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• ASP.NET 4.0 Features

  ASP.NET v4 is released with Visual studio 2010. Web developers are presented with a bewildering range of new features and so Ludmal De Silva has described what he considers to be the most important new features in ASP.NET V4

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• SQL Server Optimizer Malfunction?

  - by Tony Davis

  There was a sharp intake of breath from the audience when Adam Machanic declared the SQL Server optimizer to be essentially "stuck in 1997". It was during his fascinating "Query Tuning Mastery: Manhandling Parallelism" session at the recent PASS SQL Summit. Paraphrasing somewhat, Adam (blog | @AdamMachanic) offered a convincing argument that the optimizer often delivers flawed plans based on assumptions that are no longer valid with today’s hardware. In 1997, when Microsoft engineers re-designed the database engine for SQL Server 7.0, SQL Server got its initial implementation of a cost-based optimizer. Up to SQL Server 2000, the developer often had to deploy a steady stream of hints in SQL statements to combat the occasionally wilful plan choices made by the optimizer. However, with each successive release, the optimizer has evolved and improved in its decision-making. It is still prone to the occasional stumble when we tackle difficult problems, join large numbers of tables, perform complex aggregations, and so on, but for most of us, most of the time, the optimizer purrs along efficiently in the background. Adam, however, challenged further any assumption that the current optimizer is competent at providing the most efficient plans for our more complex analytical queries, and in particular of offering up correctly parallelized plans. He painted a picture of a present where complex analytical queries have become ever more prevalent; where disk IO is ever faster so that reads from disk come into buffer cache faster than ever; where the improving RAM-to-data ratio means that we have a better chance of finding our data in cache. Most importantly, we have more CPUs at our disposal than ever before. To get these queries to perform, we not only need to have the right indexes, but also to be able to split the data up into subsets and spread its processing evenly across all these available CPUs. Improvements such as support for ColumnStore indexes are taking things in the right direction, but, unfortunately, deficiencies in the current Optimizer mean that SQL Server is yet to be able to exploit properly all those extra CPUs. Adam’s contention was that the current optimizer uses essentially the same costing model for many of its core operations as it did back in the days of SQL Server 7, based on assumptions that are no longer valid. One example he gave was a "slow disk" bias that may have been valid back in 1997 but certainly is not on modern disk systems. Essentially, the optimizer assesses the relative cost of serial versus parallel plans based on the assumption that there is no IO cost benefit from parallelization, only CPU. It assumes that a single request will saturate the IO channel, and so a query would not run any faster if we parallelized IO because the disk system simply wouldn’t be able to handle the extra pressure. As such, the optimizer often decides that a serial plan is lower cost, often in cases where a parallel plan would improve performance dramatically. It was challenging and thought provoking stuff, as were his techniques for driving parallelism through query logic based on subsets of rows that define the "grain" of the query. I highly recommend you catch the session if you missed it. I’m interested to hear though, when and how often people feel the force of the optimizer’s shortcomings. Barring mistakes, such as stale statistics, how often do you feel the Optimizer fails to find the plan you think it should, and what are the most common causes? Is it fighting to induce it toward parallelism? Combating unexpected plans, arising from table partitioning? Something altogether more prosaic? Cheers, Tony.

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• The Art of Dealing with People

  Technical people generally don't easily adapt to being good salespeople. When a technical person takes on a customer-facing role as a support engineer, there are a whole lot of new skills required. Dr Petrova relates how the experience of a change in job gave her a new respect for the skills of sales and marketing.

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• Protect and Improve your Software with SmartAssembly 5

  - by Bart Read

  SmartAssembly 5 has been released. You can download a 14-day fully-functional free trial from: http://www.red-gate.com/products/smartassembly/index.htm This is the first major release since Red Gate acquired the tool last year, and our focus has mainly been on improving the quality of an already great tool. We've also simplified the licensing model so that there are now only three editions: Standard - bullet-proof protection at a bargain price, Pro - includes the SDK & custom web server...(read more)

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• A new tool in beta: Conflict Alert

  - by Alex Davies

  You know that manual merges are a real pain? Well, I’ve just released a Visual Studio extension that makes manual merges a thing of the past. No source control system can automatically merge two edits to the same line of code. Conflict Alert solves this by warning you that you are heading down a path that will cause a manual merge later down the line. You choose whether you want to carry on, or talk to your teammate and find out what they are doing. Have you ever warned your teammates that you are doing a big refactor, and that they should ‘keep out of class X’? Conflict Alert tells them for you automatically by highlighting the sections of code that you have edited.   It doesn’t need to connect to your source control system, so it works no matter which you use. Its a first release, and I hope it is useful. Any feedback would be gratefully received. Grab a teammate and try it now.

