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• ???????????! Java EE 6???????????????/???????!!????UFJ????????????????????????Java EE 6??????JavaOne Tokyo 2012?????|WebLogic Channel|??????

  - by ???02

  ??UFJ?????????????????????????IT??????? ?????????UFJ?????????/????????2007?7????????????JavaEE5?????????Java EE??????????????????????2012?4???????JavaOne Tokyo 2012??????????Java EE 6?????????????????????????Java EE 6???????????????????????????????????????????Java EE 6???????"??????????????"???????????????????????????????????(???)Java EE 6?????????·?????????????????UFJ??????????????? IT??????? ????????　???????????????????Java EE????????????????????J2EE 1.4??????????????????????????????(EoD:Ease of Development)?????????????????????2006??????Java EE 5?????????·??????????????????????EoD????????????????Java EE 5????????????????????????????Java Servlet?JavaServer Faces(JSF)?????????????API?EoD????????????Dependency Injection(DI???????)?Aspect Oriented Programming(AOP???????????????)???????????????RESTful Web?????API????????????????　????????????????2009?12?????????????Java EE 6??????Java EE 6???????????????·??????????????????????????????????????????????????·??????????????????????????????????????????????????????Java EE 6????????????????????????Java EE??????Java EE 6????????????　Java EE 6????1?????????????????????????????????????Java EE 6???JSF??????1.2??2.0??????????????JSF 1.2?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????JSF 2.0??????????????????????????????????(???)????????Ajax??????????????????????????????????????????????????????JSF????????????????UI?????????????????(?????)?????HTML???JSF???????????HTML?JSF????????????(?)???????????????JSF 2.0????????????　???EJB??????3.0??3.1??????????EJB 3.1???????EoD???????????????????????????????????????Singleton??????????Session Bean????????????Java Persistence API(JPA)??????1.0??2.0????????????????????(?????)??????????????　???????Java EE 6???????API???/???????????????Java EE 6?????"?????"???????Contexts and Dependency Injection(CDI) 1.0?????????JSF?EJB?JPA???????????DI?????????????????????Java EE 5???DI????????Java EE?????????????????????????????CDI??????????JavaBeans????DI???????????????????CDI??????????????????·?????????????1???????????????(???????)?????????????????????????????????·???????　??????????API?????1??????????Java API for RESTful Web Services(JAX-RS) 1.1?????????????????Java?RESTful Web????????????API?????????2???????1???SOAP????Web??????????????????????????????????????????????????1???Web??????????JavaScript????·???·???????????????????JAX-RS???　????????????????????Java EE 6?????????????????????????EoD???????:???????JSF?????????????????????????:?????????API?????????????????????????????????????API?Java EE????????????????????????????????EJB?????EAR???????????WAR??????????????????????????????:JNDI????????????(?????)????????????Java EE 6??????????????????????!　?????????????·???????????????????????????Java EE 6??????????Java EE 5????????????????????????????????????????????Web?????????????????????Model/View/Controller(MVC)???????????????????????????(1)HTML?JSF???????????(JSF 2.0???)(2)????UI????????????????(JSF 2.0???)(3)JavaScript+JAX-RS?????????MVC????(1)HTML?JSF???????????(JSF 2.0???)(2)????UI????????????????(JSF 2.0???)(3)JavaScript+JAX-RS?????　??????(3)JavaScript+JAX-RS???????????????????????????????????·??????????·???????????????????????????????????????????????????????????(???)??????　???????????3?????(3????)??????????????????3?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????/????????????????????????????????????????????????????????·???????????????????????????????????????　??????????????3??????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????Java EE 6???CDI????????????·???(JSF?EJB?JPA)??????????????????????EJB??????WAR?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????? Java EE 6??????????????　???????????????????????????????(?????·???????)???????Java EE 6???????????????????????????????????????????????·?????????????????????????Java EE 6???????????????????????API????????????????????????????????????·????????Java EE 6???????　????Java EE 6????????????????????????????????Java EE 6???????????????????????Java EE 6??????????????????????????????????????????????Java EE 6???????????????????????????

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• Xcode/iPhone Development 6 months in - Annoyances

  - by clearbrian

  Hi I've been iPhone programming for 6 months and come from a PC/Java/Eclipse background and still have a few annoyances with Xcode/iPhone programming I wonder are there any shortcuts to. Is there any way to prevent multiple windows opening all the time in XCode? a) When you click on the Errors/Warnings in the bottom right of the status bar build errors are shown in separate window. Any way to get these to show in the main editor? b) Anyway to get debugger to appear in main editor. I have a big screen iMac and it's still window hell on Macs. When you come from Alt-Tab the Mac is a nightmare. 2) Anyway to get a toolbar item on the main editor to: a) Open Console (I know CMD-thingy-R) b) Open Break points (you have to open Debugger first then breakpoints) I know there's keyboard shortcuts but I have only left hand free others on the trackball so any keys on right hand side of keyboard are too far. I know you can add Finder toolbar scripts (just wondering if anyway to extend Xcode). Are there utilities to extend Xcode? Scripts/Automator/Any Services I can setup to help. Can you automate Xcode like you can with Windows/ActiveX/VBA 3) Limit lookups using CMD + double click. If I double click on a variable to find its definition using CMD + double click it shows every occurrence of all variables with that name. (annoying it you name all you maps mapView) Anyway to get it to limit to the current class or at least order so current class is first. 4) Find doesn't seem to loop backwards if result all above cursor position I'm in a class and I hit CMD + F for find. Find box appears. I enter some text hit return. It says I have x matches but only back arrow is highlight in Find But when I hit < it does nothing. I need to scroll to the top and redo the search. If the text is both forwards and backwards then both < are highlighted and it works. is this a bug or a 'feature' Missing Eclipse features I have been looking at the User Script menu but was wondering how powerful they are? 5) any scripts around to generate source from members such as description: @property @synthesize if I add a new member, run a script will generate @property/@syntesize and release in dealloc 7) any good sites for scripts? SCM Im having problems with SCM and Folders on HD under project Classes directory. You get a library e.g. JSON. It usually comes as a folder. You copy it to the /Classes for your project. /Classes/JSON I create a Group for the Library in Xcode under Classes group. Classes JSON I drag the files from the folder into xcode into the JSON Group. I add them to the SCM and icon changes from ? to A but if I try and commit them it say folder /JSON is not under SCM. Can you drag a folder into Xcode so that it AND its files get included in SCM? Anyway to stop Xcode Help from being on top all the time. I keep feeling like punching it and telling it to get out of the way! :) I dont mind it open just not in the way once I've finished. Yes I know I can Ctrl-W Sites: the main site I use to learn Obj-C are : stackoverflow.com Google code Search - tonnes of full apps on here http://www.iphonedevsdk.com/forum/iphone-sdk-development/ Apple Developers Forums (anyway to get RSS feed to these or is that blasphemy :) ) Safari - 100s of IT book though prob too many to keep up :) any others? Any site that gives simple examples for Obj-C/ UIKit The docs just show the methods but actual examples (Google code search has helped a lot here)

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• How to write a Mork File Format file in Java?

  - by Sumit Ghosh

  Iam working on a project which involves writing a Mork File (Mork is a database format used by Mozilla to store url history and other information.) It has been replaced by an enhanced version of SQLite in latest Mozilla 3.0. Now I have the code for parsing a Mork File , but Iam struggling a bit with this part of the the file. <(A9=3)(81=)([email protected])(80=0)(85=2)(86=4ac18267)(83=1) (87=Mark)(88=Colbath)(89=Mark Colbath)([email protected])(8B [email protected])(8C=512-282-2509)(8D=+504-9907-1342)(8E=512-282-2510) (8F=512-282-2511)(90=512-282-2512)(91=Two Blocks Past Oxen Team)(92 =Villa Alicia)(93=Siguatepeque)(94=Comayagua)(95=NA)(96=Honduras) (97=9309 Heatherwood Dr)(98=Apartment 1)(99=Austin)(9A=TX)(9B=78748) (9C=USA)(9D=Programmer)(9E=Programming)(9F=MPC Solutions)(A0 =rentaprogrammer)(A1=http://www.mpcsol.com)(A2 =http://www.jesuslovesthelittlechildren.org)(A3=Hannah)(A4=John) (A5=Faith)(A6=Timothy)(A7=Some notes go here.)(A8 [email protected])> {1:^80 {(k^C0:c)(s=9)} [1:^82(^BF=3)] [1(^83=)(^84=)(^85=)(^86=)(^87=)(^88=)(^89^82)(^8A^82)(^8B=)(^8C=) (^8D=)(^8E=0)(^8F=2)(^90=0)(^91=)(^92=)(^93=)(^94=)(^95=)(^96=) (^97=)(^98=)(^99=)(^9A=)(^9B=)(^9C=)(^9D=)(^9E=)(^9F=)(^A0=)(^A1=) (^A2=)(^A3=)(^A4=)(^A5=)(^A6=)(^A7=)(^A8=)(^A9=)(^AA=)(^AB=)(^AC=) (^AD=)(^AE=)(^AF=)(^B0=)(^B1=)(^B2=)(^B3=)(^B4=)(^B5=)(^B6=)(^B7=) (^B8=)(^B9=)(^BA=)(^BB=)(^BC^86)(^BD=1)] [2(^83^87)(^84^88)(^85=)(^86=)(^87^89)(^88=)(^89^8A)(^8A^8A)(^8B^8B) (^8C=)(^8D=)(^8E=2)(^8F=0)(^90=1)(^91^8C)(^92^8D)(^93^8E)(^94^8F) (^95^90)(^96=)(^97=)(^98=)(^99=)(^9A=)(^9B^91)(^9C^92)(^9D^93)(^9E^94) (^9F=NA)(^A0^96)(^A1^97)(^A2^98)(^A3^99)(^A4=TX)(^A5^9B)(^A6^9C) (^A7^9D)(^A8^9E)(^A9^9F)(^AA^A0)(^AB=)(^AC=)(^AD=)(^AE=)(^AF=)(^B0=) (^B1=)(^B2^A1)(^B3^A2)(^B4=)(^B5=)(^B6=)(^B7^A3)(^B8^A4)(^B9^A5) (^BA^A6)(^BB^A7)(^BC=0)(^BD=2)] [3(^83=)(^84=)(^85=)(^86=)(^87=)(^88=)(^89^A8)(^8A^A8)(^8B=)(^8C=) (^8D=)(^8E=0)(^8F=0)(^90=0)(^91=)(^92=)(^93=)(^94=)(^95=)(^96=) (^97=)(^98=)(^99=)(^9A=)(^9B=)(^9C=)(^9D=)(^9E=)(^9F=)(^A0=)(^A1=) (^A2=)(^A3=)(^A4=)(^A5=)(^A6=)(^A7=)(^A8=)(^A9=)(^AA=)(^AB=)(^AC=) (^AD=)(^AE=)(^AF=)(^B0=)(^B1=)(^B2=)(^B3=)(^B4=)(^B5=)(^B6=)(^B7=) (^B8=)(^B9=)(^BA=)(^BB=)(^BC=0)(^BD=3)]} Can someone tell me how this part of the Mork file relates to the data given below? run: NickName=,LastModifiedDate=4ac18267,FaxNumberType=,BirthMonth=,LastName=,HomePhone=,WorkCountry=,HomePhoneType=,PreferMailFormat=0,CellularNumber=,FamilyName=,[email protected],AnniversaryMonth=,HomeCity=,WorkState=,HomeCountry=,PhoneticFirstName=,PhoneticLastName=,HomeState=,WorkAddress=,WebPage1=,WebPage2=,HomeAddress2=,WorkZipCode=,_AimScreenName=,AnniversaryYear=,WorkPhoneType=,Notes=,WorkAddress2=,WorkPhone=,Custom3=,Custom4=,Custom1=,Custom2=,PagerNumber=,AnniversaryDay=,WorkCity=,AllowRemoteContent=0,CellularNumberType=,FaxNumber=,PopularityIndex=2,FirstName=,SpouseName=,CardType=,Department=,Company=,HomeAddress=,BirthDay=,SecondEmail=,RecordKey=1,DisplayName=,DefaultEmail=,DefaultAddress=,BirthYear=,Category=,PagerNumberType=,[email protected],JobTitle=,HomeZipCode=, NickName=,LastModifiedDate=0,FaxNumberType=,BirthMonth=,LastName=Colbath,HomePhone=+504-9907-1342,WorkCountry=USA,HomePhoneType=,PreferMailFormat=2,CellularNumber=512-282-2512,FamilyName=,[email protected],AnniversaryMonth=,HomeCity=Siguatepeque,WorkState=TX,HomeCountry=Honduras,PhoneticFirstName=,PhoneticLastName=,HomeState=Comayagua,WorkAddress=9309 HeatherwoodDr,WebPage1=http://www.mpcsol.com,WebPage2=http://www.jesuslovesthelittlechildren.org,HomeAddress2=VillaAlicia,WorkZipCode=78748,_AimScreenName=rentaprogrammer,AnniversaryYear=,WorkPhoneType=,Notes=Some notes go here.,WorkAddress2=Apartment 1,WorkPhone=512-282-2509,Custom3=Faith,Custom4=Timothy,Custom1=Hannah,Custom2=John,PagerNumber=512-282-2511,AnniversaryDay=,WorkCity=Austin,AllowRemoteContent=1,CellularNumberType=,FaxNumber=512-282-2510,PopularityIndex=0,FirstName=Mark,SpouseName=,CardType=,Department=Programming,Company=MPC Solutions,HomeAddress=Two Blocks Past Oxen Team,BirthDay=,[email protected],RecordKey=2,DisplayName=Mark Colbath,DefaultEmail=,DefaultAddress=,BirthYear=,Category=,PagerNumberType=,[email protected],JobTitle=Programmer,HomeZipCode=NA, NickName=,LastModifiedDate=0,FaxNumberType=,BirthMonth=,LastName=,HomePhone=,WorkCountry=,HomePhoneType=,PreferMailFormat=0,CellularNumber=,FamilyName=,[email protected],AnniversaryMonth=,HomeCity=,WorkState=,HomeCountry=,PhoneticFirstName=,PhoneticLastName=,HomeState=,WorkAddress=,WebPage1=,WebPage2=,HomeAddress2=,WorkZipCode=,_AimScreenName=,AnniversaryYear=,WorkPhoneType=,Notes=,WorkAddress2=,WorkPhone=,Custom3=,Custom4=,Custom1=,Custom2=,PagerNumber=,AnniversaryDay=,WorkCity=,AllowRemoteContent=0,CellularNumberType=,FaxNumber=,PopularityIndex=0,FirstName=,SpouseName=,CardType=,Department=,Company=,HomeAddress=,BirthDay=,SecondEmail=,RecordKey=3,DisplayName=,DefaultEmail=,DefaultAddress=,BirthYear=,Category=,PagerNumberType=,[email protected],JobTitle=,HomeZipCode=, I have been breaking my head for almost 2 days now, please someone who is part of the mozilla team can help, it would be really appreciated.

