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• Designing a social network with CQRS, graph databases and relational databases in mind

  - by Siraj Mansour

  I have done quite an amount of research on the topic so far, but i couldn't come up with a conclusion to make up my mind. I am designing a social network and during my research i stumbled upon graph databases, i found neo4j pretty interesting for user relations and traversing through nodes. I also thought of using a relational database such as MS-SQL or MySQL to store entity data only and depending on neo4j for connections between entities. Of course this means more work in my application to store and pull data in and out of 2 different sources. My first question : Is using this approach (graph + relational) a good approach for designing my social network keeping in mind that users on social networks don't have to in synch with real data by split second ? What are the positives and negatives of this approach ? My Second question : I've been doing some reading on CQRS and as i understood it is mostly useful for collaborative environments, and environments where users see a lot of "stale" data. social networks has shared comments, events, etc .. and many users query or update the same data. Could CQRS be a helpful approach ? Would it give any performance/scalability benefits or non-useful complexity ? Is it fairly applicable with my possible choice of (graph + relational) databases approach mentioned in the question above ? My purpose is to know if the approaches i have mentioned above seem good enough for the business context.

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• Evoland: A Video Game About Video Game History

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  Browser-based Evoland is, hands down, one of the more clever video game concepts to come across our desk. The game itself is a history of video games–as you play the game the game evolves from a limited 8-bit monochrome adventure into a modern game. You start off unable to do anything but move right and collect a treasure chest. That treasure chest unlocks the left key (keys are configured in a WASD style keypad) which in turn allows you to move around a simple monochromatic forest clearing to unlock the rest of the movement keys. From there you begin unlocking more game features, effectively evolving the game from monochrome to 16 and then 64 bit color and unlocking various game play features. The game itself is short and can be played in about the same time you could watch a video covering the basics of various game changes over the last 30 years but actually playing the game and watching the evolution in progress is far more rewarding. Hit up the link below to take it for a spin. Evoland [via Boing Boing] How To Switch Webmail Providers Without Losing All Your Email How To Force Windows Applications to Use a Specific CPU HTG Explains: Is UPnP a Security Risk?

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• Visual Studio ALM MVP of the Year 2011

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  For some reason this year some of my peers decided to vote for me as a contender for Visual Studio ALM MVP of the year. I am not sure what I did to deserve this, but a number of people have commented that I have a rather useful blog. I feel wholly unworthy to join the ranks of previous winners: Ed Blankenship (2010) Martin Woodward (2009) Thank you to everyone who voted regardless of who you voted for. If there was a prize for the best group of MVP’s then the Visual Studio ALM MVP would be a clear winner, as would the product group of product groups that is Visual Studio ALM Group. To use a phrase that I have learned since moving to Seattle and probably use too much: you guys are all just awesome. I have tried my best in the last year to document not only every problem that I have had with Team Foundation Server (TFS), but also to document as many of the things I am doing as possible. I have taken some of Adam Cogan’s rules to heart and when a customer asks me a question I always blog the answer and send them a link. This allows both my blog and my understanding of TFS to grow while creating a useful bank of content. The idea is that if one customer asks, all benefit. I try, when writing for my blog, to capture both the essence and the context for a problem being solved. This allows more people to benefit as they do not need to understand the specifics of an environment to gain value. I have a number of goals for this year that I think will help increase value in the community: persuade my new colleagues at Northwest Cadence to do more blogging (Steve, Jeff, Shad and Rennie) Rangers Project – TFS Iteration Automation with Willy-Peter Schaub, Bill Essary, Martin Hinshelwood, Mike Fourie, Jeff Bramwell and Brian Blackman Write a book on the Team Foundation Server API with Willy-Peter Schaub, Mike Fourie and Jeff Bramwell write more useful blog posts I do not think that these things are beyond the realms of do-ability, but we will see…

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• To the world, with love

  - by kaleidoscope

  kaleidoscope 1817, lit. "observer of beautiful forms," coined by its inventor, Sir David Brewster (1781-1868), from Gk. kalos "beautiful" + eidos "shape" (see -oid) + -scope, on model of telescope, etc. Figurative meaning "constantly changing pattern" is first attested 1819 in Lord Byron, whose publisher had sent him one. Let’s start by setting some context here. “We” are not a single blogger but a bunch of like minded people who will be contributing to this blog. We belong to a team led by some folks possessed by innovation, and this has rubbed on us in a good way. How it started It all started with initiative from Girish, A. A big thank you, goes to him. To get it straight from the horse’ mouth: What is it? - Everybody (as per the published schedule) post a small write-up (not more than say 5/6 lines) regarding any Azure related concept. - We shall consolidate all these mails (which would be 5/week) and quickly discuss/brain storm about it, end of the week i.e. on Fridays. What’s the benefit? - This should make our basic Azure concepts rock-solid. - As part of this exercise, we will have a very good collection of Azure FAQs. As the team grew stronger, so did the contributions and after almost 3 months of regular contributions and weekly discussions we thought of sharing the content with the world at large. Afterall we are IT folks and the big I in IT is there for a reason. :) The road ahead We will post the entire collection as time permits. Tagged by contributor. Going forward each contributor will post individually adding his/her specific tag. Get blogging!!

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• July, the 31 Days of SQL Server DMO’s – Day 27 (sys.dm_db_file_space_usage)

  - by Tamarick Hill

  The sys.dm_db_file_space usage DMV returns information about database file space usage.  This DMV was enhanced for the 2012 version to include 3 additional columns. Let’s query this DMV against our AdventureWorks2012 database and view the results. SELECT * FROM sys.dm_db_file_space_usage The column returned from this DMV are really self-explanatory, but I will give you a description, paraphrased from books online, below. The first three columns returned from this DMV represent the Database, File, and Filegroup for the current database context that executed the DMV query. The next column is the total_page_count which represents the total number of pages in the file. The allocated_extent_page_count represents the total number of pages in all extents that have been allocated. The unallocated_extent_page_count represents the number of pages in the unallocated extents within the file. The version_store_reserved_page_count column represents the number of pages that are allocated to the version store. The user_object_reserved_page_count represents the number of pages allocated for user objects. The internal_object_reserved_page_count represents the number of pages allocated for internal objects.  Lastly is the mixed_extent_page_count which represents the total number of pages that are part of mixed extents. This is a great DMV for retrieving usage space information from your database files. For more information about this DMV, please see the below Books Online link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms174412.aspx Follow me on Twitter @PrimeTimeDBA