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• AsyncBridge? Async on .NET 4.0 using VS11

  - by Alex.Davies

  I've just found something quite cool. It's a code snippet that lets you use the real VS 11 C#5 compiler to write code that uses the async and await keywords, but to target .NET 4.0. It was published by Daniel Grunwald (from SharpDevelop).That means I can stop using the Async CTP for VS2010, which is not at all supported anymore, and a pain to install if you have windows updates turned on. Obviously I couldn't ask all my users to install .NET 4.5 beta, but .NET Demon is a VS 2010 extension, so we already have .NET 4.0. At the time of writing, VS11 is in beta still, but hopefully it's stable enough for my team to use!I would have written the code myself, but I had the wrong impression that the C# 5 beta compiler only looked in mscorlib for the helper classes it needs to implement async methods. Turns out you can provide them yourself. You can get the code here: https://gist.github.com/1961087You just add it to your project, and the compiler will apparently pick it up and use it to implement async/await. I'm at my parents' place for Easter without access to a machine with VS 11 to try it out. Let me know whether you get it to work!This reminds me of LINQBridge, which let us use C# 3 LINQ, but only require .NET 2. We should stick up a webpage to explain, with a nice easy dll, put it in nuget, and call it AsyncBridge.If you were really enthusiastic, you could re-implement the skeleton of the Task Parallel Library against .NET 2 to use async/await without even requiring .NET 4. Our usage stats suggest that practically everyone that uses Red Gate tools already has .NET 4 installed though, so I don't think I'll go to the effort.

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• PASS Summit – looking back on my first time

  - by Fatherjack

    So I was lucky enough to get my first experience of PASS Summit this year and took some time beforehand to read some blogs and reference material to get an idea on what to do and how to get the best out of my visit. Having been to other conferences – technical and non-technical – I had a reasonable idea on the routine and what to expect in general. Here is a list of a few things that I have learned/remembered as the week has gone by. Wear comfortable shoes. This actually needs to be broadened to Take several pairs of comfortable shoes. You will be spending many many hours, for several days one after another. Having comfortable feet that can literally support you for the duration will make the week in general a whole lot better. Not only at the conference but getting to and from you could well be walking. In the evenings you will be walking around town and standing talking in various bars and clubs. Looking back, on some days I was on my feet for over 20 hours. Make friends. This is a given for the long term benefits it brings but there is also an immediate reward in being at a conference with a friend or two. Some events are bigger and more popular than others and some have the type of session that every single attendee will want to be in. This is great for those that get in but if you are in the bathroom or queuing for coffee and you miss out it sucks. Having a friend that can get in to a room and reserve you a seat is a great advantage to make sure you get the content that you want to see and still have the coffee that you need. Don’t go to every session you want to see This might sound counter intuitive and it relies on the sessions being recorded in some way to guarantee you don’t totally miss out. Both PASS Summit and SQL Bits sessions are recorded (summit is audio, SQLBits is video) and this means that if you get into a good conversation with someone over a coffee you don’t have to break it up to go to a session. Obviously there is a trade-off here and you need to decide on the tipping point for yourself but a conversation at a place like this could make a big difference to the next contract or employer you have or it might simply be great catching up with some friends you don’t see so often. Go to at least one session you don’t want to Again, this will seem to be contrary to normal logic but there is no reason why you shouldn’t learn about a part of SQL Server that isn’t part of your daily routine. Not only will you learn something new but you will also pick up on the feelings and attitudes of the people in the session. So, if you are a DBA, head off to a BI session and so on. You’ll hear BI speakers speaking to a BI audience and get to understand their point of view and reasoning for making the decisions they do. You will also appreciate the way that your decisions and instructions affect the way they have to work. This will help you a lot when you are on a project, working with multiple teams and make you all more productive. Socialise While you are at the conference venue, speak to people. Ask questions, be interested in whoever you are speaking to. You get chances to talk to new friends at breakfast, dinner and every break between sessions. The only people that might not talk to you would be speakers that are about to go and give a session, in most cases speakers like peace and quiet before going on stage. Other than that the people around you are just waiting for someone to talk to them so make the first move. There is a whole lot going on outside of the conference hours and you should make an effort to join in with some of this too. At karaoke evenings or just out for a quiet drink with a few of the people you meet at the conference. Either way, don’t be a recluse and hide in your room or be alone out in the town. Don’t talk to people Once again this sounds wrong but stay with me. I have spoken to a number of speakers since Summit 2013 finished and they have all mentioned the time it has taken them to move about the conference venue due to people stopping them for a chat or to ask a question. 45 minutes to walk from a session room to the speaker room in one case. Wow. While none of the speakers were upset about this sort of delay I think delegates should take the situation into account and possibly defer their question to an email or to a time when the person they want is clearly less in demand. Give them a chance to enjoy the conference in the same way that you are, they may actually want to go to a session or just have a rest after giving their session – talking for 75 minutes is hard work, taking an extra 45 minutes right after is unbelievable. I certainly hope that they get good feedback on their sessions and perhaps if you spoke to a speaker outside a session you can give them a mention in the ‘any other comments’ part of the feedback, just to convey your gratitude for them giving up their time and expertise for free. Say thank you I just mentioned giving the speakers a clear, visible ‘thank you’ in the feedback but there are plenty of people that help make any conference the success it is that would really appreciate hearing that their efforts are valued. People on the registration desk, volunteers giving schedule guidance and directions, people on the community zone are all volunteers giving their time to help you have the best experience possible. Send an email to PASS and convey your thoughts about the work that was done. Maybe you want to be a volunteer next time so you could enquire how you get into that position at the same time. This isn’t an exclusive list and you may agree or disagree with the points I have made, please add anything you think is good advice in the comments. I’d like to finish by saying a huge thank you to all the people involved in planning, facilitating and executing the PASS Summit 2013, it was an excellent event and I know many others think it was a totally worthwhile event to attend.

