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• Databases in Source Control

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I’ve been working as a database professional for quite a long time. But originally, I was a developer. And I loved being a developer. There was this constant feedback loop of a job well done, your code compiled and it ran. Every time this happened successfully, you’d check it into source control. These days you have to add another step; the code passed all the tests, unit, line, regression, qa, whatever, then into source control it goes. As a matter of fact, when I first made the jump from developer to DBA/database developer/database professional, source control was the one thing I couldn’t believe was missing from the DBA toolbox. Come to find out, source control was only the beginning of what was missing from your standard DBAs set of skills. Don’t get me wrong. I’m not disrespecting the DBA. They’re focused where they should be, on your production data. But there has to be a method for developing applications that include databases and the database side of that development and deployment process has long been lacking. This lack of development and deployment methodologies is a part of what has given rise to some of the wackier implementations of Object Relational Mapping tools, the NoSQL movement, and some of the other foul cursing that is directed towards databases, DBAs, and database development by application developers. Some of that is well earned. A lot isn’t. But it is a fact that database professionals, in general, do not have as sophisticated a model for managing development and deployment as application developers do. We could charge out and start trying to come up with our own standards and methods. I’m sure people have done exactly that. However, I’m lazy, and not terribly bright. Rather than try to invent a whole new process, I’m going to look to my developer roots and choose instead to emulate the developers. They’re sitting over there across the hall from me working with SCRUM/Agile/Waterfall/Object Driven/Feature Driven/Test Driven development processes that they’ve been polishing for years. What if I just started working on database development the same way they work on code development? Win! Ah, but now I have to have a mechanism for treating my database like application code. First, I need a method for getting it into source control. That’s where Red Gate’s SQL Source Control comes into the picture. SQL Source Control works within SQL Server Management Studio to connect your database objects up to the source control system of your choice. Right out of the box SQL Source Control can link to TFS, SVN or Vault. With a little work you can connect it to Git or just about any other source control system. With the ability to get my database into source control, a lot of possibilities for more direct integration with the application development teams open up.

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• Internet Protocol Suite: Transition Control Protocol (TCP) vs. User Datagram Protocol (UDP)

  How do we communicate over the Internet?  How is data transferred from one machine to another? These types of act ivies can only be done by using one of two Internet protocols currently. The collection of Internet Protocol consists of the Transition Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP).  Both protocols are used to send data between two network end points, however they both have very distinct ways of transporting data from one endpoint to another. If transmission speed and reliability is the primary concern when trying to transfer data between two network endpoints then TCP is the proper choice. When a device attempts to send data to another endpoint using TCP it creates a direct connection between both devices until the transmission has completed. The direct connection between both devices ensures the reliability of the transmission due to the fact that no intermediate devices are needed to transfer the data. Due to the fact that both devices have to continuously poll the connection until transmission has completed increases the resources needed to perform the transmission. An example of this type of direct communication can be seen when a teacher tells a students to do their homework. The teacher is talking directly to the students in order to communicate that the homework needs to be done.  Students can then ask questions about the assignment to ensure that they have received the proper instructions for the assignment. UDP is a less resource intensive approach to sending data between to network endpoints. When a device uses UDP to send data across a network, the data is broken up and repackaged with the destination address. The sending device then releases the data packages to the network, but cannot ensure when or if the receiving device will actually get the data.  The sending device depends on other devices on the network to forward the data packages to the destination devices in order to complete the transmission. As you can tell this type of transmission is less resource intensive because not connection polling is needed,  but should not be used for transmitting data with speed or reliability requirements. This is due to the fact that the sending device can not ensure that the transmission is received.  An example of this type of communication can be seen when a teacher tells a student that they would like to speak with their parents. The teacher is relying on the student to complete the transmission to the parents, and the teacher has no guarantee that the student will actually inform the parents about the request. Both TCP and UPD are invaluable when attempting to send data across a network, but depending on the situation one protocol may be better than the other. Before deciding on which protocol to use an evaluation for transmission speed, reliability, latency, and overhead must be completed in order to define the best protocol for the situation.  

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• Claims-based Identity Terminology

  - by kaleidoscope

  There are several terms commonly used to describe claims-based identity, and it is important to clearly define these terms. · Identity In terms of Access Control, the term identity will be used to refer to a set of claims made by a trusted issuer about the user. · Claim You can think of a claim as a bit of identity information, such as name, email address, age, and so on. The more claims your service receives, the more you’ll know about the user who is making the request. · Security Token The user delivers a set of claims to your service piggybacked along with his or her request. In a REST Web service, these claims are carried in the Authorization header of the HTTP(S) request. Regardless of how they arrive, claims must somehow be serialized, and this is managed by security tokens. A security token is a serialized set of claims that is signed by the issuing authority. · Issuing Authority & Identity Provider An issuing authority has two main features. The first and most obvious is that it issues security tokens. The second feature is the logic that determines which claims to issue. This is based on the user’s identity, the resource to which the request applies, and possibly other contextual data such as time of day. This type of logic is often referred to as policy[1]. There are many issuing authorities, including Windows Live ID, ADFS, PingFederate from Ping Identity (a product that exposes user identities from the Java world), Facebook Connect, and more. Their job is to validate some credential from the user and issue a token with an identifier for the user's account and  possibly other identity attributes. These types of authorities are called identity providers (sometimes shortened as IdP). It’s ultimately their responsibility to answer the question, “who are you?” and ensure that the user knows his or her password, is in possession of a smart card, knows the PIN code, has a matching retinal scan, and so on. · Security Token Service (STS) A security token service (STS) is a technical term for the Web interface in an issuing authority that allows clients to request and receive a security token according to interoperable protocols that are discussed in the following section. This term comes from the WS-Trust standard, and is often used in the literature to refer to an issuing authority. STS when used from developer point of view indicates the URL to use to request a token from an issuer. For more details please refer to the link http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/developers/dotnetservices/ Geeta, G

