decimal format - Page 497

Copying Columns from Grid to Clipboard in SQL Developer

- by thatjeffsmith

There are several ways to get data from a query or a table|view to the clipboard. You know the tried and true, copy and paste. But what if you only want one or more columns, not every column? There are several ways to do this, let’s see if we can’t identify all of them. Write your query to only include the data you want Obvious? Yes. Needed to be said? Definitely. The best tuning tip is to only ask for the data you need, only when you absolutely need it. But let’s look at a few more practical ways to do this. Hide the unwanted columns Mouse right click on an column header. In the context menu, select ‘Columns.’ Hide the columns you don’t want. Copy and paste. WYSIWYG Grids, Hide Columns and Filter Rows Mouse select the columns Obvious, but a bit painful. For a very large dataset, you’ll be holding down the Shift and PageDown buttons – but it works. Remember to use Ctrl+Shift+C to get the column headers with the data. Use the Export Wizard This used to be called ‘Unload’ – agreed, not a great name. So, we changed it. In a grid, right mouse click on the data, and on the context menu, select ‘Export…’ Select your format – I suggest ‘delimited’ or ‘fixed’ for copying data to the clipboard. You can export to the clipboard, yes you can! Click ‘Next.’ Click in the Columns dialog, and choose the columns you want copied. Trim the columns you don't want copied Click ‘Finish.’ Alt or Ctrl tab to your window or application of choice. And Paste! "FIRST_NAME" "LAST_NAME" "Donald" "OConnell" "Douglas" "Grant" "Jennifer" "Whalen" "Pat" "Fay" "Susan" "Mavris" "William" "Gietz" "Alexander" "Hunold" "Bruce" "Ernst" "David" "Austin" "Valli" "Pataballa" "Diana" "Lorentz" "Daniel" "Faviet" "John" "Chen" "Ismael" "Sciarra" "Jose Manuel" "Urman" "Luis" "Popp" "Alexander" "Khoo" "Shelli" "Baida" "Sigal" "Tobias" "Guy" "Himuro" "Karen" "Colmenares" "Matthew" "Weiss" "Adam" "Fripp" "Payam" "Kaufling" "Shanta" "Vollman" "Kevin" "Mourgos" "Julia" "Nayer" "Irene" "Mikkilineni" ... There’s probably at least 2 or 3 more ways, but… But, try these and let me know how we can improve things. I’ve already gotten a request to be able to include the SQL text used to populate the dataset on the the copy to clipboard, and it’s now on our to-do list

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The Complementary Roles of PLM and PIM

- by Ulf Köster

Oracle Product Value Chain Solutions (aka Enterprise PLM Solutions) are a comprehensive set of product management solutions that work together to provide Oracle customers with a broad array of capabilities to manage all aspects of product life: innovation, design, launch, and supply chain / commercialization processes beyond the capabilities and boundaries of traditional engineering-focused Product Lifecycle Management applications. They support companies with an integrated managed view across the product value chain: From Lab to Launch, From Farm to Fork, From Concept to Product to Customer, From Product Innovation to Product Design and Product Commercialization. Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) represents a broad suite of software solutions to improve product-oriented business processes and data. PLM success stories prove that PLM helps companies improve time to market, increase product-related revenue, reduce product costs, reduce internal costs and improve product quality. As a maturing suite of enterprise solutions, PLM is still evolving to realize the promise it can provide across all facets of a business and all phases of the product lifecycle. The vision for PLM includes everything from gathering early requirements for a product through multiple stages of the product lifecycle from product design, through commercialization and eventual product retirement or replacement. In discrete or process industries, PLM is typically more focused on Product Definition as items with respect to the technical view of a material or part, including specifications, bills of material and manufacturing data. With Agile PLM, this is specifically related to capabilities addressing Product Collaboration, Governance and Compliance, Product Quality Management, Product Cost Management and Engineering Collaboration. PLM today is mainly addressing key requirements in the early product lifecycle, in engineering changes or in the “innovation cycle”, and primarily adds value related to product design, development, launch and engineering change process. In short, PLM is the master for Product Definition, wherever manufacturing takes place. Product Information Management (PIM) is a product suite that has evolved in parallel to PLM. Product Information Management (PIM) can extend the value of PLM implementations by providing complementary tools and capabilities. More relevant in the area of Product Commercialization, the vision for PIM is to manage product information throughout an enterprise and supply chain to improve product-related knowledge management, information sharing and synchronization from multiple data sources. PIM success stories have shown the ability to provide multiple benefits, with particular emphasis on reducing information complexity and information management costs. Product Information in PIM is typically treated as the commercial view of a material or part, including sales and marketing information and categorization. PIM collects information from multiple manufacturing sites and multiple suppliers into its repository, but also provides integration tools to push the information back out to the other systems, serving as an active central repository with the aim to provide a holistic view on any product sold by a company (hence the name “Product Hub”). In short, PIM is the master of commercial Product Information. So PIM is quickly becoming mandatory because of its value in optimizing multichannel selling processes and relationships with customers, as you can see from the following table: Viewpoint PLM Current State PIM Key Benefits PIM adds to PLM Product Lifecycle Primarily R&D Front end Innovation Cycle Change process Primarily commercial / transactional state of lifecycle Provides a seamless information flow from design and manufacturing through the ultimate selling and servicing of products Data Primarily focused on “item” vs. “product” data Product structures Specifications Technical information Repository for all product information. Reaches out to entire enterprise and its various silos of product information and descriptions Provides a “trusted source” of accurate product information to the internal organization and trading partners Data Lifecycle Repository for all design iterations Historical information Released, current information, with version management and time stamping Provides a single location to track and audit historical product information Communication PLM release finished product to ERP PLM is the master for Product Definition Captures information from disparate sources, including in-house data stores Recognizes the reality of today’s data “mess” across information silos Provides the ability to package product information to its audience in the desired, relevant format to meet their exacting business requirements Departmental R&D Manufacturing Quality Compliance Procurement Strategic Marketing Focus on Marketing and Sales Gathering information from other Departments, multiple sites, multiple suppliers A singular enterprise solution that leverages existing information silos and data stores Supply Chain Multi-site internal collaboration Supplier collaboration Customer collaboration Works with customers, exchanges / data pools, and trading partners to provide relevant product information packaged the way the customer desires Provides ability to provide trading partners and internal customers with information in a manner they desire, continuously Tools Data Management Collaboration Innovation Management Cleansing Synchronization Hub functions Consistent, clean and complete commercial product information The goals of both PLM and PIM, put simply, are to help companies make more profit from their products. PLM and PIM solutions can be easily added as they share some of the same goals, while coming from two different perspectives: the definition of the product and the commercialization of the product. Both can serve as a form of product “system of record”, but take different approaches to delivering value. Oracle Product Value Chain solutions offer rich new strategies for executives to collectively leverage Agile PLM, Product Data Hub, together with Enterprise Data Quality for Products, and other industry leading Oracle applications to achieve further incremental value, like Oracle Innovation Management. This is unique on the market today.

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ISO Files to USB – The Cheap and Easy Way

- by RonGarlit

(DISCLAIMER: Yes there are lots of more elegant ISO software beside the free Microsoft one I’m about to show. But free is free and it has been tested and works for me for making advance bootable USB drives. That is another story. Look up Windows 8 Developer Preview for that one on BING.) For those of use that work with new technology all the time we accumulate a lot of ISO files and have to burn them to CD/DVD’s quite often. But we now have machines without burner in the corporate environment. We have personally Netbooks and light wait highly mobile laptops that do not have DVD burner. USB ports are all the rage and now we have USB 3.0 which is way faster than the 2.0 we are used to. Just looking at the technology, space saving and the cost issues alone is a reason to buy these answer to the DVD’s. So what is special about USB 2.0 and USB 3.0? USB 2 has a maximum speed of 480 Mbps... (That is Megabits per SECOND!!) Now look at the storage that we have with USB thumb drives that are now up to 64 GB in size, cell phone and PDAs that have a lots of internal storage built in well above the 16 Gig range. At the MAX USB 2.0 speed of 480 Mbps a full transfer of data in between devices can take a long time. Time is money right. Every back up a iPhone? Don’t get me started. So at least the engineers have been planning ahead with USB 3.0 which offers a maximum transfer speed of 4.8 Gbps... (That is Giga bits per SECOND!!) That speed is almost 10 times faster than USB 2.0 …. We don’t need to do the math on that one do we? But for now I'm thrilled with USB 2.0 and the fact I can get these little 4 Gig USB drives for $4.00 each at Staples on sale. Well that is a no brainer don’t you think. But what can you do with them to replace that DVD. Simply and cheaply put………. THIS! First let’s get an ISO file like the Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate DVD ISO from MSDN to demonstrate with. I develop on several computers so this is a good choice for me. So we downloaded the ISO file and put it in a folder somewhere like this. Next we go download to the Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool site and read about the tool. http://www.microsoftstore.com/store/msstore/html/pbPage.Help_Win7_usbdvd_dwnTool And click this like to get the tool and install it. Once it is installed you go to the Start, Programs menu, Windows 7 USB DVD Download Tool folder. And then click the tool to open it up. As you will see it is a sweet, simple tool that was originally designed to put the ISO for Windows 7 which is designed to be bootable on a USB or DVD for us geeks to play with. It is now being used for the Windows 8 Developer Preview by many developers for that for the same purpose it was built for in the past. But for now we will use it to put a NON Bootable ISO on a USB. Hey it does the job and I’m reusing a left over program. Why buy the fancy one or a free trial and clutter up my machine. We will click the BROWSE button and navigate to where we put our ISO file we want to put on the USB drive. Obviously we are going to click NEXT and continue to select a USB Device (you can guess what the DVD button is for). Next we select the USB that we have plugged into one of our laptops USB ports. Then we click the BEGIN COPYING button and the first thing the program does is format our USB drive. Then it starts copying out files out of the ISO and constructing the USB as if it was a DVD. So now that the files are copying to the drive I’m going to warn you. We will error out here. This program was design for bootable ISO’s of which this one is NOT. No problem because what fails it the writing of the bootable data to the drive that isn’t there. No biggie…. Forget the STARTOVER button is even there and click the dialog’s CLOSE button and exit the program. Now go to Windows Explorer and navigate to the USB Device. You can now access everything and even add stuff to the drive. But for me I want to keep this drive for one purpose and that is to install VS2010 on various machines. So the only stuff I’ll add to this is a folder of notes on things on visual studio that I might want to put on other machines I’m installing VS2010 on to. So that is it. Have a nice day! The Ron

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ASP.NET Web API - Screencast series Part 3: Delete and Update