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• Will HTML5 make Silverlight redundant?

  - by Laila

  One of the great features of Adobe AIR v2 that was launched this month was its support for some of the 2008 draft of HTML5. The HTML5 specification was started in 2004, but the full spec will probably not be approved by W3C until around 2022. One might have thought that it would take years yet from now to reach the point where any browsers were remotely HTML5-compliant, but enough of HTML5 is published and agreed to make a lot of it possible, and Safari and Adobe have got there thanks to Apple's open-source WebKit. The race for HTML 5 has been fuelled by the demand by Apple and Google for advanced graphics, typography, animations and transitions without having to rely on third party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash or Silverlight. There is good reason for this haste: Flash doesn't support touch-devices and has been slow in supporting hardware video decoders such as H.264. There is a strong requirement to do all that Flash can do in an open-standards way. Those with proprietary solutions remain sniffy. In AIR 2, Adobe pointedly disables the HTML5 and tags that allow basic playing of media content, saying that the specification is not final and there is still no standard for the supported formats, and adding that Safari implements a 'disjoint set' of codecs. Microsoft also has little interest in HTML 5 as it has so much invested in Silverlight. Google stands to gain by the Adobe AIR for Android as it will allow a lot of applications to be migrated easily to the platform, so sees Apple's war on Flash as a way of gaining market share. Why do we care? It is because HTML5/CSS3 provides facilities much far beyond HTML4, bring the reality of browser-based applications a lot closer. Probably most generally useful is the advanced typography: Safari and AIR already both support a way of reflowing text in a container across an arbitrary number of columns; Page-specific fonts can also be specified. Then there is 2D drawing, video, transitions, local storage, AJAX navigation and mutable DOM prototypes. HTML5 is likely to provide base functionality that is required but it is too early to be certain that it will render Flash, Silverlight or JavaFX obsolete. In the meantime, Adobe Air provides the best vehicle for developing HTML5/CSS3 applications without a twinge of worry about browser incompatibilities. Cheers, Laila

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• New spreadsheet accompanying SmartAssembly 6.0 provides statistics for prioritizing bug fixes

  - by Jason Crease

  One problem developers face is how to prioritize the many voices providing input into software bugs. If there is something wrong with a function that is the darling of a particular user, he or she tends to want action - now! The developer's dilemma is how to ascertain that the problem is major or minor, and when it should be addressed. Now there is a new spreadsheet accompanying SmartAssembly that provides exactly that information in an objective manner. This might upset those used to getting their way by being the loudest or pushiest, but ultimately it will ensure that the biggest problems get the priority they deserve. Here's how it works: Feature Usage Reporting (FUR) in SmartAssembly 6.0 provides a wealth of data about how your software is used by its end-users, but in the SmartAssembly UI the data isn't mined to its full extent. The new Excel spreadsheet for FUR extracts statistics from that data and presents them in easy-to-understand forms. I developed the spreadsheet feature in Microsoft Excel, using a fair amount of VBA. The spreadsheet connects directly to the database which stores the feature-usage data, and shows a wide variety of statistics and tables extracted from that data.  You want to know what percentage of users have used the 'Export as XML' button?  No problem.  How popular is v5.3 is compared to v5.1?  There's graphs for that. You need to know whether you have more users in Russia or Brazil? There's a big pie chart for that. I recently witnessed the spreadsheet in use here at Red Gate Software. My bug is exposed as minor While testing new features in .NET Reflector, I found a usability bug in the Refresh button and filed it in the Red Gate bug-tracking system. The bug was labelled "V.NEXT MINOR," which means it would be fixed in the next point release. Although I'm a professional tester, I'm not much different than most software users when they discover a bug that affects them personally: I wanted it fixed immediately. There was an ulterior motive at play here, of course. I would get to see my colleagues put the spreadsheet to work. The Reflector team loaded up the spreadsheet to view the feature-usage statistics that SmartAssembly collected for the refresh button. The resulting statistics showed that only 8% of users have ever pressed the Refresh button, and only 2.6% of sessions involve pressing the button. When Refresh is used, it's only pressed on average 1.6 times a session, with a maximum of 8 times during a session. This was in stark contrast to what I was doing as a conscientious tester: pressing it dozens of times per session. The spreadsheet provides evidence that my bug was a minor one. On to more serious things Based on the solid evidence uncovered by the spreadsheet, the Reflector team concluded that my experience does not represent that of the vast majority of Reflector's recorded users. The Reflector team had ample data to send me back to my desk and keep the bug classified as "V.NEXT MINOR." The team then went back to fixing more serious bugs. If I'm in the shoes of the user, I might not be thoroughly happy, but I cannot deny that the evidence clearly placed me in a very small minority. Next time I'm hoping the spreadsheet will prove that my bug is more important. Find out more about Feature-Usage Reporting here. The spreadsheet is available for free download here.