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• How I Record Screencasts

  - by Daniel Moth

  I get this asked a lot so here is my brain dump on the topic. What A screencast is just a demo that you present to yourself while recording the screen. As such, my advice for clearing your screen for demo purposes and setting up Visual Studio still applies here (adjusting for the fact I wrote those blog posts when I was running Vista and VS2008, not Windows 8 and VS2012). To see examples of screencasts, watch any of my screencasts on channel9. Why If you are a technical presenter, think of when you get best reactions from a developer audience in your sessions: when you are doing demos, of course. Imagine if you could package those alone and share them with folks to watch over and over? If you have ever gone through a tutorial trying to recreate steps to explore a feature, think how much more helpful it would be if you could watch a video and follow along. Think of how many folks you "touch" with a conference presentation, and how many more you can reach with an online shorter recording of the demo. If you invest so much of your time for the first type of activity, isn't the second type of activity also worth an investment? Fact: If you are able to record a screencast of a demo, you will be much better prepared to deliver it in person. In fact lately I will force myself to make a screencast of any demo I need to present live at an upcoming event. It is also a great backup - if for whatever reason something fails (software, network, etc) during an attempt of a live demo, you can just play the recorded video for the live audience. There are other reasons (e.g. internal sharing of the latest implemented feature) but the context above is the one within which I create most of my screencasts. Software & Hardware I use Camtasia from Tech Smith, version 7.1.1. Microsoft has a variety of options for capturing the screen to video, but I have been using this software for so long now that I have not invested time to explore alternatives… I also use whatever cheapo headset is near me, but sometimes I get some complaints from some folks about the audio so now I try to remember to use "the good headset". I do not use a web camera as I am not a huge fan of PIP. Preparation First you have to know your technology and demo. Once you think you know it, write down the outline and major steps of the demo. Keep it short 5-20 minutes max. I break that rule sometimes but try not to. The longer the video is the more chances that people will not have the patience to sit through it and the larger the download wmv file ends up being. Run your demo a few times, timing yourself each time to ensure that you have the planned timing correct, but also to make sure that you are comfortable with what you are going to demo. Unlike with a live audience, there is no live reaction/feedback to steer you, so it can be a bit unnerving at first. It can also lead you to babble too much, so try extra hard to be succinct when demoing/screencasting on your own. TIP: Before recording, hide your desktop/taskbar clock if it is showing. Recording To record you start the Camtasia Recorder tool Configure the settings thought the menus Capture menu to choose custom size or full screen. I try to use full screen and remember to lower the resolution of your screen to as low as possible, e.g. 1024x768 or 1360x768 or something like that. From the Tools -> Options dialog you can choose to record audio and the volume level. Effects menu I typically leave untouched but you should explore and experiment to your liking, e.g. how the mouse pointer is captured, and whether there should be a delay for the recording when you start it. Once you've configured these settings, typically you just launch this tool and hit the F9 key to start recording. TIP: As you record, if you ever start to "lose your way" hit F9 again to pause recording, regroup your thoughts and flow, and then hit F9 again to resume. Finally, hit F10 to stop recording. At that point the video starts playing for you in the recorder. This is where you can preview the video to see that you are happy with it before saving. If you are happy, hit the Save As menu to choose where you want to save the video.     TIP: If you've really lost your way to the extent where you'll need to do some editing, hit F10 to stop recording, save the video and then record some more - you'll be able to stitch the videos together later and this will make it easier for you to delete the parts where you messed up. TIP: Before you commit to recording the whole demo, every time you should record 5 seconds and preview them to ensure that you are capturing the screen the way you want to and that your audio is still correctly configured and at the right level. Trust me, you do not want to be recording 15 minutes only to find out that you messed up on the configuration somewhere. Editing To edit the video you launch another Camtasia app, the Camtasia Studio. File->New Project. File->Save Project and choose location. File->Import Media and choose the video(s) you saved earlier. These adds them to the area at the top/middle but not at the timeline at the bottom. Right click on the video and choose Add to timeline. It will prompt you for the Editing dimensions and I always choose Recording Dimensions. Do whatever edits you want to do for this video, then add the next video if you have one to stitch and repeat. In terms of edits there are many options. The simplest is to do nothing, which is the option I did when I first starting doing these in 2006. Nowadays, I typically cut out pieces that I don't like and also lower/mute the audio in other areas and also speed up the video in some areas. A full tutorial on how to do this is beyond the scope of this blog post, but your starting point is to select portions on the timeline and then open the Edit menu at the very top (tip: the context menu doesn't have all options). You can spend hours editing a recording, so don’t lose track of time! When you are done editing, save again, and you are now ready to Produce. Producing Production is specific to where you will publish. I've only ever published on channel9, so for that I do the following File -> Produce and share. This opens a wizard dialog In the dropdown choose Custom production settings Hit Next and then choose WMV Hit Next and keep the default of Camtasia Studio Best Quality and File Size (recommended) Hit Next and choose Editing dimensions video size Hit Next, hit Options and you get a dialog. Enter a Title for the project tab and then on the author tab enter the Creator and Homepage. Hit OK Hit Next. Hit Next again. Enter a video file name in the Production name textbox and then hit Finish. Now do other stuff while you wait for the video to be produced and you hear it playing. After the video is produced watch it to ensure it was produced correctly (e.g. sometimes you get mouse issues) and then you are ready for publishing it. Publishing Follow the instructions of the place where you are going to publish. If you are MSFT internal and want to choose channel9 then contact those folks so they can share their instructions (if you don't know who they are ping me and I'll connect you but they are easy to find in the GAL). For me this involves using a tool to point to the video, choosing a file name (again), choosing an image from the video to display when it is not playing, choosing what output formats I want, and then later on a webpage adding tags, adding a description, and adding a title. That’s all folks, have fun! Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• Understanding Process Scheduling in Oracle Solaris

  - by rickramsey

  The process scheduler in the Oracle Solaris kernel allocates CPU resources to processes. By default, the scheduler tries to give every process relatively equal access to the available CPUs. However, you might want to specify that certain processes be given more resources than others. That's where classes come in. A process class defines a scheduling policy for a set of processes. These three resources will help you understand and manage it process classes: Blog: Overview of Process Scheduling Classes in the Oracle Solaris Kernel by Brian Bream Timesharing, interactive, fair-share scheduler, fixed priority, system, and real time. What are these? Scheduling classes in the Solaris kernel. Brian Bream describes them and how the kernel manages them through context switching. Blog: Process Scheduling at the Thread Level by Brian Bream The Fair Share Scheduler allows you to dispatch processes not just to a particular CPU, but to CPU threads. Brian Bream explains how to use and provides examples. Docs: Overview of the Fair Share Scheduler by Oracle Solaris Documentation Team This official Oracle Solaris documentation set provides the nitty-gritty details for setting up classes and managing your processes. Covers: Introduction to the Scheduler CPU Share Definition CPU Shares and Process State CPU Share Versus Utilization CPU Share Examples FSS Configuration FSS and Processor Sets Combining FSS With Other Scheduling Classes Setting the Scheduling Class for the System Scheduling Class on a System with Zones Installed Commands Used With FSS -Rick Follow me on: Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Personal Twitter | YouTube | The Great Peruvian Novel