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• What is the coolest thing you can do in <10 lines of simple code? Help me inspire beginners!

  - by Tom Ritter

  I'm looking for the coolest thing you can do in a few lines of simple code. I'm sure you can write a Mandelbrot set in Haskell in 15 lines but it's difficult to follow. My goal is to inspire students that programming is cool. We know that programming is cool because you can create anything you imagine - it's the ultimate creative outlet. I want to inspire these beginners and get them over as many early-learning humps as I can. Now, my reasons are selfish. I'm teaching an Intro to Computing course to a group of 60 half-engineering, half business majors; all freshmen. They are the students who came from underprivileged High schools. From my past experience, the group is generally split as follows: a few rock-stars, some who try very hard and kind of get it, the few who try very hard and barely get it, and the few who don't care. I want to reach as many of these groups as effectively as I can. Here's an example of how I'd use a computer program to teach: Here's an example of what I'm looking for: a 1-line VBS script to get your computer to talk to you: CreateObject("sapi.spvoice").Speak InputBox("Enter your text","Talk it") I could use this to demonstrate order of operations. I'd show the code, let them play with it, then explain that There's a lot going on in that line, but the computer can make sense of it, because it knows the rules. Then I'd show them something like this: 4(5*5) / 10 + 9(.25 + .75) And you can see that first I need to do is (5*5). Then I can multiply for 4. And now I've created the Object. Dividing by 10 is the same as calling Speak - I can't Speak before I have an object, and I can't divide before I have 100. Then on the other side I first create an InputBox with some instructions for how to display it. When I hit enter on the input box it evaluates or "returns" whatever I entered. (Hint: 'oooooo' makes a funny sound) So when I say Speak, the right side is what to Speak. And I get that from the InputBox. So when you do several things on a line, like: x = 14 + y; You need to be aware of the order of things. First we add 14 and y. Then we put the result (what it evaluates to, or returns) into x. That's my goal, to have a bunch of these cool examples to demonstrate and teach the class while they have fun. I tried this example on my roommate and while I may not use this as the first lesson, she liked it and learned something. Some cool mathematica programs that make beautiful graphs or shapes that are easy to understand would be good ideas and I'm going to look into those. Here are some complicated actionscript examples but that's a bit too advanced and I can't teach flash. What other ideas do you have?

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• python: what are efficient techniques to deal with deeply nested data in a flexible manner?

  - by AlexandreS

  My question is not about a specific code snippet but more general, so please bear with me: How should I organize the data I'm analyzing, and which tools should I use to manage it? I'm using python and numpy to analyse data. Because the python documentation indicates that dictionaries are very optimized in python, and also due to the fact that the data itself is very structured, I stored it in a deeply nested dictionary. Here is a skeleton of the dictionary: the position in the hierarchy defines the nature of the element, and each new line defines the contents of a key in the precedent level: [AS091209M02] [AS091209M01] [AS090901M06] ... [100113] [100211] [100128] [100121] [R16] [R17] [R03] [R15] [R05] [R04] [R07] ... [1263399103] ... [ImageSize] [FilePath] [Trials] [Depth] [Frames] [Responses] ... [N01] [N04] ... [Sequential] [Randomized] [Ch1] [Ch2] Edit: To explain a bit better my data set: [individual] ex: [AS091209M02] [imaging session (date string)] ex: [100113] [Region imaged] ex: [R16] [timestamp of file] ex [1263399103] [properties of file] ex: [Responses] [regions of interest in image ] ex [N01] [format of data] ex [Sequential] [channel of acquisition: this key indexes an array of values] ex [Ch1] The type of operations I perform is for instance to compute properties of the arrays (listed under Ch1, Ch2), pick up arrays to make a new collection, for instance analyze responses of N01 from region 16 (R16) of a given individual at different time points, etc. This structure works well for me and is very fast, as promised. I can analyze the full data set pretty quickly (and the dictionary is far too small to fill up my computer's ram : half a gig). My problem comes from the cumbersome manner in which I need to program the operations of the dictionary. I often have stretches of code that go like this: for mk in dic.keys(): for rgk in dic[mk].keys(): for nk in dic[mk][rgk].keys(): for ik in dic[mk][rgk][nk].keys(): for ek in dic[mk][rgk][nk][ik].keys(): #do something which is ugly, cumbersome, non reusable, and brittle (need to recode it for any variant of the dictionary). I tried using recursive functions, but apart from the simplest applications, I ran into some very nasty bugs and bizarre behaviors that caused a big waste of time (it does not help that I don't manage to debug with pdb in ipython when I'm dealing with deeply nested recursive functions). In the end the only recursive function I use regularly is the following: def dicExplorer(dic, depth = -1, stp = 0): '''prints the hierarchy of a dictionary. if depth not specified, will explore all the dictionary ''' if depth - stp == 0: return try : list_keys = dic.keys() except AttributeError: return stp += 1 for key in list_keys: else: print '+%s> [\'%s\']' %(stp * '---', key) dicExplorer(dic[key], depth, stp) I know I'm doing this wrong, because my code is long, noodly and non-reusable. I need to either use better techniques to flexibly manipulate the dictionaries, or to put the data in some database format (sqlite?). My problem is that since I'm (badly) self-taught in regards to programming, I lack practical experience and background knowledge to appreciate the options available. I'm ready to learn new tools (SQL, object oriented programming), whatever it takes to get the job done, but I am reluctant to invest my time and efforts into something that will be a dead end for my needs. So what are your suggestions to tackle this issue, and be able to code my tools in a more brief, flexible and re-usable manner?

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• Error in python - don't understand

  - by Jasper

  Hi, I'm creating a game, and am quite new to Python generally. I created a function 'descriptionGenerator()' which generates a description for characters and objects either randomly or using variables passed to it. It seemed to be working, but every now and then it wouldn't work correctly. So i placed it in a loop, and it never seems to be able to complete the loop without one of the iterations having this problem. The code is as follows: #+------------------------------------------+ #| Name: bitsandpieces.py | #| A module for the 'Europa I' game | #| created for the Game Making Competition | #| | #| Date Created/Modified: | #| 3/4/10 | 3/4/10 | #+------------------------------------------+ # Import the required modules # Import system modules: import time import random # Import 3rd party modules: # Import game modules: # Define the 'descriptionGenerator()' function def descriptionGenerator(descriptionVariables): descriptionVariableSize = len(descriptionVariables) if descriptionVariables[0] == 'char': # If there is only one variable ('char'), create a random description if descriptionVariableSize == 1: # Define choices for descriptionVariables to be generated from gender_choices = ['male', 'female'] hair_choices = ['black', 'red', 'blonde', 'grey', 'brown', 'blue'] hair_choices2 = ['long', 'short', 'cropped', 'curly'] size_choices = ['tubby', 'thin', 'fat', 'almost twig-like'] demeanour_choices = ['glowering', 'bright', 'smiling', 'sombre', 'intelligent'] impression_choices = ['likeable', 'unlikeable', 'dangerous', 'annoying', 'afraid'] # Define description variables gender = random.choice(gender_choices) height = str(float('0.' + str(random.randint(1, 9))) + float(random.randint(1, 2))) if float(height) > 1.8: height_string = 'tall' if float(height) > 2: height_string = 'very tall' elif float(height) < 1.8 and float(height) > 1.5: height_string = 'average' elif float(height) < 1.5: height_string = 'short' if float(height) < 1.3: height_string = 'very short' hair = random.choice(hair_choices2) + ' ' + random.choice(hair_choices) size = random.choice(size_choices) demeanour = random.choice(demeanour_choices) impression = random.choice(impression_choices) # Collect description variables in list 'randomDescriptionVariables' randomDescriptionVariables = ['char', gender, height, height_string, hair, size, demeanour, impression] # Generate description using the 'descriptionGenerator' function descriptionGenerator(randomDescriptionVariables) # Generate the description of a character using the variables passed to the function elif descriptionVariableSize == 8: if descriptionVariables[1] == 'male': if descriptionVariables[7] != 'afraid': print """A %s man, about %s m tall. He has %s hair and is %s. He is %s and you get the impression that he is %s.""" %(descriptionVariables[3], descriptionVariables[2], descriptionVariables[4], descriptionVariables[5], descriptionVariables[6], descriptionVariables[7]) elif descriptionVariables[7] == 'afraid': print """A %s man, about %s m tall. He has %s hair and is %s. He is %s.\nYou feel that you should be %s of him.""" %(descriptionVariables[3], descriptionVariables[2], descriptionVariables[4], descriptionVariables[5], descriptionVariables[6], descriptionVariables[7]) elif descriptionVariables[1] == 'female': if descriptionVariables[7] != 'afraid': print """A %s woman, about %s m tall. She has %s hair and is %s. She is %s and you get the impression that she is %s.""" %(descriptionVariables[3], descriptionVariables[2], descriptionVariables[4], descriptionVariables[5], descriptionVariables[6], descriptionVariables[7]) elif descriptionVariables[7] == 'afraid': print """A %s woman, about %s m tall. She has %s hair and is %s. She is %s.\nYou feel that you should be %s of her.""" %(descriptionVariables[3], descriptionVariables[2], descriptionVariables[4], descriptionVariables[5], descriptionVariables[6], descriptionVariables[7]) else: pass elif descriptionVariables[0] == 'obj': # Insert code here 2 deal with object stuff pass print print myDescriptionVariables = ['char'] i = 0 while i < 30: print print print descriptionGenerator(myDescriptionVariables) i = i + 1 time.sleep(10) When it fails to properly execute it says this: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/Users/Jasper/Development/Programming/MyProjects/Game Making Challenge/Europa I/Code/Code 2.0/bitsandpieces.py", line 79, in <module> descriptionGenerator(myDescriptionVariables) File "/Users/Jasper/Development/Programming/MyProjects/Game Making Challenge/Europa I/Code/Code 2.0/bitsandpieces.py", line 50, in descriptionGenerator randomDescriptionVariables = ['char', gender, height, height_string, hair, size, demeanour, impression] UnboundLocalError: local variable 'height_string' referenced before assignment Thanks for any help with this

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• Analyzing bitmaps produced by NSAffineTransform and CILineOverlay filters

  - by Adam

  I am trying to manipulate an image using a chain of CIFilters, and then examine each byte of the resulting image (bitmap). Long term, I do not need to display the resulting image (bitmap) -- I just need to "analyze" it in memory. But near-term I am displaying it on screen, to help with debugging. I have some "bitmap examination" code that works as expected when examining the NSImage (bitmap representation) I use as my input (loaded from a JPG file into an NSImage). And it SOMETIMES works as expected when I use it on the outputBitmap produced by the code below. More specifically, when I use an NSAffineTransform filter to create outputBitmap, then outputBitmap contains the data I would expect. But if I use a CILineOverlay filter to create the outputBitmap, none of the bytes in the bitmap have any data in them. I believe both of these filters are working as expected, because when I display their results on screen (via outputImageView), they look "correct." Yet when I examine the outputBitmaps, the one created from the CILineOverlay filter is "empty" while the one created from NSAffineTransfer contains data. Furthermore, if I chain the two filters together, the final resulting bitmap only seems to contain data if I run the AffineTransform last. Seems very strange, to me??? My understanding (from reading the CI programming guide) is that the CIImage should be considered an "image recipe" rather than an actual image, because the image isn't actually created until the image is "drawn." Given that, it would make sense that the CIimage bitmap doesn't have data -- but I don't understand why it has data after I run the NSAffineTransform but doesn't have data after running the CILineOverlay transform? Basically, I am trying to determine if creating the NSCIImageRep (ir in the code below) from the CIImage (myResult) is equivalent to "drawing" the CIImage -- in other words if that should force the bitmap to be populated? If someone knows the answer to this please let me know -- it will save me a few hours of trial and error experimenting! Finally, if the answer is "you must draw to a graphics context" ... then I have another question: would I need to do something along the lines of what is described in the Quartz 2D Programming Guide: Graphics Contexts, listing 2-7 and 2-8: drawing to a bitmap graphics context? That is the path down which I am about to head ... but it seems like a lot of code just to force the bitmap data to be dumped into an array where I can get at it. So if there is an easier or better way please let me know. I just want to take the data (that should be) in myResult and put it into a bitmap array where I can access it at the byte level. And since I already have code that works with an NSBitmapImageRep, unless doing it that way is a bad idea for some reason that is not readily apparent to me, then I would prefer to "convert" myResult into an NSBitmapImageRep. CIImage * myResult = [transform valueForKey:@"outputImage"]; NSImage *outputImage; NSCIImageRep *ir = [NSCIImageRep alloc]; ir = [NSCIImageRep imageRepWithCIImage:myResult]; outputImage = [[[NSImage alloc] initWithSize: NSMakeSize(inputImage.size.width, inputImage.size.height)] autorelease]; [outputImage addRepresentation:ir]; [outputImageView setImage: outputImage]; NSBitmapImageRep *outputBitmap = [[NSBitmapImageRep alloc] initWithCIImage: myResult]; Thanks, Adam

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• Where do I start ?