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• Microsoft Access as a Weapon of War

  - by Damon Armstrong

  A while ago (probably a decade ago, actually) I saw a report on a tracking system maintained by a U.S. Army artillery control unit.  This system was capable of maintaining a bearing on various units in the field to help avoid friendly fire.  I consider the U.S. Army to be the most technologically advanced fighting force on Earth, but to my terror I saw something on the title bar of an application displayed on a laptop behind one of the soldiers they were interviewing: Tracking.mdb Oh yes.  Microsoft Office Suite had made it onto the battlefield.  My hope is that it was just running as a front-end for a more proficient database (no offense Access people), or that the soldier was tracking something else like KP duty or fantasy football scores.  But I could also see the corporate equivalent of a pointy-haired boss walking into a cube and asking someone who had piddled with Access to build a database for HR forms.  Except this pointy-haired boss would have been a general, the cube would have been a tank, and the HR forms would have been targets that, if something went amiss, would have been hit by a 500lb artillery round. Hope that solider could write a good query

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• Microsoft Access as a Weapon of War

  - by Damon

  A while ago (probably a decade ago, actually) I saw a report on a tracking system maintained by a U.S. Army artillery control unit.  This system was capable of maintaining a bearing on various units in the field to help avoid friendly fire.  I consider the U.S. Army to be the most technologically advanced fighting force on Earth, but to my terror I saw something on the title bar of an application displayed on a laptop behind one of the soldiers they were interviewing: Tracking.mdb Oh yes.  Microsoft Office Suite had made it onto the battlefield.  My hope is that it was just running as a front-end for a more proficient database (no offense Access people), or that the soldier was tracking something else like KP duty or fantasy football scores.  But I could also see the corporate equivalent of a pointy-haired boss walking into a cube and asking someone who had piddled with Access to build a database for HR forms.  Except this pointy-haired boss would have been a general, the cube would have been a tank, and the HR forms would have been targets that, if something went amiss, would have been hit by a 500lb artillery round. Hope that solider could write a good query :)

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• Calling all developers building ASP.NET applications

  - by Laila Lotfi

  We know that developers building desktop apps have to contend with memory management issues, and we’d like to learn more about the memory challenges ASP.NET developers are facing. To be more specific, we’re carrying out some exploratory research leading into the next phase of development on ANTS Memory Profiler, and our development team would love to speak to developers building ASP.NET applications. You don’t need to have ever used ANTS profiler – this will be a more general conversation about: - your current site architecture, and how you manage the memory requirements of your applications on your back-end servers and web services. - how you currently diagnose memory leaks and where you do this (production server, or during testing phase, or if you normally manage to get them all during the local development). - what specific memory problems you’ve experienced – if any. Of course, we’ll compensate you for your time with a $50 Amazon voucher (or equivalent in other currencies), and our development team’s undying gratitude. If you’d like to participate, please just drop me a line on [email protected].

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• How can I configure a Factory with the possible providers?

  - by Jonathas Costa

  I have three assemblies: "Framework.DataAccess", "Framework.DataAccess.NHibernateProvider" and "Company.DataAccess". Inside the assembly "Framework.DataAccess", I have my factory (with the wrong implementation of discovery): public class DaoFactory { private static readonly object locker = new object(); private static IWindsorContainer _daoContainer; protected static IWindsorContainer DaoContainer { get { if (_daoContainer == null) { lock (locker) { if (_daoContainer != null) return _daoContainer; _daoContainer = new WindsorContainer(new XmlInterpreter()); // THIS IS WRONG! THIS ASSEMBLY CANNOT KNOW ABOUT SPECIALIZATIONS! _daoContainer.Register( AllTypes.FromAssemblyNamed("Company.DataAccess") .BasedOn(typeof(IReadDao<>)).WithService.FromInterface(), AllTypes.FromAssemblyNamed("Framework.DataAccess.NHibernateProvider") .BasedOn(typeof(IReadDao<>)).WithService.Base()); } } return _daoContainer; } } public static T Create<T>() where T : IDao { return DaoContainer.Resolve<T>(); } } This assembly also defines the base interface for data access IReadDao: public interface IReadDao<T> { IEnumerable<T> GetAll(); } I want to keep this assembly generic and with no references. This is my base data access assembly. Then I have the NHibernate provider's assembly, which implements the above IReadDao using NHibernate's approach. This assembly references the "Framework.DataAccess" assembly. public class NHibernateDao<T> : IReadDao<T> { public NHibernateDao() { } public virtual IEnumerable<T> GetAll() { throw new NotImplementedException(); } } At last, I have the "Company.DataAccess" assembly, which can override the default implementation of NHibernate provider and references both previously seen assemblies. public interface IProductDao : IReadDao<Product> { Product GetByName(string name); } public class ProductDao : NHibernateDao<Product>, IProductDao { public override IEnumerable<Product> GetAll() { throw new NotImplementedException("new one!"); } public Product GetByName(string name) { throw new NotImplementedException(); } } I want to be able to write... IRead<Product> dao = DaoFactory.Create<IRead<Product>>(); ... and then get the ProductDao implementation. But I can't hold inside my base data access any reference to specific assemblies! My initial idea was to read that from a xml config file. So, my question is: How can I externally configure this factory to use a specific provider as my default implementation and my client implementation?

