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• c++ optimize array of ints

  - by a432511

  I have a 2D lookup table of int16_t. int16_t my_array[37][73] = {{**DATA HERE**}} I have a mixture of values that range from just above the range of int8_t to just below the range of int8_t and some of the values repeat themselves. I am trying to reduce the size of this lookup table. What I have done so far is split each int16_t value into two int8_t values to visualize the wasted bytes. int8_t part_1 = original_value >> 4; int8_t part_2 = original_value & 0x0000FFFF; // If the upper 4 bits of the original_value were empty if(part_1 == 0) wasted_bytes_count++; I can easily remove the zero value int8_t that are wasting a byte of space and I can also remove the duplicate values, but my question is how do I do remove those values while retaining the ability to lookup based on the two indices? I contemplated translating this into a 1D array and adding a number following each duplicated value that would represent the number of duplicates that were removed, but I am struggling with how I would then identify what is a lookup value and what is a duplicate count. Also, it is further complicated by stripping out the zero int8_t values that were wasted bytes. EDIT: This array is stored in ROM already. RAM is even more limited than ROM so it is already stored in ROM. EDIT: I am going to post a bounty for this question as soon as I can. I need a complete answer of how to store the information AND retrieve it. It does not need to be a 2D array as long as I can get the same values. EDIT: Adding the actual array below: {150,145,140,135,130,125,120,115,110,105,100,95,90,85,80,75,70,65,60,55,50,45,40,35,30,25,20,15,10,5,0,-4,-9,-14,-19,-24,-29,-34,-39,-44,-49,-54,-59,-64,-69,-74,-79,-84,-89,-94,-99,104,109,114,119,124,129,134,139,144,149,154,159,164,169,174,179,175,170,165,160,155,150}, \ {143,137,131,126,120,115,110,105,100,95,90,85,80,75,71,66,62,57,53,48,44,39,35,31,27,22,18,14,9,5,1,-3,-7,-11,-16,-20,-25,-29,-34,-38,-43,-47,-52,-57,-61,-66,-71,-76,-81,-86,-91,-96,101,107,112,117,123,128,134,140,146,151,157,163,169,175,178,172,166,160,154,148,143}, \ {130,124,118,112,107,101,96,92,87,82,78,74,70,65,61,57,54,50,46,42,38,34,31,27,23,19,16,12,8,4,1,-2,-6,-10,-14,-18,-22,-26,-30,-34,-38,-43,-47,-51,-56,-61,-65,-70,-75,-79,-84,-89,-94,100,105,111,116,122,128,135,141,148,155,162,170,177,174,166,159,151,144,137,130}, \ {111,104,99,94,89,85,81,77,73,70,66,63,60,56,53,50,46,43,40,36,33,30,26,23,20,16,13,10,6,3,0,-3,-6,-9,-13,-16,-20,-24,-28,-32,-36,-40,-44,-48,-52,-57,-61,-65,-70,-74,-79,-84,-88,-93,-98,103,109,115,121,128,135,143,152,162,172,176,165,154,144,134,125,118,111}, \ {85,81,77,74,71,68,65,63,60,58,56,53,51,49,46,43,41,38,35,32,29,26,23,19,16,13,10,7,4,1,-1,-3,-6,-9,-13,-16,-19,-23,-26,-30,-34,-38,-42,-46,-50,-54,-58,-62,-66,-70,-74,-78,-83,-87,-91,-95,100,105,110,117,124,133,144,159,178,160,141,125,112,103,96,90,85}, \ {62,60,58,57,55,54,52,51,50,48,47,46,44,42,41,39,36,34,31,28,25,22,19,16,13,10,7,4,2,0,-3,-5,-8,-10,-13,-16,-19,-22,-26,-29,-33,-37,-41,-45,-49,-53,-56,-60,-64,-67,-70,-74,-77,-80,-83,-86,-89,-91,-94,-97,101,105,111,130,109,84,77,74,71,68,66,64,62}, \ {46,46,45,44,44,43,42,42,41,41,40,39,38,37,36,35,33,31,28,26,23,20,16,13,10,7,4,1,-1,-3,-5,-7,-9,-12,-14,-16,-19,-22,-26,-29,-33,-36,-40,-44,-48,-51,-55,-58,-61,-64,-66,-68,-71,-72,-74,-74,-75,-74,-72,-68,-61,-48,-25,2,22,33,40,43,45,46,47,46,46}, \ {36,36,36,36,36,35,35,35,35,34,34,34,34,33,32,31,30,28,26,23,20,17,14,10,6,3,0,-2,-4,-7,-9,-10,-12,-14,-15,-17,-20,-23,-26,-29,-32,-36,-40,-43,-47,-50,-53,-56,-58,-60,-62,-63,-64,-64,-63,-62,-59,-55,-49,-41,-30,-17,-4,6,15,22,27,31,33,34,35,36,36}, \ {30,30,30,30,30,30,30,29,29,29,29,29,29,29,29,28,27,26,24,21,18,15,11,7,3,0,-3,-6,-9,-11,-12,-14,-15,-16,-17,-19,-21,-23,-26,-29,-32,-35,-39,-42,-45,-48,-51,-53,-55,-56,-57,-57,-56,-55,-53,-49,-44,-38,-31,-23,-14,-6,0,7,13,17,21,24,26,27,29,29,30}, \ {25,25,26,26,26,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,25,26,25,25,24,23,21,19,16,12,8,4,0,-3,-7,-10,-13,-15,-16,-17,-18,-19,-20,-21,-22,-23,-25,-28,-31,-34,-37,-40,-43,-46,-48,-49,-50,-51,-51,-50,-48,-45,-42,-37,-32,-26,-19,-13,-7,-1,3,7,11,14,17,19,21,23,24,25,25}, \ {21,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,22,21,20,18,16,13,9,5,1,-3,-7,-11,-14,-17,-18,-20,-21,-21,-22,-22,-22,-23,-23,-25,-27,-29,-32,-35,-37,-40,-42,-44,-45,-45,-45,-44,-42,-40,-36,-32,-27,-22,-17,-12,-7,-3,0,3,7,9,12,14,16,18,19,20,21,21}, \ {18,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,19,18,17,16,14,10,7,2,-1,-6,-10,-14,-17,-19,-21,-22,-23,-24,-24,-24,-24,-23,-23,-23,-24,-26,-28,-30,-33,-35,-37,-38,-39,-39,-38,-36,-34,-31,-28,-24,-19,-15,-10,-6,-3,0,1,4,6,8,10,12,14,15,16,17,18,18}, \ {16,16,17,17,17,17,17,17,17,17,17,16,16,16,16,16,16,15,13,11,8,4,0,-4,-9,-13,-16,-19,-21,-23,-24,-25,-25,-25,-25,-24,-23,-21,-20,-20,-21,-22,-24,-26,-28,-30,-31,-32,-31,-30,-29,-27,-24,-21,-17,-13,-9,-6,-3,-1,0,2,4,5,7,9,10,12,13,14,15,16,16}, \ {14,14,14,15,15,15,15,15,15,15,14,14,14,14,14,14,13,12,11,9,5,2,-2,-6,-11,-15,-18,-21,-23,-24,-25,-25,-25,-25,-24,-22,-21,-18,-16,-15,-15,-15,-17,-19,-21,-22,-24,-24,-24,-23,-22,-20,-18,-15,-12,-9,-5,-3,-1,0,1,2,4,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,13,14,14}, \ {12,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,13,12,12,12,12,11,10,9,6,3,0,-4,-8,-12,-16,-19,-21,-23,-24,-24,-24,-24,-23,-22,-20,-17,-15,-12,-10,-9,-9,-10,-12,-13,-15,-17,-17,-18,-17,-16,-15,-13,-11,-8,-5,-3,-1,0,1,1,2,3,4,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,12,12}, \ {11,11,11,11,11,12,12,12,12,12,11,11,11,11,11,10,10,9,7,5,2,-1,-5,-9,-13,-17,-20,-22,-23,-23,-23,-23,-22,-20,-18,-16,-14,-11,-9,-6,-5,-4,-5,-6,-8,-9,-11,-12,-12,-12,-12,-11,-9,-8,-6,-3,-1,0,0,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,11,11}, \ {10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,9,9,9,7,6,3,0,-3,-6,-10,-14,-17,-20,-21,-22,-22,-22,-21,-19,-17,-15,-13,-10,-8,-6,-4,-2,-2,-2,-2,-4,-5,-7,-8,-8,-9,-8,-8,-7,-5,-4,-2,0,0,1,1,1,2,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,10,10}, \ {9,9,9,9,9,9,9,10,10,9,9,9,9,9,9,8,8,6,5,2,0,-4,-7,-11,-15,-17,-19,-21,-21,-21,-20,-18,-16,-14,-12,-10,-8,-6,-4,-2,-1,0,0,0,-1,-2,-4,-5,-5,-6,-6,-5,-5,-4,-3,-1,0,0,1,1,1,1,2,3,3,5,6,7,8,8,9,9,9}, \ {9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,8,8,8,8,7,5,4,1,-1,-5,-8,-12,-15,-17,-19,-20,-20,-19,-18,-16,-14,-11,-9,-7,-5,-4,-2,-1,0,0,1,1,0,0,-2,-3,-3,-4,-4,-4,-3,-3,-2,-1,0,0,0,0,0,1,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,8,9,9}, \ {9,9,9,8,8,8,9,9,9,9,9,8,8,8,8,7,6,5,3,0,-2,-5,-9,-12,-15,-17,-18,-19,-19,-18,-16,-14,-12,-9,-7,-5,-4,-2,-1,0,0,1,1,1,1,0,0,-1,-2,-2,-3,-3,-2,-2,-1,-1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,8,9}, \ {8,8,8,8,8,8,9,9,9,9,9,9,8,8,8,7,6,4,2,0,-3,-6,-9,-12,-15,-17,-18,-18,-17,-16,-14,-12,-10,-8,-6,-4,-2,-1,0,0,1,2,2,2,2,1,0,0,-1,-1,-1,-2,-2,-1,-1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,8}, \ {8,8,8,8,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,9,8,8,7,5,3,1,-1,-4,-7,-10,-13,-15,-16,-17,-17,-16,-15,-13,-11,-9,-6,-5,-3,-2,0,0,0,1,2,2,2,2,1,1,0,0,0,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,0,0,0,0,-1,-1,-1,-1,-1,0,0,1,3,4,5,7,7,8}, \ {8,8,9,9,9,9,10,10,10,10,10,10,10,9,8,7,5,3,0,-2,-5,-8,-11,-13,-15,-16,-16,-16,-15,-13,-12,-10,-8,-6,-4,-2,-1,0,0,1,2,2,3,3,2,2,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,-1,-1,-2,-2,-2,-2,-2,-1,0,0,1,3,4,6,7,8}, \ {7,8,9,9,9,10,10,11,11,11,11,11,10,10,9,7,5,3,0,-2,-6,-9,-11,-13,-15,-16,-16,-15,-14,-13,-11,-9,-7,-5,-3,-2,0,0,1,1,2,3,3,3,3,2,2,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0,0,-1,-1,-2,-3,-3,-4,-4,-4,-3,-2,-1,0,1,3,5,6,7}, \ {6,8,9,9,10,11,11,12,12,12,12,12,11,11,9,7,5,2,0,-3,-7,-10,-12,-14,-15,-16,-15,-15,-13,-12,-10,-8,-7,-5,-3,-1,0,0,1,2,2,3,3,4,3,3,3,2,2,1,1,1,0,0,0,0,-1,-2,-3,-4,-4,-5,-5,-5,-5,-4,-2,-1,0,2,3,5,6}, \ {6,7,8,10,11,12,12,13,13,14,14,13,13,11,10,8,5,2,0,-4,-8,-11,-13,-15,-16,-16,-16,-15,-13,-12,-10,-8,-6,-5,-3,-1,0,0,1,2,3,3,4,4,4,4,4,3,3,3,2,2,1,1,0,0,-1,-2,-3,-5,-6,-7,-7,-7,-6,-5,-4,-3,-1,0,2,4,6}, \ {5,7,8,10,11,12,13,14,15,15,15,14,14,12,11,8,5,2,-1,-5,-9,-12,-14,-16,-17,-17,-16,-15,-14,-12,-11,-9,-7,-5,-3,-1,0,0,1,2,3,4,4,5,5,5,5,5,5,4,4,3,3,2,1,0,-1,-2,-4,-6,-7,-8,-8,-8,-8,-7,-6,-4,-2,0,1,3,5}, \ {4,6,8,10,12,13,14,15,16,16,16,16,15,13,11,9,5,2,-2,-6,-10,-13,-16,-17,-18,-18,-17,-16,-15,-13,-11,-9,-7,-5,-4,-2,0,0,1,3,3,4,5,6,6,7,7,7,7,7,6,5,4,3,2,0,-1,-3,-5,-7,-8,-9,-10,-10,-10,-9,-7,-5,-4,-1,0,2,4}, \ {4,6,8,10,12,14,15,16,17,18,18,17,16,15,12,9,5,1,-3,-8,-12,-15,-18,-19,-20,-20,-19,-18,-16,-15,-13,-11,-8,-6,-4,-2,-1,0,1,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,9,9,9,9,9,8,7,5,3,1,-1,-3,-6,-8,-10,-11,-12,-12,-11,-10,-9,-7,-5,-2,0,1,4}, \ {4,6,8,11,13,15,16,18,19,19,19,19,18,16,13,10,5,0,-5,-10,-15,-18,-21,-22,-23,-22,-22,-20,-18,-17,-14,-12,-10,-8,-5,-3,-1,0,1,3,5,6,8,9,10,11,12,12,13,12,12,11,9,7,5,2,0,-3,-6,-9,-11,-12,-13,-13,-12,-11,-10,-8,-6,-3,-1,1,4}, \ {3,6,9,11,14,16,17,19,20,21,21,21,19,17,14,10,4,-1,-8,-14,-19,-22,-25,-26,-26,-26,-25,-23,-21,-19,-17,-14,-12,-9,-7,-4,-2,0,1,3,5,7,9,11,13,14,15,16,16,16,16,15,13,10,7,4,0,-3,-7,-10,-12,-14,-15,-14,-14,-12,-11,-9,-6,-4,-1,1,3}, \ {4,6,9,12,14,17,19,21,22,23,23,23,21,19,15,9,2,-5,-13,-20,-25,-28,-30,-31,-31,-30,-29,-27,-25,-22,-20,-17,-14,-11,-9,-6,-3,0,1,4,6,9,11,13,15,17,19,20,21,21,21,20,18,15,11,6,2,-2,-7,-11,-13,-15,-16,-16,-15,-13,-11,-9,-7,-4,-1,1,4}, \ {4,7,10,13,15,18,20,22,24,25,25,25,23,20,15,7,-2,-12,-22,-29,-34,-37,-38,-38,-37,-36,-34,-31,-29,-26,-23,-20,-17,-13,-10,-7,-4,-1,2,5,8,11,13,16,18,21,23,24,26,26,26,26,24,21,17,12,5,0,-6,-10,-14,-16,-16,-16,-15,-14,-12,-10,-7,-4,-1,1,4}, \ {4,7,10,13,16,19,22,24,26,27,27,26,24,19,11,-1,-15,-28,-37,-43,-46,-47,-47,-45,-44,-41,-39,-36,-32,-29,-26,-22,-19,-15,-11,-8,-4,-1,2,5,9,12,15,19,22,24,27,29,31,33,33,33,32,30,26,21,14,6,0,-6,-11,-14,-15,-16,-15,-14,-12,-9,-7,-4,-1,1,4}, \ {6,9,12,15,18,21,23,25,27,28,27,24,17,4,-14,-34,-49,-56,-60,-60,-60,-58,-56,-53,-50,-47,-43,-40,-36,-32,-28,-25,-21,-17,-13,-9,-5,-1,2,6,10,14,17,21,24,28,31,34,37,39,41,42,43,43,41,38,33,25,17,8,0,-4,-8,-10,-10,-10,-8,-7,-4,-2,0,3,6}, \ {22,24,26,28,30,32,33,31,23,-18,-81,-96,-99,-98,-95,-93,-89,-86,-82,-78,-74,-70,-66,-62,-57,-53,-49,-44,-40,-36,-32,-27,-23,-19,-14,-10,-6,-1,2,6,10,15,19,23,27,31,35,38,42,45,49,52,55,57,60,61,63,63,62,61,57,53,47,40,33,28,23,21,19,19,19,20,22}, \ {168,173,178,176,171,166,161,156,151,146,141,136,131,126,121,116,111,106,101,-96,-91,-86,-81,-76,-71,-66,-61,-56,-51,-46,-41,-36,-31,-26,-21,-16,-11,-6,-1,3,8,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,53,58,63,68,73,78,83,88,93,98,103,108,113,118,123,128,133,138,143,148,153,158,163,168}, \ Thanks for your time.

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• Rails 3 - development errors in production mode

  - by skrafi

  Im using Rails, Passenger (both are 3.0.5) and Nginx on my production server. As I heard, Rails should show public/404.html or public/500.html instead of development errors like ActiveRecord::RecordNotFound or Unknown action but that doesn't happen. I've tried to delete config.ru file and set rack_env or rails_env in nginx.conf but nothing helped. Here is my nginx.conf: worker_processes 1; events { worker_connections 1024; } http { passenger_root /home/makk/.rvm/gems/ruby-1.9.2-p0/gems/passenger-3.0.5; passenger_ruby /home/makk/.rvm/bin/passenger_ruby; #passenger_ruby /home/makk/.rvm/wrappers/ruby-1.9.2-p0/ruby; include mime.types; default_type application/octet-stream; sendfile on; keepalive_timeout 65; server { listen 80; server_name localhost; location / { root /home/makk/projects/1server/deploy/current/public; index index.html index.htm; passenger_enabled on; rack_env production; recursive_error_pages on; if (-f /home/makk/projects/1server/maintenance.html) { return 503; } error_page 404 /404.html; error_page 500 502 504 /500.html; error_page 503 @503; } location @503 { error_page 405 = /maintenance.html; # Serve static assets if found. if (-f $request_filename) { break; } rewrite ^(.*)$ /maintenance.html break; } location ~ ^(\/phpmyadmin\/)(.*)$ { fastcgi_pass 127.0.0.1:9000; fastcgi_index index.php; fastcgi_split_path_info ^(\/phpmyadmin\/)(.*)$; fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME /usr/share/phpmyadmin/$fastcgi_path_info; include fastcgi_params; } } } It seems that this question duplicates this one but there are no working suggestions. UPD: I have both development and production apps on same PC. In production Rails ignores config.consider_all_requests_local = false (in /config/environments/production.rb) due to local_request? method. So one of possible solutions is listed below (taken from here): # config/initializers/local_request_override.rb module CustomRescue def local_request? return false if Rails.env.production? || Rails.env.staging? super end end ActionController::Base.class_eval do include CustomRescue end Or for Rails 3: class ActionDispatch::Request def local? false end end

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• Radio button inside anchor element is reset after jQuery click handler

  - by GrievousAngel

  I have a situation where an element, of type radio, is contained in an element. The anchor element has a href but I want to override that behaviour by adding a jQuery 'click' handler to the element. The click handler makes the radio button inside it the selected one within the group. This all works when the anchor is clicked, however, when the radio button is clicked it appears that jQuery resets the selected radio to the previously selected one! Here is a the simplified page that duplicates the issue: <html> <head> <script src="https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.4/jquery.min.js"></script> <script type="text/javascript"> $(document).ready(function() { $("#a1").click(function(event) { anchorClicked("a1"); return false; }); $("#a2").click(function(event) { anchorClicked("a2"); return false; }); }); function anchorClicked(anchorId) { $('#' + anchorId + ' input:radio').attr("checked", true); alert("Look at what is selected and what happens after the event when this dialog is closed!"); } </script> </head> <body> <form> <ul> <li id="li1"> <a id="a1" href="javascript:alert('default functionality')"> <input value="1" name="rb" type="radio" id="rb1"> <span>Details 1</span> </a> </li> <li id="li2"> <a id="a2" href="javascript:alert('default functionality')"> <input value="2" name="rb" type="radio" id="rb2"> <span>Details 2</span> </a> </li> </ul> </form> </body> Does anyone have any idea how I can prevent jQuery for resetting the radio button?

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• Select latest group by in nhibernate

  - by Kendrick

  I have Canine and CanineHandler objects in my application. The CanineHandler object has a PersonID (which references a completely different database), an EffectiveDate (which specifies when a handler started with the canine), and a FK reference to the Canine (CanineID). Given a specific PersonID, I want to find all canines they're currently responsible for. The (simplified) query I'd use in SQL would be: Select Canine.* from Canine inner join CanineHandler on(CanineHandler.CanineID=Canine.CanineID) inner join (select CanineID,Max(EffectiveDate) MaxEffectiveDate from caninehandler group by CanineID) as CurrentHandler on(CurrentHandler.CanineID=CanineHandler.CanineID and CurrentHandler.MaxEffectiveDate=CanineHandler.EffectiveDate) where CanineHandler.HandlerPersonID=@PersonID Edit: Added mapping files below: <class name="CanineHandler" table="CanineHandler" schema="dbo"> <id name="CanineHandlerID" type="Int32"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="EffectiveDate" type="DateTime" precision="16" not-null="true" /> <property name="HandlerPersonID" type="Int64" precision="19" not-null="true" /> <many-to-one name="Canine" class="Canine" column="CanineID" not-null="true" access="field.camelcase-underscore" /> </class> <class name="Canine" table="Canine"> <id name="CanineID" type="Int32"> <generator class="identity" /> </id> <property name="Name" type="String" length="64" not-null="true" /> ... <set name="CanineHandlers" table="CanineHandler" inverse="true" order-by="EffectiveDate desc" cascade="save-update" access="field.camelcase-underscore"> <key column="CanineID" /> <one-to-many class="CanineHandler" /> </set> <property name="IsDeleted" type="Boolean" not-null="true" /> </class> I haven't tried yet, but I'm guessing I could do this in HQL. I haven't had to write anything in HQL yet, so I'll have to tackle that eventually anyway, but my question is whether/how I can do this sub-query with the criterion/subqueries objects. I got as far as creating the following detached criteria: DetachedCriteria effectiveHandlers = DetachedCriteria.For<Canine>() .SetProjection(Projections.ProjectionList() .Add(Projections.Max("EffectiveDate"),"MaxEffectiveDate") .Add(Projections.GroupProperty("CanineID"),"handledCanineID") ); but I can't figure out how to do the inner join. If I do this: Session.CreateCriteria<Canine>() .CreateCriteria("CanineHandler", "handler", NHibernate.SqlCommand.JoinType.InnerJoin) .List<Canine>(); I get an error "could not resolve property: CanineHandler of: OPS.CanineApp.Model.Canine". Obviously I'm missing something(s) but from the documentation I got the impression that should return a list of Canines that have handlers (possibly with duplicates). Until I can make this work, adding the subquery isn't going to work... I've found similar questions, such as http://stackoverflow.com/questions/747382/only-get-latest-results-using-nhibernate but none of the answers really seem to apply with the kind of direct result I'm looking for. Any help or suggestion is greatly appreciated.