  - by Panthe

  Brief History: Just graduated high school, learned a bit of python and C++, have no friends with any helpful computer knowledge at all. Out of anyone i met in my school years I was probably the biggest nerd, but no one really knew. I consider my self to have a vast amount of knowledge on computers and tech then the average person. built/fixed tons of computers, and ability to troubleshoot pretty much any problem I came across. Now that high school is over, Ive really been thinking about my career. Loving, living computers for the past 15 years of my life I decided to take my ability's and try to learn computer programming, why I didn't start earlier I don't know, seems to be big mistake on my part... Doing some research I concluded that Python was the first programming language I should learn, since it was high level and easier to understand then C++ and Java. I also knew that to become good at what I did I needed to know more then just 2 or 3 languages, which didn't seem like a big problem considering once I learned the way Python worked, mainly syntax changed, and the rest would come naturally. I watched a couple of youtube videos, downloaded some book pdf's and snooped around from some tutorials here and there to get the hang of what to do. A two solid weeks had passed of trying to understand the syntax, create small programs that used the basic functions and understanding how it worked, I think i have got the hang of it. It breaks down into what ive been dealing with all this time (although i kinda knew) is that, input,output, loops, functions and other things derived from 0's and 1's storing data and recalling it, ect. (A VERY BASIC IDEA). Ive been able to create small programs, Hangman, file storing, temperature conversion, Caeser Cipher decode/encoding, Fibonacci Sequence and more, which i can create and understand how each work. Being 2 weeks into this, I have learned alot. Nothing at all compared to what i should be learning in the years to come if i get a grip on what I'm doing. While doing these programs I wont stop untill I've done doing a practice problem on a book, which embarresing enough will take me a couple hour depending on the complexity of it. I absolutly will not put aside the challenge until its complete, WHICH CAN BE EXTREMELY DRAINING, ive tried most problems without cheating and reached success, which makes me feel extremely proud of my self after completing something after much trial and error. After all this I have met the demon, alogrithm's which seem to be key to effiecent code. I cant seem to rap my head around some of the computer codes people put out there using numbers, and sometimes even basic functions, I have been able to understand them after a while but i know there are alot more complex things to come, considering my self smart, functions that require complex codes, actually hurt my brain. NOTHING EVER IN LIFE HURT MY BRAIN....... not even math classes in highschool, trying to understand some of the stuff people put out there makes me feel like i have a mental disadvantage lol... i still walk forward though, crossing my fingers that the understanding will come with time. Sorry if is this is long i just wish someone takes all these things into consideration when answering my question. even through all these downsides im still pushing through and continuing to try and get good at this, i know reading these tutorials wont make me any good unless i can become creative and make my own, understand other peoples programs, so this leads me to the simple question i could have asked in the beginning..... WHERE IN THE WORLD DO I START ? Ive been trying to find out how to understand some of the open source projects, how i can work with experianced coders to learn from them and help them, but i dont think thats even possible by the way how far people's knowledge is compared to me, i have no freinds who i can learn from, can someone help me and guide me into the right direction.. i have a huge motivation to get good at coding, anything information would be extremely helpful

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• bubble sort on array of c structures not sorting properly

  - by xmpirate

  I have the following program for books record and I want to sort the records on name of book. the code isn't showing any error but it's not sorting all the records. #include "stdio.h" #include "string.h" #define SIZE 5 struct books{ //define struct char name[100],author[100]; int year,copies; }; struct books book1[SIZE],book2[SIZE],*pointer; //define struct vars void sort(struct books *,int); //define sort func main() { int i; char c; for(i=0;i<SIZE;i++) //scanning values { gets(book1[i].name); gets(book1[i].author); scanf("%d%d",&book1[i].year,&book1[i].copies); while((c = getchar()) != '\n' && c != EOF); } pointer=book1; sort(pointer,SIZE); //sort call i=0; //printing values while(i<SIZE) { printf("##########################################################################\n"); printf("Book: %s\nAuthor: %s\nYear of Publication: %d\nNo of Copies: %d\n",book1[i].name,book1[i].author,book1[i].year,book1[i].copies); printf("##########################################################################\n"); i++; } } void sort(struct books *pointer,int n) { int i,j,sorted=0; struct books temp; for(i=0;(i<n-1)&&(sorted==0);i++) //bubble sort on the book name { sorted=1; for(j=0;j<n-i-1;j++) { if(strcmp((*pointer).name,(*(pointer+1)).name)>0) { //copy to temp val strcpy(temp.name,(*pointer).name); strcpy(temp.author,(*pointer).author); temp.year=(*pointer).year; temp.copies=(*pointer).copies; //copy next val strcpy((*pointer).name,(*(pointer+1)).name); strcpy((*pointer).author,(*(pointer+1)).author); (*pointer).year=(*(pointer+1)).year; (*pointer).copies=(*(pointer+1)).copies; //copy back temp val strcpy((*(pointer+1)).name,temp.name); strcpy((*(pointer+1)).author,temp.author); (*(pointer+1)).year=temp.year; (*(pointer+1)).copies=temp.copies; sorted=0; } *pointer++; } } } My Imput The C Programming Language X Y Z 1934 56 Inferno Dan Brown 1993 453 harry Potter and the soccers stone J K Rowling 2012 150 Ruby On Rails jim aurther nil 2004 130 Learn Python Easy Way gmaps4rails 1967 100 And the output ########################################################################## Book: Inferno Author: Dan Brown Year of Publication: 1993 No of Copies: 453 ########################################################################## ########################################################################## Book: The C Programming Language Author: X Y Z Year of Publication: 1934 No of Copies: 56 ########################################################################## ########################################################################## Book: Ruby On Rails Author: jim aurther nil Year of Publication: 2004 No of Copies: 130 ########################################################################## ########################################################################## Book: Learn Python Easy Way Author: gmaps4rails Year of Publication: 1967 No of Copies: 100 ########################################################################## ########################################################################## Book: Author: Year of Publication: 0 No of Copies: 0 ########################################################################## We can see the above sorting is wrong? What I'm I doing wrong?

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• How do I learn algorithms?

  - by Panthe

  Brief History: Just graduated high school, learned a bit of python and C++, have no friends with any helpful computer knowledge at all. Out of anyone i met in my school years I was probably the biggest nerd, but no one really knew. I consider my self to have a vast amount of knowledge on computers and tech then the average person. built/fixed tons of computers, and ability to troubleshoot pretty much any problem I came across. Now that high school is over, Ive really been thinking about my career. Loving, living computers for the past 15 years of my life I decided to take my ability's and try to learn computer programming, why I didn't start earlier I don't know, seems to be big mistake on my part... Doing some research I concluded that Python was the first programming language I should learn, since it was high level and easier to understand then C++ and Java. I also knew that to become good at what I did I needed to know more then just 2 or 3 languages, which didn't seem like a big problem considering once I learned the way Python worked, mainly syntax changed, and the rest would come naturally. I watched a couple of youtube videos, downloaded some book pdf's and snooped around from some tutorials here and there to get the hang of what to do. A two solid weeks had passed of trying to understand the syntax, create small programs that used the basic functions and understanding how it worked, I think i have got the hang of it. It breaks down into what ive been dealing with all this time (although i kinda knew) is that, input,output, loops, functions and other things derived from 0's and 1's storing data and recalling it, ect. (A VERY BASIC IDEA). Ive been able to create small programs, Hangman, file storing, temperature conversion, Caeser Cipher decode/encoding, Fibonacci Sequence and more, which i can create and understand how each work. Being 2 weeks into this, I have learned alot. Nothing at all compared to what i should be lear ning in the years to come if i get a grip on what I'm doing. While doing these programs I wont stop untill I've done doing a practice problem on a book, which embarresing enough will take me a couple hour depending on the complexity of it. I absolutly will not put aside the challenge until its complete, WHICH CAN BE EXTREMELY DRAINING, ive tried most problems without cheating and reached success, which makes me feel extremely proud of my self after completing something after much trial and error. After all this I have met the demon, alogrithm's which seem to be key to effiecent code. I cant seem to rap my head around some of the computer codes people put out there using numbers, and sometimes even basic functions, I have been able to understand them after a while but i know there are alot more complex things to come, considering my self smart, functions that require complex codes, actually hurt my brain. NOTHING EVER IN LIFE HURT MY BRAIN....... not even math classes in highschool, trying to understand some of the stuff people put out there makes me feel like i have a mental disadvantage lol... i still walk forward though, crossing my fingers that the understanding will come with time. Sorry if is this is long i just wish someone takes all these things into consideration when answering my question. even through all these downsides im still pushing through and continuing to try and get good at this, i know reading these tutorials wont make me any good unless i can become creative and make my own, understand other peoples programs, so this leads me to the simple question i could have asked in the beginning..... WHERE IN THE WORLD DO I START ? Ive been trying to find out how to understand some of the open source projects, how i can work with experianced coders to learn from them and help them, but i dont think thats even possible by the way how far people's knowledge is compared to me, i have no freinds who i can learn from, can someone help me and guide me into the right direction.. i have a huge motivation to get good at coding, anything information would be extremely helpful

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• Separation of presentation and business logic in PHP

  - by Markus Ossi

  I am programming my first real PHP website and am wondering how to make my code more readable to myself. The reference book I am using is PHP and MySQL Web Development 4th ed. The aforementioned book gives three approaches to separating logic and content: include files function or class API template system I haven't chosen any of these yet, as wrapping my brains around these concepts is taking some time. However, my code has become some hybrid of the first two as I am just copy-pasting away here and modifying as I go. On presentation side, all of my pages have these common elements: header, top navigation, sidebar navigation, content, right sidebar and footer. The function-based examples in the book suggest that I could have these display functions that handle all the presentation example. So, my page code will be like this: display_header(); display_navigation(); display_content(); display_footer(); However, I don't like this because the examples in the book have these print statements with HTML and PHP mixed up like this: echo "<tr bgcolor=\"".$color."\"><td><a href=\"".$url."\">" ... I would rather like to have HTML with some PHP in the middle, not the other way round. I am thinking of making my pages so that at the beginning of my page, I will fetch all the data from database and put it in arrays. I will also get the data for variables. If there are any errors in any of these processes, I will put them into error strings. Then, at the HTML code, I will loop through these arrays using foreach and display the content. In some cases, there will be some variables that will be shown. If there is an error variable that is set, I will display that at the proper position. (As a side note: The thing I do not understand is that in most example code, if some database query or whatnot gives an error, there is always: else echo 'Error'; This baffles me, because when the example code gives an error, it is sometimes echoed out even before the HTML has started...) For people who have used ASP.NET, I have gotten somewhat used to the code-behind files and lblError and I am trying to do something similar here. The thing I haven't figured out is how could I do this "do logic first, then presentation" thing so that I would not have to replicate for example the navigation logic and navigation presentation in all of the pages. Should I do some include files or could I use functions here but a little bit differently? Are there any good articles where these "styles" of separating presentation and logic are explained a little bit more thoroughly. The book I have only has one paragraph about this stuff. What I am thinking is that I am talking about some concepts or ways of doing PHP programming here, but I just don't know the terms for them yet. I know this isn't a straight forward question, I just need some help in organizing my thoughts.

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• about getadrrinfo() C++?

  - by Isavel

  I'm reading this book called beej's guide to network programming and there's a part in the book were it provide a sample code which illustrate the use of getaddrinfo(); the book state that the code below "will print the IP addresses for whatever host you specify on the command line" - beej's guide to network programming. now I'm curious and want to try it out and run the code, but I guess the code was develop in UNIX environment and I'm using visual studio 2012 windows 7 OS, and most of the headers was not supported so I did a bit of research and find out that I need to include the winsock.h and ws2_32.lib for windows, for it to get working, fortunately everything compiled no errors, but when I run it using the debugger and put in 'www.google.com' as command argument I was disappointed that it did not print any ipaddress, the output that I got from the console is "getaddrinfo: E" what does the letter E mean? Do I need to configure something out of the debugger? Interestingly I left the command argument blank and the output changed to "usage: showip hostname" Any help would be appreciated. #ifdef _WIN32 #endif #include <sys/types.h> #include <winsock2.h> #include <ws2tcpip.h> #include <iostream> using namespace std; #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <sys/types.h> #include <winsock.h> #pragma comment(lib, "ws2_32.lib") int main(int argc, char *argv[]) { struct addrinfo hints, *res, *p; int status; char ipstr[INET6_ADDRSTRLEN]; if (argc != 2) { fprintf(stderr,"usage: showip hostname\n"); system("PAUSE"); return 1; } memset(&hints, 0, sizeof hints); hints.ai_family = AF_UNSPEC; // AF_INET or AF_INET6 to force version hints.ai_socktype = SOCK_STREAM; if ((status = getaddrinfo(argv[1], NULL, &hints, &res)) != 0) { fprintf(stderr, "getaddrinfo: %s\n", gai_strerror(status)); system("PAUSE"); return 2; } printf("IP addresses for %s:\n\n", argv[1]); for(p = res;p != NULL; p = p->ai_next) { void *addr; char *ipver; // get the pointer to the address itself, // different fields in IPv4 and IPv6: if (p->ai_family == AF_INET) { // IPv4 struct sockaddr_in *ipv4 = (struct sockaddr_in *)p->ai_addr; addr = &(ipv4->sin_addr); ipver = "IPv4"; } else { // IPv6 struct sockaddr_in6 *ipv6 = (struct sockaddr_in6 *)p->ai_addr; addr = &(ipv6->sin6_addr); ipver = "IPv6"; } // convert the IP to a string and print it: inet_ntop(p->ai_family, addr, ipstr, sizeof ipstr); printf(" %s: %s\n", ipver, ipstr); } freeaddrinfo(res); // free the linked list system("PAUSE"); return 0; }

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• LSI 9285-8e and Supermicro SC837E26-RJBOD1 duplicate enclosure ID and slot numbers