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• Migrating from OCS 2007 R2 to Lync: Part 2

  In the story so far, Johan has described how to check that the migration from your OCS to Lync is supported and how to determine the requirements for the new installation This was followed by a walk-through of the preparation the Active Directory and installation of the first Lync Front End Server with a Mediation Server co-located. Now Johan tackles the merging the OCS configuration, and connection to the outsode world, followed by testing, performing and then validating the migration.

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• Getting baseline and performance stats - the easy way.

  - by fatherjack

  OK, pretty much any DBA worth their salt has read Brent Ozar's (Blog | Twitter) blog about getting a baseline of your server's performance counters and then getting the same counters at regular intervals afterwards so that you can track performance trends and evidence how you are making your servers faster or cope with extra load without costing your boss any money for hardware upgrades. No? well, go read it now. I can wait a while as there is a great video there too...http://www.brentozar.com/archive/2006/12/dba-101-using-perfmon-for-sql-performance-tuning/,...(read more)

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• Smartassembly 5: it lives! Early Access builds now available

  - by Bart Read

  I'm pleased to announce that, late last week, we put out the first early access build for Smartassembly 5, Red Gate's fantastic code protection and error reporting tool, which we acquired last September. You can download it via: http://www.red-gate.com/messageboard/viewforum.php?f=116 It's obviously pretty early days, so please do not try to use this to protect a production application, but we've already done a lot of work in some key areas: We're simplifying and streamlining the licensing model (you won't see this yet, but a lot of the work on this has already been done). We've improved usability of the product, with a better menu, reordering of project settings, and better defaults. We've also fixed a load of bugs, which I'll let Alex blog about in more detail. On a slightly more trivial level, the curly braces are also no more. Over the coming weeks, we'll be adding more improvements, and starting usability tests. If you're interested in getting involved in the latter, please drop an email to [email protected].

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• Antenna Aligner Part 3: Kaspersky

  - by Chris George

  Quick one today. Since starting this project, I've been encountering times where Nomad fails to build my app. It would then take repeated attempts at building to then see a build go through successfully. Rob, who works on Nomad at Red Gate, investigated this and it showed that certain parts of the message required to trigger the 'cloud build' were not getting through to the Nomad app, causing the HTTP connection to stall until timeout. After much scratching heads, it turns out that the Kaspersky Internet Security system I have installed on my laptop at home, was being very aggressive and was causing the problem. Perhaps it's trying to protect me from myself? Anyway, we came up with an interim solution why the Nomad guys investigate with Kaspersky by setting Visual Studio to be a trusted application with the Kaspersky settings and setting it to not scan network traffic. Hey presto! This worked and I have not had a single build problem since (other than losing internet connection, or that embarrassing moment when you blame everyone else then realise you've accidentally switched off your wireless on the laptop).

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• Exceptional PowerShell DBA Pt 3 - Collation and Fragmentation

  In this final look into his everyday essentials, Laerte Junior provides some useful scripts for the DBA that use an alternative way of error-logging. He shows how to use a PowerShell script to check and, if necessary, to defragment your indexes, write data to a SQL Server table, and change the collation for a table. Being an exceptional DBA just got a little easier.

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• ReSharper C# Live Template for Read-Only Dependency Property and Routed Event Boilerplate

  - by Bart Read

  Following on from my previous post, where I shared a Live Template for quickly declaring a normal read-write dependency property and its associated property change event boilerplate, here's an unsurprisingly similar template for creating a read-only dependency property.        #region $PROPNAME$ Read-Only Property and Property Change Routed Event        private static readonly DependencyPropertyKey $PROPNAME$PropertyKey =                                             DependencyProperty.RegisterReadOnly(             "$PROPNAME$", typeof ( $PROPTYPE$ ), typeof ( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ),             new PropertyMetadata( $DEF_VALUE$ , On$PROPNAME$Changed ) );       public static readonly DependencyProperty $PROPNAME$Property =                                           $PROPNAME$PropertyKey.DependencyProperty;        public $PROPTYPE$ $PROPNAME$         {             get { return ( $PROPTYPE$ ) GetValue( $PROPNAME$Property ); }             private set { SetValue( $PROPNAME$PropertyKey, value ); }         }       public static readonly RoutedEvent $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent   =                                           EventManager.RegisterRoutedEvent(           "$PROPNAME$Changed",           RoutingStrategy.$ROUTINGSTRATEGY$,           typeof( RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > ),           typeof( $DECLARING_TYPE$ ) );       public event RoutedPropertyChangedEventHandler< $PROPTYPE$ > $PROPNAME$Changed       {           add { AddHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }           remove { RemoveHandler( $PROPNAME$ChangedEvent, value ); }       }        private static void On$PROPNAME$Changed(           DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e)         {             var $DECLARING_TYPE_var$ = d as $DECLARING_TYPE$;            var args = new RoutedPropertyChangedEventArgs< $PROPTYPE$ >(               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.OldValue,               ( $PROPTYPE$ ) e.NewValue );           args.RoutedEvent    = $DECLARING_TYPE$.$PROPNAME$ChangedEvent;           $DECLARING_TYPE_var$.RaiseEvent( args );$END$        }        #endregion The only real difference here is the addition of the DependencyPropertyKey, which allows your implementation to set the value of the dependency property without exposing the setter code to consumers of your type. You'll probably find that you create read-only dependency properties much less often than read-write properties, but this should still save you some typing when you do need to do so. Technorati Tags: resharper,live template,c#,dependency property,read-only,routed events,property change,boilerplate,wpf

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• Got that Friday feeling?