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• organizing external libraries and include files

  - by stijn

  Over the years my projects use more and more external libraries, and the way I did it starts feeling more and more awkward (although, that has to be said, it does work flawlessly). I use VS on Windows, CMake on others, and CodeComposer for targetting DSPs on Windows. Except for the DSPs, both 32bit and 64bit platforms are used. Here's a sample of what I am doing now; note that as shown, the different external libraries themselves are not always organized in the same way. Some have different lib/include/src folders, others have a single src folder. Some came ready-to-use with static and/or shared libraries, others were built /path/to/projects /projectA /projectB /path/to/apis /apiA /src /include /lib /apiB /include /i386/lib /amd64/lib /path/to/otherapis /apiC /src /path/to/sharedlibs /apiA_x86.lib -->some libs were built in all possible configurations /apiA_x86d.lib /apiA_x64.lib /apiA_x64d.lib /apiA_static_x86.lib /apiB.lib -->other libs have just one import library /path/to/dlls -->most of this directory also gets distributed to clients /apiA_x86.dll and it's in the PATH /apiB.dll Each time I add an external libary, I roughly use this process: build it, if needed, for different configurations (release/debug/platform) copy it's static and/or import libraries to 'sharedlibs' copy it's shared libraries to 'dlls' add an environment variable, eg 'API_A_DIR' that points to the root for ApiA, like '/path/to/apis/apiA' create a VS property sheet and a CMake file to state include path and eventually the library name, like include = '$(API_A_DIR)/Include' and lib = apiA.lib add the propertysheet/cmake file to the project needing the library It's especially step 4 and 5 that are bothering me. I am pretty sure I am not the only one facing this problem, and would like see how others deal with this. I was thinking to get rid of the environment variables per library, and use just one 'API_INCLUDE_DIR' and populating it with the include files in an organized way: /path/to/api/include /apiA /apiB /apiC This way I do not need the include path in the propertysheets nor the environment variables. For libs that are only used on windows I even don't need a propertysheet at all as I can use #pragmas to instruct the linker what library to link to. Also in the code it will be more clear what gets included, and no need for wrappers to include files having the same name but are from different libraries: #include <apiA/header.h> #include <apiB/header.h> #include <apiC_version1/header.h> The withdrawal is off course that I have to copy include files, and possibly** introduce duplicates on the filesystem, but that looks like a minor price to pay, doesn't it? ** actually once libraries are built, the only thing I need from them is the include files and thie libs. Since each of those would have a dedicated directory, the original source tree is not needed anymore so can be deleted..

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• Why this search can not generate correct result?

  - by user482742

  Hi, All: Below is to find same customer and if he is in list, the number add one. If he is not in the list, just add him in the list. I use Search function to do this, but failed and generated incorrect records. It can not find the customer or the right number of customers. But if I use For..loop to iterate the list, it does well and can find the customer and add new customer in that for..loop search procedure. (I did not paste for ..loop search procedrue here). Another problem is that there is no difference between setting list.sorted true and false. It seems Search function is not correct. This search function is from an example of delphi textbook. The below is with Delphi 7. Thank you. Procedure Form1.create; begin list:=Tstringlist.create; list.sorted:=true; // Search function will generate exactly Same and Incorrect //records no matter list.sorted is set true or false. list.duplicates:=dupignore; .. end; Procedure addcustomer; var .. begin while p1.MatchAgain do begin //p1 is regular expression customer:=p1.MatchedExpression; if (search(customer)=false) then begin list.Add(customer+'=1'); end; allcustomer:=allcustomer+1; .. end; Function Tform1.search(customer: string): boolean; var fre:string; num:integer; L:integer; R:integer; M: Integer; CompareResult: Integer; found: boolean; begin result:=false; found:=false; L := 0; R := List.Count - 1; while (L <= R) and ( not found ) do begin M := (L + R) div 2; CompareResult := Comparetext(list.Names[m]), customer); if (compareresult=0) then begin fre:=list.ValueFromIndex [m]; num:=strtoint(fre); num:=num+1; list.ValueFromIndex[m]:=inttostr(num); Found := True; Result := true; exit; end else if compareresult > 0 then r := m - 1 else l := m + 1; end; end;

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• C++ Euler-Problem 14 Program Freezing

  - by Tim

  I'm working on Euler Problem 14: http://projecteuler.net/index.php?section=problems&id=14 I figured the best way would be to create a vector of numbers that kept track of how big the series was for that number... for example from 5 there are 6 steps to 1, so if ever reach the number 5 in a series, I know I have 6 steps to go and I have no need to calculate those steps. With this idea I coded up the following: #include <iostream> #include <vector> #include <iomanip> using namespace std; int main() { vector<int> sizes(1); sizes.push_back(1); sizes.push_back(2); int series, largest = 0, j; for (int i = 3; i <= 1000000; i++) { series = 0; j = i; while (j > (sizes.size()-1)) { if (j%2) { j=(3*j+1)/2; series+=2; } else { j=j/2; series++; } } series+=sizes[j]; sizes.push_back(series); if (series>largest) largest=series; cout << setw(7) << right << i << "::" << setw(5) << right << series << endl; } cout << largest << endl; return 0; } It seems to work relatively well for smaller numbers but this specific program stalls at the number 113382. Can anyone explain to me how I would go about figuring out why it freezes at this number? Is there some way I could modify my algorithim to be better? I realize that I am creating duplicates with the current way I'm doing it: for example, the series of 3 is 3,10,5,16,8,4,2,1. So I already figured out the sizes for 10,5,16,8,4,2,1 but I will duplicate those solutions later. Thanks for your help!

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• Comments Parent-Child query with indentation

  - by poldoj

  I've been trying to retrieve comments to articles in a pretty common blog fashion way. Here's my sample code: -- ---------------------------- -- Sample Table structure for [dbo].[Comments] -- ---------------------------- CREATE TABLE [dbo].[Comments] ( [CommentID] int NOT NULL , [AddedDate] datetime NOT NULL , [AddedBy] nvarchar(256) NOT NULL , [ArticleID] int NOT NULL , [Body] nvarchar(4000) NOT NULL , [parentCommentID] int NULL ) GO -- ---------------------------- -- Sample Records of Comments -- ---------------------------- INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'1', N'2011-11-26 23:18:07.000', N'user', N'1', N'body', null); GO INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'2', N'2011-11-26 23:18:50.000', N'user', N'2', N'body', null); GO INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'3', N'2011-11-26 23:19:09.000', N'user', N'1', N'body', null); GO INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'4', N'2011-11-26 23:19:46.000', N'user', N'3', N'body', null); GO INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'5', N'2011-11-26 23:20:16.000', N'user', N'1', N'body', N'1'); GO INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'6', N'2011-11-26 23:20:42.000', N'user', N'1', N'body', N'1'); GO INSERT INTO [dbo].[Comments] ([CommentID], [AddedDate], [AddedBy], [ArticleID], [Body], [parentCommentID]) VALUES (N'7', N'2011-11-26 23:21:25.000', N'user', N'1', N'body', N'6'); GO -- ---------------------------- -- Indexes structure for table Comments -- ---------------------------- -- ---------------------------- -- Primary Key structure for table [dbo].[Comments] -- ---------------------------- ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Comments] ADD PRIMARY KEY ([CommentID]) GO -- ---------------------------- -- Foreign Key structure for table [dbo].[Comments] -- ---------------------------- ALTER TABLE [dbo].[Comments] ADD FOREIGN KEY ([parentCommentID]) REFERENCES [dbo]. [Comments] ([CommentID]) ON DELETE NO ACTION ON UPDATE NO ACTION GO I thought I could use a CTE query to do the job like this: WITH CommentsCTE(CommentID, AddedDate, AddedBy, ArticleID, Body, parentCommentID, lvl, sortcol) AS ( SELECT CommentID, AddedDate, AddedBy, ArticleID, Body, parentCommentID, 0, cast(CommentID as varbinary(max)) FROM Comments UNION ALL SELECT P.CommentID, P.AddedDate, P.AddedBy, P.ArticleID, P.Body, P.parentCommentID, PP.lvl+1, CAST(sortcol + CAST(P.CommentID AS BINARY(4)) AS VARBINARY(max)) FROM Comments AS P JOIN CommentsCTE AS PP ON P.parentCommentID = PP.CommentID ) SELECT REPLICATE('--', lvl) + right('>',lvl)+ AddedBy + ' :: ' + Body, CommentID, parentCommentID, lvl FROM CommentsCTE WHERE ArticleID = 1 order by sortcol go but the results have been very disappointing so far, and after days of tweaking I decided to ask for help. I was looking for a method to display hierarchical comments to articles like it happens in blogs. [edit] The problem with this query is that I get duplicates because I couldn't figure out how to properly select the ArticleID which I want comments from to display. I'm also looking for a method that sorts children entries by date within a same level. An example of what I'm trying to accomplish could be something like: (ArticleID[post retrieved]) ------------------------- ------------------------- (Comments[related to the article id above]) first comment[no parent] --[first child to first comment] --[second child to first comment] ----[first child to second child comment to first comment] --[third child to first comment] ----[first child to third child comment to first comment] ------[(recursive child): first child to first child to third child comment to first comment] ------[(recursive child): second child to first child to third child comment to first comment] second comment[no parent] third comment[no parent] --[first child to third comment] I kinda got myself lost in all this mess...I appreciate any help or simpler ways to get this working. Thanks

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• My php script only reads the first row from mysql and doesn't check the rest of the rows for matches

  - by RobertH

  I'm trying to write a script for users to register to a club, and it does all the validation stuff properly and works great until it gets to the part where its supposed to check for duplicates. I'm not sure what is going wrong. HELP PLEASE!!! Thank you in Advance, <?php mysql_connect ("sqlhost", "username", "password") or die(mysql_error()); mysql_select_db ("databasename") or die(mysql_error()); $errormsgdb = ""; $errordb = "Sorry but that "; $error1db = "Name"; $error2db = "email"; $error3db = "mobile number"; $errordbe = " is already registered"; $pass1db = "No Matching Name"; $pass2db = "No Matching Email"; $pass3db = "No Matching Mobile"; $errorcount = 0; $qResult = mysql_query ("SELECT * FROM table"); $nRows = mysql_num_rows($qResult); for ($i=1; $i< $nRows+1; $i++){ $result = mysql_query("SELECT id,fname,lname,dob,email,mobile,agree,code,joindate FROM table WHERE fname = '$ffname"); if ($result > 0) { $errorcount = $errorcount++; $passdb = 0; $errormsgdb = $error1db; echo "<div class=\"box red\">$errordb $errormsgdb } else { $pass = 1; $errormsgdb = $pass1db; echo "<div class=\"box green\">$errormsgdb</div><br />"; } //--------------- Check if DB checks returned errors ------------------------------------> if($errorcount <= 0){ $dobp = $_REQUEST['day'].'/'.$_REQUEST['month'].'/'.$_REQUEST['year']; $dob = $_REQUEST['year'].$_REQUEST['month'].$_REQUEST['day']; //header('Location: thankyou.php?ffname='.$ffname.'&flname='.$flname.'&dob='.$dob.'&femail='.$femail.'&fmobile='.$fmobile.'&agree='.$agree.'&code='.$code.'&dobp='.$dobp); echo "<div class='box green'>Form completed! Error Count = $errorcount</div>"; } else { echo "<div class='box red'>There was an Error! Error Count = $errorcount</div>"; } } ?>

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• I cut-to-move DCIM folder to ext SD when an auto android OS update popped up b4 I could choose target - Cannot recover 200+ photos

  - by ZeroG

  I was downloading my Exhibit II's DCIM camera folder (with month's of photos inside) to its external SD card, in order to transfer them into my laptop. In my overconfidence, I hurriedly chose cut-to-move (rather than copy-to-move) when KABOOM! —an automatic Android OS update popped up before I could choose the target!!! I figured everything was in cache & calmly tried to go through with the update. But that was not a typically seamless event. It showed downloading icon but hmm… since I rooted the phone it brought the command line up & recovery sequence. But neither Android nor I had yet downloaded any alternate custom ROM Files to internal SD to update from! So were they trying to make me unroot my phone by giving me some bogus update on the fly or just give me a hard time in trying to hand me down an unrooted ROM that I'd have to figure out how to root again? Yes, I know there was that blurb about overwriting a file of the same name but I was trying to shake the darn stubborn update being forced on my phone during this precarious moment. I thought I had frozen or turned off all those auto-updates previously. Anyway, phones are small & fingers are big (sigh)... I tried to reboot into safe mode but the resultant photo file was partially overwritten (200 files had names but Zero bytes in them). I thought maybe it was still hung in cache or deposited somewhere else but I have searched everywhere with file managers. Since I did not have Titanium backing up camera, photo folder or gallery, I cannot recover 200+ photos. Dumb. You can understand my dilemma as I am involved in the arts & although just a camera phone, most of these photos were historic & aesthetic or at least as to subject matter. Photo-ops don't reoccur. I have tried a couple of recovery apps from the market like Search Duplicates & Recover to no avail. I was only able to salvage stuff I'd sent out in messages. I've got several decades in computers & this is such a miserable beginner's piece of bad luck I can't believe it happened to me. They were precious photos! Yes, I turned on Titanium since & yes I even tried USB to laptop recoveries. Being on a MacBookPro I'm trying androidfiletransfer.dmg, but I'd have to upgrade to Peach Sunrise to get above Android 3.0 for that App to recognize the phone via USB & the programmer says installation zeros your data, so that pretty much toasts any secret hidden places where these photos may have been deposited. Don't want to do that & am still trying to find them. They certainly didn't make it to my external SD Card. If any of you techies out there know anything, please help & thanks. Despite decades of being in computing, unfamiliar & ever-changing hard or software can humble even the most seasoned veterans.

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• HTG Reviews the CODE Keyboard: Old School Construction Meets Modern Amenities

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  There’s nothing quite as satisfying as the smooth and crisp action of a well built keyboard. If you’re tired of  mushy keys and cheap feeling keyboards, a well-constructed mechanical keyboard is a welcome respite from the $10 keyboard that came with your computer. Read on as we put the CODE mechanical keyboard through the paces. What is the CODE Keyboard? The CODE keyboard is a collaboration between manufacturer WASD Keyboards and Jeff Atwood of Coding Horror (the guy behind the Stack Exchange network and Discourse forum software). Atwood’s focus was incorporating the best of traditional mechanical keyboards and the best of modern keyboard usability improvements. In his own words: The world is awash in terrible, crappy, no name how-cheap-can-we-make-it keyboards. There are a few dozen better mechanical keyboard options out there. I’ve owned and used at least six different expensive mechanical keyboards, but I wasn’t satisfied with any of them, either: they didn’t have backlighting, were ugly, had terrible design, or were missing basic functions like media keys. That’s why I originally contacted Weyman Kwong of WASD Keyboards way back in early 2012. I told him that the state of keyboards was unacceptable to me as a geek, and I proposed a partnership wherein I was willing to work with him to do whatever it takes to produce a truly great mechanical keyboard. Even the ardent skeptic who questions whether Atwood has indeed created a truly great mechanical keyboard certainly can’t argue with the position he starts from: there are so many agonizingly crappy keyboards out there. Even worse, in our opinion, is that unless you’re a typist of a certain vintage there’s a good chance you’ve never actually typed on a really nice keyboard. Those that didn’t start using computers until the mid-to-late 1990s most likely have always typed on modern mushy-key keyboards and never known the joy of typing on a really responsive and crisp mechanical keyboard. Is our preference for and love of mechanical keyboards shining through here? Good. We’re not even going to try and hide it. So where does the CODE keyboard stack up in pantheon of keyboards? Read on as we walk you through the simple setup and our experience using the CODE. Setting Up the CODE Keyboard Although the setup of the CODE keyboard is essentially plug and play, there are two distinct setup steps that you likely haven’t had to perform on a previous keyboard. Both highlight the degree of care put into the keyboard and the amount of customization available. Inside the box you’ll find the keyboard, a micro USB cable, a USB-to-PS2 adapter, and a tool which you may be unfamiliar with: a key puller. We’ll return to the key puller in a moment. Unlike the majority of keyboards on the market, the cord isn’t permanently affixed to the keyboard. What does this mean for you? Aside from the obvious need to plug it in yourself, it makes it dead simple to repair your own keyboard cord if it gets attacked by a pet, mangled in a mechanism on your desk, or otherwise damaged. It also makes it easy to take advantage of the cable routing channels in on the underside of the keyboard to  route your cable exactly where you want it. While we’re staring at the underside of the keyboard, check out those beefy rubber feet. By peripherals standards they’re huge (and there is six instead of the usual four). Once you plunk the keyboard down where you want it, it might as well be glued down the rubber feet work so well. After you’ve secured the cable and adjusted it to your liking, there is one more task  before plug the keyboard into the computer. On the bottom left-hand side of the keyboard, you’ll find a small recess in the plastic with some dip switches inside: The dip switches are there to switch hardware functions for various operating systems, keyboard layouts, and to enable/disable function keys. By toggling the dip switches you can change the keyboard from QWERTY mode to Dvorak mode and Colemak mode, the two most popular alternative keyboard configurations. You can also use the switches to enable Mac-functionality (for Command/Option keys). One of our favorite little toggles is the SW3 dip switch: you can disable the Caps Lock key; goodbye accidentally pressing Caps when you mean to press Shift. You can review the entire dip switch configuration chart here. The quick-start for Windows users is simple: double check that all the switches are in the off position (as seen in the photo above) and then simply toggle SW6 on to enable the media and backlighting function keys (this turns the menu key on the keyboard into a function key as typically found on laptop keyboards). After adjusting the dip switches to your liking, plug the keyboard into an open USB port on your computer (or into your PS/2 port using the included adapter). Design, Layout, and Backlighting The CODE keyboard comes in two flavors, a traditional 87-key layout (no number pad) and a traditional 104-key layout (number pad on the right hand side). We identify the layout as traditional because, despite some modern trapping and sneaky shortcuts, the actual form factor of the keyboard from the shape of the keys to the spacing and position is as classic as it comes. You won’t have to learn a new keyboard layout and spend weeks conditioning yourself to a smaller than normal backspace key or a PgUp/PgDn pair in an unconventional location. Just because the keyboard is very conventional in layout, however, doesn’t mean you’ll be missing modern amenities like media-control keys. The following additional functions are hidden in the F11, F12, Pause button, and the 2×6 grid formed by the Insert and Delete rows: keyboard illumination brightness, keyboard illumination on/off, mute, and then the typical play/pause, forward/backward, stop, and volume +/- in Insert and Delete rows, respectively. While we weren’t sure what we’d think of the function-key system at first (especially after retiring a Microsoft Sidewinder keyboard with a huge and easily accessible volume knob on it), it took less than a day for us to adapt to using the Fn key, located next to the right Ctrl key, to adjust our media playback on the fly. Keyboard backlighting is a largely hit-or-miss undertaking but the CODE keyboard nails it. Not only does it have pleasant and easily adjustable through-the-keys lighting but the key switches the keys themselves are attached to are mounted to a steel plate with white paint. Enough of the light reflects off the interior cavity of the keys and then diffuses across the white plate to provide nice even illumination in between the keys. Highlighting the steel plate beneath the keys brings us to the actual construction of the keyboard. It’s rock solid. The 87-key model, the one we tested, is 2.0 pounds. The 104-key is nearly a half pound heavier at 2.42 pounds. Between the steel plate, the extra-thick PCB board beneath the steel plate, and the thick ABS plastic housing, the keyboard has very solid feel to it. Combine that heft with the previously mentioned thick rubber feet and you have a tank-like keyboard that won’t budge a millimeter during normal use. Examining The Keys This is the section of the review the hardcore typists and keyboard ninjas have been waiting for. We’ve looked at the layout of the keyboard, we’ve looked at the general construction of it, but what about the actual keys? There are a wide variety of keyboard construction techniques but the vast majority of modern keyboards use a rubber-dome construction. The key is floated in a plastic frame over a rubber membrane that has a little rubber dome for each key. The press of the physical key compresses the rubber dome downwards and a little bit of conductive material on the inside of the dome’s apex connects with the circuit board. Despite the near ubiquity of the design, many people dislike it. The principal complaint is that dome keyboards require a complete compression to register a keystroke; keyboard designers and enthusiasts refer to this as “bottoming out”. In other words, the register the “b” key, you need to completely press that key down. As such it slows you down and requires additional pressure and movement that, over the course of tens of thousands of keystrokes, adds up to a whole lot of wasted time and fatigue. The CODE keyboard features key switches manufactured by Cherry, a company that has manufactured key switches since the 1960s. Specifically the CODE features Cherry MX Clear switches. These switches feature the same classic design of the other Cherry switches (such as the MX Blue and Brown switch lineups) but they are significantly quieter (yes this is a mechanical keyboard, but no, your neighbors won’t think you’re firing off a machine gun) as they lack the audible click found in most Cherry switches. This isn’t to say that they keyboard doesn’t have a nice audible key press sound when the key is fully depressed, but that the key mechanism isn’t doesn’t create a loud click sound when triggered. One of the great features of the Cherry MX clear is a tactile “bump” that indicates the key has been compressed enough to register the stroke. For touch typists the very subtle tactile feedback is a great indicator that you can move on to the next stroke and provides a welcome speed boost. Even if you’re not trying to break any word-per-minute records, that little bump when pressing the key is satisfying. The Cherry key switches, in addition to providing a much more pleasant typing experience, are also significantly more durable than dome-style key switch. Rubber dome switch membrane keyboards are typically rated for 5-10 million contacts whereas the Cherry mechanical switches are rated for 50 million contacts. You’d have to write the next War and Peace  and follow that up with A Tale of Two Cities: Zombie Edition, and then turn around and transcribe them both into a dozen different languages to even begin putting a tiny dent in the lifecycle of this keyboard. So what do the switches look like under the classicly styled keys? You can take a look yourself with the included key puller. Slide the loop between the keys and then gently beneath the key you wish to remove: Wiggle the key puller gently back and forth while exerting a gentle upward pressure to pop the key off; You can repeat the process for every key, if you ever find yourself needing to extract piles of cat hair, Cheeto dust, or other foreign objects from your keyboard. There it is, the naked switch, the source of that wonderful crisp action with the tactile bump on each keystroke. The last feature worthy of a mention is the N-key rollover functionality of the keyboard. This is a feature you simply won’t find on non-mechanical keyboards and even gaming keyboards typically only have any sort of key roller on the high-frequency keys like WASD. So what is N-key rollover and why do you care? On a typical mass-produced rubber-dome keyboard you cannot simultaneously press more than two keys as the third one doesn’t register. PS/2 keyboards allow for unlimited rollover (in other words you can’t out type the keyboard as all of your keystrokes, no matter how fast, will register); if you use the CODE keyboard with the PS/2 adapter you gain this ability. If you don’t use the PS/2 adapter and use the native USB, you still get 6-key rollover (and the CTRL, ALT, and SHIFT don’t count towards the 6) so realistically you still won’t be able to out type the computer as even the more finger twisting keyboard combos and high speed typing will still fall well within the 6-key rollover. The rollover absolutely doesn’t matter if you’re a slow hunt-and-peck typist, but if you’ve read this far into a keyboard review there’s a good chance that you’re a serious typist and that kind of quality construction and high-number key rollover is a fantastic feature.  The Good, The Bad, and the Verdict We’ve put the CODE keyboard through the paces, we’ve played games with it, typed articles with it, left lengthy comments on Reddit, and otherwise used and abused it like we would any other keyboard. The Good: The construction is rock solid. In an emergency, we’re confident we could use the keyboard as a blunt weapon (and then resume using it later in the day with no ill effect on the keyboard). The Cherry switches are an absolute pleasure to type on; the Clear variety found in the CODE keyboard offer a really nice middle-ground between the gun-shot clack of a louder mechanical switch and the quietness of a lesser-quality dome keyboard without sacrificing quality. Touch typists will love the subtle tactile bump feedback. Dip switch system makes it very easy for users on different systems and with different keyboard layout needs to switch between operating system and keyboard layouts. If you’re investing a chunk of change in a keyboard it’s nice to know you can take it with you to a different operating system or “upgrade” it to a new layout if you decide to take up Dvorak-style typing. The backlighting is perfect. You can adjust it from a barely-visible glow to a blazing light-up-the-room brightness. Whatever your intesity preference, the white-coated steel backplate does a great job diffusing the light between the keys. You can easily remove the keys for cleaning (or to rearrange the letters to support a new keyboard layout). The weight of the unit combined with the extra thick rubber feet keep it planted exactly where you place it on the desk. The Bad: While you’re getting your money’s worth, the $150 price tag is a shock when compared to the $20-60 price tags you find on lower-end keyboards. People used to large dedicated media keys independent of the traditional key layout (such as the large buttons and volume controls found on many modern keyboards) might be off put by the Fn-key style media controls on the CODE. The Verdict: The keyboard is clearly and heavily influenced by the needs of serious typists. Whether you’re a programmer, transcriptionist, or just somebody that wants to leave the lengthiest article comments the Internet has ever seen, the CODE keyboard offers a rock solid typing experience. Yes, $150 isn’t pocket change, but the quality of the CODE keyboard is so high and the typing experience is so enjoyable, you’re easily getting ten times the value you’d get out of purchasing a lesser keyboard. Even compared to other mechanical keyboards on the market, like the Das Keyboard, you’re still getting more for your money as other mechanical keyboards don’t come with the lovely-to-type-on Cherry MX Clear switches, back lighting, and hardware-based operating system keyboard layout switching. If it’s in your budget to upgrade your keyboard (especially if you’ve been slogging along with a low-end rubber-dome keyboard) there’s no good reason to not pickup a CODE keyboard. Key animation courtesy of Geekhack.org user Lethal Squirrel.       