  - by Andy Shinn

  I am working with 2 x Supermicro SC837E26-RJBOD1 chassis connected to a single LSI 9285-8e card in a Supermicro 1U host. There are 28 drives in each chassis for a total of 56 drives in 28 RAID1 mirrors. The problem I am running in to is that there are duplicate slots for the 2 chassis (the slots list twice and only go from 0 to 27). All the drives also show the same enclosure ID (ID 36). However, MegaCLI -encinfo lists the 2 enclosures correctly (ID 36 and ID 65). My question is, why would this happen? Is there an option I am missing to use 2 enclosures effectively? This is blocking me rebuilding a drive that failed in slot 11 since I can only specify enclosure and slot as parameters to replace a drive. When I do this, it picks the wrong slot 11 (device ID 46 instead of device ID 19). Adapter #1 is the LSI 9285-8e, adapter #0 (which I removed due to space limitations) is the onboard LSI. Adapter information: Adapter #1 ============================================================================== Versions ================ Product Name : LSI MegaRAID SAS 9285-8e Serial No : SV12704804 FW Package Build: 23.1.1-0004 Mfg. Data ================ Mfg. Date : 06/30/11 Rework Date : 00/00/00 Revision No : 00A Battery FRU : N/A Image Versions in Flash: ================ BIOS Version : 5.25.00_4.11.05.00_0x05040000 WebBIOS Version : 6.1-20-e_20-Rel Preboot CLI Version: 05.01-04:#%00001 FW Version : 3.140.15-1320 NVDATA Version : 2.1106.03-0051 Boot Block Version : 2.04.00.00-0001 BOOT Version : 06.253.57.219 Pending Images in Flash ================ None PCI Info ================ Vendor Id : 1000 Device Id : 005b SubVendorId : 1000 SubDeviceId : 9285 Host Interface : PCIE ChipRevision : B0 Number of Frontend Port: 0 Device Interface : PCIE Number of Backend Port: 8 Port : Address 0 5003048000ee8e7f 1 5003048000ee8a7f 2 0000000000000000 3 0000000000000000 4 0000000000000000 5 0000000000000000 6 0000000000000000 7 0000000000000000 HW Configuration ================ SAS Address : 500605b0038f9210 BBU : Present Alarm : Present NVRAM : Present Serial Debugger : Present Memory : Present Flash : Present Memory Size : 1024MB TPM : Absent On board Expander: Absent Upgrade Key : Absent Temperature sensor for ROC : Present Temperature sensor for controller : Absent ROC temperature : 70 degree Celcius Settings ================ Current Time : 18:24:36 3/13, 2012 Predictive Fail Poll Interval : 300sec Interrupt Throttle Active Count : 16 Interrupt Throttle Completion : 50us Rebuild Rate : 30% PR Rate : 30% BGI Rate : 30% Check Consistency Rate : 30% Reconstruction Rate : 30% Cache Flush Interval : 4s Max Drives to Spinup at One Time : 2 Delay Among Spinup Groups : 12s Physical Drive Coercion Mode : Disabled Cluster Mode : Disabled Alarm : Enabled Auto Rebuild : Enabled Battery Warning : Enabled Ecc Bucket Size : 15 Ecc Bucket Leak Rate : 1440 Minutes Restore HotSpare on Insertion : Disabled Expose Enclosure Devices : Enabled Maintain PD Fail History : Enabled Host Request Reordering : Enabled Auto Detect BackPlane Enabled : SGPIO/i2c SEP Load Balance Mode : Auto Use FDE Only : No Security Key Assigned : No Security Key Failed : No Security Key Not Backedup : No Default LD PowerSave Policy : Controller Defined Maximum number of direct attached drives to spin up in 1 min : 10 Any Offline VD Cache Preserved : No Allow Boot with Preserved Cache : No Disable Online Controller Reset : No PFK in NVRAM : No Use disk activity for locate : No Capabilities ================ RAID Level Supported : RAID0, RAID1, RAID5, RAID6, RAID00, RAID10, RAID50, RAID60, PRL 11, PRL 11 with spanning, SRL 3 supported, PRL11-RLQ0 DDF layout with no span, PRL11-RLQ0 DDF layout with span Supported Drives : SAS, SATA Allowed Mixing: Mix in Enclosure Allowed Mix of SAS/SATA of HDD type in VD Allowed Status ================ ECC Bucket Count : 0 Limitations ================ Max Arms Per VD : 32 Max Spans Per VD : 8 Max Arrays : 128 Max Number of VDs : 64 Max Parallel Commands : 1008 Max SGE Count : 60 Max Data Transfer Size : 8192 sectors Max Strips PerIO : 42 Max LD per array : 16 Min Strip Size : 8 KB Max Strip Size : 1.0 MB Max Configurable CacheCade Size: 0 GB Current Size of CacheCade : 0 GB Current Size of FW Cache : 887 MB Device Present ================ Virtual Drives : 28 Degraded : 0 Offline : 0 Physical Devices : 59 Disks : 56 Critical Disks : 0 Failed Disks : 0 Supported Adapter Operations ================ Rebuild Rate : Yes CC Rate : Yes BGI Rate : Yes Reconstruct Rate : Yes Patrol Read Rate : Yes Alarm Control : Yes Cluster Support : No BBU : No Spanning : Yes Dedicated Hot Spare : Yes Revertible Hot Spares : Yes Foreign Config Import : Yes Self Diagnostic : Yes Allow Mixed Redundancy on Array : No Global Hot Spares : Yes Deny SCSI Passthrough : No Deny SMP Passthrough : No Deny STP Passthrough : No Support Security : No Snapshot Enabled : No Support the OCE without adding drives : Yes Support PFK : Yes Support PI : No Support Boot Time PFK Change : Yes Disable Online PFK Change : No PFK TrailTime Remaining : 0 days 0 hours Support Shield State : Yes Block SSD Write Disk Cache Change: Yes Supported VD Operations ================ Read Policy : Yes Write Policy : Yes IO Policy : Yes Access Policy : Yes Disk Cache Policy : Yes Reconstruction : Yes Deny Locate : No Deny CC : No Allow Ctrl Encryption: No Enable LDBBM : No Support Breakmirror : No Power Savings : Yes Supported PD Operations ================ Force Online : Yes Force Offline : Yes Force Rebuild : Yes Deny Force Failed : No Deny Force Good/Bad : No Deny Missing Replace : No Deny Clear : No Deny Locate : No Support Temperature : Yes Disable Copyback : No Enable JBOD : No Enable Copyback on SMART : No Enable Copyback to SSD on SMART Error : Yes Enable SSD Patrol Read : No PR Correct Unconfigured Areas : Yes Enable Spin Down of UnConfigured Drives : Yes Disable Spin Down of hot spares : No Spin Down time : 30 T10 Power State : Yes Error Counters ================ Memory Correctable Errors : 0 Memory Uncorrectable Errors : 0 Cluster Information ================ Cluster Permitted : No Cluster Active : No Default Settings ================ Phy Polarity : 0 Phy PolaritySplit : 0 Background Rate : 30 Strip Size : 64kB Flush Time : 4 seconds Write Policy : WB Read Policy : Adaptive Cache When BBU Bad : Disabled Cached IO : No SMART Mode : Mode 6 Alarm Disable : Yes Coercion Mode : None ZCR Config : Unknown Dirty LED Shows Drive Activity : No BIOS Continue on Error : No Spin Down Mode : None Allowed Device Type : SAS/SATA Mix Allow Mix in Enclosure : Yes Allow HDD SAS/SATA Mix in VD : Yes Allow SSD SAS/SATA Mix in VD : No Allow HDD/SSD Mix in VD : No Allow SATA in Cluster : No Max Chained Enclosures : 16 Disable Ctrl-R : Yes Enable Web BIOS : Yes Direct PD Mapping : No BIOS Enumerate VDs : Yes Restore Hot Spare on Insertion : No Expose Enclosure Devices : Yes Maintain PD Fail History : Yes Disable Puncturing : No Zero Based Enclosure Enumeration : No PreBoot CLI Enabled : Yes LED Show Drive Activity : Yes Cluster Disable : Yes SAS Disable : No Auto Detect BackPlane Enable : SGPIO/i2c SEP Use FDE Only : No Enable Led Header : No Delay during POST : 0 EnableCrashDump : No Disable Online Controller Reset : No EnableLDBBM : No Un-Certified Hard Disk Drives : Allow Treat Single span R1E as R10 : No Max LD per array : 16 Power Saving option : Don't Auto spin down Configured Drives Max power savings option is not allowed for LDs. Only T10 power conditions are to be used. Default spin down time in minutes: 30 Enable JBOD : No TTY Log In Flash : No Auto Enhanced Import : No BreakMirror RAID Support : No Disable Join Mirror : No Enable Shield State : Yes Time taken to detect CME : 60s Exit Code: 0x00 Enclosure information: # /opt/MegaRAID/MegaCli/MegaCli64 -encinfo -a1 Number of enclosures on adapter 1 -- 3 Enclosure 0: Device ID : 36 Number of Slots : 28 Number of Power Supplies : 2 Number of Fans : 3 Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Number of Alarms : 1 Number of SIM Modules : 0 Number of Physical Drives : 28 Status : Normal Position : 1 Connector Name : Port B Enclosure type : SES VendorId is LSI CORP and Product Id is SAS2X36 VendorID and Product ID didnt match FRU Part Number : N/A Enclosure Serial Number : N/A ESM Serial Number : N/A Enclosure Zoning Mode : N/A Partner Device Id : 65 Inquiry data : Vendor Identification : LSI CORP Product Identification : SAS2X36 Product Revision Level : 0718 Vendor Specific : x36-55.7.24.1 Number of Voltage Sensors :2 Voltage Sensor :0 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :5020 milli volts Voltage Sensor :1 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :11820 milli volts Number of Power Supplies : 2 Power Supply : 0 Power Supply Status : OK Power Supply : 1 Power Supply Status : OK Number of Fans : 3 Fan : 0 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 1 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 2 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Temp Sensor : 0 Temperature : 48 Temperature Sensor Status : OK Number of Chassis : 1 Chassis : 0 Chassis Status : OK Enclosure 1: Device ID : 65 Number of Slots : 28 Number of Power Supplies : 2 Number of Fans : 3 Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Number of Alarms : 1 Number of SIM Modules : 0 Number of Physical Drives : 28 Status : Normal Position : 1 Connector Name : Port A Enclosure type : SES VendorId is LSI CORP and Product Id is SAS2X36 VendorID and Product ID didnt match FRU Part Number : N/A Enclosure Serial Number : N/A ESM Serial Number : N/A Enclosure Zoning Mode : N/A Partner Device Id : 36 Inquiry data : Vendor Identification : LSI CORP Product Identification : SAS2X36 Product Revision Level : 0718 Vendor Specific : x36-55.7.24.1 Number of Voltage Sensors :2 Voltage Sensor :0 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :5020 milli volts Voltage Sensor :1 Voltage Sensor Status :OK Voltage Value :11760 milli volts Number of Power Supplies : 2 Power Supply : 0 Power Supply Status : OK Power Supply : 1 Power Supply Status : OK Number of Fans : 3 Fan : 0 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 1 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Fan : 2 Fan Speed :Low Speed Fan Status : OK Number of Temperature Sensors : 1 Temp Sensor : 0 Temperature : 47 Temperature Sensor Status : OK Number of Chassis : 1 Chassis : 0 Chassis Status : OK Enclosure 2: Device ID : 252 Number of Slots : 8 Number of Power Supplies : 0 Number of Fans : 0 Number of Temperature Sensors : 0 Number of Alarms : 0 Number of SIM Modules : 1 Number of Physical Drives : 0 Status : Normal Position : 1 Connector Name : Unavailable Enclosure type : SGPIO Failed in first Inquiry commnad FRU Part Number : N/A Enclosure Serial Number : N/A ESM Serial Number : N/A Enclosure Zoning Mode : N/A Partner Device Id : Unavailable Inquiry data : Vendor Identification : LSI Product Identification : SGPIO Product Revision Level : N/A Vendor Specific : Exit Code: 0x00 Now, notice that each slot 11 device shows an enclosure ID of 36, I think this is where the discrepancy happens. One should be 36. But the other should be on enclosure 65. Drives in slot 11: Enclosure Device ID: 36 Slot Number: 11 Drive's postion: DiskGroup: 5, Span: 0, Arm: 1 Enclosure position: 0 Device Id: 48 WWN: Sequence Number: 11 Media Error Count: 0 Other Error Count: 0 Predictive Failure Count: 0 Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0 PD Type: SATA Raw Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d50a3b0 Sectors] Non Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d40a3b0 Sectors] Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d400000 Sectors] Firmware state: Online, Spun Up Is Commissioned Spare : YES Device Firmware Level: A5C0 Shield Counter: 0 Successful diagnostics completion on : N/A SAS Address(0): 0x5003048000ee8a53 Connected Port Number: 1(path0) Inquiry Data: MJ1311YNG6YYXAHitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 MEAOA5C0 FDE Enable: Disable Secured: Unsecured Locked: Unlocked Needs EKM Attention: No Foreign State: None Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s Media Type: Hard Disk Device Drive Temperature :30C (86.00 F) PI Eligibility: No Drive is formatted for PI information: No PI: No PI Drive's write cache : Disabled Drive's NCQ setting : Enabled Port-0 : Port status: Active Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s Drive has flagged a S.M.A.R.T alert : No Enclosure Device ID: 36 Slot Number: 11 Drive's postion: DiskGroup: 19, Span: 0, Arm: 1 Enclosure position: 0 Device Id: 19 WWN: Sequence Number: 4 Media Error Count: 0 Other Error Count: 0 Predictive Failure Count: 0 Last Predictive Failure Event Seq Number: 0 PD Type: SATA Raw Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d50a3b0 Sectors] Non Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d40a3b0 Sectors] Coerced Size: 2.728 TB [0x15d400000 Sectors] Firmware state: Online, Spun Up Is Commissioned Spare : NO Device Firmware Level: A580 Shield Counter: 0 Successful diagnostics completion on : N/A SAS Address(0): 0x5003048000ee8e53 Connected Port Number: 0(path0) Inquiry Data: MJ1313YNG1VA5CHitachi HDS5C3030ALA630 MEAOA580 FDE Enable: Disable Secured: Unsecured Locked: Unlocked Needs EKM Attention: No Foreign State: None Device Speed: 6.0Gb/s Link Speed: 6.0Gb/s Media Type: Hard Disk Device Drive Temperature :30C (86.00 F) PI Eligibility: No Drive is formatted for PI information: No PI: No PI Drive's write cache : Disabled Drive's NCQ setting : Enabled Port-0 : Port status: Active Port's Linkspeed: 6.0Gb/s Drive has flagged a S.M.A.R.T alert : No Update 06/28/12: I finally have some new information about (what we think) the root cause of this problem so I thought I would share. After getting in contact with a very knowledgeable Supermicro tech, they provided us with a tool called Xflash (doesn't appear to be readily available on their FTP). When we gathered some information using this utility, my colleague found something very strange: root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i get avail Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) 1) SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) (50030480:00EE917F) (0.0.0.0) 2) SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) (50030480:00E9D67F) (0.0.0.0) 3) SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) (50030480:0112D97F) (0.0.0.0) This lists the connected enclosures. You see the 3 connected (we have since added a 3rd and a 4th which is not yet showing up) with their respective SAS address / WWN (50030480:00EE917F). Now we can use this address to get information on the individual enclosures: [root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i 5003048000EE917F get exp Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) Reading the expander information.......... Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) B3 SAS Address: 50030480:00EE917F Enclosure Logical Id: 50030480:0000007F IP Address: 0.0.0.0 Component Identifier: 0x0223 Component Revision: 0x05 [root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i 5003048000E9D67F get exp Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) Reading the expander information.......... Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) B3 SAS Address: 50030480:00E9D67F Enclosure Logical Id: 50030480:0000007F IP Address: 0.0.0.0 Component Identifier: 0x0223 Component Revision: 0x05 [root@mogile2 test]# ./xflash.dat -i 500304800112D97F get exp Initializing Interface. Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) Reading the expander information.......... Expander: SAS2X36 (SAS2x36) B3 SAS Address: 50030480:0112D97F Enclosure Logical Id: 50030480:0112D97F IP Address: 0.0.0.0 Component Identifier: 0x0223 Component Revision: 0x05 Did you catch it? The first 2 enclosures logical ID is partially masked out where the 3rd one (which has a correct unique enclosure ID) is not. We pointed this out to Supermicro and were able to confirm that this address is supposed to be set during manufacturing and there was a problem with a certain batch of these enclosures where the logical ID was not set. We believe that the RAID controller is determining the ID based on the logical ID and since our first 2 enclosures have the same logical ID, they get the same enclosure ID. We also confirmed that 0000007F is the default which comes from LSI as an ID. The next pointer that helps confirm this could be a manufacturing problem with a run of JBODs is the fact that all 6 of the enclosures that have this problem begin with 00E. I believe that between 00E8 and 00EE Supermicro forgot to program the logical IDs correctly and neglected to recall or fix the problem post production. Fortunately for us, there is a tool to manage the WWN and logical ID of the devices from Supermicro: ftp://ftp.supermicro.com/utility/ExpanderXtools_Lite/. Our next step is to schedule a shutdown of these JBODs (after data migration) and reprogram the logical ID and see if it solves the problem. Update 06/28/12 #2: I just discovered this FAQ at Supermicro while Google searching for "lsi 0000007f": http://www.supermicro.com/support/faqs/faq.cfm?faq=11805. I still don't understand why, in the last several times we contacted Supermicro, they would have never directed us to this article :\