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• Tuple in C# 4.0

  - by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

  C# 4.0 language includes a new feature called Tuple. Tuple provides us a way of grouping elements of different data type. That enables us to use it a lots places at practical world like we can store a coordinates of graphs etc. In C# 4.0 we can create Tuple with Create method. This Create method offer 8 overload like following. So you can group maximum 8 data types with a Tuple. Followings are overloads of a data type. Create(T1)- Which represents a tuple of size 1 Create(T1,T2)- Which represents a tuple of size 2 Create(T1,T2,T3) – Which represents a tuple of size 3 Create(T1,T2,T3,T4) – Which represents a tuple of size 4 Create(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5) – Which represents a tuple of size 5 Create(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6) – Which represents a tuple of size 6 Create(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7) – Which represents a tuple of size 7 Create(T1,T2,T3,T4,T5,T6,T7,T8) – Which represents a tuple of size 8 Following are some example code for tuple. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace TupleExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var tuple = System.Tuple.Create<string, string, string>("Jalpesh", "P", "Vadgama"); Console.WriteLine(tuple); var t = System.Tuple.Create<int, string>(1, "Jalpesh"); Console.WriteLine(t); } } } Following is a output of above as expected. You can also access values insides Tuple with ItemN property. Where N represents particular number of item in tuple. Following is an example of it. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace TupleExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var tuple = System.Tuple.Create<string, string, string>("Jalpesh", "P", "Vadgama"); Console.WriteLine(tuple.Item1); Console.WriteLine(tuple.Item2); Console.WriteLine(tuple.Item3); } } } Here you can see I have printed items with Item1,Item2 and Item3 . Following is the output of above code.   Even we can create a nested tuple also following is code for nested tuple. using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.Linq; using System.Text; namespace TupleExample { class Program { static void Main(string[] args) { var tuple = System.Tuple.Create(1,"Jalpesh",new Tuple<string,string>("P","Vadgama")); Console.WriteLine(tuple.Item1); Console.WriteLine(tuple.Item2); Console.WriteLine(tuple.Item3); } } } Following is a output above code as expected. As you can see there are unlimited possibilities we can do lots of things with Tuple. Hope you liked it. Stay tuned for more. Till then Happy Programming!!

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• Amazon Product Advertising API SOAP Namespace Changes

  - by Rick Strahl

  About two months ago (twowards the end of February 2012 I think) Amazon decided to change the namespace of the Product Advertising API. The error that would come up was: <ItemSearchResponse > was not expected. If you've used the Amazon Product Advertising API you probably know that Amazon has made it a habit to break the services every few years or so and I guess last month was about the time for another one. Basically the service namespace of the document has been changed and responses from the service just failed outright even though the rest of the schema looks fine. Now I looked around for a while trying to find a recent update to the Product Advertising API - something semi-official looking but everything is dated around 2009. Really??? And it's not just .NET - the newest thing on the sample/APIs is dated early 2011 and a handful of 2010 samples. There are newer full APIs for the 'cloud' offerings, but the Product Advertising API apparently isn't part of that. After searching for quite a bit trying to trace this down myself and trying some of the newer samples (which also failed) I found an obscure forum post that describes the solution of getting past the namespace issue. FWIW, I've been using an old version of the Product Advertising API using the old Microsoft WSE3 services (pre-WCF), which provides some of the WS* security features required by the Amazon service. The fix for this code is to explicitly override the namespace declaration on each of the imported service method signatures. The old service namespace (at least on my build) was: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2009-03-31 and it should be changed to: http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01 Change it on the class header:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapService("http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(Property[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(BrowseNode[]))] [System.Xml.Serialization.XmlIncludeAttribute(typeof(TransactionItem[]))] public partial class AWSECommerceService : Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapClient { and on all method signatures:[Microsoft.Web.Services3.Messaging.SoapMethodAttribute("http://soap.amazon.com/ItemSearch")] [return: System.Xml.Serialization.XmlElementAttribute("ItemSearchResponse", Namespace="http://webservices.amazon.com/AWSECommerceService/2011-08-01")] public ItemSearchResponse ItemSearch(ItemSearch ItemSearch1) { Microsoft.Web.Services3.SoapEnvelope results = base.SendRequestResponse("ItemSearch", ItemSearch1); return ((ItemSearchResponse)(results.GetBodyObject(typeof(ItemSearchResponse), this.SoapServiceAttribute.TargetNamespace))); } It's easy to do with a Search and Replace on the above strings. Amazon Services <rant> FWIW, I've not been impressed by Amazon's service offerings. While the services work well, their documentation and tool support is absolutely horrendous. I was recently working with a customer on an old AWS application and their old API had been completely removed with a new API that wasn't even a close match. One old API call resulted in requiring three different APIs to perform the same functionality. We had to re-write the entire piece from scratch essentially. The documentation was downright wrong, and incomplete and so scattered it was next to impossible to follow. The examples weren't examples at all - they're mockups of real service calls with fake data that didn't even provide everything that was required to make same service calls work. Additionally there appears to be just about no public support from Amazon, only peer support which is sparse at best - and getting a hold of somebody at Amazon, even for pay seems to be mythical task. It's a terrible business model they have going. I can't see why anybody would put themselves through this sort of customer and development experience. Sad really, but an experience we see more and more these days. Nobody puts in the time to document anything anymore, leaving it to devs to figure this stuff out over and over again… </rant>© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in CSharp  Web Services   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Getting a 'base' Domain from a Domain