- by Jon Galloway

We're continuing a six part series on ASP.NET Web API that accompanies the getting started screencast series. This is an introductory screencast series that walks through from File / New Project to some more advanced scenarios like Custom Validation and Authorization. The screencast videos are all short (3-5 minutes) and the sample code for the series is both available for download and browsable online. I did the screencasts, but the samples were written by the ASP.NET Web API team. In Part 1 we looked at what ASP.NET Web API is, why you'd care, did the File / New Project thing, and did some basic HTTP testing using browser F12 developer tools. In Part 2 we started to build up a sample that returns data from a repository in JSON format via GET methods. In Part 3, we'll start to modify data on the server using DELETE and POST methods. So far we've been looking at GET requests, and the difference between standard browsing in a web browser and navigating an HTTP API isn't quite as clear. Delete is where the difference becomes more obvious. With a "traditional" web page, to delete something'd probably have a form that POSTs a request back to a controller that needs to know that it's really supposed to be deleting something even though POST was really designed to create things, so it does the work and then returns some HTML back to the client that says whether or not the delete succeeded. There's a good amount of plumbing involved in communicating between client and server. That gets a lot easier when we just work with the standard HTTP DELETE verb. Here's how the server side code works: public Comment DeleteComment(int id) { Comment comment; if (!repository.TryGet(id, out comment)) throw new HttpResponseException(HttpStatusCode.NotFound); repository.Delete(id); return comment; } If you look back at the GET /api/comments code in Part 2, you'll see that they start the exact same because the use cases are kind of similar - we're looking up an item by id and either displaying it or deleting it. So the only difference is that this method deletes the comment once it finds it. We don't need to do anything special to handle cases where the id isn't found, as the same HTTP 404 handling works fine here, too. Pretty much all "traditional" browsing uses just two HTTP verbs: GET and POST, so you might not be all that used to DELETE requests and think they're hard. Not so! Here's the jQuery method that calls the /api/comments with the DELETE verb: $(function() { $("a.delete").live('click', function () { var id = $(this).data('comment-id'); $.ajax({ url: "/api/comments/" + id, type: 'DELETE', cache: false, statusCode: { 200: function(data) { viewModel.comments.remove( function(comment) { return comment.ID == data.ID; } ); } } }); return false; }); }); So in order to use the DELETE verb instead of GET, we're just using $.ajax() and setting the type to DELETE. Not hard. But what's that statusCode business? Well, an HTTP status code of 200 is an OK response. Unless our Web API method sets another status (such as by throwing the Not Found exception we saw earlier), the default response status code is HTTP 200 - OK. That makes the jQuery code pretty simple - it calls the Delete action, and if it gets back an HTTP 200, the server-side delete was successful so the comment can be deleted. Adding a new comment uses the POST verb. It starts out looking like an MVC controller action, using model binding to get the new comment from JSON data into a c# model object to add to repository, but there are some interesting differences. public HttpResponseMessage<Comment> PostComment(Comment comment) { comment = repository.Add(comment); var response = new HttpResponseMessage<Comment>(comment, HttpStatusCode.Created); response.Headers.Location = new Uri(Request.RequestUri, "/api/comments/" + comment.ID.ToString()); return response; } First off, the POST method is returning an HttpResponseMessage<Comment>. In the GET methods earlier, we were just returning a JSON payload with an HTTP 200 OK, so we could just return the model object and Web API would wrap it up in an HttpResponseMessage with that HTTP 200 for us (much as ASP.NET MVC controller actions can return strings, and they'll be automatically wrapped in a ContentResult). When we're creating a new comment, though, we want to follow standard REST practices and return the URL that points to the newly created comment in the Location header, and we can do that by explicitly creating that HttpResposeMessage and then setting the header information. And here's a key point - by using HTTP standard status codes and headers, our response payload doesn't need to explain any context - the client can see from the status code that the POST succeeded, the location header tells it where to get it, and all it needs in the JSON payload is the actual content. Note: This is a simplified sample. Among other things, you'll need to consider security and authorization in your Web API's, and especially in methods that allow creating or deleting data. We'll look at authorization in Part 6. As for security, you'll want to consider things like mass assignment if binding directly to model objects, etc. In Part 4, we'll extend on our simple querying methods form Part 2, adding in support for paging and querying.

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What is the most efficient way to convert to binary and back in C#?

- by Saad Imran.

I'm trying to write a general purpose socket server for a game I'm working on. I know I could very well use already built servers like SmartFox and Photon, but I wan't to go through the pain of creating one myself for learning purposes. I've come up with a BSON inspired protocol to convert the the basic data types, their arrays, and a special GSObject to binary and arrange them in a way so that it can be put back together into object form on the client end. At the core, the conversion methods utilize the .Net BitConverter class to convert the basic data types to binary. Anyways, the problem is performance, if I loop 50,000 times and convert my GSObject to binary each time it takes about 5500ms (the resulting byte[] is just 192 bytes per conversion). I think think this would be way too slow for an MMO that sends 5-10 position updates per second with a 1000 concurrent users. Yes, I know it's unlikely that a game will have a 1000 users on at the same time, but like I said earlier this is supposed to be a learning process for me, I want to go out of my way and build something that scales well and can handle at least a few thousand users. So yea, if anyone's aware of other conversion techniques or sees where I'm loosing performance I would appreciate the help. GSBitConverter.cs This is the main conversion class, it adds extension methods to main datatypes to convert to the binary format. It uses the BitConverter class to convert the base types. I've shown only the code to convert integer and integer arrays, but the rest of the method are pretty much replicas of those two, they just overload the type. public static class GSBitConverter { public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this short value) { return BitConverter.GetBytes(value); } public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<short> value) { List<byte> bytes = new List<byte>(); short length = (short)value.Count(); bytes.AddRange(length.ToGSBinary()); for (int i = 0; i < length; i++) bytes.AddRange(value.ElementAt(i).ToGSBinary()); return bytes.ToArray(); } public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this bool value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<bool> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<byte> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this int value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<int> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this long value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<long> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this float value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<float> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this double value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<double> value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this string value); public static byte[] ToGSBinary(this IEnumerable<string> value); public static string GetHexDump(this IEnumerable<byte> value); } Program.cs Here's the the object that I'm converting to binary in a loop. class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { GSObject obj = new GSObject(); obj.AttachShort("smallInt", 15); obj.AttachInt("medInt", 120700); obj.AttachLong("bigInt", 10900800700); obj.AttachDouble("doubleVal", Math.PI); obj.AttachStringArray("muppetNames", new string[] { "Kermit", "Fozzy", "Piggy", "Animal", "Gonzo" }); GSObject apple = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Apple"); apple.AttachString("color", "red"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", true); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)1.5); GSObject lemon = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Lemon"); apple.AttachString("color", "yellow"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", false); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)0.8); GSObject apricoat = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Apricoat"); apple.AttachString("color", "orange"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", true); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)1.9); GSObject kiwi = new GSObject(); apple.AttachString("name", "Kiwi"); apple.AttachString("color", "green"); apple.AttachBool("inStock", true); apple.AttachFloat("price", (float)2.3); GSArray fruits = new GSArray(); fruits.AddGSObject(apple); fruits.AddGSObject(lemon); fruits.AddGSObject(apricoat); fruits.AddGSObject(kiwi); obj.AttachGSArray("fruits", fruits); Stopwatch w1 = Stopwatch.StartNew(); for (int i = 0; i < 50000; i++) { byte[] b = obj.ToGSBinary(); } w1.Stop(); Console.WriteLine(BitConverter.IsLittleEndian ? "Little Endian" : "Big Endian"); Console.WriteLine(w1.ElapsedMilliseconds + "ms"); } Here's the code for some of my other classes that are used in the code above. Most of it is repetitive. GSObject GSArray GSWrappedObject

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jQuery Datatable in MVC … extended.

- by Steve Clements

There are a million plugins for jQuery and when a web forms developer like myself works in MVC making use of them is par-for-the-course! MVC is the way now, web forms are but a memory!! Grids / tables are my focus at the moment. I don’t want to get in to righting reems of css and html, but it’s not acceptable to simply dump a table on the screen, functionality like sorting, paging, fixed header and perhaps filtering are expected behaviour. What isn’t always required though is the massive functionality like editing etc you get with many grid plugins out there. You potentially spend a long time getting everything hooked together when you just don’t need it. That is where the jQuery DataTable plugin comes in. It doesn’t have editing “out of the box” (you can add other plugins as you require to achieve such functionality). What it does though is very nicely format a table (and integrate with jQuery UI) without needing to hook up and Async actions etc. Take a look here… http://www.datatables.net I did in the first instance start looking at the Telerik MVC grid control – I’m a fan of Telerik controls and if you are developing an in-house of open source app you get the MVC stuff for free…nice! Their grid however is far more than I require. Note: Using Telerik MVC controls with your own jQuery and jQuery UI does come with some hurdles, mainly to do with the order in which all your jQuery is executing – I won’t cover that here though – mainly because I don’t have a clear answer on the best way to solve it! One nice thing about the dataTable above is how easy it is to extend http://www.datatables.net/examples/plug-ins/plugin_api.html and there are some nifty examples on the site already… I however have a requirement that wasn’t on the site … I need a grid at the bottom of the page that will size automatically to the bottom of the page and be scrollable if required within its own space i.e. everything above the grid didn’t scroll as well. Now a CSS master may have a great solution to this … I’m not that master and so didn’t! The content above the grid can vary so any kind of fixed positioning is out. So I wrote a little extension for the DataTable, hooked that up to the document.ready event and window.resize event. Initialising my dataTable ( s )… $(document).ready(function () { var dTable = $(".tdata").dataTable({ "bPaginate": false, "bLengthChange": false, "bFilter": true, "bSort": true, "bInfo": false, "bAutoWidth": true, "sScrollY": "400px" }); My extension to the API to give me the resizing…. // ********************************************************************** // jQuery dataTable API extension to resize grid and adjust column sizes // $.fn.dataTableExt.oApi.fnSetHeightToBottom = function (oSettings) { var id = oSettings.nTable.id; var dt = $("#" + id); var top = dt.position().top; var winHeight = $(document).height(); var remain = (winHeight - top) - 83; dt.parent().attr("style", "overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; height: " + remain + "px;"); this.fnAdjustColumnSizing(); } This is very much is debug mode, so pretty verbose at the moment – I’ll tidy that up later! You can see the last call is a call to an existing method, as the columns are fixed and that normally involves so CSS voodoo, a call to adjust those sizes is required. Just above is the style that the dataTable gives the grid wrapper div, I got that from some firebug action and stick in my new height. The –83 is to give me the space at the bottom i require for fixed footer! Finally I hook that up to the load and window resize. I’m actually using jQuery UI tabs as well, so I’ve got that in the open event of the tabs. $(document).ready(function () { var oTable; $("#tabs").tabs({ "show": function (event, ui) { oTable = $('div.dataTables_scrollBody>table.tdata', ui.panel).dataTable(); if (oTable.length > 0) { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); } } }); $(window).bind("resize", function () { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); }); }); And that all there is too it. Testament to the wonders of jQuery and the immense community surrounding it – to which I am extremely grateful. I’ve also hooked up some custom column filtering on the grid – pretty normal stuff though – you can get what you need for that from their website. I do hide the out of the box filter input as I wanted column specific, you need filtering turned on when initialising to get it to work and that input come with it! Tip: fnFilter is the method you want. With column index as a param – I used data tags to simply that one.

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Some New .NET Toys (Repost)

- by Kevin Grossnicklaus

Last week I was fortunate enough to spend time in Redmond on Microsoft’s campus for the 2011 Microsoft MVP Summit. It was great to hang out with a number of old friends and get the opportunity to talk tech with the various product teams up at Microsoft. The weather wasn’t exactly sunny but Microsoft always does a great job with the Summit and everyone had a blast (heck, I even got to run the bases at SafeCo field) While much of what we saw is covered under NDA, there a ton of great things in the pipeline from Microsoft and many things that are already available (or just became so) that I wasn’t necessarily aware of. The purpose of this post is to share some of the info I learned on resources and tools available to .NET developers today. Please let me know if you have any questions (or if you know of something else cool which might benefit others). Enjoy! Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Microsoft has issued the RTM release of Visual Studio 2010 SP1. You can download the full SP1 on MSDN as of today (March 10th to the general public) and take advantage of such things as: Silverlight 4 is included in the box (as opposed to a separate install) Silverlight 4 Profiling WCF RIA Services SP1 Intellitrace for 64-bit and SharePoint ASP.NET now easily supports IIS Express and SQL CE Want a description of all that’s new beyond the above biased list (which arguably only contains items I think are important)? Check out this KB article. Portable Library Tools CTP Without much fanfare Microsoft has released a CTP of a new add-in to Visual Studio 2010 which simplifies code sharing between projects targeting different runtimes (i.e. Silverlight, WPF, Win7 Phone, XBox). With this Add-In installed you can add a new project of type “Portable Library” and specify which platforms you wish to target. Once that is done, any code added to this library will be limited to use only features which are common to all selected frameworks. Other projects can now reference this portable library and be provided assemblies custom built to their environment. This greatly simplifies the current process of sharing linked files between platforms like WPF and Silverlight. You can find out more about this CTP and how it works on this great blog post. Visual Studio Async CTP Microsoft has also released a CTP of a set of language and framework enhancements to provide a much more powerful asynchronous programming model. Due to the focus on async programming in all types of platforms (and it being the ONLY option in Silverlight and Win7 phone) a move towards a simpler and more understandable model is always a good thing. This CTP (called Visual Studio Async CTP) can be downloaded here. You can read more about this CTP on this blog post. MSDN Code Samples Gallery Microsoft has also launched new code samples gallery on their MSDN site: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/. This site allows you to easily search for small samples of code related to a particular technology or platform. If a sample of code you are looking for is not found, you can request one via the site and other developers can see your request and provide a sample to the site to suit your needs. You can also peruse requested samples and, if you find a scenario where you can provide value, upload your own sample for the benefit of others. Samples are packaged into the VS .vsix format and include any necessary references/dependencies. By using .vsix as the deployment mechanism, as samples are installed from the site they are kept in your Visual Studio 2010 Samples Gallery and kept for your future reference. If you get a chance, check out the site and see how it is done. Although a somewhat simple concept, I was very impressed with their implementation and the way they went about trying to suit a need. I’ll definitely be looking there in the future as need something or want to share something. MSDN Search Capabilities Another item I learned recently and was not aware of (that might seem trivial to some) is the power of the MSDN site’s search capabilities. Between the Code Samples Gallery described above and the search enhancements on MSDN, Microsoft is definitely investing in their platform to help provide developers of all skill levels the tools and resources they need to be successful. What do I mean by the MSDN search capability and why should you care? If you go to the MSDN home page (http://msdn.microsoft.com) and use the “Search MSDN with Big” box at the very top of the page you will see some very interesting results. First, the search actually doesn’t just search the MSDN library it searches: MSDN Library All Microsoft Blogs CodePlex StackOverflow Downloads MSDN Magazine Support Knowledgebase (I’m not sure it even ends there but the above are all I know of) Beyond just searching all the above locations, the results are formatted very nicely to give some contextual information based on where the result came from. For example, if a keyword search returned results from CodePlex, each row in the search results screen would include a large amount of information specific to CodePlex such as: Looking at the above results immediately tells you everything from the page views to the CodePlex ratings. All in all, knowing that this much information is indexed and available from a single search location will lead me to utilize this as one of my initial searches for development information.