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• C# 4: The Curious ConcurrentDictionary

  - by James Michael Hare

  In my previous post (here) I did a comparison of the new ConcurrentQueue versus the old standard of a System.Collections.Generic Queue with simple locking.  The results were exactly what I would have hoped, that the ConcurrentQueue was faster with multi-threading for most all situations.  In addition, concurrent collections have the added benefit that you can enumerate them even if they're being modified. So I set out to see what the improvements would be for the ConcurrentDictionary, would it have the same performance benefits as the ConcurrentQueue did?  Well, after running some tests and multiple tweaks and tunes, I have good and bad news. But first, let's look at the tests.  Obviously there's many things we can do with a dictionary.  One of the most notable uses, of course, in a multi-threaded environment is for a small, local in-memory cache.  So I set about to do a very simple simulation of a cache where I would create a test class that I'll just call an Accessor.  This accessor will attempt to look up a key in the dictionary, and if the key exists, it stops (i.e. a cache "hit").  However, if the lookup fails, it will then try to add the key and value to the dictionary (i.e. a cache "miss").  So here's the Accessor that will run the tests: 1: internal class Accessor 2: { 3: public int Hits { get; set; } 4: public int Misses { get; set; } 5: public Func<int, string> GetDelegate { get; set; } 6: public Action<int, string> AddDelegate { get; set; } 7: public int Iterations { get; set; } 8: public int MaxRange { get; set; } 9: public int Seed { get; set; } 10:  11: public void Access() 12: { 13: var randomGenerator = new Random(Seed); 14:  15: for (int i=0; i<Iterations; i++) 16: { 17: // give a wide spread so will have some duplicates and some unique 18: var target = randomGenerator.Next(1, MaxRange); 19:  20: // attempt to grab the item from the cache 21: var result = GetDelegate(target); 22:  23: // if the item doesn't exist, add it 24: if(result == null) 25: { 26: AddDelegate(target, target.ToString()); 27: Misses++; 28: } 29: else 30: { 31: Hits++; 32: } 33: } 34: } 35: } Note that so I could test different implementations, I defined a GetDelegate and AddDelegate that will call the appropriate dictionary methods to add or retrieve items in the cache using various techniques. So let's examine the three techniques I decided to test: Dictionary with mutex - Just your standard generic Dictionary with a simple lock construct on an internal object. Dictionary with ReaderWriterLockSlim - Same Dictionary, but now using a lock designed to let multiple readers access simultaneously and then locked when a writer needs access. ConcurrentDictionary - The new ConcurrentDictionary from System.Collections.Concurrent that is supposed to be optimized to allow multiple threads to access safely. So the approach to each of these is also fairly straight-forward.  Let's look at the GetDelegate and AddDelegate implementations for the Dictionary with mutex lock: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: lock (_mutex) 4: { 5: _dictionary[key] = val; 6: } 7: }; 8: var getDelegate = (key) => 9: { 10: lock (_mutex) 11: { 12: string val; 13: return _dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out val) ? val : null; 14: } 15: }; Nothing new or fancy here, just your basic lock on a private object and then query/insert into the Dictionary. Now, for the Dictionary with ReadWriteLockSlim it's a little more complex: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: _readerWriterLock.EnterWriteLock(); 4: _dictionary[key] = val; 5: _readerWriterLock.ExitWriteLock(); 6: }; 7: var getDelegate = (key) => 8: { 9: string val; 10: _readerWriterLock.EnterReadLock(); 11: if(!_dictionary.TryGetValue(key, out val)) 12: { 13: val = null; 14: } 15: _readerWriterLock.ExitReadLock(); 16: return val; 17: }; And finally, the ConcurrentDictionary, which since it does all it's own concurrency control, is remarkably elegant and simple: 1: var addDelegate = (key,val) => 2: { 3: _concurrentDictionary[key] = val; 4: }; 5: var getDelegate = (key) => 6: { 7: string s; 8: return _concurrentDictionary.TryGetValue(key, out s) ? s : null; 9: };                    Then, I set up a test harness that would simply ask the user for the number of concurrent Accessors to attempt to Access the cache (as specified in Accessor.Access() above) and then let them fly and see how long it took them all to complete.  Each of these tests was run with 10,000,000 cache accesses divided among the available Accessor instances.  All times are in milliseconds. 1: Dictionary with Mutex Locking 2: --------------------------------------------------- 3: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 4: 1 7916 3285 5: 10 8293 3481 6: 100 8799 3532 7: 1000 8815 3584 8:  9:  10: Dictionary with ReaderWriterLockSlim Locking 11: --------------------------------------------------- 12: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 13: 1 8445 3624 14: 10 11002 4119 15: 100 11076 3992 16: 1000 14794 4861 17:  18:  19: Concurrent Dictionary 20: --------------------------------------------------- 21: Accessors Mostly Misses Mostly Hits 22: 1 17443 3726 23: 10 14181 1897 24: 100 15141 1994 25: 1000 17209 2128 The first test I did across the board is the Mostly Misses category.  The mostly misses (more adds because data requested was not in the dictionary) shows an interesting trend.  In both cases the Dictionary with the simple mutex lock is much faster, and the ConcurrentDictionary is the slowest solution.  But this got me thinking, and a little research seemed to confirm it, maybe the ConcurrentDictionary is more optimized to concurrent "gets" than "adds".  So since the ratio of misses to hits were 2 to 1, I decided to reverse that and see the results. So I tweaked the data so that the number of keys were much smaller than the number of iterations to give me about a 2 to 1 ration of hits to misses (twice as likely to already find the item in the cache than to need to add it).  And yes, indeed here we see that the ConcurrentDictionary is indeed faster than the standard Dictionary here.  I have a strong feeling that as the ration of hits-to-misses gets higher and higher these number gets even better as well.  This makes sense since the ConcurrentDictionary is read-optimized. Also note that I tried the tests with capacity and concurrency hints on the ConcurrentDictionary but saw very little improvement, I think this is largely because on the 10,000,000 hit test it quickly ramped up to the correct capacity and concurrency and thus the impact was limited to the first few milliseconds of the run. So what does this tell us?  Well, as in all things, ConcurrentDictionary is not a panacea.  It won't solve all your woes and it shouldn't be the only Dictionary you ever use.  So when should we use each? Use System.Collections.Generic.Dictionary when: You need a single-threaded Dictionary (no locking needed). You need a multi-threaded Dictionary that is loaded only once at creation and never modified (no locking needed). You need a multi-threaded Dictionary to store items where writes are far more prevalent than reads (locking needed). And use System.Collections.Concurrent.ConcurrentDictionary when: You need a multi-threaded Dictionary where the writes are far more prevalent than reads. You need to be able to iterate over the collection without locking it even if its being modified. Both Dictionaries have their strong suits, I have a feeling this is just one where you need to know from design what you hope to use it for and make your decision based on that criteria.

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• How to avoid the Portlet Skin mismatch

  - by Martin Deh

  here are probably many on going debates whether to use portlets or taskflows in a WebCenter custom portal application.  Usually the main battle on which side to take in these debates are centered around which technology enables better performance.  The good news is that both of my colleagues, Maiko Rocha and George Maggessy have posted their respective views on this topic so I will not have to further the discussion.  However, if you do plan to use portlets in a WebCenter custom portal application, this post will help you not have the "portlet skin mismatch" issue.   An example of the presence of the mismatch can be view from the applications log: The skin customsharedskin.desktop specified on the requestMap will be used even though the consumer's skin's styleSheetDocumentId on the requestMap does not match the local skin's styleSheetDocument's id. This will impact performance since the consumer and producer stylesheets cannot be shared. The producer styleclasses will not be compressed to avoid conflicts. A reason the ids do not match may be the jars are not identical on the producer and the consumer. For example, one might have trinidad-skins.xml's skin-additions in a jar file on the class path that the other does not have. Notice that due to the mismatch the portlet's CSS will not be able to be compressed, which will most like impact performance in the portlet's consuming portal. The first part of the blog will define the portlet mismatch and cover some debugging tips that can help you solve the portlet mismatch issue.  Following that I will give a complete example of the creating, using and sharing a shared skin in both a portlet producer and the consumer application. Portlet Mismatch Defined  In general, when you consume/render an ADF page (or task flow) using the ADF Portlet bridge, the portlet (producer) would try to use the skin of the consumer page - this is called skin-sharing. When the producer cannot match the consumer skin, the portlet would generate its own stylesheet and reference it from its markup - this is called mismatched-skin. This can happen because: The consumer and producer use different versions of ADF Faces, or The consumer has additional skin-additions that the producer doesn't have or vice-versa, or The producer does not have the consumer skin For case (1) & (2) above, the producer still uses the consumer skin ID to render its markup. For case (3), the producer would default to using portlet skin. If there is a skin mis-match then there may be a performance hit because: The browser needs to fetch this extra stylesheet (though it should be cached unless expires caching is turned off) The generated portlet markup uses uncompressed styles resulting in a larger markup It is often not obvious when a skin mismatch occurs, unless you look for either of these indicators: The log messages in the producer log, for example: The skin blafplus-rich.desktop specified on the requestMap will not be used because the styleSheetDocument id on the requestMap does not match the local skin's styleSheetDocument's id. It could mean the jars are not identical. For example, one might have trinidad-skins.xml's skin-additions in a jar file on the class path that the other does not have. View the portlet markup inside the iframe, there should be a <link> tag to the portlet stylesheet resource like this (note the CSS is proxied through consumer's resourceproxy): <link rel=\"stylesheet\" charset=\"UTF-8\" type=\"text/css\" href=\"http:.../resourceproxy/portletId...252525252Fadf%252525252Fstyles%252525252Fcache%252525252Fblafplus-rich-portlet-d1062g-en-ltr-gecko.css... Using HTTP monitoring tool (eg, firebug, httpwatch), you can see a request is made to the portlet stylesheet resource (see URL above) There are a number of reasons for mismatched-skin. For skin to match the producer and consumer must match the following configurations: The ADF Faces version (different versions may have different style selectors) Style Compression, this is defined in the web.xml (default value is false, i.e. compression is ON) Tonal styles or themes, also defined in the web.xml via context-params The same skin additions (jars with skin) are available for both producer and consumer.  Skin additions are defined in the trinidad-skins.xml, using the <skin-addition> tags. These are then aggregated from all the jar files in the classpath. If there's any jar that exists on the producer but not the consumer, or vice veras, you get a mismatch. Debugging Tips  Ensure the style compression and tonal styles/themes match on the consumer and producer, by looking at the web.xml documents for the consumer & producer applications It is bit more involved to determine if the jars match.  However, you can enable the Trinidad logging to show which skin-addition it is processing.  To enable this feature, update the logging.xml log level of both the producer and consumer WLS to FINEST.  For example, in the case of the WebLogic server used by JDeveloper: $JDEV_USER_DIR/system<version number>/DefaultDomain/config/fmwconfig/servers/DefaultServer/logging.xml Add a new entry: <logger name="org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.skin.SkinUtils" level="FINEST"/> Restart WebLogic.  Run the consumer page, you should see the following logging in both the consumer and producer log files. Any entries that don't match is the cause of the mismatch.  The following is an example of what the log will produce with this setting: [SRC_CLASS: org.apache.myfaces.trinidadinternal.skin.SkinUtils] [APP: WebCenter] [SRC_METHOD: _getMetaInfSkinsNodeList] Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/announcement-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/calendar-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/custComps-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/forum-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/page-service-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/peopleconnections-kudos-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/peopleconnections-wall-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/portlet-client-adf-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/rtc-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/serviceframework-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/smarttag-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.skin/in1ar8/APP-INF/lib/spaces-service-skins.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/oracle.webcenter.composer/3yo7j/WEB-INF/lib/custComps-skin.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/adf.oracle.domain.webapp/q433f9/WEB-INF/lib/adf-richclient-impl-11.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/adf.oracle.domain.webapp/q433f9/WEB-INF/lib/dvt-faces.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml Processing skin URL:zip:/tmp/_WL_user/adf.oracle.domain.webapp/q433f9/WEB-INF/lib/dvt-trinidad.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml   The Complete Example The first step is to create the shared library.  The WebCenter documentation covering this is located here in section 15.7.  In addition, our ADF guru Frank Nimphius also covers this in hes blog.  Here are my steps (in JDeveloper) to create the skin that will be used as the shared library for both the portlet producer and consumer. Create a new Generic Application Give application name (i.e. MySharedSkin) Give a project name (i.e. MySkinProject) Leave Project Technologies blank (none selected), and click Finish Create the trinidad-skins.xml Right-click on the MySkinProject node in the Application Navigator and select "New" In the New Galley, click on "General", select "File" from the Items, and click OK In the Create File dialog, name the file trinidad-skins.xml, and (IMPORTANT) give the directory path to MySkinProject\src\META-INF In the trinidad-skins.xml, complete the skin entry.  for example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="windows-1252" ?> <skins xmlns="http://myfaces.apache.org/trinidad/skin">   <skin>     <id>mysharedskin.desktop</id>     <family>mysharedskin</family>     <extends>fusionFx-v1.desktop</extends>     <style-sheet-name>css/mysharedskin.css</style-sheet-name>   </skin> </skins> Create CSS file In the Application Navigator, right click on the META-INF folder (where the trinidad-skins.xml is located), and select "New" In the New Gallery, select Web-Tier-> HTML, CSS File from the the Items and click OK In the Create Cascading Style Sheet dialog, give the name (i.e. mysharedskin.css) Ensure that the Directory path is the under the META-INF (i.e. MySkinProject\src\META-INF\css) Once the new CSS opens in the editor, add in a style selector.  For example, this selector will style the background of a particular panelGroupLayout: af|panelGroupLayout.customPGL{     background-color:Fuchsia; } Create the MANIFEST.MF (used for deployment JAR) In the Application Navigator, right click on the META-INF folder (where the trinidad-skins.xml is located), and select "New" In the New Galley, click on "General", select "File" from the Items, and click OK In the Create File dialog, name the file MANIFEST.MF, and (IMPORTANT) ensure that the directory path is to MySkinProject\src\META-INF Complete the MANIFEST.MF, where the extension name is the shared library name Manifest-Version: 1.1 Created-By: Martin Deh Implementation-Title: mysharedskin Extension-Name: mysharedskin.lib.def Specification-Version: 1.0.1 Implementation-Version: 1.0.1 Implementation-Vendor: MartinDeh Create new Deployment Profile Right click on the MySkinProject node, and select New From the New Gallery, select General->Deployment Profiles, Shared Library JAR File from Items, and click OK In the Create Deployment Profile dialog, give name (i.e.mysharedskinlib) and click OK In the Edit JAR Deployment dialog, un-check Include Manifest File option  Select Project Output->Contributors, and check Project Source Path Select Project Output->Filters, ensure that all items under the META-INF folder are selected Click OK to exit the Project Properties dialog Deploy the shared lib to WebLogic (start server before steps) Right click on MySkin Project and select Deploy For this example, I will deploy to JDeverloper WLS In the Deploy dialog, select Deploy to Weblogic Application Server and click Next Choose IntegratedWebLogicServer and click Next Select Deploy to selected instances in the domain radio, select Default Server (note: server must be already started), and ensure Deploy as a shared Library radio is selected Click Finish Open the WebLogic console to see the deployed shared library The following are the steps to create a simple test Portlet Create a new WebCenter Portal - Portlet Producer Application In the Create Portlet Producer dialog, select default settings and click Finish Right click on the Portlets node and select New IIn the New Gallery, select Web-Tier->Portlets, Standards-based Java Portlet (JSR 286) and click OK In the General Portlet information dialog, give portlet name (i.e. MyPortlet) and click Next 2 times, stopping at Step 3 In the Content Types, select the "view" node, in the Implementation Method, select the Generate ADF-Faces JSPX radio and click Finish Once the portlet code is generated, open the view.jspx in the source editor Based on the simple CSS entry, which sets the background color of a panelGroupLayout, replace the <af:form/> tag with the example code <af:form>         <af:panelGroupLayout id="pgl1" styleClass="customPGL">           <af:outputText value="background from shared lib skin" id="ot1"/>         </af:panelGroupLayout>  </af:form> Since this portlet is to use the shared library skin, in the generated trinidad-config.xml, remove both the skin-family tag and the skin-version tag In the Application Resources view, under Descriptors->META-INF, double-click to open the weblogic-application.xml Add a library reference to the shared skin library (note: the library-name must match the extension-name declared in the MANIFEST.MF):  <library-ref>     <library-name>mysharedskin.lib.def</library-name>  </library-ref> Notice that a reference to oracle.webcenter.skin exists.  This is important if this portlet is going to be consumed by a WebCenter Portal application.  If this tag is not present, the portlet skin mismatch will happen.  Configure the portlet for deployment Create Portlet deployment WAR Right click on the Portlets node and select New In the New Gallery, select Deployment Profiles, WAR file from Items and click OK In the Create Deployment Profile dialog, give name (i.e. myportletwar), click OK Keep all of the defaults, however, remember the Context Root entry (i.e. MyPortlet4SharedLib-Portlets-context-root, this will be needed to obtain the producer WSDL URL) Click OK, then OK again to exit from the Properties dialog Since the weblogic-application.xml has to be included in the deployment, the portlet must be deployed as a WAR, within an EAR In the Application dropdown, select Deploy->New Deployment Profile... By default EAR File has been selected, click OK Give Deployment Profile (EAR) a name (i.e. MyPortletProducer) and click OK In the Properties dialog, select Application Assembly and ensure that the myportletwar is checked Keep all of the other defaults and click OK For this demo, un-check the Auto Generate ..., and all of the Security Deployment Options, click OK Save All In the Application dropdown, select Deploy->MyPortletProducer In the Deployment Action, select Deploy to Application Server, click Next Choose IntegratedWebLogicServer and click Next Select Deploy to selected instances in the domain radio, select Default Server (note: server must be already started), and ensure Deploy as a standalone Application radio is selected The select deployment type (identifying the deployment as a JSR 286 portlet) dialog appears.  Keep default radio "Yes" selection and click OK Open the WebLogic console to see the deployed Portlet The last step is to create the test portlet consuming application.  This will be done using the OOTB WebCenter Portal - Framework Application.  Create the Portlet Producer Connection In the JDeveloper Deployment log, copy the URL of the portlet deployment (i.e. http://localhost:7101/MyPortlet4SharedLib-Portlets-context-root Open a browser and paste in the URL.  The Portlet information page should appear.  Click on the WSRP v2 WSDL link Copy the URL from the browser (i.e. http://localhost:7101/MyPortlet4SharedLib-Portlets-context-root/portlets/wsrp2?WSDL) In the Application Resources view, right click on the Connections folder and select New Connection->WSRP Connection Give the producer a name or accept the default, click Next Enter (paste in) the WSDL URL, click Next If connection to Portlet is succesful, Step 3 (Specify Additional ...) should appear.  Accept defaults and click Finish Add the portlet to a test page Open the home.jspx.  Note in the visual editor, the orange dashed border, which identifies the panelCustomizable tag. From the Application Resources. select the MyPortlet portlet node, and drag and drop the node into the panelCustomizable section.  A Confirm Portlet Type dialog appears, keep default ADF Rich Portlet and click OK Configure the portlet to use the shared skin library Open the weblogic-application.xml and add the library-ref entry (mysharedskin.lib.def) for the shared skin library.  See create portlet example above for the steps Since by default, the custom portal using a managed bean to (dynamically) determine the skin family, the default trinidad-config.xml will need to be altered Open the trinidad-config.xml in the editor and replace the EL (preferenceBean) for the skin-family tag, with mysharedskin (this is the skin-family named defined in the trinidad-skins.xml) Remove the skin-version tag Right click on the index.html to test the application   Notice that the JDeveloper log view does not have any reporting of a skin mismatch.  In addition, since I have configured the extra logging outlined in debugging section above, I can see the processed skin jar in both the producer and consumer logs: <SkinUtils> <_getMetaInfSkinsNodeList> Processing skin URL:zip:/JDeveloper/system11.1.1.6.38.61.92/DefaultDomain/servers/DefaultServer/upload/mysharedskin.lib.def/[email protected]/app/mysharedskinlib.jar!/META-INF/trinidad-skins.xml 