  - by Rick Strahl

  Here's a simple one: How do you reliably get the base domain from full domain name or URI? Specifically I've run into this scenario in a few recent applications when creating the Forms Auth Cookie in my ASP.NET applications where I explicitly need to force the domain name to the common base domain. So, www.west-wind.com, store.west-wind.com, west-wind.com, dev.west-wind.com all should return west-wind.com. Here's the code where I need to use this type of logic for issuing an AuthTicket explicitly:private void IssueAuthTicket(UserState userState, bool rememberMe) { FormsAuthenticationTicket ticket = new FormsAuthenticationTicket(1, userState.UserId, DateTime.Now, DateTime.Now.AddDays(10), rememberMe, userState.ToString()); string ticketString = FormsAuthentication.Encrypt(ticket); HttpCookie cookie = new HttpCookie(FormsAuthentication.FormsCookieName, ticketString); cookie.HttpOnly = true; if (rememberMe) cookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(10); // write out a domain cookie cookie.Domain = Request.Url.GetBaseDomain(); HttpContext.Response.Cookies.Add(cookie); } Now unfortunately there's no Uri.GetBaseDomain() method unfortunately, as I was surprised to find out. So I ended up creating one:public static class NetworkUtils { /// <summary> /// Retrieves a base domain name from a full domain name. /// For example: www.west-wind.com produces west-wind.com /// </summary> /// <param name="domainName">Dns Domain name as a string</param> /// <returns></returns> public static string GetBaseDomain(string domainName) { var tokens = domainName.Split('.'); // only split 3 segments like www.west-wind.com if (tokens == null || tokens.Length != 3) return domainName; var tok = new List<string>(tokens); var remove = tokens.Length - 2; tok.RemoveRange(0, remove); return tok[0] + "." + tok[1]; ; } /// <summary> /// Returns the base domain from a domain name /// Example: http://www.west-wind.com returns west-wind.com /// </summary> /// <param name="uri"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static string GetBaseDomain(this Uri uri) { if (uri.HostNameType == UriHostNameType.Dns) return GetBaseDomain(uri.DnsSafeHost); return uri.Host; } } I've had a need for this so frequently it warranted a couple of helpers. The second Uri helper is an Extension method to the Uri class, which is what's used the in the first code sample. This is the preferred way to call this since the URI class can differentiate between Dns names and IP Addresses. If you use the first string based version there's a little more guessing going on if a URL is an IP Address. There are a couple of small twists in dealing with 'domain names'. When passing a string only there's a possibility to not actually pass domain name, but end up passing an IP address, so the code explicitly checks for three domain segments (can there be more than 3?). IP4 Addresses have 4 and IP6 have none so they'll fall through. Then there are things like localhost or a NetBios machine name which also come back on URL strings, but also shouldn't be handled. Anyway, small thing but maybe somebody else will find this useful.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in ASP.NET  Networking   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• OWB 11gR2 &ndash; Degenerate Dimensions

  - by David Allan

  Ever wondered how to build degenerate dimensions in OWB and get the benefits of slowly changing dimensions and cube loading? Now its possible through some changes in 11gR2 to make the dimension and cube loading much more flexible. This will let you get the benefits of OWB's surrogate key handling and slowly changing dimension reference when loading the fact table and need degenerate dimensions (see Ralph Kimball's degenerate dimensions design tip). Here we will see how to use the cube operator to load slowly changing, regular and degenerate dimensions. The cube and cube operator can now work with dimensions which have no surrogate key as well as dimensions with surrogates, so you can get the benefit of the cube loading and incorporate the degenerate dimension loading. What you need to do is create a dimension in OWB that is purely used for ETL metadata; the dimension itself is never deployed (its table is, but has not data) it has no surrogate keys has a single level with a business attribute the degenerate dimension data and a dummy attribute, say description just to pass the OWB validation. When this degenerate dimension is added into a cube, you will need to configure the fact table created and set the 'Deployable' flag to FALSE for the foreign key generated to the degenerate dimension table. The degenerate dimension reference will then be in the cube operator and used when matching. Create the degenerate dimension using the regular wizard. Delete the Surrogate ID attribute, this is not needed. Define a level name for the dimension member (any name). After the wizard has completed, in the editor delete the hierarchy STANDARD that was automatically generated, there is only a single level, no need for a hierarchy and this shouldn't really be created. Deploy the implementing table DD_ORDERNUMBER_TAB, this needs to be deployed but with no data (the mapping here will do a left outer join of the source data with the empty degenerate dimension table). Now, go ahead and build your cube, use the regular TIMES dimension for example and your degenerate dimension DD_ORDERNUMBER, can add in SCD dimensions etc. Configure the fact table created and set Deployable to false, so the foreign key does not get generated. Can now use the cube in a mapping and load data into the fact table via the cube operator, this will look after surrogate lookups and slowly changing dimension references.   If you generate the SQL you will see the ON clause for matching includes the columns representing the degenerate dimension columns. Here we have seen how this use case for loading fact tables using degenerate dimensions becomes a whole lot simpler using OWB 11gR2. I'm sure there are other use cases where using this mix of dimensions with surrogate and regular identifiers is useful, Fact tables partitioned by date columns is another classic example that this will greatly help and make the cube operator much more useful. Good to hear any comments.

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• Best way to Draw a cube for 3D Picking

  - by Kenneth Bray

  Currently I am drawing a cube for a game that I am making and the cube draw method is below. My question is, what is the best way to draw a cube and to be able to easily find the face that the cursor is over? My draw method works just fine, but I am getting ready to start to add picking (this will be used to mold the cubes into other shaps), and would like to know the best way to find a face of the cube. public void Draw() { // center point posX, posY, posZ float radius = size / 2; //top glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(1.0f,0.0f,0.0f); // red glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //bottom glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(1.0f,1.0f,0.0f); // ?? color glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //right side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(1.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // ?? color glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //left side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(0.0f,1.0f,1.0f); // ?? color glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //front side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(0.0f,0.0f,1.0f); // blue glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ + radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); //back side glPushMatrix(); glBegin(GL_QUADS); { glColor3f(0.0f,1.0f,0.0f); // green glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY - radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX - radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); glVertex3f(posX + radius, posY + radius, posZ - radius); } glEnd(); glPopMatrix(); }

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• Multi-Threaded Application vs. Single Threaded Application