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• Adding an Admin user to an ASP.NET MVC 4 application using a single drop-in file

  - by Jon Galloway

  I'm working on an ASP.NET MVC 4 tutorial and wanted to set it up so just dropping a file in App_Start would create a user named "Owner" and assign them to the "Administrator" role (more explanation at the end if you're interested). There are reasons why this wouldn't fit into most application scenarios: It's not efficient, as it checks for (and creates, if necessary) the user every time the app starts up The username, password, and role name are hardcoded in the app (although they could be pulled from config) Automatically creating an administrative account in code (without user interaction) could lead to obvious security issues if the user isn't informed However, with some modifications it might be more broadly useful - e.g. creating a test user with limited privileges, ensuring a required account isn't accidentally deleted, or - as in my case - setting up an account for demonstration or tutorial purposes. Challenge #1: Running on startup without requiring the user to install or configure anything I wanted to see if this could be done just by having the user drop a file into the App_Start folder and go. No copying code into Global.asax.cs, no installing addition NuGet packages, etc. That may not be the best approach - perhaps a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator would be better - but I wanted to see if this was possible and see if it offered the best experience. Fortunately ASP.NET 4 and later provide a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute which allows you to register a method which will run when the application starts up. You drop this attribute in your application and give it two parameters: a method name and the type that contains it. I created a static class named PreApplicationTasks with a static method named, then dropped this attribute in it: [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] That's it. One small gotcha: the namespace can be a problem with assembly attributes. I decided my class didn't need a namespace. Challenge #2: Only one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly In .NET 4, the PreApplicationStartMethod is marked as AllMultiple=false, so you can only have one PreApplicationStartMethod per assembly. This was fixed in .NET 4.5, as noted by Jon Skeet, so you can have as many PreApplicationStartMethods as you want (allowing you to keep your users waiting for the application to start indefinitely!). The WebActivator NuGet package solves the multiple instance problem if you're in .NET 4 - it registers as a PreApplicationStartMethod, then calls any methods you've indicated using [assembly: WebActivator.PreApplicationStartMethod(type, method)]. David Ebbo blogged about that here:  Light up your NuGets with startup code and WebActivator. In my scenario (bootstrapping a beginner level tutorial) I decided not to worry about this and stick with PreApplicationStartMethod. Challenge #3: PreApplicationStartMethod kicks in before configuration has been read This is by design, as Phil explains. It allows you to make changes that need to happen very early in the pipeline, well before Application_Start. That's fine in some cases, but it caused me problems when trying to add users, since the Membership Provider configuration hadn't yet been read - I got an exception stating that "Default Membership Provider could not be found." The solution here is to run code that requires configuration in a PostApplicationStart method. But how to do that? Challenge #4: Getting PostApplicationStartMethod without requiring WebActivator The WebActivator NuGet package, among other things, provides a PostApplicationStartMethod attribute. That's generally how I'd recommend running code that needs to happen after Application_Start: [assembly: WebActivator.PostApplicationStartMethod(typeof(TestLibrary.MyStartupCode), "CallMeAfterAppStart")] This works well, but I wanted to see if this would be possible without WebActivator. Hmm. Well, wait a minute - WebActivator works in .NET 4, so clearly it's registering and calling PostApplicationStartup tasks somehow. Off to the source code! Sure enough, there's even a handy comment in ActivationManager.cs which shows where PostApplicationStartup tasks are being registered: public static void Run() { if (!_hasInited) { RunPreStartMethods(); // Register our module to handle any Post Start methods. But outside of ASP.NET, just run them now if (HostingEnvironment.IsHosted) { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(StartMethodCallingModule)); } else { RunPostStartMethods(); } _hasInited = true; } } Excellent. Hey, that DynamicModuleUtility seems familiar... Sure enough, K. Scott Allen mentioned it on his blog last year. This is really slick - a PreApplicationStartMethod can register a new HttpModule in code. Modules are run right after application startup, so that's a perfect time to do any startup stuff that requires configuration to be read. As K. Scott says, it's this easy: using System; using System.Web; using Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper; [assembly:PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(MyAppStart), "Start")] public class CoolModule : IHttpModule { // implementation not important // imagine something cool here } public static class MyAppStart { public static void Start() { DynamicModuleUtility.RegisterModule(typeof(CoolModule)); } } Challenge #5: Cooperating with SimpleMembership The ASP.NET MVC Internet template includes SimpleMembership. SimpleMembership is a big improvement over traditional ASP.NET Membership. For one thing, rather than forcing a database schema, it can work with your database schema. In the MVC 4 Internet template case, it uses Entity Framework Code First to define the user model. SimpleMembership bootstrap includes a call to InitializeDatabaseConnection, and I want to play nice with that. There's a new [InitializeSimpleMembership] attribute on the AccountController, which calls \Filters\InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute.cs::OnActionExecuting(). That comment in that method that says "Ensure ASP.NET Simple Membership is initialized only once per app start" which sounds like good advice. I figured the best thing would be to call that directly: new Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters.InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); I'm not 100% happy with this - in fact, it's my least favorite part of this solution. There are two problems - first, directly calling a method on a filter, while legal, seems odd. Worse, though, the Filter lives in the application's namespace, which means that this code no longer works well as a generic drop-in. The simplest workaround would be to duplicate the relevant SimpleMembership initialization code into my startup code, but I'd rather not. I'm interested in your suggestions here. Challenge #6: Module Init methods are called more than once When debugging, I noticed (and remembered) that the Init method may be called more than once per page request - it's run once per instance in the app pool, and an individual page request can cause multiple resource requests to the server. While SimpleMembership does have internal checks to prevent duplicate user or role entries, I'd rather not cause or handle those exceptions. So here's the standard single-use lock in the Module's init method: void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { //Do stuff } initialized = true; } } Putting it all together With all of that out of the way, here's the code I came up with: using Mvc4SampleApplication.Filters; using System.Web; using System.Web.Security; using WebMatrix.WebData; [assembly: PreApplicationStartMethod(typeof(PreApplicationTasks), "Initializer")] public static class PreApplicationTasks { public static void Initializer() { Microsoft.Web.Infrastructure.DynamicModuleHelper.DynamicModuleUtility .RegisterModule(typeof(UserInitializationModule)); } } public class UserInitializationModule : IHttpModule { private static bool initialized; private static object lockObject = new object(); private const string _username = "Owner"; private const string _password = "p@ssword123"; private const string _role = "Administrator"; void IHttpModule.Init(HttpApplication context) { lock (lockObject) { if (!initialized) { new InitializeSimpleMembershipAttribute().OnActionExecuting(null); if (!WebSecurity.UserExists(_username)) WebSecurity.CreateUserAndAccount(_username, _password); if (!Roles.RoleExists(_role)) Roles.CreateRole(_role); if (!Roles.IsUserInRole(_username, _role)) Roles.AddUserToRole(_username, _role); } initialized = true; } } void IHttpModule.Dispose() { } } The Verdict: Is this a good thing? Maybe. I think you'll agree that the journey was undoubtedly worthwhile, as it took us through some of the finer points of hooking into application startup, integrating with membership, and understanding why the WebActivator NuGet package is so useful Will I use this in the tutorial? I'm leaning towards no - I think a NuGet package with a dependency on WebActivator might work better: It's a little more clear what's going on Installing a NuGet package might be a little less error prone than copying a file A novice user could uninstall the package when complete It's a good introduction to NuGet, which is a good thing for beginners to see This code either requires either duplicating a little code from that filter or modifying the file to use the namespace Honestly I'm undecided at this point, but I'm glad that I can weigh the options. If you're interested: Why are you doing this? I'm updating the MVC Music Store tutorial to ASP.NET MVC 4, taking advantage of a lot of new ASP.NET MVC 4 features and trying to simplify areas that are giving people trouble. One change that addresses both needs us using the new OAuth support for membership as much as possible - it's a great new feature from an application perspective, and we get a fair amount of beginners struggling with setting up membership on a variety of database and development setups, which is a distraction from the focus of the tutorial - learning ASP.NET MVC. Side note: Thanks to some great help from Rick Anderson, we had a draft of the tutorial that was looking pretty good earlier this summer, but there were enough changes in ASP.NET MVC 4 all the way up to RTM that there's still some work to be done. It's high priority and should be out very soon. The one issue I ran into with OAuth is that we still need an Administrative user who can edit the store's inventory. I thought about a number of solutions for that - making the first user to register the admin, or the first user to use the username "Administrator" is assigned to the Administrator role - but they both ended up requiring extra code; also, I worried that people would use that code without understanding it or thinking about whether it was a good fit.