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Parallelism in .NET – Part 17, Think Continuations, not Callbacks

- by Reed

In traditional asynchronous programming, we’d often use a callback to handle notification of a background task’s completion. The Task class in the Task Parallel Library introduces a cleaner alternative to the traditional callback: continuation tasks. Asynchronous programming methods typically required callback functions. For example, MSDN’s Asynchronous Delegates Programming Sample shows a class that factorizes a number. The original method in the example has the following signature: public static bool Factorize(int number, ref int primefactor1, ref int primefactor2) { //... .csharpcode, .csharpcode pre { font-size: small; color: black; font-family: consolas, "Courier New", courier, monospace; background-color: #ffffff; /*white-space: pre;*/ } .csharpcode pre { margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .rem { color: #008000; } .csharpcode .kwrd { color: #0000ff; } .csharpcode .str { color: #006080; } .csharpcode .op { color: #0000c0; } .csharpcode .preproc { color: #cc6633; } .csharpcode .asp { background-color: #ffff00; } .csharpcode .html { color: #800000; } .csharpcode .attr { color: #ff0000; } .csharpcode .alt { background-color: #f4f4f4; width: 100%; margin: 0em; } .csharpcode .lnum { color: #606060; } However, calling this is quite “tricky”, even if we modernize the sample to use lambda expressions via C# 3.0. Normally, we could call this method like so: int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool answer = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", primeFactor1, primeFactor2, answer); If we want to make this operation run in the background, and report to the console via a callback, things get tricker. First, we need a delegate definition: public delegate bool AsyncFactorCaller( int number, ref int primefactor1, ref int primefactor2); Then we need to use BeginInvoke to run this method asynchronously: int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; AsyncFactorCaller caller = new AsyncFactorCaller(Factorize); caller.BeginInvoke(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2, result => { int factor1 = 0; int factor2 = 0; bool answer = caller.EndInvoke(ref factor1, ref factor2, result); Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", factor1, factor2, answer); }, null); This works, but is quite difficult to understand from a conceptual standpoint. To combat this, the framework added the Event-based Asynchronous Pattern, but it isn’t much easier to understand or author. Using .NET 4’s new Task<T> class and a continuation, we can dramatically simplify the implementation of the above code, as well as make it much more understandable. We do this via the Task.ContinueWith method. This method will schedule a new Task upon completion of the original task, and provide the original Task (including its Result if it’s a Task<T>) as an argument. Using Task, we can eliminate the delegate, and rewrite this code like so: var background = Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool result = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); return new { Result = result, Factor1 = primeFactor1, Factor2 = primeFactor2 }; }); background.ContinueWith(task => Console.WriteLine("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", task.Result.Factor1, task.Result.Factor2, task.Result.Result)); This is much simpler to understand, in my opinion. Here, we’re explicitly asking to start a new task, then continue the task with a resulting task. In our case, our method used ref parameters (this was from the MSDN Sample), so there is a little bit of extra boiler plate involved, but the code is at least easy to understand. That being said, this isn’t dramatically shorter when compared with our C# 3 port of the MSDN code above. However, if we were to extend our requirements a bit, we can start to see more advantages to the Task based approach. For example, supposed we need to report the results in a user interface control instead of reporting it to the Console. This would be a common operation, but now, we have to think about marshaling our calls back to the user interface. This is probably going to require calling Control.Invoke or Dispatcher.Invoke within our callback, forcing us to specify a delegate within the delegate. The maintainability and ease of understanding drops. However, just as a standard Task can be created with a TaskScheduler that uses the UI synchronization context, so too can we continue a task with a specific context. There are Task.ContinueWith method overloads which allow you to provide a TaskScheduler. This means you can schedule the continuation to run on the UI thread, by simply doing: Task.Factory.StartNew( () => { int primeFactor1 = 0; int primeFactor2 = 0; bool result = Factorize(10298312, ref primeFactor1, ref primeFactor2); return new { Result = result, Factor1 = primeFactor1, Factor2 = primeFactor2 }; }).ContinueWith(task => textBox1.Text = string.Format("{0}/{1} [Succeeded {2}]", task.Result.Factor1, task.Result.Factor2, task.Result.Result), TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext()); This is far more understandable than the alternative. By using Task.ContinueWith in conjunction with TaskScheduler.FromCurrentSynchronizationContext(), we get a simple way to push any work onto a background thread, and update the user interface on the proper UI thread. This technique works with Windows Presentation Foundation as well as Windows Forms, with no change in methodology.

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SQL Developer Data Modeler v3.3 Early Adopter: Collaborative Design via Excel?

- by thatjeffsmith

As you may have heard last week, we have a new version of Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler now available as an Early Adopter release. Version 3.3 has quite a few new features and I’ll be previewing them here. Today’s topic is our new Excel integration. It builds off of last week’s lesson: Search, so you may want to go read that first. They say it takes a village to raise a child. I say it takes a team to build a data model. You have your techie folks, your business folks, your in-betweeners, and your database geeks. Who gets to define how customers are represented and stored in your database? That data lives forever, so you better get it right from the beginning, or you’ll be living in a hacker’s paradise for years to come. Lots of good rantings, ravings, and advice on this topic in general on Karen Lopez’s (@datachick) blog. But let’s say you are the primary modeler on a project. You dutifully interview the business folks for their requirements. You sit down and start to model and think you’re pretty close. Now you need someone to confirm your assumptions and provide some feedback. Do you send your model over? Take a screenshot and blow it up on a whiteboard? Export to HTML and let them take a magic marker to their monitors? Or maybe you bite the bullet and install your modeling software on their desktops and take the hours or days required to train them up on how to use the the tool. Wouldn’t it be nice if they could just mark up their corrections in Excel and let you suck the updates back in? This is what we have started to build in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler. Let’s say you have a new table called ‘UT_STARTUPS.’ It looks a little something like this: A table in Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler What I would like to do is have my team or co-worker review how I have defined those columns. Perhaps TIMESTAMP is overkill or maybe the column names themselves aren’t up to snuff. What I am going to do is now search for all the columns in my table, then export that to Excel. So do a search for UT_STARTUPS. Search, filter, then Report With the filter set to ‘Columns,’ if I do a report I’ll be only getting the columns that are resolving to my search term. So as long as my table name is unique in the model, I should get what I’m looking for. Here’s what I see when I click on the Report button: XLS or XLSX, either format is just fine I want to decide how the Column data is exported to Excel though, so I’m going to create a report template that I can use going forward. So click the ‘Manage’ button and setup a new template. I’m going to call mine ‘CollaborativeDevelopment.’ The templates allow me to define what properties are included in the reports. Once this is set, I’ll have the XLS file generated, and get to work Now let the Excel junkies do their stuff Note that not ALL of the report properties are update-able (yes, I made up a new word there) via Excel. We’ll have the full list of properties documented going forward, but in my Excel sheet, note that I can’t change the table name or the data types for the columns. I’m going to update some column names and supply ‘nice’ comments so the database users know what’s what. Here’s my input for the designer/architect/database dude: Be kind, please rew…use comments. Save the file, email it back to your modeler. Update the model from Excel That’s right, it’s a right mouse click from your model in the tree If everything goes right, you’ll see a nice confirmation message: It’s alive! Another to-do item on tap – making this dialog more informative. We’ll be showing exactly what in your model was updated from Excel. Let’s take another look at the model now Voila! Why are we doing this again? The goal is to reduce the number of round-trips from the modeler and the business process owner. One is used to working with Excel – why not allow them to mark up their changes in the tool they already know? This is an early adopter release and I anticipate this feature getting a good bit of tuning up before we release. Why don’t you download 3.3, give it a whirl, and let us know what you think?

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Building InstallShield based Installers using Team Build 2010

- by jehan

Last few weeks, I have been working on Application Packaging stuff using all the widely used tools like InstallShield, WISE, WiX and Visual Studio Installer. So, I thought it would be good to post about how to Build the Installers developed using these tools with Team Build 2010. This post will focus on how to build the InstallShield generated packages using Team Build 2010. For the release of VS2010, Microsoft has partnered with Flexera who are the makers of InstallShield to create InstallShield Limited Edition, especially for the customers of Visual Studio. First Microsoft planned to release WiX (Windows Installer Xml) with VS2010, but later Microsoft dropped WiX from VS2010 due to reasons which are best known to them and partnered with InstallShield for Limited Edition. It disappointed lot of people because InstallShield Limited Edition provides only few features of InstallShield and it may not feasable to build complex installer packages using this and it also requires License, where as WiX is an open source with no license costs and it has proved efficient in building most complex packages. Only the last three features are available in InstallShield Limited Edition from the total features offered by InstallShield as shown in below list. Feature Limited Edition for Visual Studio 2010 Standalone Build System Maintain a clean build machine by using only the part of InstallShield that compiles the installations. InstallShield Best Practices Validation Suite Avoid common installation issues. Try and Die Functionality RCreate a fully functional trial version of your product. InstallShield Repackager Create Windows Installer setups from any legacy installation. Multilingual Support Present installation text in up to 35 languages. Microsoft App-V™ Support Deploy your applications as App-V virtual packages that run without conflict. Industry-Standard InstallScript Achieve maximum flexibility in your installations. Dialog Editor Modify the layout of existing end-user dialogs, create new custom dialogs, and more. Patch Creation Build updates and patches for your products. Setup Prerequisite Editor Easily control prerequisite restart behavior and source locations. String Editor View Control the localizable text strings displayed at run time with this spreadsheet-like table. Text File Changes View Configure search-and-replace actions for content in text files to be modified at run time. Virtual Machine Detection Block your installations from running on virtual machines. Unicode Support Improve multi-language installation development. Support for 64-Bit COM Extraction Extract COM data from a 64-bit COM server. Windows Installer Installation Chaining Add MSI packages to your main installation and chain them together. XML Support Save time by quickly testing XML configuration changes to installation projects. Billboard Support for Custom Branding Display Adobe Flash billboards and other graphic files during the install process. SaaS Support (IIS 7 and SSL Technologies) Easily deploy Windows-based Web applications. Project Assistant Jumpstart a project by using a simplified set of views. Support for Digital Signatures Save time by digitally signing all your files at build time. Easily Run Custom Actions Schedule a custom action to run at precisely the right moment in your installation. Installation Prerequisites Check for and install prerequisites before your installation is executed. To create a InstallShield project in Visual Studio and Build it using Team Build 2010, first you have to add the InstallShield Project template to your Solution file. If you want to use InstallShield Limited edition you can add it from FileàNewà project àother Project Types àSetup and Deploymentà InstallShield LE and if you are using other versions of InstallShield, then you have to add it from from FileàNewà project àInstallShield Projects. Here, I’m using InstallShield 2011 Premier edition as I already have it Installed. I have created a simple package for TailSpin Application which has a Feature called Web, few components and a IIS Web Site for TailSpin application. Before started working on this, I thought I may need to build the package by calling invoke process activity in build process template or have to create a new custom activity. But, it got build without any changes to build process template. But, it was failing with below error message. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2011\InstallShield.targets (68): The "InstallShield.Tasks.InstallShield" task could not be loaded from the assembly C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2010Limited\InstallShield.Tasks.dll. Could not load file or assembly 'file:///C:\Program Files(x86)\MSBuild\InstallShield\2011\InstallShield.Tasks.dll' or one of its dependencies. An attempt was made to load a program with an incorrect format. Confirm that the <UsingTask> declaration is correct, that the assembly and all its dependencies are available, and that the task contains a public class that implements Microsoft.Build.Framework.ITask. This error is due to 64-bit build machine which I’m using. This issue will be replicable if you are queuing a build on a 64-bit build machine. To avoid this you have to ensure that you configured the build definition for your InstallShield project to load the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file (which is a 32-bit file); otherwise, you will encounter this build error informing you that the InstallShield.Tasks.dll file could not be loaded. To select the 32-bit version of MSBuild, click the Process tab of your build definition in Team Explorer. Then, under the Advanced node, find the MSBuild Platform setting, and select x86. Note that if you are using a 32-bit build machine, you can select either Auto or x86 for the MSBuild Platform setting. Once I did above changes, the build got successful.