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• Pigs in Socks?

  - by MightyZot

  My wonderful wife Annie surprised me with a cruise to Cozumel for my fortieth birthday. I love to travel. Every trip is ripe with adventure, crazy things to see and experience. For example, on the way to Mobile Alabama to catch our boat, some dude hauling a mobile home lost a window and we drove through a cloud of busting glass going 80 miles per hour! The night before the cruise, we stayed in the Malaga Inn and I crawled UNDER the hotel to look at an old civil war bunker. WOAH! Then, on the way to and from Cozumel, the boat plowed through two beautiful and slightly violent storms. But, the adventures you have while travelling often pale in comparison to the cult of personalities you meet along the way.  :) We met many cool people during our travels and we made some new friends. Todd and Andrea are in the publishing business (www.myneworleans.com) and teaching, respectively. Erika is a teacher too and Matt has a pig on his foot. This story is about the pig. Without that pig on Matt’s foot, we probably would have hit a buoy and drowned. Alright, so…this pig on Matt’s foot…this is no henna tatt, this is a man’s tattoo. Apparently, getting tattoos on your feet is very painful because there is very little muscle and fat and lots of nifty nerves to tell you that you might be doing something stupid. Pig and rooster tattoos carry special meaning for sailors of old. According to some sources, having a tattoo of a pig or rooster on one foot or the other will keep you from drowning. There are many great musings as to why a pig and a rooster might save your life. The most plausible in my opinion is that pigs and roosters were common livestock tagging along with the crew. Since they were shipped in wooden crates, pigs and roosters were often counted amongst the survivors when ships succumbed to Davy Jones’ Locker. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time researching the pig and the rooster, so consider these musings as you would a grain of salt. And, I was not able to find a lot of what you might consider credible history regarding the tradition. What I did find was a comfort, or solace, in the maritime tradition. Seems like raw traditions like the pig and the rooster are in danger of getting lost in a sea of non-permanence. I mean, what traditions are us old programmers and techies leaving behind for future generations? Makes me wonder what Ward Christensen has tattooed on his left foot.  I guess my choice would have to be a Commodore 64.   (I met Ward, by the way, in an elevator after he received his Dvorak awards in 1992. He was a very non-assuming individual sporting business casual and was very much a “sailor” of an old-school programmer. I can’t remember his exact words, but I think they were essentially that he felt it odd that he was getting an award for just doing his work. I’m sure that Ward doesn’t know this…he couldn’t have set a more positive example for a young 22 year old programmer. Thanks Ward!)

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• Dependency Replication with TFS 2010 Build

  - by Jakob Ehn

  Some time ago, I wrote a post about how to implement dependency replication using TFS 2008 Build. We use this for Library builds, where we set up a build definition for a common library, and have the build check the resulting assemblies back into source control. The folder is then branched to the applications that need to reference the common library. See the above post for more details. Of course, we have reimplemented this feature in TFS 2010 Build, which results in a much nicer experience for the developer who wants to setup a new library build. Here is how it looks: There is a separate build process template for library builds registered in all team projects The following properties are used to configure the library build: Deploy Folder in Source Control is the server path where the assemblies should be checked in DeploymentFiles is a list of files and/or extensions to what files to check in. Default here is *.dll;*.pdb which means that all assemblies and debug symbols will be checked in. We can also type for example CommonLibrary.*;SomeOtherAssembly.dll in order to exclude other assemblies You can also see that we are versioning the assemblies as part of the build. This is important, since the resulting assemblies will be deployed together with the referencing application.   When the build executes, it will see of the matching assemblies exist in source control, if not, it will add the files automatically:   After the build has finished, we can see in the history of the TestDeploy folder that the build service account has in fact checked in a new version: Nice!   The implementation of the library build process template is not very complicated, it is a combination of customization of the build process template and some custom activities. We use the generic TFActivity (http://geekswithblogs.net/jakob/archive/2010/11/03/performing-checkins-in-tfs-2010-build.aspx) to check in and out files, but for the part that checks if a file exists and adds it to source control, it was easier to do this in a custom activity:   public sealed class AddFilesToSourceControl : BaseCodeActivity { // Files to add to source control [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<IEnumerable<string>> Files { get; set; } [RequiredArgument] public InArgument<Workspace> Workspace { get; set; } // If your activity returns a value, derive from CodeActivity<TResult> // and return the value from the Execute method. protected override void Execute(CodeActivityContext context) { foreach (var file in Files.Get(context)) { if (!File.Exists(file)) { throw new ApplicationException("Could not locate " + file); } var ws = this.Workspace.Get(context); string serverPath = ws.TryGetServerItemForLocalItem(file); if( !String.IsNullOrEmpty(serverPath)) { if (!ws.VersionControlServer.ServerItemExists(serverPath, ItemType.File)) { TrackMessage(context, "Adding file " + file); ws.PendAdd(file); } else { TrackMessage(context, "File " + file + " already exists in source control"); } } else { TrackMessage(context, "No server path for " + file); } } } } This build template is a very nice tool that makes it easy to do dependency replication with TFS 2010. Next, I will add funtionality for automatically merging the assemblies (using ILMerge) as part of the build, we do this to keep the number of references to a minimum.

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• SQL SERVER – Auto Complete and Format T-SQL Code – Devart SQL Complete

  - by pinaldave

  Some people call it laziness, some will call it efficiency, some think it is the right thing to do. At any rate, tools are meant to make a job easier, and I like to use various tools. If we consider the history of the world, if we all wanted to keep traditional practices, we would have never invented the wheel.  But as time progressed, people wanted convenience and efficiency, which then led to laziness. Wanting a more efficient way to do something is not inherently lazy.  That’s how I see any efficiency tools. A few days ago I found Devart SQL Complete.  It took less than a minute to install, and after installation it just worked without needing any tweaking.  Once I started using it I was impressed with how fast it formats SQL code – you can write down any terms or even copy and paste.  You can start typing right away, and it will complete keywords, object names, and fragmentations. It completes statement expressions.  How many times do we write insert, update, delete?  Take this example: to alter a stored procedure name, we don’t remember the code written in it, you have to write it over again, or go back to SQL Server Studio Manager to create and alter which is very difficult.  With SQL Complete , you can write “alter stored procedure,” and it will finish it for you, and you can modify as needed. I love to write code, and I love well-written code.  When I am working with clients, and I find people whose code have not been written properly, I feel a little uncomfortable.  It is difficult to deal with code that is in the wrong case, with no line breaks, no white spaces, improper indents, and no text wrapping.  The worst thing to encounter is code that goes all the way to the right side, and you have to scroll a million times because there are no breaks or indents.  SQL Complete will take care of this for you – if a developer is too lazy for proper formatting, then Devart’s SQL formatter tool will make them better, not lazier. SQL Management Studio gives information about your code when you hover your mouse over it, however SQL Complete goes further in it, going into the work table, and the current rate idea, too. It gives you more information about the parameters; and last but not least, it will just take you to the help file of code navigation.  It will open object explorer in a document viewer.  You can start going through the various properties of your code – a very important thing to do. Here are are interesting Intellisense examples: 1) We are often very lazy to expand *however, when we are using SQL Complete we can just mouse over the * and it will give us all the the column names and we can select the appropriate columns. 2) We can put the cursor after * and it will give us option to expand it to all the column names by pressing the Tab key. 3) Here is one more Intellisense feature I really liked it. I always alias my tables and I always select the alias with special logic. When I was using SQL Complete I selected just a tablename (without schema name) and…(just like below image) … and it autocompleted the schema and alias name (the way I needed it). I believe using SQL Complete we can work faster.  It supports all versions of SQL Server, and works SQL formatting.  Many businesses perform code review and have code standards, so why not use an efficiency tool on everyone’s computer and make sure the code is written correctly from the first time?  If you’re interested in this tool, there are free editions available.  If you like it, you can buy it.  I bought it because it works.  I love it, and I want to hear all your opinions on it, too. You can get the product for FREE.  Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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• Travelling MVP #1: Visit to SharePoint User Group Finland

  - by DigiMortal

  My first self organized trip this autumn was visit to SharePoint User Group Finland community evening. As active community leaders who make things like these possible they are worth mentioning and on spug.fi side there was Jussi Roine the one who invited me. Here is my short review about my trip to Helsinki. User group meeting As Helsinki is near Tallinn I went there using ship. It was easy to get from sea port to venue and I had also some minutes of time to visit academic book store. Community evening was held on the ground floor of one city center hotel and room was conveniently located near hotel bar and restaurant. Here is the meeting schedule: Welcome (Jussi Roine) OpenText application archiving and governance for SharePoint (Bernd Hennicke, OpenText) Using advanced C# features in SharePoint development (Alexey Sadomov, NED Consulting) Optimizing public-facing internet sites for SharePoint (Gunnar Peipman) After meeting, of course, local dudes doesn’t walk away but continue with some beers and discussion. Sessions After welcome words by Jussi there was session by Bernd Hennicke who spoke about OpenText. His session covered OpenText history and current moment. After this introduction he spoke about OpenText products for SharePoint and gave the audience good overview about where their SharePoint extensions fit in big picture. I usually don’t like those vendors sessions but this one was good. I mean vendor dudes were not aggressively selling something. They were way different – kind people who introduced their stuff and later answered questions. They acted like good guests. Second speaker was Alexey Sadomov who is working on SharePoint development projects. He introduced some ways how to get over some limitations of SharePoint. I don’t go here deeply with his session but it’s worth to mention that this session was strong one. It is not rear case when developers have to make nasty hacks to SharePoint. I mean really nasty hacks. Often these hacks are long blocks of code that uses terrible techniques to achieve the result. Alexey introduced some very much civilized ways about how to apply hacks. Alex Sadomov, SharePoint MVP, speaking about SharePoint coding tips and tricks on C# I spoke about how I optimized caching of Estonian Microsoft community portal that runs on SharePoint Server and that uses publishing infrastructure. I made no actual demos on SharePoint because I wanted to focus on optimizing process and share some experiences about how to get caches optimized and how to measure caches. Networking After official part there was time to talk and discuss with people. Finns are cool – they have beers and they are glad. It was not big community event but people were like one good family. Developers there work often for big companies and it was very interesting to me to hear about their experiences with SharePoint. One thing was a little bit surprising for me – SharePoint guys in Finland are talking actively also about Office 365 and online SharePoint. It doesn’t happen often here in Estonia. I had to leave a little bit 21:00 to get to my ship back to Tallinn. I am sure spug.fi dudes continued nice evening and they had at least same good time as I did. Do I want to go back to Finland and meet these guys again? Yes, sure, let’s do it again! :)