  Why would we use a multi threaded application vs. a single threaded application? First we must define multithreading. Multithreading is a feature of an operating system that allows programs to run subcomponents or threads in parallel. Typically most applications only need to use one thread because they do not perform time consuming tasks. The use of multiple threads allows an application to distribute long running tasks so that they can be executed in parallel. This gives the user the perceived appearance that the application is working faster due to the fact that while one thread is waiting on an IO process the remaining tasks can make use of the available CPU. The allows working threads to execute in tandem so that they can be competed sooner. Multithreading Benefits Improved responsiveness — Users usually report improved responsiveness compared to single thread applications. Faster applications — Multiple threads can lead to improved application performance. Prioritization — Threads can be assigned a priority which would allow higher priority tasks to take precedence over lower priority tasks. Single Threading Benefits Programming and debugging —These activities are easier compared to multithreaded applications due to the reduced complexity Less Overhead — Threads add overhead to an application When developing multi-threaded applications, the following must be considered. Deadlocks occur when two threads hold a monitor that the other one requires. In essence each task is blocking the other and both tasks are waiting for the other monitor to be released. This forces an application to hang or deadlock. Resource allocation is used to prevent deadlocks because the system determines if approving the resource request will render the system in an unsafe state. An unsafe state could result in a deadlock. The system only approves requests that will lead to safe states. Thread Synchronization is used when multiple threads use the same instance of an object. The threads accessing the object can then be locked and then synchronized so that each task can interact with the static object on at a time.

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• Start/Stop Window Service from ASP.NET page

  - by kaushalparik27

  Last week, I needed to complete one task on which I am going to blog about in this entry. The task is "Create a control panel like webpage to control (Start/Stop) Window Services which are part of my solution installed on computer where the main application is hosted". Here are the important points to accomplish:[1] You need to add System.ServiceProcess reference in your application. This namespace holds ServiceController Class to access the window service.[2] You need to check the status of the window services before you explicitly start or stop it.[3] By default, IIS application runs under ASP.NET account which doesn't have access rights permission to window service. So, Very Important part of the solution is: Impersonation. You need to impersonate the application/part of the code with the User Credentials which is having proper rights and permission to access the window service. If you try to access window service it will generate "access denied" error.The alternatives are: You can either impersonate whole application by adding Identity tag in web.cofig as:        <identity impersonate="true" userName="" password=""/>This tag will be under System.Web section. the "userName" and "password" will be the credentials of the user which is having rights to access the window service. But, this would not be a wise and good solution; because you may not impersonate whole website like this just to have access window service (which is going to be a small part of code).Second alternative is: Only impersonate part of code where you need to access the window service to start or stop it. I opted this one. But, to be fair; I am really unaware of the code part for impersonation. So, I just googled it and injected the code in my solution in a separate class file named as "Impersonate" with required static methods. In Impersonate class; impersonateValidUser() is the method to impersonate a part of code and undoImpersonation() is the method to undo the impersonation. Below is one example:  You need to provide domain name (which is "." if you are working on your home computer), username and password of appropriate user to impersonate.[4] Here, it is very important to note that: You need to have to store the Access Credentials (username and password) which you are going to user for impersonation; to some secured and encrypted format. I have used Machinekey Encryption to store the value encrypted value inside database.[5] So now; The real part is to start or stop a window service. You are almost done; because ServiceController class has simple Start() and Stop() methods to start or stop a window service. A ServiceController class has parametrized constructor that takes name of the service as parameter.Code to Start the window service: Code to Stop the window service: Isn't that too easy! ServiceController made it easy :) I have attached a working example with this post here to start/stop "SQLBrowser" service where you need to provide proper credentials who have permission to access to window service.  hope it would helps./.

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• How to use caching to increase render performance?

  - by Christian Ivicevic

  First of all I am going to cover the basic design of my 2d tile-based engine written with SDL in C++, then I will point out what I am up to and where I need some hints. Concept of my engine My engine uses the concept of GameScreens which are stored on a stack in the main game class. The main methods of a screen are usually LoadContent, Render, Update and InitMultithreading. (I use the last one because I am using v8 as a JavaScript bridge to the engine. The main game loop then renders the top screen on the stack (if there is one; otherwise, it exits the game) - actually it calls the render methods, but stores all items to be rendered in a list. After gathering all this information the methods like SDL_BlitSurface are called by my GameUIRenderer which draws the enqueued content and then draws some overlay. The code looks like this: while(Game is running) { Handle input if(Screens on stack == 0) exit Update timer etc. Clear the screen Peek the screen on the stack and collect information on what to render Actually render the enqueue screen stuff and some overlay etc. Flip the screen } The GameUIRenderer uses as hinted a std::vector<std::shared_ptr<ImageToRender>> to hold all necessary information described by this class: class ImageToRender { private: SDL_Surface* image; int x, y, w, h, xOffset, yOffset; }; This bunch of attributes is usually needed if I have a texture atlas with all tiles in one SDL_Surface and then the engine should crop one specific area and draw this to the screen. The GameUIRenderer::Render() method then just iterates over all elements and renders them something like this: std::for_each( this->m_vImageVector.begin(), this->m_vImageVector.end(), [this](std::shared_ptr<ImageToRender> pCurrentImage) { SDL_Rect rc = { pCurrentImage->x, pCurrentImage->y, 0, 0 }; // For the sake of simplicity ignore offsets... SDL_Rect srcRect = { 0, 0, pCurrentImage->w, pCurrentImage->h }; SDL_BlitSurface(pCurrentImage->pImage, &srcRect, g_pFramework->GetScreen(), &rc); } ); this->m_vImageVector.clear(); Current ideas which need to be reviewed The specified approach works really good and IMHO it is really has a good structure, however the performance could be definitely increased. I would like to know what do you suggest, how to implement efficient caching of surfaces etc so that there is no need to redraw the same scene over and over again? The map itself would be almost static, only when the player moves, we would need to move the map. Furthermore animated entities would either require updates of the whole map or updates of only the specific areas the entities are currently moving in. My first approaches were to include a flag IsTainted which should be used by the GameUIRenderer to decide whether to redraw everything or use cached version (or to not render anything so that we do not have to Clear the screen and let the last frame persist). However this seems to be quite messy if I have to manually handle in my Render method of the screen class if something has changed or not.