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• Working with PivotTables in Excel

  - by Mark Virtue

  PivotTables are one of the most powerful features of Microsoft Excel.  They allow large amounts of data to be analyzed and summarized in just a few mouse clicks. In this article, we explore PivotTables, understand what they are, and learn how to create and customize them. Note:  This article is written using Excel 2010 (Beta).  The concept of a PivotTable has changed little over the years, but the method of creating one has changed in nearly every iteration of Excel.  If you are using a version of Excel that is not 2010, expect different screens from the ones you see in this article. A Little History In the early days of spreadsheet programs, Lotus 1-2-3 ruled the roost.  Its dominance was so complete that people thought it was a waste of time for Microsoft to bother developing their own spreadsheet software (Excel) to compete with Lotus.  Flash-forward to 2010, and Excel’s dominance of the spreadsheet market is greater than Lotus’s ever was, while the number of users still running Lotus 1-2-3 is approaching zero.  How did this happen?  What caused such a dramatic reversal of fortunes? Industry analysts put it down to two factors:  Firstly, Lotus decided that this fancy new GUI platform called “Windows” was a passing fad that would never take off.  They declined to create a Windows version of Lotus 1-2-3 (for a few years, anyway), predicting that their DOS version of the software was all anyone would ever need.  Microsoft, naturally, developed Excel exclusively for Windows.  Secondly, Microsoft developed a feature for Excel that Lotus didn’t provide in 1-2-3, namely PivotTables.  The PivotTables feature, exclusive to Excel, was deemed so staggeringly useful that people were willing to learn an entire new software package (Excel) rather than stick with a program (1-2-3) that didn’t have it.  This one feature, along with the misjudgment of the success of Windows, was the death-knell for Lotus 1-2-3, and the beginning of the success of Microsoft Excel. Understanding PivotTables So what is a PivotTable, exactly? Put simply, a PivotTable is a summary of some data, created to allow easy analysis of said data.  But unlike a manually created summary, Excel PivotTables are interactive.  Once you have created one, you can easily change it if it doesn’t offer the exact insights into your data that you were hoping for.  In a couple of clicks the summary can be “pivoted” – rotated in such a way that the column headings become row headings, and vice versa.  There’s a lot more that can be done, too.  Rather than try to describe all the features of PivotTables, we’ll simply demonstrate them… The data that you analyze using a PivotTable can’t be just any data – it has to be raw data, previously unprocessed (unsummarized) – typically a list of some sort.  An example of this might be the list of sales transactions in a company for the past six months. Examine the data shown below: Notice that this is not raw data.  In fact, it is already a summary of some sort.  In cell B3 we can see $30,000, which apparently is the total of James Cook’s sales for the month of January.  So where is the raw data?  How did we arrive at the figure of $30,000?  Where is the original list of sales transactions that this figure was generated from?  It’s clear that somewhere, someone must have gone to the trouble of collating all of the sales transactions for the past six months into the summary we see above.  How long do you suppose this took?  An hour?  Ten?  Probably. If we were to track down the original list of sales transactions, it might look something like this: You may be surprised to learn that, using the PivotTable feature of Excel, we can create a monthly sales summary similar to the one above in a few seconds, with only a few mouse clicks.  We can do this – and a lot more too! How to Create a PivotTable First, ensure that you have some raw data in a worksheet in Excel.  A list of financial transactions is typical, but it can be a list of just about anything:  Employee contact details, your CD collection, or fuel consumption figures for your company’s fleet of cars. So we start Excel… …and we load such a list… Once we have the list open in Excel, we’re ready to start creating the PivotTable. Click on any one single cell within the list: Then, from the Insert tab, click the PivotTable icon: The Create PivotTable box appears, asking you two questions:  What data should your new PivotTable be based on, and where should it be created?  Because we already clicked on a cell within the list (in the step above), the entire list surrounding that cell is already selected for us ($A$1:$G$88 on the Payments sheet, in this example).  Note that we could select a list in any other region of any other worksheet, or even some external data source, such as an Access database table, or even a MS-SQL Server database table.  We also need to select whether we want our new PivotTable to be created on a new worksheet, or on an existing one.  In this example we will select a new one: The new worksheet is created for us, and a blank PivotTable is created on that worksheet: Another box also appears:  The PivotTable Field List.  This field list will be shown whenever we click on any cell within the PivotTable (above): The list of fields in the top part of the box is actually the collection of column headings from the original raw data worksheet.  The four blank boxes in the lower part of the screen allow us to choose the way we would like our PivotTable to summarize the raw data.  So far, there is nothing in those boxes, so the PivotTable is blank.  All we need to do is drag fields down from the list above and drop them in the lower boxes.  A PivotTable is then automatically created to match our instructions.  If we get it wrong, we only need to drag the fields back to where they came from and/or drag new fields down to replace them. The Values box is arguably the most important of the four.  The field that is dragged into this box represents the data that needs to be summarized in some way (by summing, averaging, finding the maximum, minimum, etc).  It is almost always numerical data.  A perfect candidate for this box in our sample data is the “Amount” field/column.  Let’s drag that field into the Values box: Notice that (a) the “Amount” field in the list of fields is now ticked, and “Sum of Amount” has been added to the Values box, indicating that the amount column has been summed. If we examine the PivotTable itself, we indeed find the sum of all the “Amount” values from the raw data worksheet: We’ve created our first PivotTable!  Handy, but not particularly impressive.  It’s likely that we need a little more insight into our data than that. Referring to our sample data, we need to identify one or more column headings that we could conceivably use to split this total.  For example, we may decide that we would like to see a summary of our data where we have a row heading for each of the different salespersons in our company, and a total for each.  To achieve this, all we need to do is to drag the “Salesperson” field into the Row Labels box: Now, finally, things start to get interesting!  Our PivotTable starts to take shape….   With a couple of clicks we have created a table that would have taken a long time to do manually. So what else can we do?  Well, in one sense our PivotTable is complete.  We’ve created a useful summary of our source data.  The important stuff is already learned!  For the rest of the article, we will examine some ways that more complex PivotTables can be created, and ways that those PivotTables can be customized. First, we can create a two-dimensional table.  Let’s do that by using “Payment Method” as a column heading.  Simply drag the “Payment Method” heading to the Column Labels box: Which looks like this: Starting to get very cool! Let’s make it a three-dimensional table.  What could such a table possibly look like?  Well, let’s see… Drag the “Package” column/heading to the Report Filter box: Notice where it ends up…. This allows us to filter our report based on which “holiday package” was being purchased.  For example, we can see the breakdown of salesperson vs payment method for all packages, or, with a couple of clicks, change it to show the same breakdown for the “Sunseekers” package: And so, if you think about it the right way, our PivotTable is now three-dimensional.  Let’s keep customizing… If it turns out, say, that we only want to see cheque and credit card transactions (i.e. no cash transactions), then we can deselect the “Cash” item from the column headings.  Click the drop-down arrow next to Column Labels, and untick “Cash”: Let’s see what that looks like…As you can see, “Cash” is gone. Formatting This is obviously a very powerful system, but so far the results look very plain and boring.  For a start, the numbers that we’re summing do not look like dollar amounts – just plain old numbers.  Let’s rectify that. A temptation might be to do what we’re used to doing in such circumstances and simply select the whole table (or the whole worksheet) and use the standard number formatting buttons on the toolbar to complete the formatting.  The problem with that approach is that if you ever change the structure of the PivotTable in the future (which is 99% likely), then those number formats will be lost.  We need a way that will make them (semi-)permanent. First, we locate the “Sum of Amount” entry in the Values box, and click on it.  A menu appears.  We select Value Field Settings… from the menu: The Value Field Settings box appears. Click the Number Format button, and the standard Format Cells box appears: From the Category list, select (say) Accounting, and drop the number of decimal places to 0.  Click OK a few times to get back to the PivotTable… As you can see, the numbers have been correctly formatted as dollar amounts. While we’re on the subject of formatting, let’s format the entire PivotTable.  There are a few ways to do this.  Let’s use a simple one… Click the PivotTable Tools/Design tab: Then drop down the arrow in the bottom-right of the PivotTable Styles list to see a vast collection of built-in styles: Choose any one that appeals, and look at the result in your PivotTable:   Other Options We can work with dates as well.  Now usually, there are many, many dates in a transaction list such as the one we started with.  But Excel provides the option to group data items together by day, week, month, year, etc.  Let’s see how this is done. First, let’s remove the “Payment Method” column from the Column Labels box (simply drag it back up to the field list), and replace it with the “Date Booked” column: As you can see, this makes our PivotTable instantly useless, giving us one column for each date that a transaction occurred on – a very wide table! To fix this, right-click on any date and select Group… from the context-menu: The grouping box appears.  We select Months and click OK: Voila!  A much more useful table: (Incidentally, this table is virtually identical to the one shown at the beginning of this article – the original sales summary that was created manually.) Another cool thing to be aware of is that you can have more than one set of row headings (or column headings): …which looks like this…. You can do a similar thing with column headings (or even report filters). Keeping things simple again, let’s see how to plot averaged values, rather than summed values. First, click on “Sum of Amount”, and select Value Field Settings… from the context-menu that appears: In the Summarize value field by list in the Value Field Settings box, select Average: While we’re here, let’s change the Custom Name, from “Average of Amount” to something a little more concise.  Type in something like “Avg”: Click OK, and see what it looks like.  Notice that all the values change from summed totals to averages, and the table title (top-left cell) has changed to “Avg”: If we like, we can even have sums, averages and counts (counts = how many sales there were) all on the same PivotTable! Here are the steps to get something like that in place (starting from a blank PivotTable): Drag “Salesperson” into the Column Labels Drag “Amount” field down into the Values box three times For the first “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Total” and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the second “Amount” field, change its custom name to “Average”, its function to Average and it’s number format to Accounting (0 decimal places) For the third “Amount” field, change its name to “Count” and its function to Count Drag the automatically created field from Column Labels to Row Labels Here’s what we end up with: Total, average and count on the same PivotTable! Conclusion There are many, many more features and options for PivotTables created by Microsoft Excel – far too many to list in an article like this.  To fully cover the potential of PivotTables, a small book (or a large website) would be required.  Brave and/or geeky readers can explore PivotTables further quite easily:  Simply right-click on just about everything, and see what options become available to you.  There are also the two ribbon-tabs: PivotTable Tools/Options and Design.  It doesn’t matter if you make a mistake – it’s easy to delete the PivotTable and start again – a possibility old DOS users of Lotus 1-2-3 never had. We’ve included an Excel that should work with most versions of Excel, so you can download to practice your PivotTable skills. Download Our Practice Excel File Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Magnify Selected Cells In Excel 2007Share Access Data with Excel in Office 2010Make Excel 2007 Print Gridlines In Workbook FileMake Excel 2007 Always Save in Excel 2003 FormatConvert Older Excel Documents to Excel 2007 Format TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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• Macbook Pro Wireless Reconnecting

  - by A Student at a University

  I'm using a WPA2 EAP network. I'm sitting next to the access point. The connection keeps dropping and taking ~10 seconds to reconnect. My other devices are staying online. What's causing it? syslog: 01:21:10 dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX on eth1 to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX port 67 01:21:10 dhclient: DHCPACK of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): DHCPv4 state changed reboot -> renew 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> prefix 20 (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX) 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> gateway XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> nameserver 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX' 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> nameserver 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX' 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> nameserver 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX' 01:21:10 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> domain name 'server.domain.tld' 01:21:10 dhclient: bound to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX -- renewal in XXX seconds. 01:33:30 dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX on eth1 to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX port 67 01:33:30 dhclient: DHCPACK of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:33:30 dhclient: bound to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX -- renewal in XXX seconds. 01:35:13 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-STARTED EAP authentication started 01:35:13 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-METHOD EAP vendor 0 method 25 (PEAP) selected 01:35:14 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: EAP-MSCHAPV2: Authentication succeeded 01:35:14 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: EAP-TLV: TLV Result - Success - EAP-TLV/Phase2 Completed 01:35:14 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-SUCCESS EAP authentication completed successfully 01:35:14 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: completed -> 4-way handshake 01:35:14 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: WPA: Key negotiation completed with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP] 01:35:14 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: 4-way handshake -> group handshake 01:35:14 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: group handshake -> completed 01:35:17 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys 01:35:17 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: completed -> disconnected 01:35:17 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning 01:35:26 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-DISCONNECTED - Disconnect event - remove keys 01:35:26 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: scanning -> disconnected 01:35:29 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 8 -> 3 (reason 11) 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): deactivating device (reason: 11). 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): canceled DHCP transaction, DHCP client pid XX27 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) starting connection 'Auto XXXXXXXXXX' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 3 -> 4 (reason 0) 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: scanning -> disconnected 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete. 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 4 -> 5 (reason 0) 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1/wireless): access point 'Auto XXXXXXXXXX' has security, but secrets are required. 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 5 -> 6 (reason 0) 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete. 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) scheduled... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) started... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 6 -> 4 (reason 0) 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) scheduled... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 1 of 5 (Device Prepare) complete. 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) starting... 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 4 -> 5 (reason 0) 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1/wireless): connection 'Auto XXXXXXXXXX' has security, and secrets exist. No new secrets needed. 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'ssid' value 'XXXXXXXXXX' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'scan_ssid' value '1' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'key_mgmt' value 'WPA-EAP' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'password' value '<omitted>' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'eap' value 'PEAP' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'fragment_size' value 'XXX0' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'phase2' value 'auth=MSCHAPV2' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'ca_cert' value '/etc/ssl/certs/Equifax_Secure_CA.pem' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: added 'identity' value 'XXXXXXX' 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) complete. 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Config: set interface ap_scan to 1 01:35:32 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: disconnected -> scanning 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: Associated with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: scanning -> associated 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-STARTED EAP authentication started 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-METHOD EAP vendor 0 method 25 (PEAP) selected 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: EAP-MSCHAPV2: Authentication succeeded 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: EAP-TLV: TLV Result - Success - EAP-TLV/Phase2 Completed 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-EAP-SUCCESS EAP authentication completed successfully 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: associated -> 4-way handshake 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: WPA: Could not find AP from the scan results 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: WPA: Key negotiation completed with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP] 01:35:36 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX completed (reauth) [id=0 id_str=] 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: 4-way handshake -> group handshake 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: group handshake -> completed 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1/wireless) Stage 2 of 5 (Device Configure) successful. Connected to wireless network 'XXXXXXXXXX'. 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) scheduled. 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) started... 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 5 -> 7 (reason 0) 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Beginning DHCPv4 transaction (timeout in 45 seconds) 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> dhclient started with pid XX87 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 3 of 5 (IP Configure Start) complete. 01:35:36 dhclient: Internet Systems Consortium DHCP Client VXXX.XXX.XXX 01:35:36 dhclient: Copyright 2004-2009 Internet Systems Consortium. 01:35:36 dhclient: All rights reserved. 01:35:36 dhclient: For info, please visit https://www.isc.org/software/dhcp/ 01:35:36 dhclient: 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): DHCPv4 state changed nbi -> preinit 01:35:36 dhclient: Listening on LPF/eth1/XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX 01:35:36 dhclient: Sending on LPF/eth1/XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX 01:35:36 dhclient: Sending on Socket/fallback 01:35:36 dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX on eth1 to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX port 67 01:35:36 dhclient: DHCPACK of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:35:36 dhclient: bound to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX -- renewal in XXX seconds. 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): DHCPv4 state changed preinit -> reboot 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 4 of 5 (IP4 Configure Get) scheduled... 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 4 of 5 (IP4 Configure Get) started... 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> prefix 20 (XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX) 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> gateway XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> nameserver 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX' 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> nameserver 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX' 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> nameserver 'XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX' 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> domain name 'server.domain.tld' 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) scheduled... 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 4 of 5 (IP4 Configure Get) complete. 01:35:36 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) started... 01:35:37 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): device state change: 7 -> 8 (reason 0) 01:35:37 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): roamed from BSSID XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (XXXXXXXXXX) to XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (XXXXXXXXX) 01:35:37 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Policy set 'Auto XXXXXXXXXX' (eth1) as default for IPv4 routing and DNS. 01:35:37 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) successful, device activated. 01:35:37 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> Activation (eth1) Stage 5 of 5 (IP Configure Commit) complete. 01:35:43 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: Trying to associate with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX (SSID='XXXXXXXXXX' freq=2412 MHz) 01:35:43 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: completed -> associating 01:35:43 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: Association request to the driver failed 01:35:46 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: Associated with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX 01:35:46 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: associating -> associated 01:35:46 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: associated -> 4-way handshake 01:35:46 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: WPA: Key negotiation completed with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX [PTK=CCMP GTK=TKIP] 01:35:46 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: CTRL-EVENT-CONNECTED - Connection to XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX completed (reauth) [id=0 id_str=] 01:35:46 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: 4-way handshake -> group handshake 01:35:46 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: group handshake -> completed 01:40:47 wpa_supplicant[XX60]: WPA: Group rekeying completed with XX:XX:XX:XX:XX:XX [GTK=TKIP] 01:40:47 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: completed -> group handshake 01:40:47 NetworkManager[XX40]: <info> (eth1): supplicant connection state: group handshake -> completed 01:50:19 dhclient: DHCPREQUEST of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX on eth1 to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX port 67 01:50:19 dhclient: DHCPACK of XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX from XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX