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To ref or not to ref

- by nmarun

So the question is what is the point of passing a reference type along with the ref keyword? I have an Employee class as below: 1: public class Employee 2: { 3: public string FirstName { get; set; } 4: public string LastName { get; set; } 5: 6: public override string ToString() 7: { 8: return string.Format("{0}-{1}", FirstName, LastName); 9: } 10: } In my calling class, I say: 1: class Program 2: { 3: static void Main() 4: { 5: Employee employee = new Employee 6: { 7: FirstName = "John", 8: LastName = "Doe" 9: }; 10: Console.WriteLine(employee); 11: CallSomeMethod(employee); 12: Console.WriteLine(employee); 13: } 14: 15: private static void CallSomeMethod(Employee employee) 16: { 17: employee.FirstName = "Smith"; 18: employee.LastName = "Doe"; 19: } 20: } After having a look at the code, you’ll probably say, Well, an instance of a class gets passed as a reference, so any changes to the instance inside the CallSomeMethod, actually modifies the original object. Hence the output will be ‘John-Doe’ on the first call and ‘Smith-Doe’ on the second. And you’re right: So the question is what’s the use of passing this Employee parameter as a ref? 1: class Program 2: { 3: static void Main() 4: { 5: Employee employee = new Employee 6: { 7: FirstName = "John", 8: LastName = "Doe" 9: }; 10: Console.WriteLine(employee); 11: CallSomeMethod(ref employee); 12: Console.WriteLine(employee); 13: } 14: 15: private static void CallSomeMethod(ref Employee employee) 16: { 17: employee.FirstName = "Smith"; 18: employee.LastName = "Doe"; 19: } 20: } The output is still the same: Ok, so is there really a need to pass a reference type using the ref keyword? I’ll remove the ‘ref’ keyword and make one more change to the CallSomeMethod method. 1: class Program 2: { 3: static void Main() 4: { 5: Employee employee = new Employee 6: { 7: FirstName = "John", 8: LastName = "Doe" 9: }; 10: Console.WriteLine(employee); 11: CallSomeMethod(employee); 12: Console.WriteLine(employee); 13: } 14: 15: private static void CallSomeMethod(Employee employee) 16: { 17: employee = new Employee 18: { 19: FirstName = "Smith", 20: LastName = "John" 21: }; 22: } 23: } In line 17 you’ll see I’ve ‘new’d up the incoming Employee parameter and then set its properties to new values. The output tells me that the original instance of the Employee class does not change. Huh? But an instance of a class gets passed by reference, so why did the values not change on the original instance or how do I keep the two instances in-sync all the times? Aah, now here’s the answer. In order to keep the objects in sync, you pass them using the ‘ref’ keyword. 1: class Program 2: { 3: static void Main() 4: { 5: Employee employee = new Employee 6: { 7: FirstName = "John", 8: LastName = "Doe" 9: }; 10: Console.WriteLine(employee); 11: CallSomeMethod(ref employee); 12: Console.WriteLine(employee); 13: } 14: 15: private static void CallSomeMethod(ref Employee employee) 16: { 17: employee = new Employee 18: { 19: FirstName = "Smith", 20: LastName = "John" 21: }; 22: } 23: } Viola! Now, to prove it beyond doubt, I said, let me try with another reference type: string. 1: class Program 2: { 3: static void Main() 4: { 5: string name = "abc"; 6: Console.WriteLine(name); 7: CallSomeMethod(ref name); 8: Console.WriteLine(name); 9: } 10: 11: private static void CallSomeMethod(ref string name) 12: { 13: name = "def"; 14: } 15: } The output was as expected, first ‘abc’ and then ‘def’ - proves the 'ref' keyword works here as well. Now, what if I remove the ‘ref’ keyword? The output should still be the same as the above right, since string is a reference type? 1: class Program 2: { 3: static void Main() 4: { 5: string name = "abc"; 6: Console.WriteLine(name); 7: CallSomeMethod(name); 8: Console.WriteLine(name); 9: } 10: 11: private static void CallSomeMethod(string name) 12: { 13: name = "def"; 14: } 15: } Wrong, the output shows ‘abc’ printed twice. Wait a minute… now how could this be? This is because string is an immutable type. This means that any time you modify an instance of string, new memory address is allocated to the instance. The effect is similar to ‘new’ing up the Employee instance inside the CallSomeMethod in the absence of the ‘ref’ keyword. Verdict: ref key came to the rescue and saved the planet… again!

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Using real fonts in HTML 5 & CSS 3 pages

- by nikolaosk

This is going to be the fifth post in a series of posts regarding HTML 5. You can find the other posts here, here , here and here.In this post I will provide a hands-on example on how to use real fonts in HTML 5 pages with the use of CSS 3.Font issues have been appearing in all websites and caused all sorts of problems for web designers.The real problem with fonts for web developers until now was that they were forced to use only a handful of fonts.CSS 3 allows web designers not to use only web-safe fonts.These fonts are in wide use in most user's operating systems.Some designers (when they wanted to make their site stand out) resorted in various techniques like using images instead of fonts. That solution is not very accessible-friendly and definitely less SEO friendly.CSS (through CSS3's Fonts module) 3 allows web developers to embed fonts directly on a web page.First we need to define the font and then attach the font to elements.Obviously we have various formats for fonts. Some are supported by all modern browsers and some are not.The most common formats are, Embedded OpenType (EOT),TrueType(TTF),OpenType(OTF). I will use the @font-face declaration to define the font used in this page. Before you download fonts (in any format) make sure you have understood all the licensing issues. Please note that all these real fonts will be downloaded in the client's computer.A great resource on the web (maybe the best) is http://www.typekit.com/.They have an abundance of web fonts for use. Please note that they sell those fonts.Another free (best things in life a free, aren't they?) resource is the http://www.google.com/webfonts website. I have visited the website and downloaded the Aladin webfont.When you download any font you like make sure you read the license first. Aladin webfont is released under the Open Font License (OFL) license. Before I go on with the actual demo I will use the (http://www.caniuse.com) to see the support for web fonts from the latest versions of modern browsers.Please have a look at the picture below. We see that all the latest versions of modern browsers support this feature. In order to be absolutely clear this is not (and could not be) a detailed tutorial on HTML 5. There are other great resources for that.Navigate to the excellent interactive tutorials of W3School.Another excellent resource is HTML 5 Doctor.Two very nice sites that show you what features and specifications are implemented by various browsers and their versions are http://caniuse.com/ and http://html5test.com/. At this times Chrome seems to support most of HTML 5 specifications.Another excellent way to find out if the browser supports HTML 5 and CSS 3 features is to use the Javascript lightweight library Modernizr.In this hands-on example I will be using Expression Web 4.0.This application is not a free application. You can use any HTML editor you like.You can use Visual Studio 2012 Express edition. You can download it here.I create a simple HTML 5 page. The markup follows and it is very easy to use and understand<!DOCTYPE html><html lang="en"> <head> <title>HTML 5, CSS3 and JQuery</title> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;charset=utf-8" > <link rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" href="style.css"> </head> <body> <div id="header"> <h1>Learn cutting edge technologies</h1> <p>HTML 5, JQuery, CSS3</p> </div> <div id="main"> <h2>HTML 5</h2> <p> HTML5 is the latest version of HTML and XHTML. The HTML standard defines a single language that can be written in HTML and XML. It attempts to solve issues found in previous iterations of HTML and addresses the needs of Web Applications, an area previously not adequately covered by HTML. </p> </div> </body> </html> Then I create the style.css file.<style type="text/css">@font-face{font-family:Aladin;src: url('Aladin-Regular.ttf')}h1{font-family:Aladin,Georgia,serif;}</style> As you can see we want to style the h1 tag in our HTML 5 markup.I just use the @font-face property,specifying the font-family and the source of the web font. Then I just use the name in the font-family property to style the h1 tag.Have a look below to see my page in IE10. Make sure you open this page in all your browsers installed in your machine. Make sure you have downloaded the latest versions. Now we can make our site stand out with web fonts and give it a really unique look and feel. Hope it helps!!!

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TDD and WCF behavior

- by Frederic Hautecoeur

Some weeks ago I wanted to develop a WCF behavior using TDD. I have lost some time trying to use mocks. After a while i decided to just use a host and a client. I don’t like this approach but so far I haven’t found a good and fast solution to use Unit Test for testing a WCF behavior. To Implement my solution I had to : Create a Dummy Service Definition; Create the Dummy Service Implementation; Create a host; Create a client in my test; Create and Add the behavior; Dummy Service Definition This is just a simple service, composed of an Interface and a simple implementation. The structure is aimed to be easily customizable for my future needs. Using Clauses : 1: using System.Runtime.Serialization; 2: using System.ServiceModel; 3: using System.ServiceModel.Channels; The DataContract: 1: [DataContract()] 2: public class MyMessage 3: { 4: [DataMember()] 5: public string MessageString; 6: } The request MessageContract: 1: [MessageContract()] 2: public class RequestMessage 3: { 4: [MessageHeader(Name = "MyHeader", Namespace = "http://dummyservice/header", Relay = true)] 5: public string myHeader; 6: 7: [MessageBodyMember()] 8: public MyMessage myRequest; 9: } The response MessageContract: 1: [MessageContract()] 2: public class ResponseMessage 3: { 4: [MessageHeader(Name = "MyHeader", Namespace = "http://dummyservice/header", Relay = true)] 5: public string myHeader; 6: 7: [MessageBodyMember()] 8: public MyMessage myResponse; 9: } The ServiceContract: 1: [ServiceContract(Name="DummyService", Namespace="http://dummyservice",SessionMode=SessionMode.Allowed )] 2: interface IDummyService 3: { 4: [OperationContract(Action="Perform", IsOneWay=false, ProtectionLevel=System.Net.Security.ProtectionLevel.None )] 5: ResponseMessage DoThis(RequestMessage request); 6: } Dummy Service Implementation 1: public class DummyService:IDummyService 2: { 3: #region IDummyService Members 4: public ResponseMessage DoThis(RequestMessage request) 5: { 6: ResponseMessage response = new ResponseMessage(); 7: response.myHeader = "Response"; 8: response.myResponse = new MyMessage(); 9: response.myResponse.MessageString = 10: string.Format("Header:<{0}> and Request was <{1}>", 11: request.myHeader, request.myRequest.MessageString); 12: return response; 13: } 14: #endregion 15: } Host Creation The most simple host implementation using a Named Pipe binding. The GetBinding method will create a binding for the host and can be used to create the same binding for the client. 1: public static class TestHost 2: { 3: 4: internal static string hostUri = "net.pipe://localhost/dummy"; 5: 6: // Create Host method. 7: internal static ServiceHost CreateHost() 8: { 9: ServiceHost host = new ServiceHost(typeof(DummyService)); 10: 11: // Creating Endpoint 12: Uri namedPipeAddress = new Uri(hostUri); 13: host.AddServiceEndpoint(typeof(IDummyService), GetBinding(), namedPipeAddress); 14: 15: return host; 16: } 17: 18: // Binding Creation method. 19: internal static Binding GetBinding() 20: { 21: NamedPipeTransportBindingElement namedPipeTransport = new NamedPipeTransportBindingElement(); 22: TextMessageEncodingBindingElement textEncoding = new TextMessageEncodingBindingElement(); 23: 24: return new CustomBinding(textEncoding, namedPipeTransport); 25: } 26: 27: // Close Method. 28: internal static void Close(ServiceHost host) 29: { 30: if (null != host) 31: { 32: host.Close(); 33: host = null; 34: } 35: } 36: } Checking the service A simple test tool check the plumbing. 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void TestService() 3: { 4: using (ServiceHost host = TestHost.CreateHost()) 5: { 6: host.Open(); 7: 8: using (ChannelFactory<IDummyService> channel = 9: new ChannelFactory<IDummyService>(TestHost.GetBinding() 10: , new EndpointAddress(TestHost.hostUri))) 11: { 12: IDummyService svc = channel.CreateChannel(); 13: try 14: { 15: RequestMessage request = new RequestMessage(); 16: request.myHeader = Guid.NewGuid().ToString(); 17: request.myRequest = new MyMessage(); 18: request.myRequest.MessageString = "I want some beer."; 19: 20: ResponseMessage response = svc.DoThis(request); 21: } 22: catch (Exception ex) 23: { 24: Assert.Fail(ex.Message); 25: } 26: } 27: host.Close(); 28: } 29: } Running the service should show that the client and the host are running fine. So far so good. Adding the Behavior Add a reference to the Behavior project and add the using entry in the test class. We just need to add the behavior to the service host : 1: [TestMethod] 2: public void TestService() 3: { 4: using (ServiceHost host = TestHost.CreateHost()) 5: { 6: host.Description.Behaviors.Add(new MyBehavior()); 7: host.Open();¨ 8: … If you set a breakpoint in your behavior and run the test in debug mode, you will hit the breakpoint. In this case I used a ServiceBehavior. To add an Endpoint behavior you have to add it to the endpoints. 1: host.Description.Endpoints[0].Behaviors.Add(new MyEndpointBehavior()) To add a contract or an operation behavior a custom attribute should work on the service contract definition. I haven’t tried that yet. All the code provided in this blog and in the following files are for sample use. Improvements I don’t like to instantiate a client and a service to test my behaviors. But so far I have' not found an easy way to do it. Today I am passing a type of endpoint to the host creator and it creates the right binding type. This allows me to easily switch between bindings at will. I have used the same approach to test Mex Endpoints, another post should come later for this. Enjoy !