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• Emoti-phrases

  - by Tony Davis

  Surely the next radical step in the development of User-interface design is for applications to react appropriately to the rising tide of bewilderment, frustration or antipathy of the users. When an application understands that rapport is lost, it should respond accordingly. When we, for example, become confused by an unforgiving interface, shouldn't there be a way of signalling our bewilderment and having the application respond appropriately? There is surprisingly little in the current interface standards that would help. If we're getting frustrated with an unresponsive application, perhaps we could let it know of our increasing irritation by means of an "I'm getting angry and exasperated" slider. Although, by 'responding appropriately', I don't include playing a "we are experiencing unusually heavy traffic: your application usage is important to us" message, accompanied by calming muzak. When confronted with a tide of wizards, 'are you sure?' messages, or page-after-page of tiresome and barely-relevant options, how one yearns for a handy 'JFDI' (Just Flaming Do It) button. One click and the application miraculously desists with its annoying questions and just gets on with the job, using the defaults, or whatever we selected last time. Much more satisfying, and more direct to most developers and DBAs, however, would be the facility to communicate to the application via a twitter-style input field, or via parameters to command-line applications ("I don't want a wide-ranging debate with you; just open the bl**dy PDF!" or, or "Don't forget which of us has the close button"). Although to avoid too much cultural-dependence, perhaps we should take the lead from emoticons, and use a set of standardized emoti-phrases such as 'sez you', 'huh?', 'Pshaw!', or 'meh', which could be used to vent a range of feelings in any given application, whether it be SQL Server stubbornly refusing to give us the result we are expecting, or when an online-survey is getting too personal. Or a 'Lingua Glaswegia' perhaps: 'Atsabelter' ("very good") 'Atspish' ("must try harder") 'AnThenYerArsFellAff ' ("I don't quite trust these results") 'BileYerHeid' or 'ShutYerGub' ("please stop these inane questions") There would, of course, have to be an ANSI standards body to define the phrases that were acceptable. Presumably, there would be a tussle amongst the different international standards organizations. Meanwhile Oracle, Microsoft and Apple would each release non-standard extensions. Time then, surely, to plant emoti-phrases on the lot of them and develop a user-driven consensus. Send us your suggestions! The best one will win an iPod nano! Cheers! Tony.

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• SQL SERVER – 2011 – Introduction to SEQUENCE – Simple Example of SEQUENCE

  - by pinaldave

  SQL Server 2011 will contain one of the very interesting feature called SEQUENCE. I have waited for this feature for really long time. I am glad it is here finally. SEQUENCE allows you to define a single point of repository where SQL Server will maintain in memory counter. USE AdventureWorks2008R2 GO CREATE SEQUENCE [Seq] AS [int] START WITH 1 INCREMENT BY 1 MAXVALUE 20000 GO SEQUENCE is very interesting concept and I will write few blog post on this subject in future. Today we will see only working example of the same. Let us create a sequence. We can specify various values like start value, increment value as well maxvalue. -- First Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Second Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.AccountNumber FROM Sales.Customer c GO Once the sequence is defined, it can be fetched using following method. Every single time new incremental value is provided, irrespective of sessions. Sequence will generate values till the max value specified. Once the max value is reached, query will stop and will return error message. Msg 11728, Level 16, State 1, Line 2 The sequence object ‘Seq’ has reached its minimum or maximum value. Restart the sequence object to allow new values to be generated. We can restart the sequence from any particular value and it will work fine. -- Restart the Sequence ALTER SEQUENCE [Seq] RESTART WITH 1 GO -- Sequence Restarted SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO Let us do final clean up. -- Clean Up DROP SEQUENCE [Seq] GO There are lots of things one can find useful about this feature. We will see that in future posts. Here is the complete code for easy reference. USE AdventureWorks2008R2 GO CREATE SEQUENCE [Seq] AS [int] START WITH 1 INCREMENT BY 1 MAXVALUE 20000 GO -- First Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Second Run SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.AccountNumber FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Restart the Sequence ALTER SEQUENCE [Seq] RESTART WITH 1 GO -- Sequence Restarted SELECT NEXT VALUE FOR Seq, c.CustomerID FROM Sales.Customer c GO -- Clean Up DROP SEQUENCE [Seq] GO Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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• Instant Rename and Rename Refactoring