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• Set Firefox to Be On Top of Other Windows

  - by Asian Angel

  Sometimes you need to keep a close watch on a website and have Firefox remain in view regardless of the other apps running. See how you can keep Firefox in constant view with the Always on Top extension. Before If you have a webpage that you like to watch throughout the day but have a very busy desktop then Firefox can get lost in all of the clutter. Note: You can read about the ReloadEvery extension here. Even with a widescreen monitor sometimes there is just not enough room to keep everything in easy view while you are working on something. Always on Top in Action Once you have installed the extension you will notice that a new Toolbar Button has automatically been added to your Navigation Toolbar. At the moment this is the only on/off switch for the extension. Clicking on the Toolbar Button will enable Always on Top and the button will change to a blue color to indicate its’ active status. Click on it again to disable it. Do anything that you like in the other windows…Firefox will still be the topmost window and easy to view. Conclusion The Always on Top extension was made to do just one thing and it does it very well…keeping your Firefox window on top. Being able to turn it on or off without digging through a bunch of menus adds that extra level of convenience. Links Download the Always on Top extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Quick Hits: 11 Firefox Tab How-TosQuick Tip: Save Windows and Tabs When Restarting FirefoxInstalling Windows Media Player Plugin for FirefoxDisable Web Site Window Resizing in FirefoxFix for Firefox memory leak on Windows TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox)