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Microsoft Sql Server driver for Nodejs - Part 2

- by chanderdhall

Nodejs, Sql server and Json response with Rest This post is part 2 of Microsoft Sql Server driver for Node js.In this post we will look at the JSON responses from the Microsoft Sql Server driver for Node js. Pre-requisites: If you have read the Part 1 of the series, you should be good. We will be using a framework for Rest within Nodejs - Restify, but that would need no prior learning. Restify: Restify is a simple node module for building RESTful services. It is slimmer than Express. Express is a complete module that has all what you need to create a full-blown browser app. However, Restify does not have additional overhead of templating, rendering etc that would be needed if your app has views. So, as the name suggests it's an awesome framework for building RESTful services and is very light-weight. Set up - You can continue with the same directory or project structure we had in the previous post, or can start a new one. Install restify using npm and you are good to go. npm install restify Go to Server.js and include Restify in your solution. Then create the server object using restify.CreateServer() - SLICK - ha? var restify = require('restify'); var server = restify.createServer(); server.listen(8080, function () { console.log('%s listening at %s', server.name, server.url); }); Then make sure you provide a port for the Server to listen at. The call back function is optional but helps you for debugging purposes. Once you are done, save the file and then go to the command prompt and hit 'node server.js' and you should see the following: To test the server, go to your browser and type the address 'http://localhost:8080/' and oops you will see an error. Why is that? - Well because we haven't defined any routes. Let's go ahead and create a route. To begin with I'd like to return whatever is typed in the url after my name and the following code should do it. server.get('/ChanderDhall/:status', function respond(req, res, next) { res.end("hello " + req.params.name + "") }); You can also avoid writing call backs inline. Something like this. function respond(req, res, next) { res.end("Chander Dhall " + req.params.name + ""); } server.get('/hello/:name', respond); Now if you go ahead and type http://localhost:8080/ChanderDhall/LovesNode you will get the response 'Chander Dhall loves node'. NOTE: Make sure your url has the right case as it's case-sensitive. You could have also typed it in as 'server.get('/chanderdhall/:name', respond);' Stored procedure: We've talked a lot about Restify now, but keep in mind the post is about being able to use Sql server with Node and return JSON. To see this in action, let's go ahead and create another route to a list of Employees from a stored procedure. server.get('/Employees', Employees); The following code will return a JSON response. function Employees(req, res, next) { res.header("Content-Type: application/json"); //Need to specify the Content-Type which is //JSON in our case. sql.open(conn_str, function (err, conn) { if (err) { //Logs an error console.log("Error opening the database connection!"); return; } console.log("before query!"); conn.queryRaw("exec sp_GetEmployees", function (err, results) { if (err) { //Connection is open but an error occurs whileWhat else can be done? May be create a formatter or may be even come up with a hypermedia type but that may upset some pragmatists. Well, that's going to be a totally different discussion and is really not part of this series. Summary: We've discussed how to execute a stored procedure using Microsoft Sql Server driver for Node. Also, we have discussed how to format and send out a clean JSON to the app calling this API.

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Chart Control in ASP.Net 4 – Second Part

- by sreejukg

Couple of weeks before, I have written an introduction about the chart control available in .Net framework. In that article, I explained the basic usage of the chart control with a simple example. You can read that article from the url http://weblogs.asp.net/sreejukg/archive/2010/12/31/getting-started-with-chart-control-in-asp-net-4-0.aspx. In this article I am going to demonstrate how one can generate various types of charts that can be generated easily using the ASP.Net chart control. Let us recollect the data sample we were working in the previous sample. The following is the data I used in the previous article. id SaleAmount SalesPerson SaleType SaleDate CompletionStatus (%) 1 1000 Jack Development 2010-01-01 100 2 300 Mills Consultancy 2010-04-14 90 3 4000 Mills Development 2010-05-15 80 4 2500 Mike eMarketting 2010-06-15 40 5 1080 Jack Development 2010-07-15 30 6 6500 Mills Consultancy 2010-08-24 65 In this article I am going to demonstrate various graphical reports generated from this data with the help of chart control. The following are the reports I am going to generate 1. Representation of share of Sales by each Sales person. 2. Representation of share of sales data according to sale type 3. Representation of sales progress over time period I am going to demonstrate how to bind the chart control programmatically. In order to facilitate this, I created an aspx page named “SalesAnalysis.Aspx” to my project. In the page I added the following controls 1. Dropdownlist control – with id ddlAnalysisType, user will use this to choose the type of chart they want to see. 2. A Button control – with id btnSubmit , by clicking this button, the chart based on the dropdownlist selection will be shown to the user 3. A label Control – with id lblMessage, to display the message to the user, initially this will ask the user to select an option and click on the button. 4. Chart control – with id chrtAnalysis, by default, I set visible = false so that during the page load the chart will be hidden to the users. The following is the initial output of the page. Generating chart for salesperson share Now from Visual Studio, I have double clicked on the button; it created the event handler btnSubmit_Click. In the button Submit event handler, I am using a switch case to execute the corresponding SQL statement and bind it to the chart control. The below is the code for generating the sales person share chart using a pie chart. The above code produces the following output The steps for creating the above chart can be summarized as follows. You specify a chart area, then a series and bind the chart to some x and y values. That is it. If you want to control the chart size and position, you can set the properties for the ChartArea.Position element. For e.g. in the previous code, after instantiating the chart area, setting the below code will give you a bigger pie chart. c.Position.Width = 100; c.Position.Height = 100; The width and height values are in percentage. In this case the chart will be generated by utilizing all the width and height of the chart object. See the output updated with the width and height set to 100% each. Generate Chart for sales type share Now for generating the chart according to the sales type, you just need to change the SQL query and x and y values of the chart. The Sql query used is “SELECT SUM(saleAmount) amount, SaleType from SalesData group by SaleType” and the X-Value is amount and Y-Values is SaleType. s.XValueMember = "SaleType"; s.YValueMembers = "amount"; After modifying the above code with these, the following output is generated. Generate Chart for sales progress over time period For generating the progress of sale chart against sales amount / period, line chart is the ideal tool. In order to facilitate the line chart, you can use Chart Type as System.Web.UI.DataVisualization.Charting.SeriesChartType.Line. Also we need to retrieve the amount and sales date from the data source. I have used the following query to facilitate this. “SELECT SaleAmount, SaleDate FROM SalesData” The output for the line chart is as follows Now you have seen how easily you can build various types of charts. Chart control is an excellent one that helps you to bring business intelligence to your applications. What I demonstrated in only a small part of what you can do with the chart control. Refer http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd456632.aspx for further reading. If you want to get the project files in zip format, post your email below. Hope you enjoyed reading this article.

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UserAppDataPath in WPF

- by psheriff

In Windows Forms applications you were able to get to your user's roaming profile directory very easily using the Application.UserAppDataPath property. This folder allows you to store information for your program in a custom folder specifically for your program. The format of this directory looks like this: C:\Users\YOUR NAME\AppData\Roaming\COMPANY NAME\APPLICATION NAME\APPLICATION VERSION For example, on my Windows 7 64-bit system, this folder would look like this for a Windows Forms Application: C:\Users\PSheriff\AppData\Roaming\PDSA, Inc.\WindowsFormsApplication1\1.0.0.0 For some reason Microsoft did not expose this property from the Application object of WPF applications. I guess they think that we don't need this property in WPF? Well, sometimes we still do need to get at this folder. You have two choices on how to retrieve this property. Add a reference to the System.Windows.Forms.dll to your WPF application and use this property directly. Or, you can write your own method to build the same path. If you add a reference to the System.Windows.Forms.dll you will need to use System.Windows.Forms.Application.UserAppDataPath to access this property. Create a GetUserAppDataPath Method in WPF If you want to build this path you can do so with just a few method calls in WPF using Reflection. The code below shows this fairly simple method to retrieve the same folder as shown above. C#using System.Reflection; public string GetUserAppDataPath(){ string path = string.Empty; Assembly assm; Type at; object[] r; // Get the .EXE assembly assm = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly(); // Get a 'Type' of the AssemblyCompanyAttribute at = typeof(AssemblyCompanyAttribute); // Get a collection of custom attributes from the .EXE assembly r = assm.GetCustomAttributes(at, false); // Get the Company Attribute AssemblyCompanyAttribute ct = ((AssemblyCompanyAttribute)(r[0])); // Build the User App Data Path path = Environment.GetFolderPath( Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData); path += @"\" + ct.Company; path += @"\" + assm.GetName().Version.ToString(); return path;} Visual BasicPublic Function GetUserAppDataPath() As String Dim path As String = String.Empty Dim assm As Assembly Dim at As Type Dim r As Object() ' Get the .EXE assembly assm = Assembly.GetEntryAssembly() ' Get a 'Type' of the AssemblyCompanyAttribute at = GetType(AssemblyCompanyAttribute) ' Get a collection of custom attributes from the .EXE assembly r = assm.GetCustomAttributes(at, False) ' Get the Company Attribute Dim ct As AssemblyCompanyAttribute = _ DirectCast(r(0), AssemblyCompanyAttribute) ' Build the User App Data Path path = Environment.GetFolderPath( _ Environment.SpecialFolder.ApplicationData) path &= "\" & ct.Company path &= "\" & assm.GetName().Version.ToString() Return pathEnd Function Summary Getting the User Application Data Path folder in WPF is fairly simple with just a few method calls using Reflection. Of course, there is absolutely no reason you cannot just add a reference to the System.Windows.Forms.dll to your WPF application and use that Application object. After all, System.Windows.Forms.dll is a part of the .NET Framework and can be used from WPF with no issues at all. NOTE: Visit http://www.pdsa.com/downloads to get more tips and tricks like this one. Good Luck with your Coding,Paul Sheriff ** SPECIAL OFFER FOR MY BLOG READERS **We frequently offer a FREE gift for readers of my blog. Visit http://www.pdsa.com/Event/Blog for your FREE gift!