  - by Petr

  During the last weeks I have got  a few questions about rename refactoring and some users also complain to me that the refactoring in NetBeans 6.x was much faster. So I would like to explain the situation. For some people, who don't know, Instant Rename action and Rename Refactoring  can look like one action. But it's not true, even if  both actions use the same shortcut (CTRL + R). NetBeans 6.x contained only Instant Rename action (speaking about PHP support), which we can mark as very simple rename refactoring through one file. From NetBeans 7.0 the Instant Rename action works only in "non public" context. It means that this action is used for fast renaming variables that has local context like inside a method, or for renaming private methods and fields that can not be used outside of the scope, where they are declared. From user point of view these two action can be simply recognized. When is after CTRL+R called Instant Rename action, then the identifier is surrounded with rectangle and you can rename it directly in the file. It's fast and simple, also the usages of this identifier are renamed in the same time as you write. The picture below shows Instant Rename action for $message identifier, that is visible only in the print_test method and due this after CTRL+R is called Instant Rename. In NetBeans 7.0, there was added Rename Refactoring that is called for public identifiers. It means for identifiers that could be used in other files. If you press CTRL+R shortcut when the caret is inside $hello identifier from the picture above, NetBeans recognizes that $hello is declared / used in a global context and calls the Rename Refactoring that brings a dialog to change the name of the identifier. From this dialog you have to preview suggested changes, through pressing Preview button and then execute the refactoring through Do Refactoring button. Yes, it's more complicated from user point of view than Instant Rename, but in Rename Refactoring NetBeans can change more files at once. It should be  the developer responsibility to decide whether the suggested changes are right and the refactoring can be executed or in some files original name should be kept. Someone can argue that he doesn't use $hello variable in any other file so Instant Rename could be used in such case. Yes it's true, but in such case NetBeans has to know all usages of all identifiers and keep this informations up to date during editing a file. I'm sure that this is not possible due to the performance problems, mainly for big projects. So the usages are computed after pressing the Preview button. And why is the Refactor button always disabled in the Rename dialog and user has to always go through the preview phase? NetBeans has API and SPI for implementing refactoring actions and this dialog is a part of this infrastructure. If you rename an identifier for example in Java, the Refactor buttons is enabled, but Java is strongly type language and you can be almost in 99% sure that the IDE will suggest the right results. In PHP as a dynamic language, we can not be sure, what NetBeans finds is only a "guess". This is why NetBeans pushes developers to preview the changes for PHP rename. I hope that I have explain it clearly. I'm open to any discussion. What I have described above is situation in NetBeans 7.0, 7.0.1 and probably it will be also in NetBeans 7.1, because there is no plan to change it. Please write your opinion here.

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• Error trapping for a missing data source in a Spring MVC / Spring JDBC web app [migrated]

  - by Geeb

  I have written a web app that uses Spring MVC libraries and Spring JDBC to connect to an Oracle DB. (I don't use any ORM type libraries as I create stored procedures on Oracle that do my stuff and I'm quite happy with that.) I use a connection pool to Oracle managed by the Tomcat container The app generally works absolutely fine by the way! BUT... I noticed the other day when I tried to set up the app on another Tomcat instance that I had forgotten to configure the connection pool and obviously the app could not get hold of an org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource object, so it crashed. I define the pool params in the tomcat "context.conf" In my "web.xml" I have: <servlet> <servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name> <servlet-class>org.springframework.web.servlet.DispatcherServlet</servlet-class> <init-param> <param-name>contextConfigLocation</param-name> <param-value>/WEB-INF/Spring/appServlet/servlet-context.xml</param-value> </init-param> <load-on-startup>1</load-on-startup> </servlet> <servlet-mapping> <servlet-name>appServlet</servlet-name> <!-- Map *everything* to appServlet --> <url-pattern>/</url-pattern> </servlet-mapping> <resource-ref> <description>Oracle Datasource example</description> <res-ref-name>jdbc/ora1</res-ref-name> <res-type>org.apache.commons.dbcp.BasicDataSource</res-type> <res-auth>Container</res-auth> </resource-ref> And I have a Spring "servlet-context.xml" where JNDI is used to map the data source object provided by the connection pool to a Spring bean with the ID of "dataSource": <jee:jndi-lookup id="dataSource" jndi-name="java:comp/env/jdbc/ora1" resource-ref="true" /> Here's the question: Where do I trap the case where the database cannot be accessed for whatever reason? I don't want the user to see a yard-and-a-half of Java stack trace in their browser, rather a nicer message that tells them there is a database problem etc. It seems that my app tries to configure the "dataSource" bean (in "servlet-context.xml") before any code has tested it can actually provide a dataSource object from the pool?! Maybe I'm not fully understanding exactly what is going on in these stages of the app firing up ... Thanks for any advice!

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• Wipe, Delete, and Securely Destroy Your Hard Drive’s Data the Easy Way

  - by The Geek

  Giving a computer to somebody else? Maybe you’re putting it out on Craigslist to sell to a stranger—either way, you’ll want to make sure that your drive is completely wiped, scrubbed, and clean of any personal data. Here’s the easy way to do it. If you only have access to an Ubuntu Live CD or thumb drive, you can actually use that instead if you prefer, and we’ve got you covered with a full guide to securely wiping your PC’s hard drive. Otherwise, keep reading. Wipe the Drive with DBAN Darik’s Boot and Nuke CD is the easiest way to permanently and totally destroy every bit of personal information on that drive—nobody is going to recover a thing once this is done. The first thing you’ll need to do is download a copy of the ISO image, and then burn it to a blank CD with something really useful like Imgburn. Just choose Burn image to Disc at the start screen, select the little file icon, grab the downloaded ISO, and then go. If you need a little more help, we’ve got you covered with a beginner’s guide to burning an ISO image. Once you’re done, stick the disc into the drive, start the PC up, and then once you boot to the DBAN prompt you’ll see a menu. You can pretty much ignore everything on here, and just type… autonuke And there you are, your disk is now being securely wiped. Once it’s all done, you can remove the CD, and then either pack the PC up to sell, or re-install Windows on there if you feel like it. More Advanced Method If you’re really paranoid, want to run a different type of wipe, or just like fiddling with the options, you can choose F3 or hit Enter at the prompt to head to the advanced selection screen. Here you can choose exactly which drive to wipe, or hit the M key to change the method. You’ll be able to choose between a bunch of different wipe options. The Quick Erase is all you really need though.   So there you are, easy PC wiping in one package. What about you? Do you make sure to wipe your old PCs before giving them away? Personally I’ve always just yanked out the hard drives before I got rid of an old PC, but that’s just me. Download DBAN from dban.org Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use an Ubuntu Live CD to Securely Wipe Your PC’s Hard DriveHow to Dispose of Old Computers ResponsiblyHow To Delete a VHD in Windows 7Speed up External USB Hard Drives in Windows VistaSpeed Up SATA Hard Drives in Windows Vista TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Follow Finder Finds You Twitter Users To Follow Combine MP3 Files Easily QuicklyCode Provides Cheatsheets & Other Programming Stuff Download Free MP3s from Amazon Awe inspiring, inter-galactic theme (Win 7) Case Study – How to Optimize Popular Wordpress Sites