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 04, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, October 04, 2013Popular ReleasesMoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): Version 1.11: Release Notes Release 1.11 =========== =Bug Fixes= =========== Now works with Terraria 1.2 wld files. =============== =Known Issues= =============== Not all tiles and items are accounted for. Missing tiles just show up as pink. This is actively being worked on but wanted to get a build out that works with 1.2VG-Ripper & PG-Ripper: PG-Ripper 1.4.19: NEW: Added Option to login as Guest NEW: Added Support for "ImageTeam.org linksStyleMVVM: 3.1.4: This release has virtually no code change but adds multiple new Item templates for the Windows Phone 8 platformSystem Center Orchestrator Community Project: Orchestrator Visio and Word Generator 1.5: This tool lets you export Orchestrator runbooks as a Visio diagram, and you can also generate an optional Word file as well. Components exported as of v1.5 are : - Title of the runbook - Activities and their names/thumbnails/description (description is displayed as a callout in the Visio diagram, attached to the shape of the activity) - Links and their names/colors - Looping and their interval Thumbnails and activities are grouped in the Visio diagram, for easy manipulation of the diagra...State of Decay Save Manager: Version 1.0.4: Add version at bottom of formDNN® Form and List: DNN Form and List 06.00.07: DotNetNuke Form and List 06.00.06 Changes to 6.0.7•Fixed an error in datatypes.config that caused calculated fields to be missing in 6.0.6 Changes to 6.0.6•Add in Sql to remove 'text on row' setting for UserDefinedTable to make SQL Azure compatible. •Add new azureCompatible element to manifest. •Added a fix for importing templates. Changes to 6.0.2•Fix: MakeThumbnail was broken if the application pool was configured to .Net 4 •Change: Data is now stored in nvarchar(max) instead of ntext C...SimpleExcelReportMaker: Serm 0.03: SourceCode and Sample .Net Framework 3.5 AnyCPU compile.RDFSharp - Start playing with RDF!: RDFSharp-0.6.6: GENERAL (NEW) Introduction of INT64 hashing engine (codenamed "Greta"); QUERY (FIX) Incorrect query evaluation due to faulty detection of optional patterns (v0.6.5 regression); (FIX) Missing update of PatternGroupID information after adding patterns and filters to a pattern group; (FIX) Ensure Context information of a pattern is not null before trying to collect it as variable; (MISC) Changed semantics of Context information of a pattern: if not provided, it will be ignored; (MISC...Application Architecture Guidelines: App Architecture Guidelines 3.0.8: This document is an overview of software qualities, principles, patterns, practices, tools and libraries.C# Intellisense for Notepad++: Release v1.0.7.2: - smart indentation - document formatting To avoid the DLLs getting locked by OS use MSI file for the installation.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.6: 2013.09.30 Ver5.9.6 (1)SMTP???????、???????????????? (2)WinAPI??????? (3)Web???????CGI???????????????????????Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 5.2: Mostly internal code tweaks. added -nosize switch to turn off the size- and gzip-calculations done after minification. removed the comments in the build targets script for the old AjaxMin build task (discussion #458831). Fixed an issue with extended Unicode characters encoded inside a string literal with adjacent \uHHHH\uHHHH sequences. Fixed an IndexOutOfRange exception when encountering a CSS identifier that's a single underscore character (_). In previous builds, the net35 and net20...AJAX Control Toolkit: September 2013 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - September 2013 Release (Updated) Version 7.1002September 2013 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4.5 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Important UpdateThis release has been updated to fix two issues: Upda...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha: WDTVHubGen.v2.1.4.apifix-alpha is for testers to figure out if we got the NEW api plugged in ok. thanksVisual Log Parser: VisualLogParser: Portable Visual Log Parser for Dotnet 4.0AudioWordsDownloader: AudioWordsDownloader 1.1 build 88: New features list of words (mp3 files) is available upon typing when a download path is defined list of download paths is added paths history settings added Bug fixed case mismatch in word search field fixed path not exist bug fixed when history has been used path, when filled from dialog, not stored refresh autocomplete list after path change word sought is deleted when path is changed at the end sought word list is deleted word list not refreshed download ends. word lis...Wsus Package Publisher: Release v1.3.1309.28: Fix a bug, where WPP crash when running on a computer where Windows was installed in another language than Fr, En or De, and launching the Update Creation Wizard. Fix a bug, where WPP crash if some Multi-Thread job are launch with more than 64 items. Add a button to abort "Install This Update" wizard. Allow WPP to remember which columns are shown last time. Make URL clickable on the Update Information Tab. Add a new feature, when Double-Clicking on an update, the default action exec...Tweetinvi a friendly Twitter C# API: Alpha 0.8.3.0: Version 0.8.3.0 emphasis on the FIlteredStream and ease how to manage Exceptions that can occur due to the network or any other issue you might encounter. Will be available through nuget the 29/09/2013. FilteredStream Features provided by the Twitter Stream API - Ability to track specific keywords - Ability to track specific users - Ability to track specific locations Additional features - Detect the reasons the tweet has been retrieved from the Filtered API. You have access to both the ma...WPF Extended DataGrid: WPF Extended DataGrid 2.0.0.4 binaries: Improved performance of GroupByAcDown?????: AcDown????? v4.5: ??●AcDown??????????、??、??、???????。????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。 ●??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ??v4.5 ???? AcPlay????????v3.5 ????????，???????????30% ?? ???????GoodManga.net???? ?? ?????????? ?? ??Acfun?????????? ??Bilibili??????????? ?????????flvcd???????? ??SfAcg????????????? ???????????? ???????????????? ????32...New ProjectsAnalysis Services Activity Viewer 2012: This project was created from a blog post I wrote back in February 2013 http://redphoenix.me/2013/08/22/upgrade-activity-viewer-2008-to-sql-server-2012/ARYSTA SYSTEM: Notebook System A/R Sales * Sales Order * Delivery * Sales Invoice * Sales Return * A/R Credit Memo * A/R Debit Memo A/P Purchasing * Purchase Order BEWELL SYSTEM: This system is design for Bewell-C Incorporated. Project Manager: Ben Penafiel System Engineer: Jhay Camba Report Designer: William Damasco Caching IOC: Caching IOC Container This will cache any Interface return results making it really easy to introduce caching to your solution.Grupo Anclita: Trabajo Final Laboratorio 4Halcyonic Skin by HTML5-UP - for DNN: This skin was converted for use in DNN by Michael Doxsey. Original HTML template designed and built by HTML5-UP: http://html5up.net/halcyonic/ ProPro: project about other projectsS3Unlock: Unlocks S3 agents that are stuck installing.sdfsdlfsdlkj01: dsfdffsdSerendipity - Responsive Skin for DNN: This is an HTML Template by Elemis, converted for use in DNN. Elemis URL: http://elemisfreebies.com/premium-themes/ Free for personal use and ed. purposes only.SmartSystemMenu: Smart system menu for you.SP 2013 Custom MultiTenant Adminstration: This Project creates a custom SP 2013 Tenant Admin site template covering limitations of existing tenant admin site.Telephasic Skin by HTML5-UP - for DNN: This skin was converted for use in DNN by Michael Doxsey. Original HTML template designed and built by HTML5-UP: http://html5up.net/telephasic/TelerikedIn: Social web app trying to look and feel like the famous LinkedInTerra 2: Generador de personajes para el juego de rol Terra2tsydev01: TextLineUpdateVds2465 Parser: This Project is about implementing a Parser for the Vds2465 protocol. It includes parsing and generating Vds2465 telegram bytes.Your Appliances: Empresa De ElectrodomesticosZeroFour by HTML5-UP - for DNN: This skin was converted for use in DNN by Michael Doxsey. Original HTML template designed and built by HTML5-UP: http://html5up.net/zerofour.

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• Elevating Customer Experience through Enterprise Social Networking

  - by john.brunswick

  I am not sure about most people, but I really dislike automated call center routing systems. They are impersonal and convey a sense that the company I am dealing with does not see the value of providing customer service that increases positive perception of their brand. By the time I am connected with a live support representative I am actually more frustrated than before I originally dialed. Each time a company interacts with its customers or prospects there is an opportunity to enhance that relationship. Technical enablers like call center routing systems can be a double edged sword - providing process efficiencies, but removing the human context of some interactions that can build a lot of long term value and create substantial repeat business. Certain web systems, available through "chat with a representative" now links on some web sites, provide a quick and easy way to get in touch with someone and cut down on help desk calls, but miss the opportunity to deliver an even more personal experience to customers and prospects. As more and more users head to the web for self-service and product information, the quality of this interaction becomes critical to supporting a company's brand image and viability. It takes very little effort to go a step further and elevate customer experience, without adding significant cost through social enterprise software technologies. Enterprise Social Networking Social networking technologies have slowly gained footholds in the enterprise, evolving from something that people may have been simply curious about, to tools that have started to provide tangible value in the enterprise. Much like instant messaging, once considered a toy in the enterprise, expertise search, blogs as communications tools, wikis for tacit knowledge sharing are all seeing adoption in a way that is directly applicable to the business and quickly adding value. So where does social networking come in when trying to enhance customer experience?

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• ODI 11g – How to override SQL at runtime?