  - by Rebecca Amos

  Saturday is just around the corner, and we’re all starting to wrap up for the weekend. If you’re the DBA that ‘Friday feeling’ might be as much about checking and preparing your SQL Servers for the next two days, as about looking forward to spending time with friends and family. Whether you’re double-checking your disaster recovery strategy, or know that it’s your turn to be on-call this weekend, it’s likely you’re preparing for the worst, just in case. The fact that you’re making these checks, and caring about both your servers and your users, means that you might be an exceptional DBA. You’re already putting in that extra effort to make other people’s lives easier. So why not take some time for your professional development and enter the Exceptional DBA Awards? If you’re looking for some inspiration for your entry, download our Judges’ Top Tips poster for advice on what the judges are looking for from this year’s entrants. Not only will you be boosting your professional development, but you could win full conference registration for the 2011 PASS Summit in Seattle (where the awards ceremony will take place), four nights' hotel accommodation, and a copy of Red Gate’s SQL DBA Bundle. So take some time out for yourself this weekend and get started on your entry: www.exceptionaldba.com

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• Inside the DLR – Invoking methods

  - by Simon Cooper

  So, we’ve looked at how a dynamic call is represented in a compiled assembly, and how the dynamic lookup is performed at runtime. The last piece of the puzzle is how the resolved method gets invoked, and that is the subject of this post. Invoking methods As discussed in my previous posts, doing a full lookup and bind at runtime each and every single time the callsite gets invoked would be far too slow to be usable. The results obtained from the callsite binder must to be cached, along with a series of conditions to determine whether the cached result can be reused. So, firstly, how are the conditions represented? These conditions can be anything; they are determined entirely by the semantics of the language the binder is representing. The binder has to be able to return arbitary code that is then executed to determine whether the conditions apply or not. Fortunately, .NET 4 has a neat way of representing arbitary code that can be easily combined with other code – expression trees. All the callsite binder has to return is an expression (called a ‘restriction’) that evaluates to a boolean, returning true when the restriction passes (indicating the corresponding method invocation can be used) and false when it does’t. If the bind result is also represented in an expression tree, these can be combined easily like so: if ([restriction is true]) { [invoke cached method] } Take my example from my previous post: public class ClassA { public static void TestDynamic() { CallDynamic(new ClassA(), 10); CallDynamic(new ClassA(), "foo"); } public static void CallDynamic(dynamic d, object o) { d.Method(o); } public void Method(int i) {} public void Method(string s) {} } When the Method(int) method is first bound, along with an expression representing the result of the bind lookup, the C# binder will return the restrictions under which that bind can be reused. In this case, it can be reused if the types of the parameters are the same: if (thisArg.GetType() == typeof(ClassA) && arg1.GetType() == typeof(int)) { thisClassA.Method(i); } Caching callsite results So, now, it’s up to the callsite to link these expressions returned from the binder together in such a way that it can determine which one from the many it has cached it should use. This caching logic is all located in the System.Dynamic.UpdateDelegates class. It’ll help if you’ve got this type open in a decompiler to have a look yourself. For each callsite, there are 3 layers of caching involved: The last method invoked on the callsite. All methods that have ever been invoked on the callsite. All methods that have ever been invoked on any callsite of the same type. We’ll cover each of these layers in order Level 1 cache: the last method called on the callsite When a CallSite<T> object is first instantiated, the Target delegate field (containing the delegate that is called when the callsite is invoked) is set to one of the UpdateAndExecute generic methods in UpdateDelegates, corresponding to the number of parameters to the callsite, and the existance of any return value. These methods contain most of the caching, invoke, and binding logic for the callsite. The first time this method is invoked, the UpdateAndExecute method finds there aren’t any entries in the caches to reuse, and invokes the binder to resolve a new method. Once the callsite has the result from the binder, along with any restrictions, it stitches some extra expressions in, and replaces the Target field in the callsite with a compiled expression tree similar to this (in this example I’m assuming there’s no return value): if ([restriction is true]) { [invoke cached method] return; } if (callSite._match) { _match = false; return; } else { UpdateAndExecute(callSite, arg0, arg1, ...); } Woah. What’s going on here? Well, this resulting expression tree is actually the first level of caching. The Target field in the callsite, which contains the delegate to call when the callsite is invoked, is set to the above code compiled from the expression tree into IL, and then into native code by the JIT. This code checks whether the restrictions of the last method that was invoked on the callsite (the ‘primary’ method) match, and if so, executes that method straight away. This means that, the next time the callsite is invoked, the first code that executes is the restriction check, executing as native code! This makes this restriction check on the primary cached delegate very fast. But what if the restrictions don’t match? In that case, the second part of the stitched expression tree is executed. What this section should be doing is calling back into the UpdateAndExecute method again to resolve a new method. But it’s slightly more complicated than that. To understand why, we need to understand the second and third level caches. Level 2 cache: all methods that have ever been invoked on the callsite When a binder has returned the result of a lookup, as well as updating the Target field with a compiled expression tree, stitched together as above, the callsite puts the same compiled expression tree in an internal list of delegates, called the rules list. This list acts as the level 2 cache. Why use the same delegate? Stitching together expression trees is an expensive operation. You don’t want to do it every time the callsite is invoked. Ideally, you would create one expression tree from the binder’s result, compile it, and then use the resulting delegate everywhere in the callsite. But, if the same delegate is used to invoke the callsite in the first place, and in the caches, that means each delegate needs two modes of operation. An ‘invoke’ mode, for when the delegate is set as the value of the Target field, and a ‘match’ mode, used when UpdateAndExecute is searching for a method in the callsite’s cache. Only in the invoke mode would the delegate call back into UpdateAndExecute. In match mode, it would simply return without doing anything. This mode is controlled by the _match field in CallSite<T>. The first time the callsite is invoked, _match is false, and so the Target delegate is called in invoke mode. Then, if the initial restriction check fails, the Target delegate calls back into UpdateAndExecute. This method sets _match to true, then calls all the cached delegates in the rules list in match mode to try and find one that passes its restrictions, and invokes it. However, there needs to be some way for each cached delegate to inform UpdateAndExecute whether it passed its restrictions or not. To do this, as you can see above, it simply re-uses _match, and sets it to false if it did not pass the restrictions. This allows the code within each UpdateAndExecute method to check for cache matches like so: foreach (T cachedDelegate in Rules) { callSite._match = true; cachedDelegate(); // sets _match to false if restrictions do not pass if (callSite._match) { // passed restrictions, and the cached method was invoked // set this delegate as the primary target to invoke next time callSite.Target = cachedDelegate; return; } // no luck, try the next one... } Level 3 cache: all methods that have ever been invoked on any callsite with the same signature The reason for this cache should be clear – if a method has been invoked through a callsite in one place, then it is likely to be invoked on other callsites in the codebase with the same signature. Rather than living in the callsite, the ‘global’ cache for callsite delegates lives in the CallSiteBinder class, in the Cache field. This is a dictionary, typed on the callsite delegate signature, providing a RuleCache<T> instance for each delegate signature. This is accessed in the same way as the level 2 callsite cache, by the UpdateAndExecute methods. When a method is matched in the global cache, it is copied into the callsite and Target cache before being executed. Putting it all together So, how does this all fit together? Like so (I’ve omitted some implementation & performance details): That, in essence, is how the DLR performs its dynamic calls nearly as fast as statically compiled IL code. Extensive use of expression trees, compiled to IL and then into native code. Multiple levels of caching, the first of which executes immediately when the dynamic callsite is invoked. And a clever re-use of compiled expression trees that can be used in completely different contexts without being recompiled. All in all, a very fast and very clever reflection caching mechanism.