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• Using progress dialog in Visual Studio extensions

  - by Utkarsh Shigihalli

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/onlyutkarsh/archive/2014/05/23/using-progress-dialog-in-visual-studio-extensions.aspxAs a Visual Studio extension developer you are required to keep the aesthetics of Visual Studio in tact when you integrate your extension with Visual Studio. Your extension looks odd when you try to use windows controls and dialogs in your extensions. Visual Studio SDK exposes many interfaces so that your extension looks as integrated with Visual Studio as possible. When your extension is performing a long running task, you have many options to notify the progress to the user. One such option is through Visual Studio status bar. I have previously blogged about displaying progress through Visual Studio status bar. In this blog post I am going to highlight another way using IVsThreadedWaitDialog2 interface. One thing to note is, as the IVsThreadedWaitDialog2 interface name suggests it is a dialog hence user cannot perform any action when the dialog is being shown. So Visual Studio seems responsive to user, even when a task is being performed. Visual Studio itself makes use of this interface heavily. One example is when you are loading a solution (.sln) with lot of projects Visual Studio displays dialog implemented by this interface (screenshot below). So the first step is to get the instance of IVsThreadedWaitDialog2 interface using IServiceProvider interface. var dialogFactory = _serviceProvider.GetService(typeof(SVsThreadedWaitDialogFactory)) as IVsThreadedWaitDialogFactory; IVsThreadedWaitDialog2 dialog = null; if (dialogFactory != null) { dialogFactory.CreateInstance(out dialog); } So if your have the package initialized properly out object dialog will be not null and would contain the instance of IVsThreadedWaitDialog2 interface. Once the instance is got, you call the different methods to manage the dialog. I will cover 3 methods StartWaitDialog, EndWaitDialog and HasCanceled in this blog post. You show the progress dialog as below. if (dialog != null && dialog.StartWaitDialog( "Threaded Wait Dialog", "VS is Busy", "Progress text", null, "Waiting status bar text", 0, false, true) == VSConstants.S_OK) { Thread.Sleep(4000); } As you can see from the method syntax it is very similar to standard windows message box. If you pass true to the 7th parameter to StartWaitDialog method, you will also see a cancel button allowing user to cancel the running task. You can react when user cancels the task as below. bool isCancelled; dialog.HasCanceled(out isCancelled); if (isCancelled) { MessageBox.Show("Cancelled"); } Finally, you can close the dialog when you complete the task running as below. int usercancel; dialog.EndWaitDialog(out usercancel); To help you quickly experience the above code, I have created a sample. It is available for download from GitHub. The sample creates a tool window with two buttons to demo the above explained scenarios. The tool window can be accessed by clicking View –> Other Windows -> ProgressDialogDemo Window

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• Defining Discovery: Core Concepts

  - by Joe Lamantia

  Discovery tools have had a referencable working definition since at least 2001, when Ben Shneiderman published 'Inventing Discovery Tools: Combining Information Visualization with Data Mining'.  Dr. Shneiderman suggested the combination of the two distinct fields of data mining and information visualization could manifest as new category of tools for discovery, an understanding that remains essentially unaltered over ten years later.  An industry analyst report titled Visual Discovery Tools: Market Segmentation and Product Positioning from March of this year, for example, reads, "Visual discovery tools are designed for visual data exploration, analysis and lightweight data mining." Tools should follow from the activities people undertake (a foundational tenet of activity centered design), however, and Dr. Shneiderman does not in fact describe or define discovery activity or capability. As I read it, discovery is assumed to be the implied sum of the separate fields of visualization and data mining as they were then understood.  As a working definition that catalyzes a field of product prototyping, it's adequate in the short term.  In the long term, it makes the boundaries of discovery both derived and temporary, and leaves a substantial gap in the landscape of core concepts around discovery, making consensus on the nature of most aspects of discovery difficult or impossible to reach.  I think this definitional gap is a major reason that discovery is still an ambiguous product landscape. To help close that gap, I'm suggesting a few definitions of four core aspects of discovery.  These come out of our sustained research into discovery needs and practices, and have the goal of clarifying the relationship between discvoery and other analytical categories.  They are suggested, but should be internally coherent and consistent.   Discovery activity is: "Purposeful sense making activity that intends to arrive at new insights and understanding through exploration and analysis (and for these we have specific defintions as well) of all types and sources of data." Discovery capability is: "The ability of people and organizations to purposefully realize valuable insights that address the full spectrum of business questions and problems by engaging effectively with all types and sources of data." Discovery tools: "Enhance individual and organizational ability to realize novel insights by augmenting and accelerating human sense making to allow engagement with all types of data at all useful scales." Discovery environments: "Enable organizations to undertake effective discovery efforts for all business purposes and perspectives, in an empirical and cooperative fashion." Note: applicability to a world of Big data is assumed - thus the refs to all scales / types / sources - rather than stated explicitly.  I like that Big Data doesn't have to be written into this core set of definitions, b/c I think it's a transitional label - the new version of Web 2.0 - and goes away over time. References and Resources: Inventing Discovery Tools Visual Discovery Tools: Market Segmentation and Product Positioning Logic versus usage: the case for activity-centered design A Taxonomy of Enterprise Search and Discovery

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• Backup Azure Tables, schedule Azure scripts&hellip; and more