  - by David Allan

  Following on from the posting some time back entitled ‘ODI 11g – Simple, Powerful, Flexible’ here we push the envelope even further. Rather than just having the SQL we override defined statically in the interface design we will have it configurable via a variable….at runtime. Imagine you have a well defined interface shape that you want to be fulfilled and that shape can be satisfied from a number of different sources that is what this allows - or the ability for one interface to consume data from many different places using variables. The cool thing about ODI’s reference API and this is that it can be fantastically flexible and useful. When I use the variable as the option value, and I execute the top level scenario that uses this temporary interface I get prompted (or can get prompted to be correct) for the value of the variable. Note I am using the <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","EMP", "SCOTT","D")@> notation for the table reference, since this is done at runtime, then the context will resolve to the correct table name etc. Each time I execute, I could use a different source provider (obviously some dependencies on KMs/technologies here). For example, the following groovy snippet first executes and the query uses SCOTT model with EMP, the next time it is from BOB model and the datastore OTHERS. m=new Properties(); m.put("DEMO.SQLSTR", "select empno, deptno from <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","EMP", "SCOTT","D")@>"); s=new StartupParams(m); runtimeAgent.startScenario("TOP", null, s, null, "GLOBAL", 5, null, true); m2=new Properties(); m2.put("DEMO.SQLSTR", "select empno, deptno from <@=odiRef.getObjectName("L","OTHERS", "BOB","D")@>"); s2=new StartupParams(m); runtimeAgent.startScenario("TOP", null, s2, null, "GLOBAL", 5, null, true); You’ll need a patch to 11.1.1.6 for this type of capability, thanks to my ole buddy Ron Gonzalez from the Enterprise Management group for help pushing the envelope!

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• The Legend of Zelda – 1980s High School Style [Video]

  - by Asian Angel

  What happens when you mix the Legend of Zelda with the 80s high school scene? Something fun and cheesy that makes you wish there really was a movie based on this! From YouTube: In this charming critically-acclaimed tale of first love, Link, an eternal optimist and adventurer, seeks to capture the heart of Zelda, an unattainable high school beauty and straight-A student. He surprises just about everyone-including himself-when she returns the sentiment. But the high school’s over-possessive, megalomaniacal Principal Ganondorf doesn’t approve and it’s going to take more than just the power of love to conquer all. The Legend of Zelda (1987) Trailer [via Geeks are Sexy] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware How to Change the Default Application for Android Tasks Stop Believing TV’s Lies: The Real Truth About "Enhancing" Images The Legend of Zelda – 1980s High School Style [Video] Suspended Sentence is a Free Cross-Platform Point and Click Game Build a Batman-Style Hidden Bust Switch Make Your Clock Creates a Custom Clock for your Android Homescreen Download the Anime Angels Theme for Windows 7 CyanogenMod Updates; Rolls out Android 2.3 to the Less Fortunate

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• Quick Outline: Navigating Your PL/SQL Packages in Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  If you’re browsing your packages using the Connections panel, you have a nice tree navigator to click around your packages and your variable, procedure, and functions. Click, click, click all day long, click, click, click while I sing this song… But What if you drill into your PL/SQL source from the worksheet and don’t have the Tree expanded? Let’s say you’re working on your script, something like - Hmm, what goes next again? So I need to reacquaint myself with just what my beer package requires, so I’m going to drill into it by doing a DESCRIBE (via SHIFT+F4), and now I have the package open. The package is open but the tree hasn’t auto-expanded. Please don’t tell me I have to do the click-click-click thing in the tree!?! Just Open the Quick Outline Panel Do you see it? Just right click in the procedure editor – select the ‘Quick Outline’ in the context menu, and voila! The navigational power of the tree, without needing to drill down the tree itself. If I want to drill into my procedure declaration, just click on said procedure name in the Quick Outline panel. This works for both package specs and bodies. Technically you can use this for stand alone procedures and functions, but the real power is demonstrated for packages.

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• Is there any way to stop a window's title bar merging with the panel when maximised?

  - by Richard Turner

  I'm working on a desktop machine with plenty of screen real-estate, so I don't need my windows' title bars to merge with the global menu bar when the windows are maximised. Moreover, I'm working on a dual-screen set-up, so the fact that a window is maximised doesn't mean that it's the only window visible. Before Unity I'd switch to a maximised window by clicking on its title bar, or close the window, even though it isn't focused, by clicking on its close button; I can no longer do this because the title bar is missing and the global menu bar is empty on that screen. This isn't a huge problem - I can click on some of the window's chrome to focus it - but it's unintuitive and it's forcing me to relearn my mousing behaviour. I'd like to turn-off the merging of title and global menu bars, but how? EDIT: I simply want the title bar of the window NOT to merge with the top panel whenever I maximize a Window. The global menu should stay in the top panel as far as I am concerned. Current it maximizes like this I want it to maximize like this (In that screeny the unmaximized Window has been resized to take rest of the space)

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• indirect rendering issue on 12.04, using ati driver