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• RegexClean Transformation

  Use the power of regular expressions to cleanse your data right there inside the Data Flow. This transformation includes a full user interface for simple configuration, as well as advanced features such as error output configuration. Two regular expressions are used, a match expression and a replace expression. The transformation is designed around the named capture groups or match groups, and even supports multiple expressions. This allows for rich and complex expressions to be built, all through an easy to reuse transformation where a bespoke Script Component was previously the only alternative. Some simple properties are available for each column selected – Behaviour The two behaviour modes offer similar functionality but with a difference. Replace, replaces tokens with the input, and Emit overwrites the whole string. Cascade Cascade allows you to define multiple expressions, each on a new line. The match expression will be processed into one operation per line, which are then processed in order at run-time. Multiple replace expressions can also be specified, again each on a new line. If there is no corresponding replace expression for a match expression line, then the last replace expression will be used instead. It is common to have multiple match expressions, but only a single replace expression. Match Expression The expression used to define the named capture groups. This is where you can analyse the data, and tag or name elements within it as found by the match expression. Replace Expression The replace determines the final output. It will reference the named groups from the match expression and assembles them into the final output. If you want to use regular expressions to validate data then try the Regular Expression Transformation. Quick Start Guide Select a column. A new output column is created for each selected column; there is no option for in-place replacement of column values. One input column can be used to populate multiple output columns, just select the column again in the lower grid, using the Input Columns drop-down selector. Amend the output column name and size as required. They default to the same as the input column selected. Amend the behaviour as required, the default is Replace. Amend the cascade option as required, the default is true. Finally enter your match and replace regular expressions Quick Sample #1 Parse an email address and extract the user and domain portions. Format as a web address passing the user portion as a URL parameter. This uses two match groups, user and host, which correspond to the text before the @ and after it respectively. Behaviour is Emit, and cascade of false, we only have a single match expression. Match Expression ^(?<user>[^@]+)@(?<host>.+)$ Replace Expression - http://www.${host}?user=${user} Results Sample Input Sample Output [email protected] http://www.adventure-works.com?user=zheng0 The component is provided as an MSI file, however to complete the installation, you will have to add the transformation to the Visual Studio toolbox manually. Right-click the toolbox, and select Choose Items.... Select the SSIS Data Flow Items tab, and then check the RegexClean Transformation from the list. Downloads The RegexClean Transformation is available for both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008. Please choose the version to match your SQL Server version, or you can install both versions and use them side by side if you have both SQL Server 2005 and SQL Server 2008 installed. RegexClean Transformation for SQL Server 2005 RegexClean Transformation for SQL Server 2008 Version History SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.105 - Public Release (28 Jan 2008) SQL Server 2005 Version 1.0.0.105 - Public Release (28 Jan 2008) Screenshot

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• What if &ldquo;Microsoft&rdquo; were in our shoes? About Windows Phone

  - by Vijaya Malla

  This is what I think about Microsoft Windows Phone. If Microsoft were in our shoes looking at various phones available their configurations, memory, front facing cameras etc. Microsoft disappointed the USA customer base again by not getting Nokia Lumia 800. The Past: If we talk few years ago, few business people were on their Blackberry’s and few Gadget lovers were on crappy Windows OS devices. The world was all going right till Apple came with a revolutionary device iPhone, which completely changed our perception towards phone and how great a smartphone can be. It’s not just phone but the whole technology industry. The romantic appealing of the phone and smooth touch and feel of it made everyone to get one of those bad boys. The sales went up for not just Apple for AT&T too. Even though everyone complained about the signal strength of AT&T, everyone wanted to be on it because they have iPhones. All world wanted iPhone back then except Microsoft with few comments on how it is not going to be in market. But it did great and rocked the industry. A few years later with iPhone and Android taking over the smartphone market Microsoft realized that it should be in the game too. Worked on the design of it, and gave us the best Mobile OS ever. Everyone thinks that iOS is a great OS for phones but if you have touched a Windows Phone and use it for real then you will realize the strengths of it. so last year we welcomed Windows Phone 7 The Present : Windows Phone 7 has the fastest growing market. The phones are cheap, you can buy from any carrier out there. The phone became smarter and smarter with the recent update “Mango (7.5)” and with the collaboration with Nokia, Microsoft created a new eco-system for smartphones with the best smartphone hardware and best smartphone software. Everyone in the world was excited about the collaboration. As we fly over cloud 9 imagining about Nokia made Windows Phones we all heard a good news from Nokia “Nokia World”. Nokia showed the world what a best hardware making company can do with Windows Phone 7.5 OS. Nokia Lumia 800 and 710 took the spotlight. Everyone here in USA and all over the world wanted to own a Nokia Lumia 800 because of the design, software, proprietary apps from Nokia (maps, ESPN, drive and music). If USA market had Nokia Lumia 800, then it would have been the best step Microsoft and Nokia had ever made in their history of smartphone market. With all the numbers going to Android and IPhone, its not clear on why Microsoft/Nokia did not release Lumia 800 here in USA. Its unclear if Microsoft had learnt the lesson or not. if it had learnt the lesson I guess Microsoft needs to get the Nokia Lumia 800 to the USA. The Future: This is where we hope we get the best form Microsoft. I was an iPhone user, I used 2G, 3G, 3GS, 4 and then moved to Windows Phone and never felt so happy with my iPhones’. From the day when Nokia announced the partnership with Microsoft and said that they going to come up with a new Nokia windows phone, I was dreaming for my Nokia Phone. but looks like it is not going to happen any time soon. My thoughts about the Market :  Nokia has the biggest market base in the world. Even though people moved to Android or iPhone over the years in other parts of the world like India and China, people still love to use Nokia. Everyone who uses a Windows Phone now will wait for that day when Nokia Lumia comes to the USA but what either or both of the companies should do for a better market share is to make a very aggressive move with the hardware and bet on the devices. I am pretty sure that it will work. everyone here in the USA will like to have a dual core windows phone with front facing camera and all other crazy things that android/apple phones offer. I think we just have to wait for that day and hope that day comes soon. Love Microsoft and Nokia Thank you for reading.

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• Pet Store Loyalty Programs: I'm Not Loyal Yet!

  - by ruth.donohue

  After two years of constantly being asked (aka "pestered) by my now eight-year-old daughter for a dog (or any pet that is more interactive than a goldfish), I've finally compromised with a hamster purely by chance. Friends of ours had recently brought home a female hamster, and (surprise, surprise) two weeks later, they were looking for homes for 11 baby hamster pups. Since the pups were not yet ready to be weaned from their mother, my daughter and I had several weeks to get ready -- and we spent that extra time visiting a number of local pet stores and purchasing an assortment of hamster books, toys, exercise equipment, food, bedding, and cage -- not cheap! Now, I'm usually an online shopper (i.e. I love reading user reviews and comparing prices), but for kids, there is absolutely no online substitute for actually walking into a store and physically picking out something you want. We have two competing pet shops within close proximity to where we live, and I signed up for their rewards programs to get discounts on select items. I'm sure it takes a while to get my data into the system (after all, I did fill out a form the old-fashioned way), but as it has been more than two weeks for one store and over a week for the other, the window of opportunity is getting smaller as we by now pretty much have most of what we think we need. Everything I've purchased has been purely hamster or small animal related, so in an ideal world, the stores would have me easily figured out as a hamster owner. Here is what I would be expecting of a loyalty rewards program: Point me to some useful links, either information provied by the company or external websites where I can learn more. Any value-add a business can provide to make my life easier makes me a much more loyal customer. What things can I expect as a new pet owner? Any hamster communities? Any hamster-related events? Any vets that specialize in small animals in the vicinity? Send me an email with other related products I may be interested in. Upsell and cross-sell to me. We've go the basics and a couple of luxuries, but at this point, I'm pretty excited (surprisingly) about the hamster, and my daughter is footing the bill with her birthday and Christmas money. She and I would be more than happy to spend her money! Get this information to me faster. As I mentioned, my window of opportunity is getting smaller, as eithe rmy daughter's money will run out on other things or we'll start losing the thrill of buying new hamster toys and treats. I realize this is easier said than done, and undoubtedly, the stores are getting value knowing my basic customer information and purchase history. Buth, they could really benefit by delivering a loyalty program that really earned my loyalty. "Goldeen" needs a new water bottle, yogurt chips, and chew toys as he doesn't seem to like the ones we bought. So for now, I'll just go to whichever store is the most convenient. Oh, and just for fun (not related to this post), here are a couple of videos my daughter really got a kick out of watching: Hamster on a Piano Tic in a Spin-Dryer

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• Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

  - by Divya Malik

  A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on the Oracle Applications blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com

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• Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 5 - Jobs Module / View