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• Preserving Permalinks

  - by Daniel Moth

  One of the things that gets me on a rant is websites that break permalinks. If you have posted something somewhere and there is a public URL pointing to it, that URL should never ever return a 404. You are breaking all websites that ever linked to you and you are breaking all search engine links to your content (that others will try and follow). It is a pet peeve of mine. So when I had to move my blog, obviously I would preserve the root URL (www.danielmoth.com/Blog/), but I also wanted to preserve every URL my blog has generated over the years. To be clear, our focus here is on the URL formatting, not the content migration which I'll talk about in my next post. In this post, I'll describe my solution first and then what it solves. 1. The IIS7 Rewrite Module and web.config There are a few ways you can map an old URL to a new one (so when requests to the old URL come in, they get redirected to the new one). The new blog engine I use (dasBlog) has built-in functionality to do that (Scott refers to it here). Instead, the way I chose to address the issue was to use the IIS7 rewrite module. The IIS7 rewrite module allows redirecting URLs based on pattern matching, regular expressions and, of course, hardcoded full URLs for things that don't fall into any pattern. You can configure it visually from IIS Manager using a handy dialog that allows testing patterns against input URLs. Here is what mine looked like after configuring a few rules: To learn more about this technology check out this video, the reference page and this overview blog post; all 3 pages have a collection of related resources at the bottom worth checking out too. All the visual configuration ends up in a web.config file at the root folder of your website. If you are on a shared hosting service, probably the only way you can use the Rewrite Module is by directly editing the web.config file. Next, I'll describe the URLs I had to map and how that manifested itself in the web.config file. What I did was create the rules locally using the GUI, and then took the generated web.config file and uploaded it to my live site. You can view my web.config here. 2. Monthly Archives Observe the difference between the way the two blog engines generate this type of URL Blogger: /Blog/2004_07_01_mothblog_archive.html dasBlog: /Blog/default,month,2004-07.aspx In my web.config file, the rule that deals with this is the one named "monthlyarchive_redirect". 3. Categories Observe the difference between the way the two blog engines generate this type of URL Blogger: /Blog/labels/Personal.html dasBlog: /Blog/CategoryView,category,Personal.aspx In my web.config file the rule that deals with this is the one named "category_redirect". 4. Posts Observe the difference between the way the two blog engines generate this type of URL Blogger: /Blog/2004/07/hello-world.html dasBlog: /Blog/Hello-World.aspx In my web.config file the rule that deals with this is the one named "post_redirect". Note: The decision is taken to use dasBlog URLs that do not include the date info (see the description of my Appearance settings). If we included the date info then it would have to include the day part, which blogger did not generate. This makes it impossible to redirect correctly and to have a single permalink for blog posts moving forward. An implication of this decision, is that no two blog posts can have the same title. The tool I will describe in my next post (inelegantly) deals with duplicates, but not with triplicates or higher. 5. Unhandled by a generic rule Unfortunately, the two blog engines use different rules for generating URLs for blog posts. Most of the time the conversion is as simple as the example of the previous section where a post titled "Hello World" generates a URL with the words separated by a hyphen. Some times that is not the case, for example: /Blog/2006/05/medc-wrap-up.html /Blog/MEDC-Wrapup.aspx or /Blog/2005/01/best-of-moth-2004.html /Blog/Best-Of-The-Moth-2004.aspx or /Blog/2004/11/more-windows-mobile-2005-details.html /Blog/More-Windows-Mobile-2005-Details-Emerge.aspx In short, blogger does not add words to the title beyond ~39 characters, it drops some words from the title generation (e.g. a, an, on, the), and it preserve hyphens that appear in the title. For this reason, we need to detect these and explicitly list them for redirects (no regular expression can help here because the full set of rules is not listed anywhere). In my web.config file the rule that deals with this is the one named "Redirect rule1 for FullRedirects" combined with the rewriteMap named "StaticRedirects". Note: The tool I describe in my next post will detect all the URLs that need to be explicitly redirected and will list them in a file ready for you to copy them to your web.config rewriteMap. 6. C# code doing the same as the web.config I wrote some naive code that does the same thing as the web.config: given a string it will return a new string converted according to the 3 rules above. It does not take into account the 4th case where an explicit hard-coded conversion is needed (the tool I present in the next post does take that into account). static string REGEX_post_redirect = "[0-9]{4}/[0-9]{2}/([0-9a-z-]+).html"; static string REGEX_category_redirect = "labels/([_0-9a-z-% ]+).html"; static string REGEX_monthlyarchive_redirect = "([0-9]{4})_([0-9]{2})_[0-9]{2}_mothblog_archive.html"; static string Redirect(string oldUrl) { GroupCollection g; if (RunRegExOnIt(oldUrl, REGEX_post_redirect, 2, out g)) return string.Concat(g[1].Value, ".aspx"); if (RunRegExOnIt(oldUrl, REGEX_category_redirect, 2, out g)) return string.Concat("CategoryView,category,", g[1].Value, ".aspx"); if (RunRegExOnIt(oldUrl, REGEX_monthlyarchive_redirect, 3, out g)) return string.Concat("default,month,", g[1].Value, "-", g[2], ".aspx"); return string.Empty; } static bool RunRegExOnIt(string toRegEx, string pattern, int groupCount, out GroupCollection g) { if (pattern.Length == 0) { g = null; return false; } g = new Regex(pattern, RegexOptions.IgnoreCase | RegexOptions.Compiled).Match(toRegEx).Groups; return (g.Count == groupCount); } Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Hosting :: How to Deploy Web Apps Using ASP.NET MVC 3, Razor and EF Code First - Part I

  - by mbridge

  First, you can download the source code from http://efmvc.codeplex.com. The following frameworks will be used for this step by step tutorial. public class Category {     public int CategoryId { get; set; }     [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")]     [StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]     public string Name { get; set;}     public string Description { get; set; }     public virtual ICollection<Expense> Expenses { get; set; } } Expense Class public class Expense {             public int ExpenseId { get; set; }            public string  Transaction { get; set; }     public DateTime Date { get; set; }     public double Amount { get; set; }     public int CategoryId { get; set; }     public virtual Category Category { get; set; } }    Define Domain Model Let’s create domain model for our simple web application Category Class We have two domain entities - Category and Expense. A single category contains a list of expense transactions and every expense transaction should have a Category. In this post, we will be focusing on CRUD operations for the entity Category and will be working on the Expense entity with a View Model object in the later post. And the source code for this application will be refactored over time. The above entities are very simple POCO (Plain Old CLR Object) classes and the entity Category is decorated with validation attributes in the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace. Now we want to use these entities for defining model objects for the Entity Framework 4. Using the Code First approach of Entity Framework, we can first define the entities by simply writing POCO classes without any coupling with any API or database library. This approach lets you focus on domain model which will enable Domain-Driven Development for applications. EF code first support is currently enabled with a separate API that is runs on top of the Entity Framework 4. EF Code First is reached CTP 5 when I am writing this article. Creating Context Class for Entity Framework We have created our domain model and let’s create a class in order to working with Entity Framework Code First. For this, you have to download EF Code First CTP 5 and add reference to the assembly EntitFramework.dll. You can also use NuGet to download add reference to EEF Code First. public class MyFinanceContext : DbContext {     public MyFinanceContext() : base("MyFinance") { }     public DbSet<Category> Categories { get; set; }     public DbSet<Expense> Expenses { get; set; }         }   The above class MyFinanceContext is derived from DbContext that can connect your model classes to a database. The MyFinanceContext class is mapping our Category and Expense class into database tables Categories and Expenses using DbSet<TEntity> where TEntity is any POCO class. When we are running the application at first time, it will automatically create the database. EF code-first look for a connection string in web.config or app.config that has the same name as the dbcontext class. If it is not find any connection string with the convention, it will automatically create database in local SQL Express database by default and the name of the database will be same name as the dbcontext class. You can also define the name of database in constructor of the the dbcontext class. Unlike NHibernate, we don’t have to use any XML based mapping files or Fluent interface for mapping between our model and database. The model classes of Code First are working on the basis of conventions and we can also use a fluent API to refine our model. The convention for primary key is ‘Id’ or ‘<class name>Id’.  If primary key properties are detected with type ‘int’, ‘long’ or ‘short’, they will automatically registered as identity columns in the database by default. Primary key detection is not case sensitive. We can define our model classes with validation attributes in the System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations namespace and it automatically enforces validation rules when a model object is updated or saved. Generic Repository for EF Code First We have created model classes and dbcontext class. Now we have to create generic repository pattern for data persistence with EF code first. If you don’t know about the repository pattern, checkout Martin Fowler’s article on Repository Let’s create a generic repository to working with DbContext and DbSet generics. public interface IRepository<T> where T : class     {         void Add(T entity);         void Delete(T entity);         T GetById(long Id);         IEnumerable<T> All();     } RepositoryBasse – Generic Repository class protected MyFinanceContext Database {     get { return database ?? (database = DatabaseFactory.Get()); } } public virtual void Add(T entity) {     dbset.Add(entity);            }        public virtual void Delete(T entity) {     dbset.Remove(entity); }   public virtual T GetById(long id) {     return dbset.Find(id); }   public virtual IEnumerable<T> All() {     return dbset.ToList(); } } DatabaseFactory class public class DatabaseFactory : Disposable, IDatabaseFactory {     private MyFinanceContext database;     public MyFinanceContext Get()     {         return database ?? (database = new MyFinanceContext());     }     protected override void DisposeCore()     {         if (database != null)             database.Dispose();     } } Unit of Work If you are new to Unit of Work pattern, checkout Fowler’s article on Unit of Work . According to Martin Fowler, the Unit of Work pattern "maintains a list of objects affected by a business transaction and coordinates the writing out of changes and the resolution of concurrency problems." Let’s create a class for handling Unit of Work public interface IUnitOfWork {     void Commit(); } UniOfWork class public class UnitOfWork : IUnitOfWork {     private readonly IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory;     private MyFinanceContext dataContext;       public UnitOfWork(IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory)     {         this.databaseFactory = databaseFactory;     }       protected MyFinanceContext DataContext     {         get { return dataContext ?? (dataContext = databaseFactory.Get()); }     }       public void Commit()     {         DataContext.Commit();     } } The Commit method of the UnitOfWork will call the commit method of MyFinanceContext class and it will execute the SaveChanges method of DbContext class.   Repository class for Category In this post, we will be focusing on the persistence against Category entity and will working on other entities in later post. Let’s create a repository for handling CRUD operations for Category using derive from a generic Repository RepositoryBase<T>. public class CategoryRepository: RepositoryBase<Category>, ICategoryRepository     {     public CategoryRepository(IDatabaseFactory databaseFactory)         : base(databaseFactory)         {         }                } public interface ICategoryRepository : IRepository<Category> { } If we need additional methods than generic repository for the Category, we can define in the CategoryRepository. Dependency Injection using Unity 2.0 If you are new to Inversion of Control/ Dependency Injection or Unity, please have a look on my articles at http://weblogs.asp.net/shijuvarghese/archive/tags/IoC/default.aspx. I want to create a custom lifetime manager for Unity to store container in the current HttpContext. public class HttpContextLifetimeManager<T> : LifetimeManager, IDisposable {     public override object GetValue()     {         return HttpContext.Current.Items[typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName];     }     public override void RemoveValue()     {         HttpContext.Current.Items.Remove(typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName);     }     public override void SetValue(object newValue)     {         HttpContext.Current.Items[typeof(T).AssemblyQualifiedName] = newValue;     }     public void Dispose()     {         RemoveValue();     } } Let’s create controller factory for Unity in the ASP.NET MVC 3 application.                 404, String.Format(                     "The controller for path '{0}' could not be found" +     "or it does not implement IController.",                 reqContext.HttpContext.Request.Path));       if (!typeof(IController).IsAssignableFrom(controllerType))         throw new ArgumentException(                 string.Format(                     "Type requested is not a controller: {0}",                     controllerType.Name),                     "controllerType");     try     {         controller= container.Resolve(controllerType) as IController;     }     catch (Exception ex)     {         throw new InvalidOperationException(String.Format(                                 "Error resolving controller {0}",                                 controllerType.Name), ex);     }     return controller; }   } Configure contract and concrete types in Unity Let’s configure our contract and concrete types in Unity for resolving our dependencies. private void ConfigureUnity() {     //Create UnityContainer               IUnityContainer container = new UnityContainer()                 .RegisterType<IDatabaseFactory, DatabaseFactory>(new HttpContextLifetimeManager<IDatabaseFactory>())     .RegisterType<IUnitOfWork, UnitOfWork>(new HttpContextLifetimeManager<IUnitOfWork>())     .RegisterType<ICategoryRepository, CategoryRepository>(new HttpContextLifetimeManager<ICategoryRepository>());                 //Set container for Controller Factory                ControllerBuilder.Current.SetControllerFactory(             new UnityControllerFactory(container)); } In the above ConfigureUnity method, we are registering our types onto Unity container with custom lifetime manager HttpContextLifetimeManager. Let’s call ConfigureUnity method in the Global.asax.cs for set controller factory for Unity and configuring the types with Unity. protected void Application_Start() {     AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas();     RegisterGlobalFilters(GlobalFilters.Filters);     RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes);     ConfigureUnity(); } Developing web application using ASP.NET MVC 3 We have created our domain model for our web application and also have created repositories and configured dependencies with Unity container. Now we have to create controller classes and views for doing CRUD operations against the Category entity. Let’s create controller class for Category Category Controller public class CategoryController : Controller {     private readonly ICategoryRepository categoryRepository;     private readonly IUnitOfWork unitOfWork;           public CategoryController(ICategoryRepository categoryRepository, IUnitOfWork unitOfWork)     {         this.categoryRepository = categoryRepository;         this.unitOfWork = unitOfWork;     }       public ActionResult Index()     {         var categories = categoryRepository.All();         return View(categories);     }     [HttpGet]     public ActionResult Edit(int id)     {         var category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);         return View(category);     }       [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Edit(int id, FormCollection collection)     {         var category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);         if (TryUpdateModel(category))         {             unitOfWork.Commit();             return RedirectToAction("Index");         }         else return View(category);                 }       [HttpGet]     public ActionResult Create()     {         var category = new Category();         return View(category);     }           [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Create(Category category)     {         if (!ModelState.IsValid)         {             return View("Create", category);         }                     categoryRepository.Add(category);         unitOfWork.Commit();         return RedirectToAction("Index");     }       [HttpPost]     public ActionResult Delete(int  id)     {         var category = categoryRepository.GetById(id);         categoryRepository.Delete(category);         unitOfWork.Commit();         var categories = categoryRepository.All();         return PartialView("CategoryList", categories);       }        } Creating Views in Razor Now we are going to create views in Razor for our ASP.NET MVC 3 application.  Let’s create a partial view CategoryList.cshtml for listing category information and providing link for Edit and Delete operations. CategoryList.cshtml @using MyFinance.Helpers; @using MyFinance.Domain; @model IEnumerable<Category>      <table>         <tr>         <th>Actions</th>         <th>Name</th>          <th>Description</th>         </tr>     @foreach (var item in Model) {             <tr>             <td>                 @Html.ActionLink("Edit", "Edit",new { id = item.CategoryId })                 @Ajax.ActionLink("Delete", "Delete", new { id = item.CategoryId }, new AjaxOptions { Confirm = "Delete Expense?", HttpMethod = "Post", UpdateTargetId = "divCategoryList" })                           </td>             <td>                 @item.Name             </td>             <td>                 @item.Description             </td>         </tr>         }       </table>     <p>         @Html.ActionLink("Create New", "Create")     </p> The delete link is providing Ajax functionality using the Ajax.ActionLink. This will call an Ajax request for Delete action method in the CategoryCotroller class. In the Delete action method, it will return Partial View CategoryList after deleting the record. We are using CategoryList view for the Ajax functionality and also for Index view using for displaying list of category information. Let’s create Index view using partial view CategoryList  Index.chtml @model IEnumerable<MyFinance.Domain.Category> @{     ViewBag.Title = "Index"; }    <h2>Category List</h2>    <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.unobtrusive-ajax.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>    <div id="divCategoryList">               @Html.Partial("CategoryList", Model) </div> We can call the partial views using Html.Partial helper method. Now we are going to create View pages for insert and update functionality for the Category. Both view pages are sharing common user interface for entering the category information. So I want to create an EditorTemplate for the Category information. We have to create the EditorTemplate with the same name of entity object so that we can refer it on view pages using @Html.EditorFor(model => model) . So let’s create template with name Category. Category.cshtml @model MyFinance.Domain.Category <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Name) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Name) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Name) </div> <div class="editor-label"> @Html.LabelFor(model => model.Description) </div> <div class="editor-field"> @Html.EditorFor(model => model.Description) @Html.ValidationMessageFor(model => model.Description) </div> Let’s create view page for insert Category information @model MyFinance.Domain.Category   @{     ViewBag.Title = "Save"; }   <h2>Create</h2>   <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script> <script src="@Url.Content("~/Scripts/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.min.js")" type="text/javascript"></script>   @using (Html.BeginForm()) {     @Html.ValidationSummary(true)     <fieldset>         <legend>Category</legend>                @Html.EditorFor(model => model)               <p>             <input type="submit" value="Create" />         </p>     </fieldset> }   <div>     @Html.ActionLink("Back to List", "Index") </div> ViewStart file In Razor views, we can add a file named _viewstart.cshtml in the views directory  and this will be shared among the all views with in the Views directory. The below code in the _viewstart.cshtml, sets the Layout page for every Views in the Views folder.     @{     Layout = "~/Views/Shared/_Layout.cshtml"; } Tomorrow, we will cotinue the second part of this article. :)

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• Building a jQuery Plug-in to make an HTML Table scrollable

  - by Rick Strahl

  Today I got a call from a customer and we were looking over an older application that uses a lot of tables to display financial and other assorted data. The application is mostly meta-data driven with lots of layout formatting automatically driven through meta data rather than through explicit hand coded HTML layouts. One of the problems in this apps are tables that display a non-fixed amount of data. The users of this app don't want to use paging to see more data, but instead want to display overflow data using a scrollbar. Many of the forms are very densely populated, often with multiple data tables that display a few rows of data in the UI at the most. This sort of layout does not lend itself well to paging, but works much better with scrollable data. Unfortunately scrollable tables are not easily created. HTML Tables are mangy beasts as anybody who's done any sort of Web development knows. Tables are finicky when it comes to styling and layout, and they have many funky quirks, especially when it comes to scrolling both of the table rows themselves or even the child columns. There's no built-in way to make tables scroll and to lock headers while you do, and while you can embed a table (or anything really) into a scrolling div with something like this: <div style="position:relative; overflow: hidden; overflow-y: scroll; height: 200px; width: 400px;"> <table id="table" style="width: 100%" class="blackborder" > <thead> <tr class="gridheader"> <th>Column 1</th> <th>Column 2</th> <th>Column 3</th> <th >Column 4</th> </tr> </thead> <tbody> <tr> <td>Column 1 Content</td> <td>Column 2 Content</td> <td>Column 3 Content</td> <td>Column 4 Content</td> </tr> <tr> <td>Column 1 Content</td> <td>Column 2 Content</td> <td>Column 3 Content</td> <td>Column 4 Content</td> </tr> … </tbody> </table> </div> </div> that won't give a very satisfying visual experience: Both the header and body scroll which looks odd. You lose context as soon as the header scrolls off the top and when you reach the bottom of the list the bottom outline of the table shows which also looks off. The the side bar shows all the way down the length of the table yet another visual miscue. In a pinch this will work, but it's ugly. What's out there? Before we go further here you should know that there are a few capable grid plug-ins out there already. Among them: Flexigrid (can work of any table as well as with AJAX data) jQuery Scrollable Table Plug-in (feature similar to what I need but not quite) jqGrid (mostly an Ajax Grid which is very powerful and works very well) But in the end none of them fit the bill of what I needed in this situation. All of these require custom CSS and some of them are fairly complex to restyle. Others are AJAX only or work better with AJAX loaded data. However, I need to actually try (as much as possible) to maintain the original styling of the tables without requiring extensive re-styling. Building the makeTableScrollable() Plug-in To make a table scrollable requires rearranging the table a bit. In the plug-in I built I create two <div> tags and split the table into two: one for the table header and one for the table body. The bottom <div> tag then contains only the table's row data and can be scrolled while the header stays fixed. Using jQuery the basic idea is pretty simple: You create the divs, copy the original table into the bottom, then clone the table, clear all content append the <thead> section, into new table and then copy that table into the second header <div>. Easy as pie, right? Unfortunately it's a bit more complicated than that as it's tricky to get the width of the table right to account for the scrollbar (by adding a small column) and making sure the borders properly line up for the two tables. A lot of style settings have to be made to ensure the table is a fixed size, to remove and reattach borders, to add extra space to allow for the scrollbar and so forth. The end result of my plug-in is a table with a scrollbar. Using the same table I used earlier the result looks like this: To create it, I use the following jQuery plug-in logic to select my table and run the makeTableScrollable() plug-in against the selector: $("#table").makeTableScrollable( { cssClass:"blackborder"} ); Without much further ado, here's the short code for the plug-in: (function ($) { $.fn.makeTableScrollable = function (options) { return this.each(function () { var $table = $(this); var opt = { // height of the table height: "250px", // right padding added to support the scrollbar rightPadding: "10px", // cssclass used for the wrapper div cssClass: "" } $.extend(opt, options); var $thead = $table.find("thead"); var $ths = $thead.find("th"); var id = $table.attr("id"); var cssClass = $table.attr("class"); if (!id) id = "_table_" + new Date().getMilliseconds().ToString(); $table.width("+=" + opt.rightPadding); $table.css("border-width", 0); // add a column to all rows of the table var first = true; $table.find("tr").each(function () { var row = $(this); if (first) { row.append($("<th>").width(opt.rightPadding)); first = false; } else row.append($("<td>").width(opt.rightPadding)); }); // force full sizing on each of the th elemnts $ths.each(function () { var $th = $(this); $th.css("width", $th.width()); }); // Create the table wrapper div var $tblDiv = $("<div>").css({ position: "relative", overflow: "hidden", overflowY: "scroll" }) .addClass(opt.cssClass); var width = $table.width(); $tblDiv.width(width).height(opt.height) .attr("id", id + "_wrapper") .css("border-top", "none"); // Insert before $tblDiv $tblDiv.insertBefore($table); // then move the table into it $table.appendTo($tblDiv); // Clone the div for header var $hdDiv = $tblDiv.clone(); $hdDiv.empty(); var width = $table.width(); $hdDiv.attr("style", "") .css("border-bottom", "none") .width(width) .attr("id", id + "_wrapper_header"); // create a copy of the table and remove all children var $newTable = $($table).clone(); $newTable.empty() .attr("id", $table.attr("id") + "_header"); $thead.appendTo($newTable); $hdDiv.insertBefore($tblDiv); $newTable.appendTo($hdDiv); $table.css("border-width", 0); }); } })(jQuery); Oh sweet spaghetti code :-) The code starts out by dealing the parameters that can be passed in the options object map: height The height of the full table/structure. The height of the outside wrapper container. Defaults to 200px. rightPadding The padding that is added to the right of the table to account for the scrollbar. Creates a column of this width and injects it into the table. If too small the rightmost column might get truncated. if too large the empty column might show. cssClass The CSS class of the wrapping container that appears to wrap the table. If you want a border around your table this class should probably provide it since the plug-in removes the table border. The rest of the code is obtuse, but pretty straight forward. It starts by creating a new column in the table to accommodate the width of the scrollbar and avoid clipping of text in the rightmost column. The width of the columns is explicitly set in the header elements to force the size of the table to be fixed and to provide the same sizing when the THEAD section is moved to a new copied table later. The table wrapper div is created, formatted and the table is moved into it. The new wrapper div is cloned for the header wrapper and configured. Finally the actual table is cloned and cleared of all elements. The original table's THEAD section is then moved into the new table. At last the new table is added to the header <div>, and the header <div> is inserted before the table wrapper <div>. I'm always amazed how easy jQuery makes it to do this sort of re-arranging, and given of what's happening the amount of code is rather small. Disclaimer: Your mileage may vary A word of warning: I make no guarantees about the code above. It's a first cut and I provided this here mainly to demonstrate the concepts of decomposing and reassembling an HTML layout :-) which jQuery makes so nice and easy. I tested this component against the typical scenarios we plan on using it for which are tables that use a few well known styles (or no styling at all). I suspect if you have complex styling on your <table> tag that things might not go so well. If you plan on using this plug-in you might want to minimize your styling of the table tag and defer any border formatting using the class passed in via the cssClass parameter, which ends up on the two wrapper div's that wrap the header and body rows. There's also no explicit support for footers. I rarely if ever use footers (when not using paging that is), so I didn't feel the need to add footer support. However, if you need that it's not difficult to add - the logic is the same as adding the header. The plug-in relies on a well-formatted table that has THEAD and TBODY sections along with TH tags in the header. Note that ASP.NET WebForm DataGrids and GridViews by default do not generate well-formatted table HTML. You can look at my Adding proper THEAD sections to a GridView post for more info on how to get a GridView to render properly. The plug-in has no dependencies other than jQuery. Even with the limitations in mind I hope this might be useful to some of you. I know I've already identified a number of places in my own existing applications where I will be plugging this in almost immediately. Resources Download Sample and Plug-in code Latest version in the West Wind Web & AJAX Toolkit Repository © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in jQuery  HTML  ASP.NET  