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• Software Tuned to Humanity

  - by Phil Factor

  I learned a great deal from a cynical old programmer who once told me that the ideal length of time for a compiler to do its work was the same time it took to roll a cigarette. For development work, this is oh so true. After intently looking at the editing window for an hour or so, it was a relief to look up, stretch, focus the eyes on something else, and roll the possibly-metaphorical cigarette. This was software tuned to humanity. Likewise, a user’s perception of the “ideal” time that an application will take to move from frame to frame, to retrieve information, or to process their input has remained remarkably static for about thirty years, at around 200 ms. Anything else appears, and always has, to be either fast or slow. This could explain why commercial applications, unlike games, simulations and communications, aren’t noticeably faster now than they were when I started programming in the Seventies. Sure, they do a great deal more, but the SLAs that I negotiated in the 1980s for application performance are very similar to what they are nowadays. To prove to myself that this wasn’t just some rose-tinted misperception on my part, I cranked up a Z80-based Jonos CP/M machine (1985) in the roof-space. Within 20 seconds from cold, it had loaded Wordstar and I was ready to write. OK, I got it wrong: some things were faster 30 years ago. Sure, I’d now have had all sorts of animations, wizzy graphics, and other comforting features, but it seems a pity that we have used all that extra CPU and memory to increase the scope of what we develop, and the graphical prettiness, but not to speed the processes needed to complete a business procedure. Never mind the weight, the response time’s great! To achieve 200 ms response times on a Z80, or similar, performance considerations influenced everything one did as a developer. If it meant writing an entire application in assembly code, applying every smart algorithm, and shortcut imaginable to get the application to perform to spec, then so be it. As a result, I’m a dyed-in-the-wool performance freak and find it difficult to change my habits. Conversely, many developers now seem to feel quite differently. While all will acknowledge that performance is important, it’s no longer the virtue is once was, and other factors such as user-experience now take precedence. Am I wrong? If not, then perhaps we need a new school of development technique to rival Agile, dedicated once again to producing applications that smoke the rear wheels rather than pootle elegantly to the shops; that forgo skeuomorphism, cute animation, or architectural elegance in favor of the smell of hot rubber. I struggle to name an application I use that is truly notable for its blistering performance, and would dearly love one to do my everyday work – just as long as it doesn’t go faster than my brain.