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Helping install mrcwa and solve problems with f2py in Ubuntu 14.04 LTS

- by user288160

I am sorry if this is the wrong section but I am starting to get desperate, please someone help me... I need to install the program mrcwa-20080820 (sourceforge.net/projects/mrcwa/) because a summer project that I am involved. I need to use it together with anaconda (store.continuum.io/cshop/anaconda/), I already installed Anaconda and apparently it is working. When I type: conda --version I got the expected answer. conda 3.5.2 If I tried to import numpy or scipy with python or simple type f2py there are no errors. So far so good. But when I tried to install this program sudo python setup.py install I got these errors: running install running build sh: 1: f2py: not found cp: cannot stat ‘mrcwaf.so’: No such file or directory running build_py running install_lib running install_egg_info Removing /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mrcwa-20080820.egg-info Writing /usr/local/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/mrcwa-20080820.egg-info Obs: I am trying to use intel fortran 64-bits and Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. So I was checking f2py and tried to execute the program hello world f2py -c -m hello hello.f from here: cens.ioc.ee/projects/f2py2e/index.html#usage and I had some problems too: running build running config_cc unifing config_cc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands --compiler options running config_fc unifing config_fc, config, build_clib, build_ext, build commands --fcompiler options running build_src build_src building extension "hello" sources f2py options: [] f2py:> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 Reading fortran codes... Reading file 'hello.f' (format:fix,strict) Post-processing... Block: hello Block: foo Post-processing (stage 2)... Building modules... Building module "hello"... Constructing wrapper function "foo"... foo(a) Wrote C/API module "hello" to file "/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 /hellomodule.c" adding '/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c' to sources. adding '/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7' to include_dirs. copying /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/f2py/src/fortranobject.c -> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 copying /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/f2py/src/fortranobject.h -> /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 build_src: building npy-pkg config files running build_ext customize UnixCCompiler customize UnixCCompiler using build_ext customize Gnu95FCompiler Could not locate executable gfortran Could not locate executable f95 customize IntelFCompiler Found executable /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort customize LaheyFCompiler Could not locate executable lf95 customize PGroupFCompiler Could not locate executable pgfortran customize AbsoftFCompiler Could not locate executable f90 Could not locate executable f77 customize NAGFCompiler customize VastFCompiler customize CompaqFCompiler Could not locate executable fort customize IntelItaniumFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler customize IntelEM64TFCompiler using build_ext building 'hello' extension compiling C sources C compiler: gcc -pthread -fno-strict-aliasing -g -O2 -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -Wstrict-prototypes -fPIC creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 creating /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 compile options: '-I/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 -I/home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/home/felipe/anaconda/include/python2.7 -c' gcc: /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c In file included from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h:1761:0, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarrayobject.h:17, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/arrayobject.h:4, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.h:13, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.c:17: /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/npy_1_7_deprecated_api.h:15:2: warning: #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " "#defining NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API NPY_1_7_API_VERSION" [-Wcpp] #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " \ ^ gcc: /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c In file included from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarraytypes.h:1761:0, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/ndarrayobject.h:17, from /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/arrayobject.h:4, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.h:13, from /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.c:2: /home/felipe/.local/lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include/numpy/npy_1_7_deprecated_api.h:15:2: warning: #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " "#defining NPY_NO_DEPRECATED_API NPY_1_7_API_VERSION" [-Wcpp] #warning "Using deprecated NumPy API, disable it by " \ ^ compiling Fortran sources Fortran f77 compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FI -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict Fortran f90 compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FR -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict Fortran fix compiler: /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -FI -fPIC -xhost -openmp -fp-model strict compile options: '-I/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7 -I/home/felipe/.local /lib/python2.7/site-packages/numpy/core/include -I/home/felipe/anaconda/include/python2.7 -c' ifort:f77: hello.f /opt/intel/composer_xe_2013_sp1.3.174/bin/intel64/ifort -shared -shared -nofor_main /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/hellomodule.o /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/src.linux-x86_64-2.7/fortranobject.o /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3/hello.o -L/home/felipe /anaconda/lib -lpython2.7 -o ./hello.so Removing build directory /tmp/tmpf8P4Y3 Please help me I am new in ubuntu and python. I really need this program, my advisor is waiting an answer. Thank you very much, Felipe Oliveira.

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How to Buy an SD Card: Speed Classes, Sizes, and Capacities Explained

- by Chris Hoffman

Memory cards are used in digital cameras, music players, smartphones, tablets, and even laptops. But not all SD cards are created equal — there are different speed classes, physical sizes, and capacities to consider. Different devices require different types of SD cards. Here are the differences you’ll need to keep in mind when picking out the right SD card for your device. Speed Class In a nutshell, not all SD cards offer the same speeds. This matters for some tasks more than it matters for others. For example, if you’re a professional photographer taking photos in rapid succession on a DSLR camera saving them in high-resolution RAW format, you’ll want a fast SD card so your camera can save them as fast as possible. A fast SD card is also important if you want to record high-resolution video and save it directly to the SD card. If you’re just taking a few photos on a typical consumer camera or you’re just using an SD card to store some media files on your smartphone, the speed isn’t as important. Manufacturers use “speed classes” to measure an SD card’s speed. The SD Association that defines the SD card standard doesn’t actually define the exact speeds associated with these classes, but they do provide guidelines. There are four different speed classes — 10, 8, 4, and 2. 10 is the fastest, while 2 is the slowest. Class 2 is suitable for standard definition video recording, while classes 4 and 6 are suitable for high-definition video recording. Class 10 is suitable for “full HD video recording” and “HD still consecutive recording.” There are also two Ultra High Speed (UHS) speed classes, but they’re more expensive and are designed for professional use. UHS cards are designed for devices that support UHS. Here are the associated logos, in order from slowest to fastest: You’ll probably be okay with a class 4 or 6 card for typical use in a digital camera, smartphone, or tablet. Class 10 cards are ideal if you’re shooting high-resolution videos or RAW photos. Class 2 cards are a bit on the slow side these days, so you may want to avoid them for all but the cheapest digital cameras. Even a cheap smartphone can record HD video, after all. An SD card’s speed class is identified on the SD card itself. You’ll also see the speed class on the online store listing or on the card’s packaging when purchasing it. For example, in the below photo, the middle SD card is speed class 4, while the two other cards are speed class 6. If you see no speed class symbol, you have a class 0 SD card. These cards were designed and produced before the speed class rating system was introduced. They may be slower than even a class 2 card. Physical Size Different devices use different sizes of SD cards. You’ll find standard-size CD cards, miniSD cards, and microSD cards. Standard SD cards are the largest, although they’re still very small. They measure 32x24x2.1 mm and weigh just two grams. Most consumer digital cameras for sale today still use standard SD cards. They have the standard “cut corner” design. miniSD cards are smaller than standard SD cards, measuring 21.5x20x1.4 mm and weighing about 0.8 grams. This is the least common size today. miniSD cards were designed to be especially small for mobile phones, but we now have a smaller size. microSD cards are the smallest size of SD card, measuring 15x11x1 mm and weighing just 0.25 grams. These cards are used in most cell phones and smartphones that support SD cards. They’re also used in many other devices, such as tablets. SD cards will only fit into marching slots. You can’t plug a microSD card into a standard SD card slot — it won’t fit. However, you can purchase an adapter that allows you to plug a smaller SD card into a larger SD card’s form and fit it into the appropriate slot. Capacity Like USB flash drives, hard drives, solid-state drives, and other storage media, different SD cards can have different amounts of storage. But the differences between SD card capacities don’t stop there. Standard SDSC (SD) cards are 1 MB to 2 GB in size, or perhaps 4 GB in size — although 4 GB is non-standard. The SDHC standard was created later, and allows cards 2 GB to 32 GB in size. SDXC is a more recent standard that allows cards 32 GB to 2 TB in size. You’ll need a device that supports SDHC or SDXC cards to use them. At this point, the vast majority of devices should support SDHC. In fact, the SD cards you have are probably SDHC cards. SDXC is newer and less common. When buying an SD card, you’ll need to buy the right speed class, size, and capacity for your needs. Be sure to check what your device supports and consider what speed and capacity you’ll actually need. Image Credit: Ryosuke SEKIDO on Flickr, Clive Darra on Flickr, Steven Depolo on Flickr

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Design a T-shirt for .NET Reflector Pro

- by Laila

Win a .NET Reflector Pro license, a box of Red Gate goodies, and a t-shirt printed with your design! Red Gate likes t-shirts. Each of our teams has one. In fact, each individual person has one, numbered according to when they joined the company: Red Gate's 1st, 2nd, and so on right up to Red Gate's 170th, with the slogan "More than just a number". Those t-shirts are important, chiefly because they remind the people wearing them that they are important. But that isn't enough. What really makes us great are the people who choose to use our tools. So we'd like to extend our tradition of t-shirts to include you and put the design of our next shirt entirely in your hands. We'd like you to come up with a witty slogan or create an inventive or simply beautiful t-shirt design for .NET Reflector Pro, our add-in for Visual Studio, which allows you to step into decompiled assemblies whilst debugging in Visual Studio. When you're done, post your masterpiece to Twitter with the hash tag #reflectortees, and @redgate will take a look! We'll pick the best design, and the winner will get a licensed copy of .NET Reflector Pro and a box of Red Gate goodies - not to mention a copy of their t-shirt. The winning design will go into production and be worn and given out at tradeshows, conferences, and user group events across the world, proudly bearing the name of their designer. We'll also pick three runners-up who will receive licenses for .NET Reflector Pro. Red Gate goodie box Interested? If you're up for the challenge, then we've got some resources to get you started. Inside the .zip file you'll find high-quality versions of the following: T-shirt templates: don't forget to design the front and the back! Different versions of the .NET Reflector Pro logo and Red Gate logo. Colour sheets to give you an easy reference to the Red Gate colours, including hex and RGB values. You can create and send us as many designs as you like, and each of them will be considered for the prize. To submit your designs, simply tweet including the competition hash tag, #reflectortees, and a link to somewhere we can see your design: either an image hosting site such as Twitpic, Flickr or Picasa, or a personal blog. You will need to create a Twitter account (which is free), if you don't already have one. You only have three limits: The background colour of the t-shirt should be one of our brand colours (red, light/dark grey or black), though you're welcome to use other colours in the rest of the design. You need to make use of either the .NET Reflector Pro logo OR the Red Gate logo (please keep them as they are) If you include any text or slogan, stick with just one or two colors for it. Apart from that, go wild. Go and do whatever it is you do when you get creative: whether you walk barefoot on the grass with a pencil and paper, sit cross-legged on a pile of cushions with a laptop, or simply close your eyes and float through a mist of ideas, now is your chance. Make sure you enjoy it. We're looking forward to seeing your creations. Terms and conditions 1. The closing date for entries is June 11th, 2010 (4 p.m. UK time). Red Gate Software Ltd reserves the right to extend the competition deadline at its discretion. If there is a revision, the revised date will be published on this blog and the date for announcing the results will be postponed accordingly. 2. The winning designer will be notified on June 14th, 2010 through Twitter. The winner must claim his/her prize by sending us a high-resolution image of their design via email (i.e. Illustrator EPS files or appropriate format, ideally at 300dpi). If the winner does not come forward within 3 days of the announcement, they will forfeit their prize and another winner will be selected from the runners-up. The names of the winner and runners-up will be posted on this blog by June 18th. 3. Entry is completed on the designer posting a link to their entry in a tweet with the correct hash tag, #reflectortees. 4. Red Gate Software needs to hold the rights to using the winning design in order to put the t-shirt into production. We will make sure that this is fine with the winner before we do so, but if you do not want us holding the rights to your design, please do not submit your designs. We reserve the right to slightly alter or adjust any artwork we decide to use (mainly to make it easier to print), but we will make sure we contact the winner for approval first. The winner will also need to allow us the use of his/her name for purposes of promoting your design. 5. Entries must be entirely your own original work and must not breach any copyright or third party rights. Red Gate Software Ltd will not be made partially or fully liable for any non-original work submitted by you. 6. This competition is free: you do not need to buy anything or be an existing customer to enter. 7. This competition is not open to employees of Red Gate Software Ltd, their families, or any other company directly connected with the administration of this promotion.