  - by lurscher

  I have ubuntu 12.04 64-bit system, when i run glxinfo i see some strange error about indirect rendering and failed to load some lib32/dri/swrast_dri libraries. Any idea what is going on? please let me know if i can enhance the relevant information provided in this question $ LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose glxinfo name of display: :0 libGL: screen 0 does not appear to be DRI2 capable libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib32/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib32/dri/swrast_dri.so libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib32/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib32/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/tls/swrast_dri.so libGL: OpenDriver: trying /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so libGL error: dlopen /usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so failed (/usr/lib/dri/swrast_dri.so: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory) libGL error: unable to load driver: swrast_dri.so libGL error: reverting to indirect rendering display: :0 screen: 0 direct rendering: No (If you want to find out why, try setting LIBGL_DEBUG=verbose) server glx vendor string: ATI server glx version string: 1.4 server glx extensions: GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI client glx version string: 1.4 client glx extensions: GLX_ARB_create_context, GLX_ARB_create_context_profile, GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_EXT_framebuffer_sRGB, GLX_EXT_create_context_es2_profile, GLX_MESA_copy_sub_buffer, GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_MESA_swap_control, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_OML_sync_control, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGI_video_sync, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap, GLX_INTEL_swap_event GLX version: 1.4 GLX extensions: GLX_ARB_get_proc_address, GLX_ARB_multisample, GLX_EXT_import_context, GLX_EXT_visual_info, GLX_EXT_visual_rating, GLX_MESA_multithread_makecurrent, GLX_OML_swap_method, GLX_SGI_make_current_read, GLX_SGI_swap_control, GLX_SGIS_multisample, GLX_SGIX_fbconfig, GLX_SGIX_pbuffer, GLX_SGIX_visual_select_group, GLX_EXT_texture_from_pixmap OpenGL vendor string: ATI Technologies Inc. OpenGL renderer string: AMD Radeon HD 6800 Series OpenGL version string: 1.4 (2.1 (4.2.11762 Compatibility Profile Context)) OpenGL extensions: GL_ARB_depth_texture, GL_ARB_draw_buffers, GL_ARB_fragment_program, GL_ARB_fragment_program_shadow, GL_ARB_framebuffer_object, GL_ARB_imaging, GL_ARB_multisample, GL_ARB_multitexture, GL_ARB_occlusion_query, GL_ARB_point_parameters, GL_ARB_point_sprite, GL_ARB_shadow, GL_ARB_shadow_ambient, GL_ARB_texture_border_clamp, GL_ARB_texture_compression, GL_ARB_texture_cube_map, GL_ARB_texture_env_add, GL_ARB_texture_env_combine, GL_ARB_texture_env_crossbar, GL_ARB_texture_env_dot3, GL_ARB_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_ARB_texture_non_power_of_two, GL_ARB_texture_rectangle, GL_ARB_transpose_matrix, GL_ARB_vertex_program, GL_ARB_window_pos, GL_EXT_abgr, GL_EXT_bgra, GL_EXT_blend_color, GL_EXT_blend_equation_separate, GL_EXT_blend_func_separate, GL_EXT_blend_minmax, GL_EXT_blend_subtract, GL_EXT_copy_texture, GL_EXT_draw_range_elements, GL_EXT_fog_coord, GL_EXT_framebuffer_blit, GL_EXT_framebuffer_multisample, GL_EXT_framebuffer_object, GL_EXT_multi_draw_arrays, GL_EXT_packed_pixels, GL_EXT_point_parameters, GL_EXT_rescale_normal, GL_EXT_secondary_color, GL_EXT_separate_specular_color, GL_EXT_shadow_funcs, GL_EXT_stencil_wrap, GL_EXT_subtexture, GL_EXT_texture3D, GL_EXT_texture_compression_s3tc, GL_EXT_texture_edge_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_env_add, GL_EXT_texture_env_combine, GL_EXT_texture_env_dot3, GL_EXT_texture_lod, GL_EXT_texture_lod_bias, GL_EXT_texture_mirror_clamp, GL_EXT_texture_object, GL_EXT_texture_rectangle, GL_EXT_vertex_array, GL_ATI_draw_buffers, GL_ATI_texture_env_combine3, GL_ATI_texture_mirror_once, GL_ATIX_texture_env_combine3, GL_IBM_texture_mirrored_repeat, GL_INGR_blend_func_separate, GL_NV_texture_rectangle, GL_SGIS_generate_mipmap, GL_SGIS_texture_border_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_edge_clamp, GL_SGIS_texture_lod, GL_SGIX_shadow_ambient, GL_SUN_multi_draw_arrays

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

  - by Dylan Smith

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

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• UPK Professional Customer Success Story: Medtronic

  - by [email protected]

  In case you missed the live event, be sure to listen to last week's UPK Customer iSeminar featuring Medtronic. This was the first iSeminar in our quarterly series to showcase UPK Professional (UPK and Knowledge Pathways). Donna Miller and Staci Gilbert gave viewers an inside look at samples of Medtronic's content as they shared their experiences, methodology and best practices for use of the solution. Here are some highlights of the call: • Medtronic initially purchased UPK Professional to support a multi-year, global SAP rollout for 9,000 end users located in 24 countries. • As time went on, they expanded their use of UPK Professional to include several of their other enterprise applications: PeopleSoft, Siebel CRM, Hyperion Financial Management, a number of SAP bolt-ons, Documentum, TrackWise, and many others. • In combination with their Saba LMS, UPK Professional has allowed Medtronic to create, deploy, track and certify consistent end user training for critical transactions and processes across their organization worldwide - essential for a company in a heavily regulated industry. • For key pieces of content or certain end user populations, some Medtronic business units localize/translate the global UPK content. Staci demonstrated examples of their SAP content which has been translated into Japanese. • In the live SAP environment, end users rely on UPK's context sensitive in-application performance support. Medtronic has found this to be very helpful post go-live, giving just-in-time support so end users are confident in a new system or when performing tasks they don't often touch (at quarter or year end). UPK also serves as Medtronic's internal Google. • Medtronic has realized savings on many fronts: reduction in support calls due to in-application performance support, elimination of their training clients, and speedier training (1.5 days rather than 5-7 days) of temporary workers by moving from ILT to a blended solution that includes UPK simulations for eLearning. Thanks again to Donna and Staci for an exceptional presentation. They offered so many great examples for anyone who's looking for ways to get more out of UPK or interested in learning about UPK Professional: Knowledge Pathways. - Karen Rihs, Oracle UPK Outbound Product Management

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• How do I get vmbuilder to progress?

  - by Avery Chan

  I've used the following command to create my vm: vmbuilder kvm ubuntu --verbose --suite=precise --flavour=virtual --arch=amd64 -o --libvirt=qemu:///system --tmpfs=- --ip=192.168.2.1 --part=/home/shared/vm1/vmbuilder.partition --templates=/home/shared/vm1/templates --user=vadmin --name=VM-Administrator --pass=vpass --addpkg=vim-nox --addpkg=unattended-upgrades --addpkg=acpid --firstboot=/home/shared/vm1/boot.sh --mem=256 --hostname=chameleon --bridge=br0 I've been trying to follow the direction here. My system just outputs this and it hangs at the last line: 2012-06-26 18:08:29,225 INFO : Mounting tmpfs under /tmp/tmpJbf1dZtmpfs 2012-06-26 18:08:29,234 INFO : Calling hook: preflight_check 2012-06-26 18:08:29,243 INFO : Calling hook: set_defaults 2012-06-26 18:08:29,244 INFO : Calling hook: bootstrap How can I get vmbuilder to continue the process instead of dying right here? I'm running 12.04. EDIT: Adding some additional output details When I ^C to get out of the hang I see this: ^C2012-06-26 18:19:29,622 INFO : Unmounting tmpfs from /tmp/tmpJbf1dZtmpfs Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/bin/vmbuilder", line 24, in <module> cli.main() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/contrib/cli.py", line 216, in main distro.build_chroot() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/distro.py", line 83, in build_chroot self.call_hooks('bootstrap') File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/distro.py", line 67, in call_hooks call_hooks(self, *args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/util.py", line 165, in call_hooks getattr(context, func, log_no_such_method)(*args, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/plugins/ubuntu/distro.py", line 136, in bootstrap self.suite.debootstrap() File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/plugins/ubuntu/dapper.py", line 269, in debootstrap run_cmd(*cmd, **kwargs) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/VMBuilder/util.py", line 113, in run_cmd fds = select.select([x.file for x in [mystdout, mystderr] if not x.closed], [], [])[0]

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• Ask the Readers: Which Search Engine Do You Use?