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 30, 2011Popular ReleasesASP.NET Comet Ajax Library (Reverse Ajax - Server Push): Reverse Ajax Samples v1.53: 16 Comprehensive ASP.NET Ajax / Reverse Ajax / WCF / MVC / Mono samplesReactive Extensions - Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.1: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. About LabsAll "Labs" downloads include the Rxx.dll assembly, so only a single download is required. To start RxxLabs.exe, right-mouse click and select Run as Administrator; otherwise, do not run the Reactive WebClient lab because it will crash the program. RxxLabs.exe requires administrator privileges for the Reactive WebClient lab to register a local HTTP port. To launch the Silverlight labs...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Final: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6759 6748 6583 6737datajs - JavaScript Library for data-centric web applications: datajs version 1.0.0: datajs is a cross-browser and UI agnostic JavaScript library that enables data-centric web applications with the following features: OData client that enables CRUD operations including batching and metadata support using both ATOM and JSON payloads. Single store abstraction that provides a common API on top of HTML5 local storage technologies. Data cache component that allows reading data ranges from a collection and storing them locally to reduce the number of network requests. Changes...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in some of th....NET Reflector Add-Ins: Reflector V7 Add-Ins: All the add-ins compiled for Reflector V7TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v4.1 [4.0 Bug Fixes]: Version 4.1 ChangelogChanged how users will Open Player files (This change makes it much easier) This allowed me to remove the "Current player file" labels that were present Changed file control icons Added submit bug button Various Bug Fixes Fixed crashes related to clicking on buffs before a character is loaded Fixed crashes related to selecting "No Buff" when choosing a new buff Fixed crashes related to clicking on a "Max" button on the buff tab before a character is loaded Cor...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta8: ??AcDown???????????????，?????????????????????。????????????????????，??Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、?????，???????????、???????。 AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 AcDown???????C#??，?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ??v3.0 Beta8 ?? ??????????????? ???????????????(??????????) ???????...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.5 instructions. 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No installer needed, just run the EXE.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5New Projects{Adjunct} functionality for the .NET framework: A project to provide Ingots for the .NET framework.3Webee.net: 3Webee.net is the First Navigator dedicated to Web.3.0 by P2P. Developped in C# for DotNet-3.5 or Mono.net, compatible with Linux ready. Website.fr : http://3webee.net/ Download Win32 : http://3webee.net/Download/3Webee.net.beta.0.0.Win32.exe AB Donor Choose Planner: The goal of this doantion planner is to allow you to coordinate the completion of one or more Donors Choose projects. 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I can share the code ...Navigation Light Toolkit: Navigation Light add support for View Navigation in WPF and SilverlightRight Click Calculator: a mini calculator with numpad that opens in a dialogbox. it can combined with a textbox. bir textbox üzerinde sag tus ile açabileceginiz ufak bir hesap makinesi örnegi.Shaaps & Ladders: It's a modern software implementation of the popular classic board game Snakes & Ladders. The Bengali translation of "Snakes" pronounces "Shaaps" and thus the name of the game is such. The game is being developed on top of the Shaaps & Ladders GDK. Source for both are released.SharePoint PowerShell Scripts: Usefull PowerShell scripts written for SharePoint that helps organizations with governance.Smith Web Tools: Smith Web Tools are some useful controls to help to build web application. They are written in pure JavaScript and CSS without introducing any other JavaScript framework. 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This library generates the zipped file with data for Google Transit Feed, in the GTFS formatVRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Collaborator Search Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Content Archiving Kit for SharePoint 2010VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Document Review Workflow Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE Literature Review Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010: VRE Researcher and Project Templates for SharePoint 2010 VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE RSS Feeds Kit for SharePoint 2010 VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010: VRE User Administration (FBA) Kit for SharePoint 2010 WebPart Collapser: WebPart Collapser is a lightweight, customizable jQuery plugin for SharePoint 2007 that allows visitors to expand/collapse WebParts. Through the use of cookies, the collapsed state of any webparts will be saved and collapsed each time a user visits a page. WPF Hex Editor: hex editor which is created with WPF with a xaml designed UI.Xoorscript: A proprietary scripting language created by Jared Thomson for the purpose of script defining an easy to use make system. The plans for this project are minimal for now, but if things go well I may expand it. This is low priority for me.

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• Using Oracle Proxy Authentication with JPA (eclipselink-Style)

  - by olaf.heimburger

  Security is a very intriguing topic. You will find it everywhere and you need to implement it everywhere. Yes, you need. Unfortunately, one can easily forget it while implementing the last mile. The Last Mile In a multi-tier application it is a common practice to use connection pools between the business layer and the database layer. Connection pools are quite useful to speed database connection creation and to split the load. Another very common practice is to use a specific, often called technical, user to connect to the database. This user has authentication and authorization rules that apply to all application users. Imagine you've put every effort to define roles for different types of users that use your application. These roles are necessary to differentiate between normal users, premium users, and administrators (I bet you will find or already have more roles in your application). While these user roles are pretty well used within your application, once the flow of execution enters the database everything is gone. Each and every user just has one role and is the same database user. Issues? What Issues? As long as things go well, this is not a real issue. However, things do not go well all the time. Once your application becomes famous performance decreases in certain situations or, more importantly, current and upcoming regulations and laws require that your application must be able to apply different security measures on a per user role basis at every stage of your application. If you only have a bunch of users with the same name and role you are not able to find the application usage profile that causes the performance issue, or which user has accessed data that he/she is not allowed to. Another thread to your role concept is that databases tend to be used by different applications and tools. These tools can be developer tools like SQL*Plus, SQL Developer, etc. or end user applications like BI Publisher, Oracle Forms and so on. These tools have no idea of your applications role concept and access the database the way they think is appropriate. A big oversight for your perfect role model and a big nightmare for your Chief Security Officer. Speaking of the CSO, brings up another issue: Password management. Once your technical user account is compromised, every user is able to do things that he/she is not expected to do from the design of your application. Counter Measures In the Oracle world a common counter measure is to use Virtual Private Database (VPD). This restricts the values a database user can see to the allowed minimum. However, it doesn't help in regard of a connection pool user, because this one is still not the real user. Oracle Proxy Authentication Another feature of the Oracle database is Proxy Authentication. First introduced with version 9i it is a quite useful feature for nearly every situation. The main idea behind Proxy Authentication is, to create a crippled database user who has only connect rights. Even if this user is compromised the risks are well understood and fairly limited. This user can be used in every situation in which you need to connect to the database, no matter which tool or application (see above) you use.The proxy user is perfect for multi-tier connection pools. CREATE USER app_user IDENTIFIED BY abcd1234; GRANT CREATE SESSION TO app_user; But what if you need to access real data? Well, this is the primary use case, isn't it? Now is the time to bring the application's role concept into play. You define database roles that define the grants for your identified user groups. Once you have these groups you grant access through the proxy user with the application role to the specific user. CREATE ROLE app_role_a; GRANT app_role_a TO scott; ALTER USER scott GRANT CONNECT THROUGH app_user WITH ROLE app_role_a; Now, hr has permission to connect to the database through the proxy user. Through the role you can restrict the hr's rights the are needed for the application only. If hr connects to the database directly all assigned role and permissions apply. Testing the Setup To test the setup you can use SQL*Plus and connect to your database: $ sqlplus app_user[hr]/abcd1234 Java Persistence API The Java Persistence API (JPA) is a fairly easy means to build applications that retrieve data from the database and put it into Java objects. You use plain old Java objects (POJOs) and mixin some Java annotations that define how the attributes of the object are used for storing data from the database into the Java object. Here is a sample for objects from the HR sample schema EMPLOYEES table. When using Java annotations you only specify what can not be deduced from the code. If your Java class name is Employee but the table name is EMPLOYEES, you need to specify the table name, otherwise it will fail. package demo.proxy.ejb; import java.io.Serializable; import java.sql.Timestamp; import java.util.List; import javax.persistence.Column; import javax.persistence.Entity; import javax.persistence.Id; import javax.persistence.JoinColumn; import javax.persistence.ManyToOne; import javax.persistence.NamedQueries; import javax.persistence.NamedQuery; import javax.persistence.OneToMany; import javax.persistence.Table; @Entity @NamedQueries({ @NamedQuery(name = "Employee.findAll", query = "select o from Employee o") }) @Table(name = "EMPLOYEES") public class Employee implements Serializable { @Column(name="COMMISSION_PCT") private Double commissionPct; @Column(name="DEPARTMENT_ID") private Long departmentId; @Column(nullable = false, unique = true, length = 25) private String email; @Id @Column(name="EMPLOYEE_ID", nullable = false) private Long employeeId; @Column(name="FIRST_NAME", length = 20) private String firstName; @Column(name="HIRE_DATE", nullable = false) private Timestamp hireDate; @Column(name="JOB_ID", nullable = false, length = 10) private String jobId; @Column(name="LAST_NAME", nullable = false, length = 25) private String lastName; @Column(name="PHONE_NUMBER", length = 20) private String phoneNumber; private Double salary; @ManyToOne @JoinColumn(name = "MANAGER_ID") private Employee employee; @OneToMany(mappedBy = "employee") private List employeeList; public Employee() { } public Employee(Double commissionPct, Long departmentId, String email, Long employeeId, String firstName, Timestamp hireDate, String jobId, String lastName, Employee employee, String phoneNumber, Double salary) { this.commissionPct = commissionPct; this.departmentId = departmentId; this.email = email; this.employeeId = employeeId; this.firstName = firstName; this.hireDate = hireDate; this.jobId = jobId; this.lastName = lastName; this.employee = employee; this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber; this.salary = salary; } public Double getCommissionPct() { return commissionPct; } public void setCommissionPct(Double commissionPct) { this.commissionPct = commissionPct; } public Long getDepartmentId() { return departmentId; } public void setDepartmentId(Long departmentId) { this.departmentId = departmentId; } public String getEmail() { return email; } public void setEmail(String email) { this.email = email; } public Long getEmployeeId() { return employeeId; } public void setEmployeeId(Long employeeId) { this.employeeId = employeeId; } public String getFirstName() { return firstName; } public void setFirstName(String firstName) { this.firstName = firstName; } public Timestamp getHireDate() { return hireDate; } public void setHireDate(Timestamp hireDate) { this.hireDate = hireDate; } public String getJobId() { return jobId; } public void setJobId(String jobId) { this.jobId = jobId; } public String getLastName() { return lastName; } public void setLastName(String lastName) { this.lastName = lastName; } public String getPhoneNumber() { return phoneNumber; } public void setPhoneNumber(String phoneNumber) { this.phoneNumber = phoneNumber; } public Double getSalary() { return salary; } public void setSalary(Double salary) { this.salary = salary; } public Employee getEmployee() { return employee; } public void setEmployee(Employee employee) { this.employee = employee; } public List getEmployeeList() { return employeeList; } public void setEmployeeList(List employeeList) { this.employeeList = employeeList; } public Employee addEmployee(Employee employee) { getEmployeeList().add(employee); employee.setEmployee(this); return employee; } public Employee removeEmployee(Employee employee) { getEmployeeList().remove(employee); employee.setEmployee(null); return employee; } } JPA could be used in standalone applications and Java EE containers. In both worlds you normally create a Facade to retrieve or store the values of the Entities to or from the database. The Facade does this via an EntityManager which will be injected by the Java EE container. Here is sample Facade Session Bean for a Java EE container. package demo.proxy.ejb; import java.util.HashMap; import java.util.List; import javax.ejb.Local; import javax.ejb.Remote; import javax.ejb.Stateless; import javax.persistence.EntityManager; import javax.persistence.PersistenceContext; import javax.persistence.Query; import javax.interceptor.AroundInvoke; import javax.interceptor.InvocationContext; import oracle.jdbc.driver.OracleConnection; import org.eclipse.persistence.config.EntityManagerProperties; import org.eclipse.persistence.internal.jpa.EntityManagerImpl; @Stateless(name = "DataFacade", mappedName = "ProxyUser-TestEJB-DataFacade") @Remote @Local public class DataFacadeBean implements DataFacade, DataFacadeLocal { @PersistenceContext(unitName = "TestEJB") private EntityManager em; private String username; public Object queryByRange(String jpqlStmt, int firstResult, int maxResults) { // setSessionUser(); Query query = em.createQuery(jpqlStmt); if (firstResult 0) { query = query.setFirstResult(firstResult); } if (maxResults 0) { query = query.setMaxResults(maxResults); } return query.getResultList(); } public Employee persistEmployee(Employee employee) { // setSessionUser(); em.persist(employee); return employee; } public Employee mergeEmployee(Employee employee) { // setSessionUser(); return em.merge(employee); } public void removeEmployee(Employee employee) { // setSessionUser(); employee = em.find(Employee.class, employee.getEmployeeId()); em.remove(employee); } /** select o from Employee o */ public List getEmployeeFindAll() { Query q = em.createNamedQuery("Employee.findAll"); return q.getResultList(); } Putting Both Together To use Proxy Authentication with JPA and within a Java EE container you have to take care of the additional requirements: Use an OCI JDBC driver Provide the user name that connects through the proxy user Use an OCI JDBC driver To use the OCI JDBC driver you need to set up your JDBC data source file to use the correct JDBC URL. hr jdbc:oracle:oci8:@(DESCRIPTION=(ADDRESS=(PROTOCOL=TCP)(HOST=localhost)(PORT=1521))(CONNECT_DATA=(SID=XE))) oracle.jdbc.OracleDriver user app_user 62C32F70E98297522AD97E15439FAC0E SQL SELECT 1 FROM DUAL jdbc/hrDS Application Additionally you need to make sure that the version of the shared libraries of the OCI driver match the version of the JDBC driver in your Java EE container or Java application and are within your PATH (on Windows) or LD_LIBRARY_PATH (on most Unix-based systems). Installing the Oracle Database Instance Client software works perfectly. Provide the user name that connects through the proxy user This part needs some modification of your application software and session facade. Session Facade Changes In the Session Facade we must ensure that every call that goes through the EntityManager must be prepared correctly and uniquely assigned to this session. The second is really important, as the EntityManager works with a connection pool and can not guarantee that we set the proxy user on the connection that will be used for the database activities. To avoid changing every method call of the Session Facade we provide a method to set the username of the user that connects through the proxy user. This method needs to be called by the Facade client bfore doing anything else. public void setUsername(String name) { username = name; } Next we provide a means to instruct the TopLink EntityManager Delegate to use Oracle Proxy Authentication. (I love small helper methods to hide the nitty-gritty details and avoid repeating myself.) private void setSessionUser() { setSessionUser(username); } private void setSessionUser(String user) { if (user != null && !user.isEmpty()) { EntityManagerImpl emDelegate = ((EntityManagerImpl)em.getDelegate()); emDelegate.setProperty(EntityManagerProperties.ORACLE_PROXY_TYPE, OracleConnection.PROXYTYPE_USER_NAME); emDelegate.setProperty(OracleConnection.PROXY_USER_NAME, user); emDelegate.setProperty(EntityManagerProperties.EXCLUSIVE_CONNECTION_MODE, "Always"); } } The final step is use the EJB 3.0 AroundInvoke interceptor. This interceptor will be called around every method invocation. We therefore check whether the Facade methods will be called or not. If so, we set the user for proxy authentication and the normal method flow continues. @AroundInvoke public Object proxyInterceptor(InvocationContext invocationCtx) throws Exception { if (invocationCtx.getTarget() instanceof DataFacadeBean) { setSessionUser(); } return invocationCtx.proceed(); } Benefits Using Oracle Proxy Authentification has a number of additional benefits appart from implementing the role model of your application: Fine grained access control for temporary users of the account, without compromising the original password. Enabling database auditing and logging. Better identification of performance bottlenecks. References Effective Oracle Database 10g Security by Design, David Knox TopLink Developer's Guide, Chapter 98

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• C#/.NET Fundamentals: Choosing the Right Collection Class