  Now we starting getting into a more code-heavy portion of this series, thankfully though this means the groundwork is all set for the most part and after adding the modules we will have a complete application that can be provided with full source. The Jobs module will have two concerns- adding and maintaining jobs that can then be broadcast out to the website. How they are displayed on the site will be handled by our admin system (which will just poll from this common database), so we aren't too concerned with that, but rather with getting the information into the system and allowing the backend administration/HR users to keep things up to date. Since there is a fair bit of information that we want to display, we're going to move editing to a separate view so we can get all that information in an easy-to-use spot. With all the files created for this module, the project looks something like this: And now... on to the code. XAML for the Job Posting View All we really need for the Job Posting View is a RadGridView and a few buttons. This will let us both show off records and perform operations on the records without much hassle. That XAML is going to look something like this: 01.<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" 02.Background="White"> 03.<Grid.RowDefinitions> 04.<RowDefinition Height="30" /> 05.<RowDefinition /> 06.</Grid.RowDefinitions> 07.<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> 08.<Button x:Name="xAddRecordButton" 09.Content="Add Job" 10.Width="120" 11.cal:Click.Command="{Binding AddRecord}" 12.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 13.<Button x:Name="xEditRecordButton" 14.Content="Edit Job" 15.Width="120" 16.cal:Click.Command="{Binding EditRecord}" 17.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 18.</StackPanel> 19.<telerikGrid:RadGridView x:Name="xJobsGrid" 20.Grid.Row="1" 21.IsReadOnly="True" 22.AutoGenerateColumns="False" 23.ColumnWidth="*" 24.RowDetailsVisibilityMode="VisibleWhenSelected" 25.ItemsSource="{Binding MyJobs}" 26.SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedJob, Mode=TwoWay}" 27.command:SelectedItemChangedEventClass.Command="{Binding SelectedItemChanged}"> 28.<telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> 29.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Job Title" 30.DataMemberBinding="{Binding JobTitle}" 31.UniqueName="JobTitle" /> 32.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Location" 33.DataMemberBinding="{Binding Location}" 34.UniqueName="Location" /> 35.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Resume Required" 36.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsResume}" 37.UniqueName="NeedsResume" /> 38.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="CV Required" 39.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsCV}" 40.UniqueName="NeedsCV" /> 41.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Overview Required" 42.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsOverview}" 43.UniqueName="NeedsOverview" /> 44.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Active" 45.DataMemberBinding="{Binding IsActive}" 46.UniqueName="IsActive" /> 47.</telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> 48.</telerikGrid:RadGridView> 49.</Grid> I'll explain what's happening here by line numbers: Lines 11 and 16: Using the same type of click commands as we saw in the Menu module, we tie the button clicks to delegate commands in the viewmodel. Line 25: The source for the jobs will be a collection in the viewmodel. Line 26: We also bind the selected item to a public property from the viewmodel for use in code. Line 27: We've turned the event into a command so we can handle it via code in the viewmodel. So those first three probably make sense to you as far as Silverlight/WPF binding magic is concerned, but for line 27... This actually comes from something I read onDamien Schenkelman's blog back in the day for creating an attached behavior from any event. So, any time you see me using command:Whatever.Command, the backing for it is actually something like this: SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior.cs: 01.public class SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior : CommandBehaviorBase<Telerik.Windows.Controls.DataControl> 02.{ 03.public SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DataControl element) 04.: base(element) 05.{ 06.element.SelectionChanged += new EventHandler<SelectionChangeEventArgs>(element_SelectionChanged); 07.} 08.void element_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangeEventArgs e) 09.{ 10.// We'll only ever allow single selection, so will only need item index 0 11.base.CommandParameter = e.AddedItems[0]; 12.base.ExecuteCommand(); 13.} 14.} SelectedItemChangedEventClass.cs: 01.public class SelectedItemChangedEventClass 02.{ 03.#region The Command Stuff 04.public static ICommand GetCommand(DependencyObject obj) 05.{ 06.return (ICommand)obj.GetValue(CommandProperty); 07.} 08.public static void SetCommand(DependencyObject obj, ICommand value) 09.{ 10.obj.SetValue(CommandProperty, value); 11.} 12.public static readonly DependencyProperty CommandProperty = 13.DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("Command", typeof(ICommand), 14.typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventClass), new PropertyMetadata(OnSetCommandCallback)); 15.public static void OnSetCommandCallback(DependencyObject dependencyObject, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) 16.{ 17.DataControl element = dependencyObject as DataControl; 18.if (element != null) 19.{ 20.SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior behavior = GetOrCreateBehavior(element); 21.behavior.Command = e.NewValue as ICommand; 22.} 23.} 24.#endregion 25.public static SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior GetOrCreateBehavior(DataControl element) 26.{ 27.SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior behavior = element.GetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty) as SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior; 28.if (behavior == null) 29.{ 30.behavior = new SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(element); 31.element.SetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty, behavior); 32.} 33.return behavior; 34.} 35.public static SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior GetSelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DependencyObject obj) 36.{ 37.return (SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior)obj.GetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty); 38.} 39.public static void SetSelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DependencyObject obj, SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior value) 40.{ 41.obj.SetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty, value); 42.} 43.public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty = 44.DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior", 45.typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior), typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventClass), null); 46.} These end up looking very similar from command to command, but in a nutshell you create a command based on any event, determine what the parameter for it will be, then execute. It attaches via XAML and ties to a DelegateCommand in the viewmodel, so you get the full event experience (since some controls get a bit event-rich for added functionality). Simple enough, right? Viewmodel for the Job Posting View The Viewmodel is going to need to handle all events going back and forth, maintaining interactions with the data we are using, and both publishing and subscribing to events. Rather than breaking this into tons of little pieces, I'll give you a nice view of the entire viewmodel and then hit up the important points line-by-line: 001.public class JobPostingViewModel : ViewModelBase 002.{ 003.private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; 004.private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; 005.public DelegateCommand<object> AddRecord { get; set; } 006.public DelegateCommand<object> EditRecord { get; set; } 007.public DelegateCommand<object> SelectedItemChanged { get; set; } 008.public RecruitingContext context; 009.private QueryableCollectionView _myJobs; 010.public QueryableCollectionView MyJobs 011.{ 012.get { return _myJobs; } 013.} 014.private QueryableCollectionView _selectionJobActionHistory; 015.public QueryableCollectionView SelectedJobActionHistory 016.{ 017.get { return _selectionJobActionHistory; } 018.} 019.private JobPosting _selectedJob; 020.public JobPosting SelectedJob 021.{ 022.get { return _selectedJob; } 023.set 024.{ 025.if (value != _selectedJob) 026.{ 027._selectedJob = value; 028.NotifyChanged("SelectedJob"); 029.} 030.} 031.} 032.public SubscriptionToken editToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 033.public SubscriptionToken addToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 034.public JobPostingViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAgg, IRegionManager regionmanager) 035.{ 036.// set Unity items 037.this.eventAggregator = eventAgg; 038.this.regionManager = regionmanager; 039.// load our context 040.context = new RecruitingContext(); 041.this._myJobs = new QueryableCollectionView(context.JobPostings); 042.context.Load(context.GetJobPostingsQuery()); 043.// set command events 044.this.AddRecord = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.AddNewRecord); 045.this.EditRecord = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.EditExistingRecord); 046.this.SelectedItemChanged = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.SelectedRecordChanged); 047.SetSubscriptions(); 048.} 049.#region DelegateCommands from View 050.public void AddNewRecord(object obj) 051.{ 052.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobEvent>().Publish(true); 053.} 054.public void EditExistingRecord(object obj) 055.{ 056.if (_selectedJob == null) 057.{ 058.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<NotifyUserEvent>().Publish("No job selected."); 059.} 060.else 061.{ 062.this._myJobs.EditItem(this._selectedJob); 063.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobEvent>().Publish(this._selectedJob); 064.} 065.} 066.public void SelectedRecordChanged(object obj) 067.{ 068.if (obj.GetType() == typeof(ActionHistory)) 069.{ 070.// event bubbles up so we don't catch items from the ActionHistory grid 071.} 072.else 073.{ 074.JobPosting job = obj as JobPosting; 075.GrabHistory(job.PostingID); 076.} 077.} 078.#endregion 079.#region Subscription Declaration and Events 080.public void SetSubscriptions() 081.{ 082.EditJobCompleteEvent editComplete = eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>(); 083.if (editToken != null) 084.editComplete.Unsubscribe(editToken); 085.editToken = editComplete.Subscribe(this.EditCompleteEventHandler); 086.AddJobCompleteEvent addComplete = eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>(); 087.if (addToken != null) 088.addComplete.Unsubscribe(addToken); 089.addToken = addComplete.Subscribe(this.AddCompleteEventHandler); 090.} 091.public void EditCompleteEventHandler(bool complete) 092.{ 093.if (complete) 094.{ 095.JobPosting thisJob = _myJobs.CurrentEditItem as JobPosting; 096.this._myJobs.CommitEdit(); 097.this.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 098.{ 099.ActionHistory myAction = new ActionHistory(); 100.myAction.PostingID = thisJob.PostingID; 101.myAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been edited by {1}", thisJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 102.myAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 103.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddActionEvent>().Publish(myAction); 104.} 105., null); 106.} 107.else 108.{ 109.this._myJobs.CancelEdit(); 110.} 111.this.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "JobPostingsView"); 112.} 113.public void AddCompleteEventHandler(JobPosting job) 114.{ 115.if (job == null) 116.{ 117.// do nothing, new job add cancelled 118.} 119.else 120.{ 121.this.context.JobPostings.Add(job); 122.this.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 123.{ 124.ActionHistory myAction = new ActionHistory(); 125.myAction.PostingID = job.PostingID; 126.myAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been added by {1}", job.JobTitle, "default user"); 127.myAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 128.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddActionEvent>().Publish(myAction); 129.} 130., null); 131.} 132.this.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "JobPostingsView"); 133.} 134.#endregion 135.public void GrabHistory(int postID) 136.{ 137.context.ActionHistories.Clear(); 138._selectionJobActionHistory = new QueryableCollectionView(context.ActionHistories); 139.context.Load(context.GetHistoryForJobQuery(postID)); 140.} Taking it from the top, we're injecting an Event Aggregator and Region Manager for use down the road and also have the public DelegateCommands (just like in the Menu module). We also grab a reference to our context, which we'll obviously need for data, then set up a few fields with public properties tied to them. We're also setting subscription tokens, which we have not yet seen but I will get into below. The AddNewRecord (50) and EditExistingRecord (54) methods should speak for themselves for functionality, the one thing of note is we're sending events off to the Event Aggregator which some module, somewhere will take care of. Since these aren't entirely relying on one another, the Jobs View doesn't care if anyone is listening, but it will publish AddJobEvent (52), NotifyUserEvent (58) and EditJobEvent (63)regardless. Don't mind the GrabHistory() method so much, that is just grabbing history items (visibly being created in the SubmitChanges callbacks), and adding them to the database. Every action will trigger a history event, so we'll know who modified what and when, just in case. ;) So where are we at? Well, if we click to Add a job, we publish an event, if we edit a job, we publish an event with the selected record (attained through the magic of binding). Where is this all going though? To the Viewmodel, of course! XAML for the AddEditJobView This is pretty straightforward except for one thing, noted below: 001.<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" 002.Background="White"> 003.<Grid x:Name="xEditGrid" 004.Margin="10" 005.validationHelper:ValidationScope.Errors="{Binding Errors}"> 006.<Grid.Background> 007.<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" 008.StartPoint="0.5,0"> 009.<GradientStop Color="#FFC7C7C7" 010.Offset="0" /> 011.<GradientStop Color="#FFF6F3F3" 012.Offset="1" /> 013.</LinearGradientBrush> 014.</Grid.Background> 015.<Grid.RowDefinitions> 016.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 017.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 018.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 019.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 020.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 021.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 022.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 023.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 024.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 025.</Grid.RowDefinitions> 026.<Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 027.<ColumnDefinition Width="150" /> 028.<ColumnDefinition Width="150" /> 029.<ColumnDefinition Width="300" /> 030.<ColumnDefinition Width="100" /> 031.</Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 032.<!-- Title --> 033.<TextBlock Margin="8" 034.Text="{Binding AddEditString}" 035.TextWrapping="Wrap" 036.Grid.Column="1" 037.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 038.FontSize="16" /> 039.<!-- Data entry area--> 040. 041.<TextBlock Margin="8,0,0,0" 042.Style="{StaticResource LabelTxb}" 043.Grid.Row="1" 044.Text="Job Title" 045.VerticalAlignment="Center" /> 046.<TextBox x:Name="xJobTitleTB" 047.Margin="0,8" 048.Grid.Column="1" 049.Grid.Row="1" 050.Text="{Binding activeJob.JobTitle, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 051.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 052.<TextBlock Margin="8,0,0,0" 053.Grid.Row="2" 054.Text="Location" 055.d:LayoutOverrides="Height" 056.VerticalAlignment="Center" /> 057.<TextBox x:Name="xLocationTB" 058.Margin="0,8" 059.Grid.Column="1" 060.Grid.Row="2" 061.Text="{Binding activeJob.Location, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 062.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 063. 064.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 065.Grid.Row="3" 066.Text="Description" 067.TextWrapping="Wrap" 068.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 069. 070.<TextBox x:Name="xDescriptionTB" 071.Height="84" 072.TextWrapping="Wrap" 073.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 074.Grid.Column="1" 075.Grid.Row="3" 076.Text="{Binding activeJob.Description, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 077.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 078.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 079.Grid.Row="4" 080.Text="Requirements" 081.TextWrapping="Wrap" 082.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 083. 084.<TextBox x:Name="xRequirementsTB" 085.Height="84" 086.TextWrapping="Wrap" 087.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 088.Grid.Column="1" 089.Grid.Row="4" 090.Text="{Binding activeJob.Requirements, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 091.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 092.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 093.Grid.Row="5" 094.Text="Qualifications" 095.TextWrapping="Wrap" 096.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 097. 098.<TextBox x:Name="xQualificationsTB" 099.Height="84" 100.TextWrapping="Wrap" 101.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 102.Grid.Column="1" 103.Grid.Row="5" 104.Text="{Binding activeJob.Qualifications, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 105.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 106.<!-- Requirements Checkboxes--> 107. 108.<CheckBox x:Name="xResumeRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 109.Content="Resume Required" 110.Grid.Row="6" 111.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 112.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsResume, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 113. 114.<CheckBox x:Name="xCoverletterRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 115.Content="Cover Letter Required" 116.Grid.Column="2" 117.Grid.Row="6" 118.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsCV, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 119. 120.<CheckBox x:Name="xOverviewRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 121.Content="Overview Required" 122.Grid.Row="7" 123.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 124.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsOverview, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 125. 126.<CheckBox x:Name="xJobActiveCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 127.Content="Job is Active" 128.Grid.Column="2" 129.Grid.Row="7" 130.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.IsActive, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 131. 132.<!-- Buttons --> 133. 134.<Button x:Name="xAddEditButton" Margin="8,8,0,10" 135.Content="{Binding AddEditButtonString}" 136.cal:Click.Command="{Binding AddEditCommand}" 137.Grid.Column="2" 138.Grid.Row="8" 139.HorizontalAlignment="Left" 140.Width="125" 141.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 142. 143.<Button x:Name="xCancelButton" HorizontalAlignment="Right" 144.Content="Cancel" 145.cal:Click.Command="{Binding CancelCommand}" 146.Margin="0,8,8,10" 147.Width="125" 148.Grid.Column="2" 149.Grid.Row="8" 150.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 151.</Grid> 152.</Grid> The 'validationHelper:ValidationScope' line may seem odd. This is a handy little trick for catching current and would-be validation errors when working in this whole setup. This all comes from an approach found on theJoy Of Code blog, although it looks like the story for this will be changing slightly with new advances in SL4/WCF RIA Services, so this section can definitely get an overhaul a little down the road. The code is the fun part of all this, so let us see what's happening under the hood. Viewmodel for the AddEditJobView We are going to see some of the same things happening here, so I'll skip over the repeat info and get right to the good stuff: 001.public class AddEditJobViewModel : ViewModelBase 002.{ 003.private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; 004.private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; 005. 006.public RecruitingContext context; 007. 008.private JobPosting _activeJob; 009.public JobPosting activeJob 010.{ 011.get { return _activeJob; } 012.set 013.{ 014.if (_activeJob != value) 015.{ 016._activeJob = value; 017.NotifyChanged("activeJob"); 018.} 019.} 020.} 021. 022.public bool isNewJob; 023. 024.private string _addEditString; 025.public string AddEditString 026.{ 027.get { return _addEditString; } 028.set 029.{ 030.if (_addEditString != value) 031.{ 032._addEditString = value; 033.NotifyChanged("AddEditString"); 034.} 035.} 036.} 037. 038.private string _addEditButtonString; 039.public string AddEditButtonString 040.{ 041.get { return _addEditButtonString; } 042.set 043.{ 044.if (_addEditButtonString != value) 045.{ 046._addEditButtonString = value; 047.NotifyChanged("AddEditButtonString"); 048.} 049.} 050.} 051. 052.public SubscriptionToken addJobToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 053.public SubscriptionToken editJobToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 054. 055.public DelegateCommand<object> AddEditCommand { get; set; } 056.public DelegateCommand<object> CancelCommand { get; set; } 057. 058.private ObservableCollection<ValidationError> _errors = new ObservableCollection<ValidationError>(); 059.public ObservableCollection<ValidationError> Errors 060.{ 061.get { return _errors; } 062.} 063. 064.private ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> _valResults = new ObservableCollection<ValidationResult>(); 065.public ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> ValResults 066.{ 067.get { return this._valResults; } 068.} 069. 070.public AddEditJobViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAgg, IRegionManager regionmanager) 071.{ 072.// set Unity items 073.this.eventAggregator = eventAgg; 074.this.regionManager = regionmanager; 075. 076.context = new RecruitingContext(); 077. 078.AddEditCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.AddEditJobCommand); 079.CancelCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.CancelAddEditCommand); 080. 081.SetSubscriptions(); 082.} 083. 084.#region Subscription Declaration and Events 085. 086.public void SetSubscriptions() 087.{ 088.AddJobEvent addJob = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobEvent>(); 089. 090.if (addJobToken != null) 091.addJob.Unsubscribe(addJobToken); 092. 093.addJobToken = addJob.Subscribe(this.AddJobEventHandler); 094. 095.EditJobEvent editJob = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobEvent>(); 096. 097.if (editJobToken != null) 098.editJob.Unsubscribe(editJobToken); 099. 100.editJobToken = editJob.Subscribe(this.EditJobEventHandler); 101.} 102. 103.public void AddJobEventHandler(bool isNew) 104.{ 105.this.activeJob = null; 106.this.activeJob = new JobPosting(); 107.this.activeJob.IsActive = true; // We assume that we want a new job to go up immediately 108.this.isNewJob = true; 109.this.AddEditString = "Add New Job Posting"; 110.this.AddEditButtonString = "Add Job"; 111. 112.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "AddEditJobView"); 113.} 114. 115.public void EditJobEventHandler(JobPosting editJob) 116.{ 117.this.activeJob = null; 118.this.activeJob = editJob; 119.this.isNewJob = false; 120.this.AddEditString = "Edit Job Posting"; 121.this.AddEditButtonString = "Edit Job"; 122. 123.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "AddEditJobView"); 124.} 125. 126.#endregion 127. 128.#region DelegateCommands from View 129. 130.public void AddEditJobCommand(object obj) 131.{ 132.if (this.Errors.Count > 0) 133.{ 134.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 135. 136.foreach (var valR in this.Errors) 137.{ 138.errorMessages.Add(valR.Exception.Message); 139.} 140. 141.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<DisplayValidationErrorsEvent>().Publish(errorMessages); 142. 143.} 144.else if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(this.activeJob, new ValidationContext(this.activeJob, null, null), _valResults, true)) 145.{ 146.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 147. 148.foreach (var valR in this._valResults) 149.{ 150.errorMessages.Add(valR.ErrorMessage); 151.} 152. 153.this._valResults.Clear(); 154. 155.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<DisplayValidationErrorsEvent>().Publish(errorMessages); 156.} 157.else 158.{ 159.if (this.isNewJob) 160.{ 161.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(this.activeJob); 162.} 163.else 164.{ 165.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(true); 166.} 167.} 168.} 169. 170.public void CancelAddEditCommand(object obj) 171.{ 172.if (this.isNewJob) 173.{ 174.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(null); 175.} 176.else 177.{ 178.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(false); 179.} 180.} 181. 182.#endregion 183.} 184.} We start seeing something new on line 103- the AddJobEventHandler will create a new job and set that to the activeJob item on the ViewModel. When this is all set, the view calls that familiar MakeMeActive method to activate itself. I made a bit of a management call on making views self-activate like this, but I figured it works for one reason. As I create this application, views may not exist that I have in mind, so after a view receives its 'ping' from being subscribed to an event, it prepares whatever it needs to do and then goes active. This way if I don't have 'edit' hooked up, I can click as the day is long on the main view and won't get lost in an empty region. Total personal preference here. :) Everything else should again be pretty straightforward, although I do a bit of validation checking in the AddEditJobCommand, which can either fire off an event back to the main view/viewmodel if everything is a success or sent a list of errors to our notification module, which pops open a RadWindow with the alerts if any exist. As a bonus side note, here's what my WCF RIA Services metadata looks like for handling all of the validation: private JobPostingMetadata() { } [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage = "Description should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength = 1)] [Required(ErrorMessage = "Description is required.")] public string Description; [Required(ErrorMessage="Active Status is Required")] public bool IsActive; [StringLength(100, ErrorMessage = "Posting title must be more than 3 but less than 100 characters.", MinimumLength = 3)] [Required(ErrorMessage = "Job Title is required.")] public bool JobTitle; [Required] public string Location; public bool NeedsCV; public bool NeedsOverview; public bool NeedsResume; public int PostingID; [Required(ErrorMessage="Qualifications are required.")] [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage="Qualifications should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength=1)] public string Qualifications; [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage = "Requirements should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength = 1)] [Required(ErrorMessage="Requirements are required.")] public string Requirements;   The RecruitCB Alternative See all that Xaml I pasted above? Those are now two pieces sitting in the JobsView.xaml file now. The only real difference is that the xEditGrid now sits in the same place as xJobsGrid, with visibility swapping out between the two for a quick switch. I also took out all the cal: and command: command references and replaced Button events with clicks and the Grid selection command replaced with a SelectedItemChanged event. Also, at the bottom of the xEditGrid after the last button, I add a ValidationSummary (with Visibility=Collapsed) to catch any errors that are popping up. Simple as can be, and leads to this being the single code-behind file: 001.public partial class JobsView : UserControl 002.{ 003.public RecruitingContext context; 004.public JobPosting activeJob; 005.public bool isNew; 006.private ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> _valResults = new ObservableCollection<ValidationResult>(); 007.public ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> ValResults 008.{ 009.get { return this._valResults; } 010.} 011.public JobsView() 012.{ 013.InitializeComponent(); 014.this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(JobsView_Loaded); 015.} 016.void JobsView_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 017.{ 018.context = new RecruitingContext(); 019.xJobsGrid.ItemsSource = context.JobPostings; 020.context.Load(context.GetJobPostingsQuery()); 021.} 022.private void xAddRecordButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 023.{ 024.activeJob = new JobPosting(); 025.isNew = true; 026.xAddEditTitle.Text = "Add a Job Posting"; 027.xAddEditButton.Content = "Add"; 028.xEditGrid.DataContext = activeJob; 029.HideJobsGrid(); 030.} 031.private void xEditRecordButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 032.{ 033.activeJob = xJobsGrid.SelectedItem as JobPosting; 034.isNew = false; 035.xAddEditTitle.Text = "Edit a Job Posting"; 036.xAddEditButton.Content = "Edit"; 037.xEditGrid.DataContext = activeJob; 038.HideJobsGrid(); 039.} 040.private void xAddEditButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 041.{ 042.if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(this.activeJob, new ValidationContext(this.activeJob, null, null), _valResults, true)) 043.{ 044.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 045.foreach (var valR in this._valResults) 046.{ 047.errorMessages.Add(valR.ErrorMessage); 048.} 049.this._valResults.Clear(); 050.ShowErrors(errorMessages); 051.} 052.else if (xSummary.Errors.Count > 0) 053.{ 054.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 055.foreach (var err in xSummary.Errors) 056.{ 057.errorMessages.Add(err.Message); 058.} 059.ShowErrors(errorMessages); 060.} 061.else 062.{ 063.if (this.isNew) 064.{ 065.context.JobPostings.Add(activeJob); 066.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 067.{ 068.ActionHistory thisAction = new ActionHistory(); 069.thisAction.PostingID = activeJob.PostingID; 070.thisAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been edited by {1}", activeJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 071.thisAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 072.context.ActionHistories.Add(thisAction); 073.context.SubmitChanges(); 074.}, null); 075.} 076.else 077.{ 078.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 079.{ 080.ActionHistory thisAction = new ActionHistory(); 081.thisAction.PostingID = activeJob.PostingID; 082.thisAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been added by {1}", activeJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 083.thisAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 084.context.ActionHistories.Add(thisAction); 085.context.SubmitChanges(); 086.}, null); 087.} 088.ShowJobsGrid(); 089.} 090.} 091.private void xCancelButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 092.{ 093.ShowJobsGrid(); 094.} 095.private void ShowJobsGrid() 096.{ 097.xAddEditRecordButtonPanel.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 098.xEditGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 099.xJobsGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 100.} 101.private void HideJobsGrid() 102.{ 103.xAddEditRecordButtonPanel.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 104.xJobsGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 105.xEditGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 106.} 107.private void ShowErrors(List<string> errorList) 108.{ 109.string nm = "Errors received: \n"; 110.foreach (string anerror in errorList) 111.nm += anerror + "\n"; 112.RadWindow.Alert(nm); 113.} 114.} The first 39 lines should be pretty familiar, not doing anything too unorthodox to get this up and running. Once we hit the xAddEditButton_Click on line 40, we're still doing pretty much the same things except instead of checking the ValidationHelper errors, we both run a check on the current activeJob object as well as check the ValidationSummary errors list. Once that is set, we again use the callback of context.SubmitChanges (lines 68 and 78) to create an ActionHistory which we will use to track these items down the line. That's all? Essentially... yes. If you look back through this post, most of the code and adventures we have taken were just to get things working in the MVVM/Prism setup. Since I have the whole 'module' self-contained in a single JobView+code-behind setup, I don't have to worry about things like sending events off into space for someone to pick up, communicating through an Infrastructure project, or even re-inventing events to be used with attached behaviors. Everything just kinda works, and again with much less code. Here's a picture of the MVVM and Code-behind versions on the Jobs and AddEdit views, but since the functionality is the same in both apps you still cannot tell them apart (for two-strike): Looking ahead, the Applicants module is effectively the same thing as the Jobs module, so most of the code is being cut-and-pasted back and forth with minor tweaks here and there. So that one is being taken care of by me behind the scenes. Next time, we get into a new world of fun- the interview scheduling module, which will pull from available jobs and applicants for each interview being scheduled, tying everything together with RadScheduler to the rescue. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Beyond Chatting: What ‘Social’ Means for CRM