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• In search of database delivery practitioners and enthusiasts

  - by Claire Brooking

  We know from speaking with many of you at tradeshows and user groups that database delivery is not a factory production line. During planning, evaluation, quality control, and disaster mitigation, the people having their say at each step means that successful database deployment is a carefully managed course of action. With so many factors involved at every stage, we would love to find a way for our software to help out, by simplifying processes, speeding them up or joining together the people and the steps that make it all happen. We’re hoping our new research group for database delivery (SQL Server and Oracle) will help us understand the views and experiences of those of you out there in the trenches managing database changes. As part of our new group, we’ll be running a variety of research sessions, including surveys and phone interviews, over coming months. If you have opinions to share on Continuous Integration or Continuous Delivery for databases, we’d love to hear from you. Your feedback really will count as the product teams at Red Gate build plans. For some of our more in-depth sessions, we’ll also be offering participants an Amazon voucher as a thank-you for your time. If you’re not yet practising automated database deployment processes, but are contemplating or planning it, please do consider joining our research group too. If you’d like to sign up to the group and find out more, please fill in a quick form online, and we’ll be in touch to let you know about new research opportunities you might be interested in. We look forward to hearing your stories!

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• Finding bugs is difficult, right?

  - by Laila

  Something I hear developers tell us all the time is that they take pride in being a developer.and that bugs are a dent in that pride. Someone once told me "I know I have found bugs years later, and it's the worst feeling in the world." So how can you avoid that sinking feeling when you find out a bug has been in production months before someone lets you know about it? Besides, let's face it: hearing about a bug often means a world of pain, because it can take hours to track down where the problem is and more hours (if not days) to fix it. And during that time, you're not working on something new, and that, my friends, is really frustrating! So to cheer you up, we've created a Bug Hunt game, where you battle against the clock to spot bugs. We've really enjoyed putting this together and hope you enjoy playing it too. Once you're done with the bug hunt, we explain how easy it can be to find and fix bugs in real life, using a neat mechanism that we call Automated Error Reporting. Play the game now.

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• Know your Data Lineage

  - by Simon Elliston Ball

  An academic paper without the footnotes isn’t an academic paper. Journalists wouldn’t base a news article on facts that they can’t verify. So why would anyone publish reports without being able to say where the data has come from and be confident of its quality, in other words, without knowing its lineage. (sometimes referred to as ‘provenance’ or ‘pedigree’) The number and variety of data sources, both traditional and new, increases inexorably. Data comes clean or dirty, processed or raw, unimpeachable or entirely fabricated. On its journey to our report, from its source, the data can travel through a network of interconnected pipes, passing through numerous distinct systems, each managed by different people. At each point along the pipeline, it can be changed, filtered, aggregated and combined. When the data finally emerges, how can we be sure that it is right? How can we be certain that no part of the data collection was based on incorrect assumptions, that key data points haven’t been left out, or that the sources are good? Even when we’re using data science to give us an approximate or probable answer, we cannot have any confidence in the results without confidence in the data from which it came. You need to know what has been done to your data, where it came from, and who is responsible for each stage of the analysis. This information represents your data lineage; it is your stack-trace. If you’re an analyst, suspicious of a number, it tells you why the number is there and how it got there. If you’re a developer, working on a pipeline, it provides the context you need to track down the bug. If you’re a manager, or an auditor, it lets you know the right things are being done. Lineage tracking is part of good data governance. Most audit and lineage systems require you to buy into their whole structure. If you are using Hadoop for your data storage and processing, then tools like Falcon allow you to track lineage, as long as you are using Falcon to write and run the pipeline. It can mean learning a new way of running your jobs (or using some sort of proxy), and even a distinct way of writing your queries. Other Hadoop tools provide a lot of operational and audit information, spread throughout the many logs produced by Hive, Sqoop, MapReduce and all the various moving parts that make up the eco-system. To get a full picture of what’s going on in your Hadoop system you need to capture both Falcon lineage and the data-exhaust of other tools that Falcon can’t orchestrate. However, the problem is bigger even that that. Often, Hadoop is just one piece in a larger processing workflow. The next step of the challenge is how you bind together the lineage metadata describing what happened before and after Hadoop, where ‘after’ could be  a data analysis environment like R, an application, or even directly into an end-user tool such as Tableau or Excel. One possibility is to push as much as you can of your key analytics into Hadoop, but would you give up the power, and familiarity of your existing tools in return for a reliable way of tracking lineage? Lineage and auditing should work consistently, automatically and quietly, allowing users to access their data with any tool they require to use. The real solution, therefore, is to create a consistent method by which to bring lineage data from these data various disparate sources into the data analysis platform that you use, rather than being forced to use the tool that manages the pipeline for the lineage and a different tool for the data analysis. The key is to keep your logs, keep your audit data, from every source, bring them together and use the data analysis tools to trace the paths from raw data to the answer that data analysis provides.

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