  - by James Michael Hare

  The .NET Base Class Library (BCL) has a wide array of collection classes at your disposal which make it easy to manage collections of objects. While it's great to have so many classes available, it can be daunting to choose the right collection to use for any given situation. As hard as it may be, choosing the right collection can be absolutely key to the performance and maintainability of your application! This post will look at breaking down any confusion between each collection and the situations in which they excel. We will be spending most of our time looking at the System.Collections.Generic namespace, which is the recommended set of collections. The Generic Collections: System.Collections.Generic namespace The generic collections were introduced in .NET 2.0 in the System.Collections.Generic namespace. This is the main body of collections you should tend to focus on first, as they will tend to suit 99% of your needs right up front. It is important to note that the generic collections are unsynchronized. This decision was made for performance reasons because depending on how you are using the collections its completely possible that synchronization may not be required or may be needed on a higher level than simple method-level synchronization. Furthermore, concurrent read access (all writes done at beginning and never again) is always safe, but for concurrent mixed access you should either synchronize the collection or use one of the concurrent collections. So let's look at each of the collections in turn and its various pros and cons, at the end we'll summarize with a table to help make it easier to compare and contrast the different collections. The Associative Collection Classes Associative collections store a value in the collection by providing a key that is used to add/remove/lookup the item. Hence, the container associates the value with the key. These collections are most useful when you need to lookup/manipulate a collection using a key value. For example, if you wanted to look up an order in a collection of orders by an order id, you might have an associative collection where they key is the order id and the value is the order. The Dictionary<TKey,TVale> is probably the most used associative container class. The Dictionary<TKey,TValue> is the fastest class for associative lookups/inserts/deletes because it uses a hash table under the covers. Because the keys are hashed, the key type should correctly implement GetHashCode() and Equals() appropriately or you should provide an external IEqualityComparer to the dictionary on construction. The insert/delete/lookup time of items in the dictionary is amortized constant time - O(1) - which means no matter how big the dictionary gets, the time it takes to find something remains relatively constant. This is highly desirable for high-speed lookups. The only downside is that the dictionary, by nature of using a hash table, is unordered, so you cannot easily traverse the items in a Dictionary in order. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is similar to the Dictionary<TKey,TValue> in usage but very different in implementation. The SortedDictionary<TKey,TValye> uses a binary tree under the covers to maintain the items in order by the key. As a consequence of sorting, the type used for the key must correctly implement IComparable<TKey> so that the keys can be correctly sorted. The sorted dictionary trades a little bit of lookup time for the ability to maintain the items in order, thus insert/delete/lookup times in a sorted dictionary are logarithmic - O(log n). Generally speaking, with logarithmic time, you can double the size of the collection and it only has to perform one extra comparison to find the item. Use the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> when you want fast lookups but also want to be able to maintain the collection in order by the key. The SortedList<TKey,TValue> is the other ordered associative container class in the generic containers. Once again SortedList<TKey,TValue>, like SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue>, uses a key to sort key-value pairs. Unlike SortedDictionary, however, items in a SortedList are stored as an ordered array of items. This means that insertions and deletions are linear - O(n) - because deleting or adding an item may involve shifting all items up or down in the list. Lookup time, however is O(log n) because the SortedList can use a binary search to find any item in the list by its key. So why would you ever want to do this? Well, the answer is that if you are going to load the SortedList up-front, the insertions will be slower, but because array indexing is faster than following object links, lookups are marginally faster than a SortedDictionary. Once again I'd use this in situations where you want fast lookups and want to maintain the collection in order by the key, and where insertions and deletions are rare. The Non-Associative Containers The other container classes are non-associative. They don't use keys to manipulate the collection but rely on the object itself being stored or some other means (such as index) to manipulate the collection. The List<T> is a basic contiguous storage container. Some people may call this a vector or dynamic array. Essentially it is an array of items that grow once its current capacity is exceeded. Because the items are stored contiguously as an array, you can access items in the List<T> by index very quickly. However inserting and removing in the beginning or middle of the List<T> are very costly because you must shift all the items up or down as you delete or insert respectively. However, adding and removing at the end of a List<T> is an amortized constant operation - O(1). Typically List<T> is the standard go-to collection when you don't have any other constraints, and typically we favor a List<T> even over arrays unless we are sure the size will remain absolutely fixed. The LinkedList<T> is a basic implementation of a doubly-linked list. This means that you can add or remove items in the middle of a linked list very quickly (because there's no items to move up or down in contiguous memory), but you also lose the ability to index items by position quickly. Most of the time we tend to favor List<T> over LinkedList<T> unless you are doing a lot of adding and removing from the collection, in which case a LinkedList<T> may make more sense. The HashSet<T> is an unordered collection of unique items. This means that the collection cannot have duplicates and no order is maintained. Logically, this is very similar to having a Dictionary<TKey,TValue> where the TKey and TValue both refer to the same object. This collection is very useful for maintaining a collection of items you wish to check membership against. For example, if you receive an order for a given vendor code, you may want to check to make sure the vendor code belongs to the set of vendor codes you handle. In these cases a HashSet<T> is useful for super-quick lookups where order is not important. Once again, like in Dictionary, the type T should have a valid implementation of GetHashCode() and Equals(), or you should provide an appropriate IEqualityComparer<T> to the HashSet<T> on construction. The SortedSet<T> is to HashSet<T> what the SortedDictionary<TKey,TValue> is to Dictionary<TKey,TValue>. That is, the SortedSet<T> is a binary tree where the key and value are the same object. This once again means that adding/removing/lookups are logarithmic - O(log n) - but you gain the ability to iterate over the items in order. For this collection to be effective, type T must implement IComparable<T> or you need to supply an external IComparer<T>. Finally, the Stack<T> and Queue<T> are two very specific collections that allow you to handle a sequential collection of objects in very specific ways. The Stack<T> is a last-in-first-out (LIFO) container where items are added and removed from the top of the stack. Typically this is useful in situations where you want to stack actions and then be able to undo those actions in reverse order as needed. The Queue<T> on the other hand is a first-in-first-out container which adds items at the end of the queue and removes items from the front. This is useful for situations where you need to process items in the order in which they came, such as a print spooler or waiting lines. So that's the basic collections. Let's summarize what we've learned in a quick reference table.  Collection Ordered? Contiguous Storage? Direct Access? Lookup Efficiency Manipulate Efficiency Notes Dictionary No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Best for high performance lookups. SortedDictionary Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Compromise of Dictionary speed and ordering, uses binary search tree. SortedList Yes Yes Via Key Key: O(log n) O(n) Very similar to SortedDictionary, except tree is implemented in an array, so has faster lookup on preloaded data, but slower loads. List No Yes Via Index Index: O(1) Value: O(n) O(n) Best for smaller lists where direct access required and no ordering. LinkedList No No No Value: O(n) O(1) Best for lists where inserting/deleting in middle is common and no direct access required. HashSet No Yes Via Key Key: O(1) O(1) Unique unordered collection, like a Dictionary except key and value are same object. SortedSet Yes No Via Key Key: O(log n) O(log n) Unique ordered collection, like SortedDictionary except key and value are same object. Stack No Yes Only Top Top: O(1) O(1)* Essentially same as List<T> except only process as LIFO Queue No Yes Only Front Front: O(1) O(1) Essentially same as List<T> except only process as FIFO   The Original Collections: System.Collections namespace The original collection classes are largely considered deprecated by developers and by Microsoft itself. In fact they indicate that for the most part you should always favor the generic or concurrent collections, and only use the original collections when you are dealing with legacy .NET code. Because these collections are out of vogue, let's just briefly mention the original collection and their generic equivalents: ArrayList A dynamic, contiguous collection of objects. Favor the generic collection List<T> instead. Hashtable Associative, unordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection Dictionary<TKey,TValue> instead. Queue First-in-first-out (FIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Queue<T> instead. SortedList Associative, ordered collection of key-value pairs of objects. Favor the generic collection SortedList<T> instead. Stack Last-in-first-out (LIFO) collection of objects. Favor the generic collection Stack<T> instead. In general, the older collections are non-type-safe and in some cases less performant than their generic counterparts. Once again, the only reason you should fall back on these older collections is for backward compatibility with legacy code and libraries only. The Concurrent Collections: System.Collections.Concurrent namespace The concurrent collections are new as of .NET 4.0 and are included in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace. These collections are optimized for use in situations where multi-threaded read and write access of a collection is desired. The concurrent queue, stack, and dictionary work much as you'd expect. The bag and blocking collection are more unique. Below is the summary of each with a link to a blog post I did on each of them. ConcurrentQueue Thread-safe version of a queue (FIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentStack Thread-safe version of a stack (LIFO). For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentQueue ConcurrentBag Thread-safe unordered collection of objects. Optimized for situations where a thread may be bother reader and writer. For more information see: C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection ConcurrentDictionary Thread-safe version of a dictionary. Optimized for multiple readers (allows multiple readers under same lock). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentDictionary BlockingCollection Wrapper collection that implement producers & consumers paradigm. Readers can block until items are available to read. Writers can block until space is available to write (if bounded). For more information see C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection Summary The .NET BCL has lots of collections built in to help you store and manipulate collections of data. Understanding how these collections work and knowing in which situations each container is best is one of the key skills necessary to build more performant code. Choosing the wrong collection for the job can make your code much slower or even harder to maintain if you choose one that doesn’t perform as well or otherwise doesn’t exactly fit the situation. Remember to avoid the original collections and stick with the generic collections.  If you need concurrent access, you can use the generic collections if the data is read-only, or consider the concurrent collections for mixed-access if you are running on .NET 4.0 or higher.   Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Collecitons,Generic,Concurrent,Dictionary,List,Stack,Queue,SortedList,SortedDictionary,HashSet,SortedSet

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• Dynamic XAP loading in Task-It - Part 1

  Download Source Code NOTE 1: The source code provided is running against the RC versions of Silverlight 4 and VisualStudio 2010, so you will need to update to those bits to run it. NOTE 2: After downloading the source, be sure to set the .Web project as the StartUp Project, and Default.aspx as the Start Page In my MEF into post, MEF to the rescue in Task-It, I outlined a couple of issues I was facing and explained why I chose MEF (the Managed Extensibility Framework) to solve these issues. Other posts to check out There are a few other resources out there around dynamic XAP loading that you may want to review (by the way, Glenn Block is the main dude when it comes to MEF): Glenn Blocks 3-part series on a dynamically loaded dashboard Glenn and John Papas Silverlight TV video on dynamic xap loading These provide some great info, but didnt exactly cover the scenario I wanted to achieve in Task-Itand that is dynamically loading each of the apps pages the first time the user enters a page. The code In the code I provided for download above, I created a simple solution that shows the technique I used for dynamic XAP loading in Task-It, but without all of the other code that surrounds it. Taking all that other stuff away should make it easier to grasp. Having said that, there is still a fair amount of code involved. I am always looking for ways to make things simpler, and to achieve the desired result with as little code as possible, so if I find a better/simpler way I will blog about it, but for now this technique works for me. When I created this solution I started by creating a new Silverlight Navigation Application called DynamicXAP Loading. I then added the following line to my UriMappings in MainPage.xaml: <uriMapper:UriMapping Uri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}" MappedUri="/{assemblyName};component/{path}"/> In the section of MainPage.xaml that produces the page links in the upper right, I kept the Home link, but added a couple of new ones (page1 and page 2). These are the pages that will be dynamically (lazy) loaded: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>      <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>      <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>  </StackPanel> In App.xaml.cs I added a bit of MEF code. In Application_Startup I call a method called InitializeContainer, which creates a PackageCatalog (a MEF thing), then I create a CompositionContainer and pass it to the CompositionHost.Initialize method. This is boiler-plate MEF stuff that allows you to do 'composition' and import 'packages'. You're welcome to do a bit more MEF research on what is happening here if you'd like, but for the purpose of this example you can just trust that it works. :-) private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) {     InitializeContainer();     this.RootVisual = new MainPage(); }   private static void InitializeContainer() {     var catalog = new PackageCatalog();     catalog.AddPackage(Package.Current);     var container = new CompositionContainer(catalog);     container.ComposeExportedValue(catalog);     CompositionHost.Initialize(container); } Infrastructure In the sample code you'll notice that there is a project in the solution called DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure. This is simply a Silverlight Class Library project that I created just to move stuff I considered application 'infrastructure' code into a separate place, rather than cluttering the main Silverlight project (DynamicXapLoading). I did this same thing in Task-It, as the amount of this type of code was starting to clutter up the Silverlight project, and it just seemed to make sense to move things like Enums, Constants and the like off to a separate place. In the DynamicXapLoading.Infrastructure project you'll see 3 classes: Enums - There is only one enum in here called ModuleEnum. We'll use these later. PageMetadata - We will use this class later to add metadata to a new dynamically loaded project. ViewModelBase - This is simply a base class for view models that we will use in this, as well as future samples. As mentioned in my MVVM post, I will be using the MVVM pattern throughout my code for reasons detailed in the post. By the way, the ViewModelExtension class in there allows me to do strongly-typed property changed notification, so rather than OnPropertyChanged("MyProperty"), I can do this.OnPropertyChanged(p => p.MyProperty). It's just a less error-prown approach, because if you don't spell "MyProperty" correctly using the first method, nothing will break, it just won't work. Adding a new page We currently have a couple of pages that are being dynamically (lazy) loaded, but now let's add a third page. 1. First, create a new Silverlight Application project: In this example I call it Page3. In the future you may prefer to use a different name, like DynamicXAPLoading.Page3, or even DynamicXAPLoading.Modules.Page3. It can be whatever you want. In my Task-It application I used the latter approach (with 'Modules' in the name). I do think of these application as 'modules', but Prism uses the same term, so some folks may not like that. Use whichever naming convention you feel is appropriate, but for now Page3 will do. When you change the name to Page3 and click OK, you will be presented with the Add New Project dialog: It is important that you leave the 'Host the Silverlight application in a new or existing Web site in the solution' checked, and the .Web project will be selected in the dropdown below. This will create the .xap file for this project under ClientBin in the .Web project, which is where we want it. 2. Uncheck the 'Add a test page that references the application' checkbox, and leave everything else as is. 3. Once the project is created, you can delete App.xaml and MainPage.xaml. 4. You will need to add references your new project to the following: DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure.dll (this is a Project reference) DynamicNavigation.dll (this is in the Libs directory under the DynamicXAPLoading project) System.ComponentModel.Composition.dll System.ComponentModel.Composition.Initialization.dll System.Windows.Controls.Navigation.dll If you have installed the latest RC bits you will find the last 3 dll's under the .NET tab in the Add Referenced dialog. They live in the following location, or if you are on a 64-bit machine like me, it will be Program Files (x86).       C:\Program Files\Microsoft SDKs\Silverlight\v4.0\Libraries\Client Now let's create some UI for our new project. 5. First, create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.dyn.xaml 6. Paste the following code into the xaml: <dyn:DynamicPageShim xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:my="clr-namespace:Page3;assembly=Page3">     <my:Page3Host /> </dyn:DynamicPageShim> This is just a 'shim', part of David Poll's technique for dynamic loading. 7. Expand the icon next to Page3.dyn.xaml and delete the code-behind file (Page3.dyn.xaml.cs). 8. Next we will create a control that will 'host' our page. Create another Silverlight User Control called Page3Host.xaml and paste in the following XAML: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Page3Host"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     xmlns:Views="clr-namespace:Page3.Views"      mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Title="Page 3">       <Views:Page3/>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 9. Now paste the following code into the code-behind for this control: using DynamicXAPLoading.Infrastructure;   namespace Page3 {     [PageMetadata(NavigateUri = "/Page3;component/Page3.dyn.xaml", Module = Enums.Page3)]     public partial class Page3Host     {         public Page3Host()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } Notice that we are now using that PageMetadata custom attribute class that we created in the Infrastructure project, and setting its two properties. NavigateUri - This tells it that the assembly is called Page3 (with a slash beforehand), and the page we want to load is Page3.dyn.xaml...our 'shim'. That line we added to the UriMapper in MainPage.xaml will use this information to load the page. Module - This goes back to that ModuleEnum class in our Infrastructure project. However, setting the Module to ModuleEnum.Page3 will cause a compilation error, so... 10. Go back to that Enums.cs under the Infrastructure project and add a 3rd entry for Page3: public enum ModuleEnum {     Page1,     Page2,     Page3 } 11. Now right-click on the Page3 project and add a folder called Views. 12. Right-click on the Views folder and create a new Silverlight User Control called Page3.xaml. We won't bother creating a view model for this User Control as I did in the Page 1 and Page 2 projects, just for the sake of simplicity. Feel free to add one if you'd like though, and copy the code from one of those other projects. Right now those view models aren't really doing anything anyway...though they will in my next post. :-) 13. Now let's replace the xaml for Page3.xaml with the following: <dyn:DynamicPage x:Class="Page3.Views.Page3"     xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"     xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml"     xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008"     xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006"     xmlns:dyn="clr-namespace:DynamicNavigation;assembly=DynamicNavigation"     mc:Ignorable="d"     d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"     Style="{StaticResource PageStyle}">       <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot">         <ScrollViewer x:Name="PageScrollViewer" Style="{StaticResource PageScrollViewerStyle}">             <StackPanel x:Name="ContentStackPanel">                 <TextBlock x:Name="HeaderText" Style="{StaticResource HeaderTextStyle}" Text="Page 3"/>                 <TextBlock x:Name="ContentText" Style="{StaticResource ContentTextStyle}" Text="Page 3 content"/>             </StackPanel>         </ScrollViewer>     </Grid>   </dyn:DynamicPage> 14. And in the code-behind remove the inheritance from UserControl, so it should look like this: namespace Page3.Views {     public partial class Page3     {         public Page3()         {             InitializeComponent();         }     } } One thing you may have noticed is that the base class for the last two User Controls we created is DynamicPage. Once again, we are using the infrastructure that David Poll created. 15. OK, a few last things. We need a link on our main page so that we can access our new page. In MainPage.xaml let's update our links to look like this: <StackPanel x:Name="LinksStackPanel" Style="{StaticResource LinksStackPanelStyle}">     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" NavigateUri="/Home" TargetName="ContentFrame" Content="home"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 1" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage1}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 2" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage2}"/>     <Rectangle Style="{StaticResource DividerStyle}"/>     <HyperlinkButton Style="{StaticResource LinkStyle}" Content="page 3" Command="{Binding NavigateCommand}" CommandParameter="{Binding ModulePage3}"/> </StackPanel> 16. Next, we need to add the following at the bottom of MainPageViewModel in the ViewModels directory of our DynamicXAPLoading project: public ModuleEnum ModulePage3 {     get { return ModuleEnum.Page3; } } 17. And at last, we need to add a case for our new page to the switch statement in MainPageViewModel: switch (module) {     case ModuleEnum.Page1:         DownloadPackage("Page1.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page2:         DownloadPackage("Page2.xap");         break;     case ModuleEnum.Page3:         DownloadPackage("Page3.xap");         break;     default:         break; } Now fire up the application and click the page 1, page 2 and page 3 links. What you'll notice is that there is a 2-second delay the first time you hit each page. That is because I added the following line to the Navigate method in MainPageViewModel: Thread.Sleep(2000); // Simulate a 2 second initial loading delay The reason I put this in there is that I wanted to simulate a delay the first time the page loads (as the .xap is being downloaded from the server). You'll notice that after the first hit to the page though that there is no delay...that's because the .xap has already been downloaded. Feel free to comment out this 2-second delay, or remove it if you'd like. I just wanted to show how subsequent hits to the page would be quicker than the initial one. By the way, you may want to display some sort of BusyIndicator while the .xap is loading. I have that in my Task-It appplication, but for the sake of simplicity I did not include it here. In the future I'll blog about how I show and hide the BusyIndicator using events (I'm currently using the eventing framework in Prism for that, but may move to the one in the MVVM Light Toolkit some time soon). Whew, that felt like a lot of steps, but it does work quite nicely. As I mentioned earlier, I'll try to find ways to simplify the code (I'd like to get away from having things like hard-coded .xap file names) and will blog about it in the future if I find a better way. In my next post, I'll talk more about what is actually happening with the code that makes this all work.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• AngularJs ng-cloak Problems on large Pages

  - by Rick Strahl

  I’ve been working on a rather complex and large Angular page. Unlike a typical AngularJs SPA style ‘application’ this particular page is just that: a single page with a large amount of data on it that has to be visible all at once. The problem is that when this large page loads it flickers and displays template markup briefly before kicking into its actual content rendering. This is is what the Angular ng-cloak is supposed to address, but in this case I had no luck getting it to work properly. This application is a shop floor app where workers need to see all related information in one big screen view, so some of the benefits of Angular’s routing and view swapping features couldn’t be applied. Instead, we decided to have one very big view but lots of ng-controllers and directives to break out the logic for code separation. For code separation this works great – there are a number of small controllers that deal with their own individual and isolated application concerns. For HTML separation we used partial ASP.NET MVC Razor Views which made breaking out the HTML into manageable pieces super easy and made migration of this page from a previous server side Razor page much easier. We were also able to leverage most of our server side localization without a lot of  changes as a bonus. But as a result of this choice the initial HTML document that loads is rather large – even without any data loaded into it, resulting in a fairly large DOM tree that Angular must manage. Large Page and Angular Startup The problem on this particular page is that there’s quite a bit of markup – 35k’s worth of markup without any data loaded, in fact. It’s a large HTML page with a complex DOM tree. There are quite a lot of Angular {{ }} markup expressions in the document. Angular provides the ng-cloak directive to try and hide the element it cloaks so that you don’t see the flash of these markup expressions when the page initially loads before Angular has a chance to render the data into the markup expressions.<div id="mainContainer" class="mainContainer boxshadow" ng-app="app" ng-cloak> Note the ng-cloak attribute on this element, which here is an outer wrapper element of the most of this large page’s content. ng-cloak is supposed to prevent displaying the content below it, until Angular has taken control and is ready to render the data into the templates. Alas, with this large page the end result unfortunately is a brief flicker of un-rendered markup which looks like this: It’s brief, but plenty ugly – right?  And depending on the speed of the machine this flash gets more noticeable with slow machines that take longer to process the initial HTML DOM. ng-cloak Styles ng-cloak works by temporarily hiding the marked up element and it does this by essentially applying a style that does this:[ng\:cloak], [ng-cloak], [data-ng-cloak], [x-ng-cloak], .ng-cloak, .x-ng-cloak { display: none !important; } This style is inlined as part of AngularJs itself. If you looking at the angular.js source file you’ll find this at the very end of the file:!angular.$$csp() && angular.element(document) .find('head') .prepend('<style type="text/css">@charset "UTF-8";[ng\\:cloak],[ng-cloak],' + '[data-ng-cloak],[x-ng-cloak],.ng-cloak,.x-ng-cloak,' + '.ng-hide{display:none !important;}ng\\:form{display:block;}' '.ng-animate-block-transitions{transition:0s all!important;-webkit-transition:0s all!important;}' + '</style>'); This is is meant to initially hide any elements that contain the ng-cloak attribute or one of the other Angular directive permutation markup. Unfortunately on this particular web page ng-cloak had no effect – I still see the flicker. Why doesn’t ng-cloak work? The problem is of course – timing. The problem is that Angular actually needs to get control of the page before it ever starts doing anything like process even the ng-cloak attribute (or style etc). Because this page is rather large (about 35k of non-data HTML) it takes a while for the DOM to actually plow through the HTML. With the Angular <script> tag defined at the bottom of the page after the HTML DOM content there’s a slight delay which causes the flicker. For smaller pages the initial DOM load/parse cycle is so fast that the markup never shows, but with larger content pages it may show and become an annoying problem. Workarounds There a number of simple ways around this issue and some of them are hinted on in the Angular documentation. Load Angular Sooner One obvious thing that would help with this is to load Angular at the top of the page  BEFORE the DOM loads and that would give it much earlier control. The old ng-cloak documentation actually recommended putting the Angular.js script into the header of the page (apparently this was recently removed), but generally it’s not a good practice to load scripts in the header for page load performance. This is especially true if you load other libraries like jQuery which should be loaded prior to loading Angular so it can use jQuery rather than its own jqLite subset. This is not something I normally would like to do and also something that I’d likely forget in the future and end up right back here :-). Use ng-include for Child Content Angular supports nesting of child templates via the ng-include directive which essentially delay loads HTML content. This helps by removing a lot of the template content out of the main page and so getting control to Angular a lot sooner in order to hide the markup template content. In the application in question, I realize that in hindsight it might have been smarter to break this page out with client side ng-include directives instead of MVC Razor partial views we used to break up the page sections. Razor partial views give that nice separation as well, but in the end Razor puts humpty dumpty (ie. the HTML) back together into a whole single and rather large HTML document. Razor provides the logical separation, but still results in a large physical result document. But Razor also ended up being helpful to have a few security related blocks handled via server side template logic that simply excludes certain parts of the UI the user is not allowed to see – something that you can’t really do with client side exclusion like ng-hide/ng-show – client side content is always there whereas on the server side you can simply not send it to the client. Another reason I’m not a huge fan of ng-include is that it adds another HTTP hit to a request as templates are loaded from the server dynamically as needed. Given that this page was already heavy with resources adding another 10 separate ng-include directives wouldn’t be beneficial :-) ng-include is a valid option if you start from scratch and partition your logic. Of course if you don’t have complex pages, having completely separate views that are swapped in as they are accessed are even better, but we didn’t have this option due to the information having to be on screen all at once. Avoid using {{ }}  Expressions The biggest issue that ng-cloak attempts to address isn’t so much displaying the original content – it’s displaying empty {{ }} markup expression tags that get embedded into content. It gives you the dreaded “now you see it, now you don’t” effect where you sometimes see three separate rendering states: Markup junk, empty views, then views filled with data. If we can remove {{ }} expressions from the page you remove most of the perceived double draw effect as you would effectively start with a blank form and go straight to a filled form. To do this you can forego {{ }}  expressions and replace them with ng-bind directives on DOM elements. For example you can turn:<div class="list-item-name listViewOrderNo"> <a href='#'>{{lineItem.MpsOrderNo}}</a> </div>into:<div class="list-item-name listViewOrderNo"> <a href="#" ng-bind="lineItem.MpsOrderNo"></a> </div> to get identical results but because the {{ }}  expression has been removed there’s no double draw effect for this element. Again, not a great solution. The {{ }} syntax sure reads cleaner and is more fluent to type IMHO. In some cases you may also not have an outer element to attach ng-bind to which then requires you to artificially inject DOM elements into the page. This is especially painful if you have several consecutive values like {{Firstname}} {{Lastname}} for example. It’s an option though especially if you think of this issue up front and you don’t have a ton of expressions to deal with. Add the ng-cloak Styles manually You can also explicitly define the .css styles that Angular injects via code manually in your application’s style sheet. By doing so the styles become immediately available and so are applied right when the page loads – no flicker. I use the minimal:[ng-cloak] { display: none !important; } which works for:<div id="mainContainer" class="mainContainer dialog boxshadow" ng-app="app" ng-cloak> If you use one of the other combinations add the other CSS selectors as well or use the full style shown earlier. Angular will still load its version of the ng-cloak styling but it overrides those settings later, but this will do the trick of hiding the content before that CSS is injected into the page. Adding the CSS in your own style sheet works well, and is IMHO by far the best option. The nuclear option: Hiding the Content manually Using the explicit CSS is the best choice, so the following shouldn’t ever be necessary. But I’ll mention it here as it gives some insight how you can hide/show content manually on load for other frameworks or in your own markup based templates. Before I figured out that I could explicitly embed the CSS style into the page, I had tried to figure out why ng-cloak wasn’t doing its job. After wasting an hour getting nowhere I finally decided to just manually hide and show the container. The idea is simple – initially hide the container, then show it once Angular has done its initial processing and removal of the template markup from the page. You can manually hide the content and make it visible after Angular has gotten control. To do this I used:<div id="mainContainer" class="mainContainer boxshadow" ng-app="app" style="display:none"> Notice the display: none style that explicitly hides the element initially on the page. Then once Angular has run its initialization and effectively processed the template markup on the page you can show the content. For Angular this ‘ready’ event is the app.run() function:app.run( function ($rootScope, $location, cellService) { $("#mainContainer").show(); … }); This effectively removes the display:none style and the content displays. By the time app.run() fires the DOM is ready to displayed with filled data or at least empty data – Angular has gotten control. Edge Case Clearly this is an edge case. In general the initial HTML pages tend to be reasonably sized and the load time for the HTML and Angular are fast enough that there’s no flicker between the rendering times. This only becomes an issue as the initial pages get rather large. Regardless – if you have an Angular application it’s probably a good idea to add the CSS style into your application’s CSS (or a common shared one) just to make sure that content is always hidden. You never know how slow of a browser somebody might be running and while your super fast dev machine might not show any flicker, grandma’s old XP box very well might…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2014Posted in Angular  JavaScript  CSS  HTML   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 29, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 29, 2011Popular ReleasesCandescent NUI: Candescent NUI (8263): This is the binary version of the source code in change set 8263.Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. 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• SQL Server &ndash; Undelete a Table and Restore a Single Table from Backup