  - by Divya Malik

  A guest post by Steve Diamond, Senior Director, Outbound Product Management, Oracle In a recent post on the Oracle Applications blog, my colleague Steve Boese asked three questions related to the widespread popularity and incredibly rapid growth of Facebook, Pinterest, and LinkedIn. Steve then addressed the many applications for collaborative solutions in the area of Human Capital Management. So, in turning to a conversation about Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Sales Force Automation (SFA), let me ask you one simple question. How many sales people, particularly at business-to-business companies, consistently meet or beat their quotas in their roles by working alone, with no collaboration among fellow sales people, sales executives, employees in product groups, in service, in Legal, third-party partners, etc.? Hello? Is anybody out there? What’s that cricket noise I hear? That’s correct. Nobody! When it comes to Sales, introverts arguably have a distinct disadvantage. While it’s certainly a truism that “success” in most professional endeavors requires working with people, it’s a mandatory success factor in Sales. This fact became abundantly clear to me one early morning in the late 1990s when I joined the former Hyperion Solutions (now part of Oracle) and attended a Sales Award Ceremony. The Head of Sales at that time gave out dozens of awards – none of them to individuals and all of them to TEAMS of individuals. That’s how it works in Sales. Your colleagues help provide you with product intelligence and competitive intelligence. They help you build the best presentations, pitches, and proposals. They help you develop the most killer RFPs. They align you with the best product people to ensure you’re matching the best products for the opportunity and join you in critical meetings. They help knock the socks of your prospects in “bake off” demo’s. They bring in the best partners to either add complementary products to your opportunity or help you implement a solution. They work with you as a collective team. And so how is all this collaboration STILL typically done today? Through email. And yet we all silently or not so silently grimace about email. It’s relatively siloed. It’s painful to search. It’s difficult to align by topic. And it’s nearly impossible to re-trace meaningful and helpful conversations that occurred among a group or a team at some point in history. This is where social networking for Sales comes into play. It’s about PURPOSEFUL social networking versus chattering. What is purposeful social networking? It’s collaboration that’s built around opportunities, accounts, and contacts. It’s collaboration that delivers valuable context – on the target company, and on key competitors – just to name two examples. It’s collaboration that can scale to provide coaching for larger numbers of sales representatives, both for general purposes, and as we’ve largely discussed here, for specific ‘deals.’ And it’s collaboration that allows a team of people to collectively edit and iterate on a document like an RFP or a soon-to-be killer presentation that is maintained in a central repository, with no time wasted searching for it or worrying about version control. But lest we get carried away, let’s remember that collaboration “happens” among sales people whether there is specialized software to support it or not. The human practice of sales has not changed much in the last 80 to 90 years. Collaboration has been a mainstay during this entire time. But what social networking in general, and Oracle Social Networking in particular delivers, is the opportunity for sales teams to dramatically increase their effectiveness and efficiency – to identify and close more high quality and lucrative opportunities more quickly. For most sales organizations, this is how the game is won. To learn more please visit Oracle Social Network and Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management on oracle.com

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• Guest (and occasional co-host) on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast

  - by Jon Galloway

  I was a recent guest on Jesse Liberty's Yet Another Podcast talking about the latest Visual Studio, ASP.NET and Azure releases. Download / Listen: Yet Another Podcast #75–Jon Galloway on ASP.NET/ MVC/ Azure Co-hosted shows: Jesse's been inviting me to co-host shows and I told him I'd show up when I was available. It's a nice change to be a drive-by co-host on a show (compared with the work that goes into organizing / editing / typing show notes for Herding Code shows). My main focus is on Herding Code, but it's nice to pop in and talk to Jesse's excellent guests when it works out. Some shows I've co-hosted over the past year: Yet Another Podcast #76–Glenn Block on Node.js & Technology in China Yet Another Podcast  #73 - Adam Kinney on developing for Windows 8 with HTML5 Yet Another Podcast #64 - John Papa & Javascript Yet Another Podcast #60 - Steve Sanderson and John Papa on Knockout.js Yet Another Podcast #54–Damian Edwards on ASP.NET Yet Another Podcast #53–Scott Hanselman on Blogging Yet Another Podcast #52–Peter Torr on Windows Phone Multitasking Yet Another Podcast #51–Shawn Wildermuth: //build, Xaml Programming & Beyond And some more on the way that haven't been released yet. Some of these I'm pretty quiet, on others I get wacky and hassle the guests because, hey, not my podcast so not my problem. Show notes from the ASP.NET / MVC / Azure show: What was just released Visual Studio 2012 Web Developer features ASP.NET 4.5 Web Forms Strongly Typed data controls Data access via command methods Similar Binding syntax to ASP.NET MVC Some context: Damian Edwards and WebFormsMVP Two questions from Jesse: Q: Are you making this harder or more complicated for Web Forms developers? Short answer: Nothing's removed, it's just a new option History of SqlDataSource, ObjectDataSource Q: If I'm using some MVC patterns, why not just move to MVC? Short answer: This works really well in hybrid applications, doesn't require a rewrite Allows sharing models, validation, other code between Web Forms and MVC ASP.NET MVC Adaptive Rendering (oh, also, this is in Web Forms 4.5 as well) Display Modes Mobile project template using jQuery Mobile OAuth login to allow Twitter, Google, Facebook, etc. login Jon (and friends') MVC 4 book on the way: Professional ASP.NET MVC 4 Windows 8 development Jesse and Jon announce they're working on a new book: Pro Windows 8 Development with XAML and C# Jon and Jesse agree that it's nice to be able to write Windows 8 applications using the same skills they picked up for Silverlight, WPF, and Windows Phone development. Compare / contrast ASP.NET MVC and Windows 8 development Q: Does ASP.NET and HTML5 development overlap? Jon thinks they overlap in the MVC world because you're writing HTML views without controls Jon describes how his web development career moved from a preoccupation with server code to a focus on user interaction, which occurs in the browser Jon mentions his NDC Oslo presentation on Learning To Love HTML as Beautiful Code Q: How do you apply C# / XAML or HTML5 skills to Windows 8 development? Q: If I'm a XAML programmer, what's the learning curve on getting up to speed on ASP.NET MVC? Jon describes the difference in application lifecycle and state management Jon says it's nice that web development is really interactive compared to application development Q: Can you learn MVC by reading a book? Or is it a lot bigger than that? What is Azure, and why would I use it? Jon describes the traditional Azure platform mode and how Azure Web Sites fits in Q: Why wouldn't Jesse host his blog on Azure Web Sites? Domain names on Azure Web Sites File hosting options Q: Is Azure just another host? How is it different from any of the other shared hosting options? A: Azure gives you the ability to scale up or down whenever you want A: Other services are available if or when you want them

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• From NaN to Infinity...and Beyond!

  - by Tony Davis

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

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