  - by Mysticgeek

  While Google dominates the search engine market, there are certainly other alternatives out there such as Bing and Yahoo. Today we’re curious about which one you use, and would you ever consider another one? Believe it or not…not everyone uses Google (surprising indeed), there are several other alternatives out there that some of you may be using and we’re interested in hearing about it. One of the more unique and interesting ones we previously covered is ixquick, which doesn’t save your IP or any information and can be customized quite nicely if you’re the paranoid type. We’re interested in hearing about which search engine you currently use. Would you ever switch to a different one? Have you ever tried to experiment and not use Google (or your favorite engine) for a week? Leave a comment below and join in the discussion! Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips A Few Things I’ve Learned from Writing at How-To GeekModify Firefox’s Search Bar Behavior with SearchLoad OptionsGain Access to a Search Box in Google ChromeSearch Alternative Search Engines from within Bing’s Search PageCombine the Address & Search Bars in Firefox 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Download Wallpapers From National Geographic Site Spyware Blaster v4.3 Yes, it’s Patch Tuesday Generate Stunning Tag Clouds With Tagxedo Install, Remove and HIDE Fonts in Windows 7 Need Help with Your Home Network?

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• Oracle Tuxedo JCA Adapter 11gR1

  - by deepak.goel

  As part of Tuxedo 11gR1 release, we introduced Oracle Tuxedo JCA Adapter. Tuxedo JCA Adapter is based JCA 1.5 specification and should be deployable on any JCA 1.5 compliant application server. I am saying "should" as we have tested Tuxedo JCA Adapter with WebLogic Server, IBM WebSphere and RedHat JBoss only. This adapter provides bi-directional service invocation and transaction and security context propagation from app server to Tuxedo. Basically Tuxedo JCA Adapter provides similar functionality to WebLogic Tuxedo Connector (WTC), if you are already familiar with it. One question we often receive is whether Tuxedo JCA Adapter 11g will interoperate with Tuxedo versions prior to 11g. Answer to this question is yes. Tuxedo JCA Adapter uses Tuxedo domains protocol, is deployed on application server and can interoperate with any current Tuxedo version, starting from version 8.1 and above. You can find datasheet, product binaries and documentation for Tuxedo JCA adapter at OTN at http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/tuxedo/index.html. Also, there is a sample application at http://www.oracle.com/technology/sample_code/products/tuxedo/index.html to get you started. Deepak Goel

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• Raleigh theme on LightDM, Ubuntu desktop, Nautilus window, menus & menu-bars

  - by Tassos Seligkas

  After performing an upgrade from Natty to Oneiric, I had a problem similar to the one reported in here at every system boot: Desktop forgets theme? Everything, from the LigthDM greeter to the ubuntu desktop used the ugly raleigh theme, apart from firefox, thunderbird few other applications after logging in. Unfortunately none of the solutions suggested in the topic above worked for me. The only way I could get acceptable appearance would be to switch to gnome at login and using the Adwaita theme. The lightdm greeter still uses the raleigh theme though. Unfortunately, I tried some "brute-force" methods by reinstalling (sudo apt-get install --reinstall) ubuntu-desktop, unity, unity-common, unity-greeter, gnome-session, gtk2-engines. I also tried moving .config, .gconf, .gconfd, .gnome, .gnome2 to a backup dir to reset account desktop preferences. None of the above solved the issue. On the contrary, logging-in to Ubuntu setup does not show unity and window decorations anymore. My fallback remains the Gnome logon and the Adwaita theme. This is my workstation machine I am hosting Ubuntu on, so, though possible, it is time consuming to perform a backup and format-reinstall ubuntu 11.10. Could you please let me know if I can get an alternative way of repairing my ubuntu desktop? (I believe it all started when, during the 11.04-to-11.10 upgrade, the installation of downloaded packages for oneiric broke when nautilus-dropbox failed to access the dropbox servers - I am behind a proxy but with proper proxy settings had no problems using apt-get & synaptic. However I removed dropbox and resumed partial installation on second boot.)

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• Handling multiple Scene in AndEngine

  - by Asad

  I am Developing a game in AndEngine Gles2. I have splash scene, loading scene, menu scene and Level1 scene. I am using a Screen Manager to manage all scenes through which i can easily switch between splash, loading and menu scene, the level1 scene is also loaded from menu perfectly but problem occur when i go back to menu scene on the completion of level, screen turned to black and nothing shown after that. I think the problem is with unloading the resources of Level1 because the switching between other scene is perfect. I can't give complete code, as it is to much lengthy. I am using bitmapTexture region, Sprites, bodies, physics Word, hud and fixtures etc. here is my unload method.. 1 more thing when i loaded the menu scene at the end of level 1 screen turn to black, but the music played and all logs are showed in logcat which i set in menu scene. unload(){ setChildrenIgnorUpdate(); clearChildScene(); clearEntityModifier(); clearTouchAreas(); clearUpdateHandler(); BitmapTextureManager.getInstance().destroyInstance(); destroyPhysics(); } Please Any help...

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• The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011

  - by Justin Garrison

  This year, How-To Geek’s own Justin was on-site at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, where every gadget manufacturer shows off their latest creations, and he was able to sit down and get hands-on with most of them. Here’s the ones that just didn’t make the cut. Make sure you also read our Best of CES 2011 post, where we cover the greatest gadgets that we found. Keep reading to take a look at the best of the worst products, that might have initially appeared good but showed their true colors after we spent some time with them Latest Features How-To Geek ETC HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy How to Combine Rescue Disks to Create the Ultimate Windows Repair Disk What is Camera Raw, and Why Would a Professional Prefer it to JPG? The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: The Basics How To Boot 10 Different Live CDs From 1 USB Flash Drive The 20 Best How-To Geek Linux Articles of 2010 Arctic Theme for Windows 7 Gives Your Desktop an Icy Touch Install LibreOffice via PPA and Receive Auto-Updates in Ubuntu Creative Portraits Peek Inside the Guts of Modern Electronics Scenic Winter Lane Wallpaper to Create a Relaxing Mood Access Your Web Apps Directly Using the Context Menu in Chrome The Deep – Awesome Use of Metal Objects as Deep Sea Creatures [Video]

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

  - by James Michael Hare

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

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