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Responsible BI for Excel, Even for Older Versions

- by andrewbrust

On Wednesday, I will have the honor of co-presenting, for both The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) and the New York Technology Council. on the subject of Excel and BI. My co-presenter will be none other than Bill Baker, who was a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and, essentially, the father of BI at that company. Details on the events are here and here. We'll be talking about PowerPivot, of course, but that's not all. Probably even more important than any one product, will be our discussion of whether the usual characterization of Excel as the nemesis of IT, the guilty pleasure of business users and the antithesis of formal BI is really valid and/or hopelessly intractable. Without giving away our punchline, I'll tell you that we are much more optimistic than that. There are huge upsides to Excel and while there are real dangers to using it in the BI space, there are standards and practices you can employ to ensure Excel is used responsibly. And when those practices are followed, Excel becomes quite powerful indeed. One of the keys to this is using Excel as a data consumer rather than data storage mechanism. Caching data in Excel is OK, but only if that data is (a) not modified and (b) configured for automated periodic refresh. PowerPivot meets both criteria -- it stores a read-only copy of your data in the form of a model, and once workbook containing a PowerPivot model is published to SharePoint, it can be configured for scheduled data refresh, on the server, requiring no user intervention whatsoever. Data refresh is a bit like hard drive backup: it will only happen reliably if it's automated, and super-easy to configure. PowerPivot hits a real home run here (as does Windows Home Server for PC backup, but I digress). The thing about PowerPivot is that it's an add-in for Excel 2010. What if you're not planning to go to that new version for quite a while? What if you’ve just deployed Office 2007 in your organization? What if you're still on Office 2003, or an even earlier version? What can you do immediately to share data responsibly and easily? As it turns out, there's a feature in Excel that's been around for quite a while, that can help: Web Queries. The Web Query feature was introduced, ostensibly, to allow Excel to pull data in from Internet Web pages…for example, data in a stock quote history table will come in nicely, as will any data in a Web page that is displayed in an HTML table. To use the feature In Excel 2007 or 2010, click the Data Tab or the ribbon and click the “From Web” button towards the left; in older versions use the corresponding option in the menu or toolbars. Next, paste a URL into the resulting dialog box and tap Enter or click the Go button. A preview of the Web page will come up, and the dialog will allow you to select the specific table within the page whose data you’d like to import. Here’s an example: Now just click the table, click the Import button, and the Import Data dialog appears. You can simply click OK to bring in your data or you can first click the Properties… button and configure the data import to be refreshed at an interval in minutes that you select. Now your data’s in the spreadsheet and ready to worked with: Your data may be vulnerable to modification, but if you’ve set up the data refresh, any accidental or malicious changes will be corrected in time anyway. The thing about this feature is that it’s most useful not for public Web pages, but for pages behind the firewall. In effect, the Web Query feature provides an incredibly easy way to consume data in Excel that’s “published” from an application. Users just need a URL. They don’t need to know server and database names and since the data is read-only, providing credentials may be unnecessary, or can be handled using integrated security. If that’s not good enough, the Web Query can be saved to a special .iqy file, which can be edited to provide POST parameter data. The only requirement is that the data must be provided in an HTML table, with the first row providing the column names. From an ASP.NET project, it couldn’t be easier: a simple bound GridView control is totally compatible. Use a data source control with it, and you don’t even have to write any code. Users can link to pages that are part of an application’s UI, or developers can create pages that are specially designed for the purpose of providing an interface to the Web Query import feature. And none of this is Microsoft- or .NET-specific. You can create pages in any language you want (PHP comes to mind) that output the result set of a query in HTML table format, and then consume that data in a Web Query. Then build PivotTables and charts on the data, and in Excel 2007 or 2010 you can use conditional formatting to create scorecards and dashboards. This strategy allows you to create pages that function quite similarly to the OData XML feeds rendered when .NET developers create an “Astoria” WCF Data Service. And while it’s cool that PowerPivot and Excel 2010 can import such OData feeds, it’s good to know that older versions of Excel can function in a similar fashion, and can consume data produced by virtually any Web development platform. As a final matter, instead of just telling you that “older versions” of Excel support this feature, I’ll be more specific. To discover what the first version of Excel was to support Web queries, go to http://bit.ly/OldSchoolXL.

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Calculated Columns in Entity Framework Code First Migrations

- by David Paquette

I had a couple people ask me about calculated properties / columns in Entity Framework this week. The question was, is there a way to specify a property in my C# class that is the result of some calculation involving 2 properties of the same class. For example, in my database, I store a FirstName and a LastName column and I would like a FullName property that is computed from the FirstName and LastName columns. My initial answer was: 1: public string FullName 2: { 3: get { return string.Format("{0} {1}", FirstName, LastName); } 4: } Of course, this works fine, but this does not give us the ability to write queries using the FullName property. For example, this query: 1: var users = context.Users.Where(u => u.FullName.Contains("anan")); Would result in the following NotSupportedException: The specified type member 'FullName' is not supported in LINQ to Entities. Only initializers, entity members, and entity navigation properties are supported. It turns out there is a way to support this type of behavior with Entity Framework Code First Migrations by making use of Computed Columns in SQL Server. While there is no native support for computed columns in Code First Migrations, we can manually configure our migration to use computed columns. Let’s start by defining our C# classes and DbContext: 1: public class UserProfile 2: { 3: public int Id { get; set; } 4: 5: public string FirstName { get; set; } 6: public string LastName { get; set; } 7: 8: [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Computed)] 9: public string FullName { get; private set; } 10: } 11: 12: public class UserContext : DbContext 13: { 14: public DbSet<UserProfile> Users { get; set; } 15: } The DatabaseGenerated attribute is needed on our FullName property. This is a hint to let Entity Framework Code First know that the database will be computing this property for us. Next, we need to run 2 commands in the Package Manager Console. First, run Enable-Migrations to enable Code First Migrations for the UserContext. Next, run Add-Migration Initial to create an initial migration. This will create a migration that creates the UserProfile table with 3 columns: FirstName, LastName, and FullName. This is where we need to make a small change. Instead of allowing Code First Migrations to create the FullName property, we will manually add that column as a computed column. 1: public partial class Initial : DbMigration 2: { 3: public override void Up() 4: { 5: CreateTable( 6: "dbo.UserProfiles", 7: c => new 8: { 9: Id = c.Int(nullable: false, identity: true), 10: FirstName = c.String(), 11: LastName = c.String(), 12: //FullName = c.String(), 13: }) 14: .PrimaryKey(t => t.Id); 15: Sql("ALTER TABLE dbo.UserProfiles ADD FullName AS FirstName + ' ' + LastName"); 16: } 17: 18: 19: public override void Down() 20: { 21: DropTable("dbo.UserProfiles"); 22: } 23: } Finally, run the Update-Database command. Now we can query for Users using the FullName property and that query will be executed on the database server. However, we encounter another potential problem. Since the FullName property is calculated by the database, it will get out of sync on the object side as soon as we make a change to the FirstName or LastName property. Luckily, we can have the best of both worlds here by also adding the calculation back to the getter on the FullName property: 1: [DatabaseGenerated(DatabaseGeneratedOption.Computed)] 2: public string FullName 3: { 4: get { return FirstName + " " + LastName; } 5: private set 6: { 7: //Just need this here to trick EF 8: } 9: } Now we can both query for Users using the FullName property and we also won’t need to worry about the FullName property being out of sync with the FirstName and LastName properties. When we run this code: 1: using(UserContext context = new UserContext()) 2: { 3: UserProfile userProfile = new UserProfile {FirstName = "Chanandler", LastName = "Bong"}; 4: 5: Console.WriteLine("Before saving: " + userProfile.FullName); 6: 7: context.Users.Add(userProfile); 8: context.SaveChanges(); 9: 10: Console.WriteLine("After saving: " + userProfile.FullName); 11: 12: UserProfile chanandler = context.Users.First(u => u.FullName == "Chanandler Bong"); 13: Console.WriteLine("After reading: " + chanandler.FullName); 14: 15: chanandler.FirstName = "Chandler"; 16: chanandler.LastName = "Bing"; 17: 18: Console.WriteLine("After changing: " + chanandler.FullName); 19: 20: } We get this output: It took a bit of work, but finally Chandler’s TV Guide can be delivered to the right person. The obvious downside to this implementation is that the FullName calculation is duplicated in the database and in the UserProfile class. This sample was written using Visual Studio 2012 and Entity Framework 5. Download the source code here.

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MySQL Connect 9 Days Away – Optimizer Sessions

- by Bertrand Matthelié

72 1024x768 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Following my previous blog post focusing on InnoDB talks at MySQL Connect, let us review today the sessions focusing on the MySQL Optimizer: Saturday, 11.30 am, Room Golden Gate 6: MySQL Optimizer Overview—Olav Sanstå, Oracle The goal of MySQL optimizer is to take a SQL query as input and produce an optimal execution plan for the query. This session presents an overview of the main phases of the MySQL optimizer and the primary optimizations done to the query. These optimizations are based on a combination of logical transformations and cost-based decisions. Examples of optimization strategies the presentation covers are the main query transformations, the join optimizer, the data access selection strategies, and the range optimizer. For the cost-based optimizations, an overview of the cost model and the data used for doing the cost estimations is included. Saturday, 1.00 pm, Room Golden Gate 6: Overview of New Optimizer Features in MySQL 5.6—Manyi Lu, Oracle Many optimizer features have been added into MySQL 5.6. This session provides an introduction to these great features. Multirange read, index condition pushdown, and batched key access will yield huge performance improvements on large data volumes. Structured explain, explain for update/delete/insert, and optimizer tracing will help users analyze and speed up queries. And last but not least, the session covers subquery optimizations in Release 5.6. Saturday, 7.00 pm, Room Golden Gate 4: BoF: Query Optimizations: What Is New and What Is Coming? This BoF presents common techniques for query optimization, covers what is new in MySQL 5.6, and provides a discussion forum in which attendees can tell the MySQL optimizer team which optimizations they would like to see in the future. Sunday, 1.15 pm, Room Golden Gate 8: Query Performance Comparison of MySQL 5.5 and MySQL 5.6—Øystein Grøvlen, Oracle MySQL Release 5.6 contains several improvements in the query optimizer that create improved performance for complex queries. This presentation looks at how MySQL 5.6 improves the performance of many of the queries in the DBT-3 benchmark. Based on the observed improvements, the presentation discusses what makes the specific queries perform better in Release 5.6. It describes the relevant new optimization techniques and gives examples of the types of queries that will benefit from these techniques. Sunday, 4.15 pm, Room Golden Gate 4: Powerful EXPLAIN in MySQL 5.6—Evgeny Potemkin, Oracle The EXPLAIN command of MySQL has long been a very useful tool for understanding how MySQL will execute a query. Release 5.6 of the MySQL database offers several new additions that give more-detailed information about the query plan and make it easier to understand at the same time. This presentation gives an overview of new EXPLAIN features: structured EXPLAIN in JSON format, EXPLAIN for INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE, and optimizer tracing. Examples in the session give insights into how you can take advantage of the new features. They show how these features supplement and relate to each other and to classical EXPLAIN and how and why the MySQL server chooses a particular query plan. You can check out the full program here as well as in the September edition of the MySQL newsletter. Not registered yet? You can still save US$ 300 over the on-site fee – Register Now!

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Making your WCF Web Apis to speak in multiple languages

- by cibrax

One of the key aspects of how the web works today is content negotiation. The idea of content negotiation is based on the fact that a single resource can have multiple representations, so user agents (or clients) and servers can work together to chose one of them. The http specification defines several “Accept” headers that a client can use to negotiate content with a server, and among all those, there is one for restricting the set of natural languages that are preferred as a response to a request, “Accept-Language”. For example, a client can specify “es” in this header for specifying that he prefers to receive the content in spanish or “en” in english. However, there are certain scenarios where the “Accept-Language” header is just not enough, and you might want to have a way to pass the “accepted” language as part of the resource url as an extension. For example, http://localhost/ProductCatalog/Products/1.es” returns all the descriptions for the product with id “1” in spanish. This is useful for scenarios in which you want to embed the link somewhere, such a document, an email or a page. Supporting both scenarios, the header and the url extension, is really simple in the new WCF programming model. You only need to provide a processor implementation for any of them. Let’s say I have a resource implementation as part of a product catalog I want to expose with the WCF web apis. [ServiceContract][Export]public class ProductResource{ IProductRepository repository; [ImportingConstructor] public ProductResource(IProductRepository repository) { this.repository = repository; } [WebGet(UriTemplate = "{id}")] public Product Get(string id, HttpResponseMessage response) { var product = repository.GetById(int.Parse(id)); if (product == null) { response.StatusCode = HttpStatusCode.NotFound; response.Content = new StringContent(Messages.OrderNotFound); } return product; }} The Get method implementation in this resource assumes the desired culture will be attached to the current thread (Thread.CurrentThread.Culture). Another option is to pass the desired culture as an additional argument in the method, so my processor implementation will handle both options. This method is also using an auto-generated class for handling string resources, Messages, which is available in the different cultures that the service implementation supports. For example, Messages.resx contains “OrderNotFound”: “Order Not Found” Messages.es.resx contains “OrderNotFound”: “No se encontro orden” The processor implementation bellow tackles the first scenario, in which the desired language is passed as part of the “Accept-Language” header. public class CultureProcessor : Processor<HttpRequestMessage, CultureInfo>{ string defaultLanguage = null; public CultureProcessor(string defaultLanguage = "en") { this.defaultLanguage = defaultLanguage; this.InArguments[0].Name = HttpPipelineFormatter.ArgumentHttpRequestMessage; this.OutArguments[0].Name = "culture"; } public override ProcessorResult<CultureInfo> OnExecute(HttpRequestMessage request) { CultureInfo culture = null; if (request.Headers.AcceptLanguage.Count > 0) { var language = request.Headers.AcceptLanguage.First().Value; culture = new CultureInfo(language); } else { culture = new CultureInfo(defaultLanguage); } Thread.CurrentThread.CurrentCulture = culture; Messages.Culture = culture; return new ProcessorResult<CultureInfo> { Output = culture }; }} As you can see, the processor initializes a new CultureInfo instance with the value provided in the “Accept-Language” header, and set that instance to the current thread and the auto-generated resource class with all the messages. In addition, the CultureInfo instance is returned as an output argument called “culture”, making possible to receive that argument in any method implementation The following code shows the implementation of the processor for handling languages as url extensions. public class CultureExtensionProcessor : Processor<HttpRequestMessage, Uri>{ public CultureExtensionProcessor() { this.OutArguments[0].Name = HttpPipelineFormatter.ArgumentUri; } public override ProcessorResult<Uri> OnExecute(HttpRequestMessage httpRequestMessage) { var requestUri = httpRequestMessage.RequestUri.OriginalString; var extensionPosition = requestUri.LastIndexOf("."); if (extensionPosition > -1) { var extension = requestUri.Substring(extensionPosition + 1); var query = httpRequestMessage.RequestUri.Query; requestUri = string.Format("{0}?{1}", requestUri.Substring(0, extensionPosition), query); ; var uri = new Uri(requestUri); httpRequestMessage.Headers.AcceptLanguage.Clear(); httpRequestMessage.Headers.AcceptLanguage.Add(new StringWithQualityHeaderValue(extension)); var result = new ProcessorResult<Uri>(); result.Output = uri; return result; } return new ProcessorResult<Uri>(); }} The last step is to inject both processors as part of the service configuration as it is shown bellow, public void RegisterRequestProcessorsForOperation(HttpOperationDescription operation, IList<Processor> processors, MediaTypeProcessorMode mode){ processors.Insert(0, new CultureExtensionProcessor()); processors.Add(new CultureProcessor());} Once you configured the two processors in the pipeline, your service will start speaking different languages :). Note: Url extensions don’t seem to be working in the current bits when you are using Url extensions in a base address. As far as I could see, ASP.NET intercepts the request first and tries to route the request to a registered ASP.NET Http Handler with that extension. For example, “http://localhost/ProductCatalog/products.es” does not work, but “http://localhost/ProductCatalog/products/1.es” does.