  - by Mladen Prajdic

  This post is part of the monthly community event called T-SQL Tuesday started by Adam Machanic (blog|twitter) and hosted by someone else each month. This month the host is Sankar Reddy (blog|twitter) and the topic is Misconceptions in SQL Server. You can follow posts for this theme on Twitter by looking at #TSQL2sDay hashtag. Let me start by saying: This code is a crazy hack that is to never be used unless you really, really have to. Really! And I don’t think there’s a time when you would really have to use it for real. Because it’s a hack there are number of things that can go wrong so play with it knowing that. I’ve managed to totally corrupt one database. :) Oh… and for those saying: yeah yeah.. you have a single table in a file group and you’re restoring that, I say “nay nay” to you. As we all know SQL Server can’t do single table restores from backup. This is kind of a obvious thing due to different relational integrity (RI) concerns. Since we have to maintain that we have to restore all tables represented in a RI graph. For this exercise i say BAH! to those concerns. Note that this method “works” only for simple tables that don’t have LOB and off rows data. The code can be expanded to include those but I’ve tried to leave things “simple”. Note that for this to work our table needs to be relatively static data-wise. This doesn’t work for OLTP table. Products are a perfect example of static data. They don’t change much between backups, pretty much everything depends on them and their table is one of those tables that are relatively easy to accidentally delete everything from. This only works if the database is in Full or Bulk-Logged recovery mode for tables where the contents have been deleted or truncated but NOT when a table was dropped. Everything we’ll talk about has to be done before the data pages are reused for other purposes. After deletion or truncation the pages are marked as reusable so you have to act fast. The best thing probably is to put the database into single user mode ASAP while you’re performing this procedure and return it to multi user after you’re done. How do we do it? We will be using an undocumented but known DBCC commands: DBCC PAGE, an undocumented function sys.fn_dblog and a little known DATABASE RESTORE PAGE option. All tests will be on a copy of Production.Product table in AdventureWorks database called Production.Product1 because the original table has FK constraints that prevent us from truncating it for testing. -- create a duplicate table. This doesn't preserve indexes!SELECT *INTO AdventureWorks.Production.Product1FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product   After we run this code take a full back to perform further testing.   First let’s see what the difference between DELETE and TRUNCATE is when it comes to logging. With DELETE every row deletion is logged in the transaction log. With TRUNCATE only whole data page deallocations are logged in the transaction log. Getting deleted data pages is simple. All we have to look for is row delete entry in the sys.fn_dblog output. But getting data pages that were truncated from the transaction log presents a bit of an interesting problem. I will not go into depths of IAM(Index Allocation Map) and PFS (Page Free Space) pages but suffice to say that every IAM page has intervals that tell us which data pages are allocated for a table and which aren’t. If we deep dive into the sys.fn_dblog output we can see that once you truncate a table all the pages in all the intervals are deallocated and this is shown in the PFS page transaction log entry as deallocation of pages. For every 8 pages in the same extent there is one PFS page row in the transaction log. This row holds information about all 8 pages in CSV format which means we can get to this data with some parsing. A great help for parsing this stuff is Peter Debetta’s handy function dbo.HexStrToVarBin that converts hexadecimal string into a varbinary value that can be easily converted to integer tus giving us a readable page number. The shortened (columns removed) sys.fn_dblog output for a PFS page with CSV data for 1 extent (8 data pages) looks like this: -- [Page ID] is displayed in hex format. -- To convert it to readable int we'll use dbo.HexStrToVarBin function found at -- http://sqlblog.com/blogs/peter_debetta/archive/2007/03/09/t-sql-convert-hex-string-to-varbinary.aspx -- This function must be installed in the master databaseSELECT Context, AllocUnitName, [Page ID], DescriptionFROM sys.fn_dblog(NULL, NULL)WHERE [Current LSN] = '00000031:00000a46:007d' The pages at the end marked with 0x00—> are pages that are allocated in the extent but are not part of a table. We can inspect the raw content of each data page with a DBCC PAGE command: -- we need this trace flag to redirect output to the query window.DBCC TRACEON (3604); -- WITH TABLERESULTS gives us data in table format instead of message format-- we use format option 3 because it's the easiest to read and manipulate further onDBCC PAGE (AdventureWorks, 1, 613, 3) WITH TABLERESULTS   Since the DBACC PAGE output can be quite extensive I won’t put it here. You can see an example of it in the link at the beginning of this section. Getting deleted data back When we run a delete statement every row to be deleted is marked as a ghost record. A background process periodically cleans up those rows. A huge misconception is that the data is actually removed. It’s not. Only the pointers to the rows are removed while the data itself is still on the data page. We just can’t access it with normal means. To get those pointers back we need to restore every deleted page using the RESTORE PAGE option mentioned above. This restore must be done from a full backup, followed by any differential and log backups that you may have. This is necessary to bring the pages up to the same point in time as the rest of the data.  However the restore doesn’t magically connect the restored page back to the original table. It simply replaces the current page with the one from the backup. After the restore we use the DBCC PAGE to read data directly from all data pages and insert that data into a temporary table. To finish the RESTORE PAGE  procedure we finally have to take a tail log backup (simple backup of the transaction log) and restore it back. We can now insert data from the temporary table to our original table by hand. Getting truncated data back When we run a truncate the truncated data pages aren’t touched at all. Even the pointers to rows stay unchanged. Because of this getting data back from truncated table is simple. we just have to find out which pages belonged to our table and use DBCC PAGE to read data off of them. No restore is necessary. Turns out that the problems we had with finding the data pages is alleviated by not having to do a RESTORE PAGE procedure. Stop stalling… show me The Code! This is the code for getting back deleted and truncated data back. It’s commented in all the right places so don’t be afraid to take a closer look. Make sure you have a full backup before trying this out. Also I suggest that the last step of backing and restoring the tail log is performed by hand. USE masterGOIF OBJECT_ID('dbo.HexStrToVarBin') IS NULL RAISERROR ('No dbo.HexStrToVarBin installed. Go to http://sqlblog.com/blogs/peter_debetta/archive/2007/03/09/t-sql-convert-hex-string-to-varbinary.aspx and install it in master database' , 18, 1) SET NOCOUNT ONBEGIN TRY DECLARE @dbName VARCHAR(1000), @schemaName VARCHAR(1000), @tableName VARCHAR(1000), @fullBackupName VARCHAR(1000), @undeletedTableName VARCHAR(1000), @sql VARCHAR(MAX), @tableWasTruncated bit; /* THE FIRST LINE ARE OUR INPUT PARAMETERS In this case we're trying to recover Production.Product1 table in AdventureWorks database. My full backup of AdventureWorks database is at e:\AW.bak */ SELECT @dbName = 'AdventureWorks', @schemaName = 'Production', @tableName = 'Product1', @fullBackupName = 'e:\AW.bak', @undeletedTableName = '##' + @tableName + '_Undeleted', @tableWasTruncated = 0, -- copy the structure from original table to a temp table that we'll fill with restored data @sql = 'IF OBJECT_ID(''tempdb..' + @undeletedTableName + ''') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE ' + @undeletedTableName + ' SELECT *' + ' INTO ' + @undeletedTableName + ' FROM [' + @dbName + '].[' + @schemaName + '].[' + @tableName + ']' + ' WHERE 1 = 0' EXEC (@sql) IF OBJECT_ID('tempdb..#PagesToRestore') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE #PagesToRestore /* FIND DATA PAGES WE NEED TO RESTORE*/ CREATE TABLE #PagesToRestore ([ID] INT IDENTITY(1,1), [FileID] INT, [PageID] INT, [SQLtoExec] VARCHAR(1000)) -- DBCC PACE statement to run later RAISERROR ('Looking for deleted pages...', 10, 1) -- use T-LOG direct read to get deleted data pages INSERT INTO #PagesToRestore([FileID], [PageID], [SQLtoExec]) EXEC('USE [' + @dbName + '];SELECT FileID, PageID, ''DBCC TRACEON (3604); DBCC PAGE ([' + @dbName + '], '' + FileID + '', '' + PageID + '', 3) WITH TABLERESULTS'' as SQLToExecFROM (SELECT DISTINCT LEFT([Page ID], 4) AS FileID, CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), ' + 'CONVERT(INT, master.dbo.HexStrToVarBin(SUBSTRING([Page ID], 6, 20)))) AS PageIDFROM sys.fn_dblog(NULL, NULL)WHERE AllocUnitName LIKE ''%' + @schemaName + '.' + @tableName + '%'' ' + 'AND Context IN (''LCX_MARK_AS_GHOST'', ''LCX_HEAP'') AND Operation in (''LOP_DELETE_ROWS''))t');SELECT *FROM #PagesToRestore -- if upper EXEC returns 0 rows it means the table was truncated so find truncated pages IF (SELECT COUNT(*) FROM #PagesToRestore) = 0 BEGIN RAISERROR ('No deleted pages found. Looking for truncated pages...', 10, 1) -- use T-LOG read to get truncated data pages INSERT INTO #PagesToRestore([FileID], [PageID], [SQLtoExec]) -- dark magic happens here -- because truncation simply deallocates pages we have to find out which pages were deallocated. -- we can find this out by looking at the PFS page row's Description column. -- for every deallocated extent the Description has a CSV of 8 pages in that extent. -- then it's just a matter of parsing it. -- we also remove the pages in the extent that weren't allocated to the table itself -- marked with '0x00-->00' EXEC ('USE [' + @dbName + '];DECLARE @truncatedPages TABLE(DeallocatedPages VARCHAR(8000), IsMultipleDeallocs BIT);INSERT INTO @truncatedPagesSELECT REPLACE(REPLACE(Description, ''Deallocated '', ''Y''), ''0x00-->00 '', ''N'') + '';'' AS DeallocatedPages, CHARINDEX('';'', Description) AS IsMultipleDeallocsFROM (SELECT DISTINCT LEFT([Page ID], 4) AS FileID, CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), CONVERT(INT, master.dbo.HexStrToVarBin(SUBSTRING([Page ID], 6, 20)))) AS PageID, DescriptionFROM sys.fn_dblog(NULL, NULL)WHERE Context IN (''LCX_PFS'') AND Description LIKE ''Deallocated%'' AND AllocUnitName LIKE ''%' + @schemaName + '.' + @tableName + '%'') t;SELECT FileID, PageID , ''DBCC TRACEON (3604); DBCC PAGE ([' + @dbName + '], '' + FileID + '', '' + PageID + '', 3) WITH TABLERESULTS'' as SQLToExecFROM (SELECT LEFT(PageAndFile, 1) as WasPageAllocatedToTable , SUBSTRING(PageAndFile, 2, CHARINDEX('':'', PageAndFile) - 2 ) as FileID , CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), CONVERT(INT, master.dbo.HexStrToVarBin(SUBSTRING(PageAndFile, CHARINDEX('':'', PageAndFile) + 1, LEN(PageAndFile))))) as PageIDFROM ( SELECT SUBSTRING(DeallocatedPages, delimPosStart, delimPosEnd - delimPosStart) as PageAndFile, IsMultipleDeallocs FROM ( SELECT *, CHARINDEX('';'', DeallocatedPages)*(N-1) + 1 AS delimPosStart, CHARINDEX('';'', DeallocatedPages)*N AS delimPosEnd FROM @truncatedPages t1 CROSS APPLY (SELECT TOP (case when t1.IsMultipleDeallocs = 1 then 8 else 1 end) ROW_NUMBER() OVER(ORDER BY number) as N FROM master..spt_values) t2 )t)t)tWHERE WasPageAllocatedToTable = ''Y''') SELECT @tableWasTruncated = 1 END DECLARE @lastID INT, @pagesCount INT SELECT @lastID = 1, @pagesCount = COUNT(*) FROM #PagesToRestore SELECT @sql = 'Number of pages to restore: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), @pagesCount) IF @pagesCount = 0 RAISERROR ('No data pages to restore.', 18, 1) ELSE RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) -- If the table was truncated we'll read the data directly from data pages without restoring from backup IF @tableWasTruncated = 0 BEGIN -- RESTORE DATA PAGES FROM FULL BACKUP IN BATCHES OF 200 WHILE @lastID <= @pagesCount BEGIN -- create CSV string of pages to restore SELECT @sql = STUFF((SELECT ',' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), FileID) + ':' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(100), PageID) FROM #PagesToRestore WHERE ID BETWEEN @lastID AND @lastID + 200 ORDER BY ID FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 1, '') SELECT @sql = 'RESTORE DATABASE [' + @dbName + '] PAGE = ''' + @sql + ''' FROM DISK = ''' + @fullBackupName + '''' RAISERROR ('Starting RESTORE command:' , 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; RAISERROR (@sql , 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC(@sql); RAISERROR ('Restore DONE' , 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; SELECT @lastID = @lastID + 200 END /* If you have any differential or transaction log backups you should restore them here to bring the previously restored data pages up to date */ END DECLARE @dbccSinglePage TABLE ( [ParentObject] NVARCHAR(500), [Object] NVARCHAR(500), [Field] NVARCHAR(500), [VALUE] NVARCHAR(MAX) ) DECLARE @cols NVARCHAR(MAX), @paramDefinition NVARCHAR(500), @SQLtoExec VARCHAR(1000), @FileID VARCHAR(100), @PageID VARCHAR(100), @i INT = 1 -- Get deleted table columns from information_schema view -- Need sp_executeSQL because database name can't be passed in as variable SELECT @cols = 'select @cols = STUFF((SELECT '', ['' + COLUMN_NAME + '']''FROM ' + @dbName + '.INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNSWHERE TABLE_NAME = ''' + @tableName + ''' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = ''' + @schemaName + '''ORDER BY ORDINAL_POSITIONFOR XML PATH('''')), 1, 2, '''')', @paramDefinition = N'@cols nvarchar(max) OUTPUT' EXECUTE sp_executesql @cols, @paramDefinition, @cols = @cols OUTPUT -- Loop through all the restored data pages, -- read data from them and insert them into temp table -- which you can then insert into the orignial deleted table DECLARE dbccPageCursor CURSOR GLOBAL FORWARD_ONLY FOR SELECT [FileID], [PageID], [SQLtoExec] FROM #PagesToRestore ORDER BY [FileID], [PageID] OPEN dbccPageCursor; FETCH NEXT FROM dbccPageCursor INTO @FileID, @PageID, @SQLtoExec; WHILE @@FETCH_STATUS = 0 BEGIN RAISERROR ('---------------------------------------------', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; SELECT @sql = 'Loop iteration: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), @i); RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; SELECT @sql = 'Running: ' + @SQLtoExec RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; -- if something goes wrong with DBCC execution or data gathering, skip it but print error BEGIN TRY INSERT INTO @dbccSinglePage EXEC (@SQLtoExec) -- make the data insert magic happen here IF (SELECT CONVERT(BIGINT, [VALUE]) FROM @dbccSinglePage WHERE [Field] LIKE '%Metadata: ObjectId%') = OBJECT_ID('['+@dbName+'].['+@schemaName +'].['+@tableName+']') BEGIN DELETE @dbccSinglePage WHERE NOT ([ParentObject] LIKE 'Slot % Offset %' AND [Object] LIKE 'Slot % Column %') SELECT @sql = 'USE tempdb; ' + 'IF (OBJECTPROPERTY(object_id(''' + @undeletedTableName + '''), ''TableHasIdentity'') = 1) ' + 'SET IDENTITY_INSERT ' + @undeletedTableName + ' ON; ' + 'INSERT INTO ' + @undeletedTableName + '(' + @cols + ') ' + STUFF((SELECT ' UNION ALL SELECT ' + STUFF((SELECT ', ' + CASE WHEN VALUE = '[NULL]' THEN 'NULL' ELSE '''' + [VALUE] + '''' END FROM ( -- the unicorn help here to correctly set ordinal numbers of columns in a data page -- it's turning STRING order into INT order (1,10,11,2,21 into 1,2,..10,11...21) SELECT [ParentObject], [Object], Field, VALUE, RIGHT('00000' + O1, 6) AS ParentObjectOrder, RIGHT('00000' + REVERSE(LEFT(O2, CHARINDEX(' ', O2)-1)), 6) AS ObjectOrder FROM ( SELECT [ParentObject], [Object], Field, VALUE, REPLACE(LEFT([ParentObject], CHARINDEX('Offset', [ParentObject])-1), 'Slot ', '') AS O1, REVERSE(LEFT([Object], CHARINDEX('Offset ', [Object])-2)) AS O2 FROM @dbccSinglePage WHERE t.ParentObject = ParentObject )t)t ORDER BY ParentObjectOrder, ObjectOrder FOR XML PATH('')), 1, 2, '') FROM @dbccSinglePage t GROUP BY ParentObject FOR XML PATH('') ), 1, 11, '') + ';' RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; EXEC (@sql) END END TRY BEGIN CATCH SELECT @sql = 'ERROR!!!' + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + 'ErrorNumber: ' + ERROR_NUMBER() + '; ErrorMessage' + ERROR_MESSAGE() + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + 'FileID: ' + @FileID + '; PageID: ' + @PageID RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; END CATCH DELETE @dbccSinglePage SELECT @sql = 'Pages left to process: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(10), @pagesCount - @i) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13) + CHAR(10) + CHAR(13), @i = @i+1 RAISERROR (@sql, 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; FETCH NEXT FROM dbccPageCursor INTO @FileID, @PageID, @SQLtoExec; END CLOSE dbccPageCursor; DEALLOCATE dbccPageCursor; EXEC ('SELECT ''' + @undeletedTableName + ''' as TableName; SELECT * FROM ' + @undeletedTableName)END TRYBEGIN CATCH SELECT ERROR_NUMBER() AS ErrorNumber, ERROR_MESSAGE() AS ErrorMessage IF CURSOR_STATUS ('global', 'dbccPageCursor') >= 0 BEGIN CLOSE dbccPageCursor; DEALLOCATE dbccPageCursor; ENDEND CATCH-- if the table was deleted we need to finish the restore page sequenceIF @tableWasTruncated = 0BEGIN -- take a log tail backup and then restore it to complete page restore process DECLARE @currentDate VARCHAR(30) SELECT @currentDate = CONVERT(VARCHAR(30), GETDATE(), 112) RAISERROR ('Starting Log Tail backup to c:\Temp ...', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; PRINT ('BACKUP LOG [' + @dbName + '] TO DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') EXEC ('BACKUP LOG [' + @dbName + '] TO DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') RAISERROR ('Log Tail backup done.', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; RAISERROR ('Starting Log Tail restore from c:\Temp ...', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT; PRINT ('RESTORE LOG [' + @dbName + '] FROM DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') EXEC ('RESTORE LOG [' + @dbName + '] FROM DISK = ''c:\Temp\' + @dbName + '_TailLogBackup_' + @currentDate + '.trn''') RAISERROR ('Log Tail restore done.', 10, 1) WITH NOWAIT;END-- The last step is manual. Insert data from our temporary table to the original deleted table The misconception here is that you can do a single table restore properly in SQL Server. You can't. But with little experimentation you can get pretty close to it. One way to possible remove a dependency on a backup to retrieve deleted pages is to quickly run a similar script to the upper one that gets data directly from data pages while the rows are still marked as ghost records. It could be done if we could beat the ghost record cleanup task.

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