebook and write it down. All of these notes get a check-mark when I get back to the office and transfer the writing to OneNote. I’ve tried those “smart pens” and so on to automate this, but it just never works out. Pencil and paper are just fine. As I mentioned, sometime I just need to think. I’ll do nothing, and let my mind wander, thinking of nothing in particular, or some math problem or science question I’m interested in. My only issue with this is that I communicate tothink, and I don’t want to drive people crazy by being that guy that won’t shut up, so I think in a different way. Power, but no Internet or Phone If I have power but no Internet or phone, I focus on the laptop and the tablet as before, and I also recharge my other gadgets. Power, Internet, Phone and a Place to Work At first I thought that when I arrived at the hotel or event I could get the same amount of work done that I do at the office. Not so. There’s simply too many distractions, things you need, or other issues that allow this. Of course, Ican work on any device, read, think, write or whatever, but I am simply not as productive as I am in my home office. So I plan for about 25-50% as much work getting done in this environment as I think I could really do. I’ve done some measurements, and this holds out to be true almost every time. The key is that I re-set my expectations (and my co-worker’s expectations as well) that this is the case. I use the Out-Of-Office notices to let people know that I’m just not going to be 100% at this time – it’s hard for everyone, but it’s more honest and realistic, and I’d rather they know that – and that I realize that – than to let them think I’m totally available. Because I’m not – I’m traveling. I don’t tend to put too much detail, because after all I don’t necessarily want to let people know when I’m not home :) but I do think it’s important to let people that depend on my know that I’ll get back with them later. I hope this helps you think through your own methodology of staying productive when you travel. Or perhaps you just go offline, and don’t worry about any of this – good for you! That’s completely valid as well.   (Oh, and yes, I wrote this at 35K feet, on Alaska Airlines on a trip. :)  Practice what you preach, Buck.)

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