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New Replication, Optimizer and High Availability features in MySQL 5.6.5!

- by Rob Young

As the Product Manager for the MySQL database it is always great to announce when the MySQL Engineering team delivers another great product release. As a field DBA and developer it is even better when that release contains improvements and innovation that I know will help those currently using MySQL for apps that range from modest intranet sites to the most highly trafficked web sites on the web. That said, it is my pleasure to take my hat off to MySQL Engineering for today's release of the MySQL 5.6.5 Development Milestone Release ("DMR"). The new highlighted features in MySQL 5.6.5 are discussed here: New Self-Healing Replication ClustersThe 5.6.5 DMR improves MySQL Replication by adding Global Transaction Ids and automated utilities for self-healing Replication clusters. Prior to 5.6.5 this has been somewhat of a pain point for MySQL users with most developing custom solutions or looking to costly, complex third-party solutions for these capabilities. With 5.6.5 these shackles are all but removed by a solution that is included with the GPL version of the database and supporting GPL tools. You can learn all about the details of the great, problem solving Replication features in MySQL 5.6 in Mat Keep's Developer Zone article. New Replication Administration and Failover UtilitiesAs mentioned above, the new Replication features, Global Transaction Ids specifically, are now supported by a set of automated GPL utilities that leverage the new GTIDs to provide administration and manual or auto failover to the most up to date slave (that is the default, but user configurable if needed) in the event of a master failure. The new utilities, along with links to Engineering related blogs, are discussed in detail in the DevZone Article noted above. Better Query Optimization and ThroughputThe MySQL Optimizer team continues to amaze with the latest round of improvements in 5.6.5. Along with much refactoring of the legacy code base, the Optimizer team has improved complex query optimization and throughput by adding these functional improvements: Subquery Optimizations - Subqueries are now included in the Optimizer path for runtime optimization. Better throughput of nested queries enables application developers to simplify and consolidate multiple queries and result sets into a single unit or work. Optimizer now uses CURRENT_TIMESTAMP as default for DATETIME columns - For simplification, this eliminates the need for application developers to assign this value when a column of this type is blank by default. Optimizations for Range based queries - Optimizer now uses ready statistics vs Index based scans for queries with multiple range values. Optimizations for queries using filesort and ORDER BY. Optimization criteria/decision on execution method is done now at optimization vs parsing stage. Print EXPLAIN in JSON format for hierarchical readability and Enterprise tool consumption. You can learn the details about these new features as well all of the Optimizer based improvements in MySQL 5.6 by following the Optimizer team blog. You can download and try the MySQL 5.6.5 DMR here. (look under "Development Releases") Please let us know what you think! The new HA utilities for Replication Administration and Failover are available as part of the MySQL Workbench Community Edition, which you can download here .Also New in MySQL LabsAs has become our tradition when announcing DMRs we also like to provide "Early Access" development features to the MySQL Community via the MySQL Labs. Today is no exception as we are also releasing the following to Labs for you to download, try and let us know your thoughts on where we need to improve:InnoDB Online OperationsMySQL 5.6 now provides Online ADD Index, FK Drop and Online Column RENAME. These operations are non-blocking and will continue to evolve in future DMRs. You can learn the grainy details by following John Russell's blog.InnoDB data access via Memcached API ("NotOnlySQL") - Improved refresh of an earlier feature releaseSimilar to Cluster 7.2, MySQL 5.6 provides direct NotOnlySQL access to InnoDB data via the familiar Memcached API. This provides the ultimate in flexibility for developers who need fast, simple key/value access and complex query support commingled within their applications.Improved Transactional Performance, ScaleThe InnoDB Engineering team has once again under promised and over delivered in the area of improved performance and scale. These improvements are also included in the aggregated Spring 2012 labs release:InnoDB CPU cache performance improvements for modern, multi-core/CPU systems show great promise with internal tests showing: 2x throughput improvement for read only activity 6x throughput improvement for SELECT range Read/Write benchmarks are in progress More details on the above are available here. You can download all of the above in an aggregated "InnoDB 2012 Spring Labs Release" binary from the MySQL Labs. You can also learn more about these improvements and about related fixes to mysys mutex and hash sort by checking out the InnoDB team blog.MySQL 5.6.5 is another installment in what we believe will be the best release of the MySQL database ever. It also serves as a shining example of how the MySQL Engineering team at Oracle leads in MySQL innovation.You can get the overall Oracle message on the MySQL 5.6.5 DMR and Early Access labs features here. As always, thanks for your continued support of MySQL, the #1 open source database on the planet!

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Parner Webcast - Innovations in Products Program

- by Richard Lefebvre

We are pleased to invite you to join the Innovations in Products –webcast. Innovations in Products will present Oracle Applications' Product's new functions and features including sales positioning. The key objectives of these webcasts are to inspire System Integrator's implementation personnel to conduct successful after sales in their Customer projects. Innovations in Products will be presented on the 1st Monday of each quarter after the billable day (4:00 to 5:00 PM CET). The webcast is intended for System Integrator's Implementation Certified Specialists but Innovations in Products is open for other interested Oracle Applications system Integrator's personnel as well. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle's contribution to Partners. Then you will see product breakout session followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. Each session will last for maximum 1 hour. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. What are the Benefits for partners? Find out how Innovations in Products helps you to improve your after sales Discover new functions and features so you can enrich your Customers's solution Learn more about Oracle Applications products, especially sales positioning Hear crucial questions raised by colleague alike, learn from their interest Engage and present your questions to subject experts Be inspired of the richness of Oracle Application portfolio – for your and your customer’s benefit Note: Should you already be familiar with a specific Product, then choose another one. Doing so you would expand your knowledge of the overall Applications portfolio. Some presentations contain product demonstration, although these presentations are not intended to be extremely detailed technical presentations. Note: At the latter part of this email you have also 17 links into the recent Applications Products presentations and 6 links into the Public Sector Value Proposition presentations that were presented in Innovations in Industries -program. Product breakout sessions: Topics Speaker To Register Fusion Applications Technology and Extensibility: A next-generation platform that adapts to client needs. Matthew Johnson, Sr. Director, SCM Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion Applications - Transforming your Back-Office Accounting Function: Changing how people work in back office functions to drive value add Liam Nolan, Director, ERP Product Development, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM & Talent Overview & Extensibility: A more in-depth look into a personalized HCM solution Synco Jonkeren, Vice-President HCM Product Development & Management, EMEA CLICK HERE Fusion HCM Compensation Planning: Compensate To Compete Rosie Warner, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Enterprise PLM for the Product Value Chain: Oracle Enterprise PLM offers Industry specific solutions that cover the Product Value Chain Ulf Köster, Sales Development Leader Enterprise PLM, Oracle Western Europe CLICK HERE Oracle's Asset Management and Maintenance Solution: What you need to know to successfully implement Oracle Asset Management solutions within Oracle Installed Base Philip Carey, Asset Management and Maintenance Solution Specialist CLICK HERE For more details please visit Innovations in Products and other breakout sessions on OPN page. Delivery Format Innovations in Products –program is a series of FREE prerecorded Applications product presentations followed by Q&A. It will be delivered over the Web. Participants have the opportunity to submit questions during the web cast via chat and subject matter experts will provide verbal answers live. Innovations in Products consists of several parallel prerecorded product breakout sessions, each lasting for max. 1 hour. At first, two Oracle representatives will discuss Oracle’s contribution to Partners. Then you’ll see the product breakout sessions followed by Q&A with Oracle Experts. A Q&A document covering all questions and answers will be made available after the webcast. You can also see Innovations in Products afterwards as its content will be available online for the next 6-12 months. The next Innovations in Products web casts will be presented as follows: July 2nd 2012 October 1st 2012 January 14th 2013 April 8th 2013. Note: Depending on local network bandwidth please allow some seconds time the presentations to download. You might want to refresh your screen by pressing F5. Duration Maximum 1 hour For further information please contact me Markku Rouhiainen. Recent Innovations in Products presentations Applications Products presented on April the 2nd, 2012 Speaker To Register Fusion CRM: Effective, Efficient and Easy James Penfold , Senior Director, Applications Product Development and Product Management CLICK HERE Fusion HCM: Talent management overview performance, goals, talent review Jaime Losantos Viñolas, Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Distributed Order Management - Fusion SCM Solution Vikram K Singla, Business Development Director, Supply Chain Management Applications, UK CLICK HERE Oracle Transportation Management Dominic Regan, Senior Director Oracle Transportation Management EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle Value Chain Planning: Demantra Sales & Operation Planning and Demantra Demand Management Lionel Albert, Senior Director Value Chain Planning, EMEA CLICK HERE Oracle CX (Customer Experience) - formerly CEM: Powering Great Customer Experiences Maria Ramirez , CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM 11.1.2.2 Overview Nicholas Cox , EMEA Sales Development Director - Enterprise Performance Management CLICK HERE Oracle Hyperion Profitability and Cost Management, 11.1.2.1 Daniela Lazar , Senior EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register CRM / ATG: Best-in-Class CRM & Commerce Maria Ramirez , Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / Automate Business Rules for Maximum Efficiency with OPA (Oracle Policy Automation) Marco Nilo, Associate CRM Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE CRM / InQuira Toby Baker, Principal Sales Consultant, CRM Product Specialist Team CLICK HERE EPM / Business Intelligence Foundation Suite – Sales and Product Updates Liviu Nitescu, Senior BI Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE EPM / Hyperion Planning 11.1.2.1 - Sales & Product Updates Andreea Voinea, EPM Sales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / JDE EnterpriseOne Fulfillment Management Overview Mirela Andreea Nasta , ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE ERP / Spotlights on iExpenses Elena Nita ,ERP Presales Consultant, EPC CLICK HERE MDM / Master Data Management Martin Boyd , Senior Director Product Strategy CLICK HERE Product break through session Fusion Applications Human Capital Management Rosie Warner , Director, HCM Sales Development CLICK HERE Recent Innovations in Industries Value Proposition presentations January the 16th 2012 Speaker To Register Process Modernisation Iemke Idsingh Public Sector Solutions Director CLICK HERE Shared Services Ann Smith Business Development Director, Shared Services CLICK HERE Strengthening Financial Discipline Whilst Delivering Cashable Savings Philippa Headley UK Sales Development Director Public Sector - EPM Solutions CLICK HERE Social Welfare Industry Solutions Christian Wernberg-Tougaard Industry Director - Social Welfare CLICK HERE Police Industry Solutions Jeff Penrose Solution Sales Director CLICK HERE Tax and Revenue Management Industry Solutions Andre van der Post Global Director - Tax Solutions and Strategy CLICK HERE

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