  - by Herve Roggero

  Well – months of effort are now officially over… or should I say it’s just the beginning?   Enzo Cloud Backup 2.0 (beta) is now officially out!!! This tool will let you do the following: * Backup SQL Database (and SQL Server to a limited extend) * Backup Azure Tables * Restore SQL Backups into another SQL environment * Restore Azure Tables in Azure Storage, or SQL Environment * Manage and schedule database maintenance scripts * Drop database schema containers (with preview) for SaaS environments * Receive alerts (SMTP) when operations complete or fail That’s it at a high level… but you need to see the flexibility around these features. For example you can select a specific backup strategy for Azure Tables allowing faster backup operations when partition keys use GUIDs. You can also call custom stored procedures during the restore operation of Azure Tables, allowing you to transform the data along the way. You can also set a performance threshold during Azure Table backup operations to help you control possible throttling conditions in your Storage Account. Regarding database scripts, you can now define T-SQL scripts and schedule them for execution in a specific order. You can also tell Enzo to execute a pre and post script during Azure Table restore operations against a SQL environment. The backup operation now supports backing up to multiple devices at the same time. So you can execute a backup request to both a local file, and a blob at the same time, guaranteeing that both will contain the exact same data. And due to the level of options that are available, you can save backup definitions for later reuse. The screenshot below backs up Azure Tables to two devices (a blob and a SQL Database). You can also manage your database schemas for SaaS environments that use schema containers to separate customer data. This new edition allows you to see how many objects you have in each schema, backup specific schemas, and even drop all objects in a given schema. For example the screenshot below shows that the EnzoLog database has 4 user-defined schemas, and the AFA schema has 5 tables and 1 module (stored proc, function, view…). Selecting the AFA schema and trying to delete it will prompt another screen to show which objects will be deleted. As you can see, Enzo Cloud Backup provides amazing capabilities that can help you safeguard your data in SQL Database and Azure Tables, and give you advanced management functions for your Azure environment. Download a free trial today at http://www.bluesyntax.net.

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• Mathematica Programming Language&ndash;An Introduction

  - by JoshReuben

  The Mathematica http://www.wolfram.com/mathematica/ programming model consists of a kernel computation engine (or grid of such engines) and a front-end of notebook instances that communicate with the kernel throughout a session. The programming model of Mathematica is incredibly rich & powerful – besides numeric calculations, it supports symbols (eg Pi, I, E) and control flow logic.   obviously I could use this as a simple calculator: 5 * 10 --> 50 but this language is much more than that!   for example, I could use control flow logic & setup a simple infinite loop: x=1; While [x>0, x=x,x+1] Different brackets have different purposes: square brackets for function arguments:  Cos[x] round brackets for grouping: (1+2)*3 curly brackets for lists: {1,2,3,4} The power of Mathematica (as opposed to say Matlab) is that it gives exact symbolic answers instead of a rounded numeric approximation (unless you request it):   Mathematica lets you define scoped variables (symbols): a=1; b=2; c=a+b --> 5 these variables can contain symbolic values – you can think of these as partially computed functions:   use Clear[x] or Remove[x] to zero or dereference a variable.   To compute a numerical approximation to n significant digits (default n=6), use N[x,n] or the //N prefix: Pi //N -->3.14159 N[Pi,50] --> 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751 The kernel uses % to reference the lastcalculation result, %% the 2nd last, %%% the 3rd last etc –> clearer statements: eg instead of: Sqrt[Pi+Sqrt[Sqrt[Pi+Sqrt[Pi]]] do: Sqrt[Pi]; Sqrt[Pi+%]; Sqrt[Pi+%] The help system supports wildcards, so I can search for functions like so: ?Inv* Mathematica supports some very powerful programming constructs and a rich function library that allow you to do things that you would have to write allot of code for in a language like C++.   the Factor function – factorization: Factor[x^3 – 6*x^2 +11x – 6] --> (-3+x) (-2+x) (-1+x)   the Solve function – find the roots of an equation: Solve[x^3 – 2x + 1 == 0] -->   the Expand function – express (1+x)^10 in polynomial form: Expand[(1+x)^10] --> 1+10x+45x^2+120x^3+210x^4+252x^5+210x^6+120x^7+45x^8+10x^9+x^10 the Prime function – what is the 1000th prime? Prime[1000] -->7919 Mathematica also has some powerful graphics capabilities:   the Plot function – plot the graph of y=Sin x in a single period: Plot[Sin[x], {x,0,2*Pi}] you can also plot 3D surfaces of functions using Plot3D function

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• Deploying a SharePoint 2007 theme using Features

  - by Kelly Jones

  I recently had a requirement to update the branding on an existing Windows SharePoint Services (WSS version 3.0) site.  I needed to update the theme, along with the master page.  An additional requirement is that my client likes to have all changes bundled up in SharePoint solutions.  This makes it much easier to move code from dev to test to prod and more importantly, makes it easier to undo code migrations if any issues would arise (I agree with this approach). Updating the theme was easy enough.  I created a new theme, along with a two new features.  The first feature, scoped at the farm level, deploys the theme, adding it to the spthemes.xml file (in the 12 hive –> \Template\layouts\1033 folder).  Here’s the method that I call from the feature activated event: private static void AddThemeToSpThemes(string id, string name, string description, string thumbnail, string preview, SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { XmlDocument spThemes = new XmlDocument(); //use GetGenericSetupPath to find the 12 hive folder string spThemesPath = SPUtility.GetGenericSetupPath(@"TEMPLATE\LAYOUTS\1033\spThemes.xml"); //load the spthemes file into our xmldocument, since it is just xml spThemes.Load(spThemesPath); XmlNode root = spThemes.DocumentElement; //search the themes file to see if our theme is already added bool found = false; foreach (XmlNode node in root.ChildNodes) { foreach (XmlNode prop in node.ChildNodes) { if (prop.Name.Equals("TemplateID")) { if (prop.InnerText.Equals(id)) { found = true; break; } } } if (found) { break; } } if (!found) //theme not found, so add it { //This is what we need to add: // <Templates> // <TemplateID>ThemeName</TemplateID> // <DisplayName>Theme Display Name</DisplayName> // <Description>My theme description</Description> // <Thumbnail>images/mythemethumb.gif</Thumbnail> // <Preview>images/mythemepreview.gif</Preview> // </Templates> StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(); sb.Append("<Templates><TemplateID>"); sb.Append(id); sb.Append("</TemplateID><DisplayName>"); sb.Append(name); sb.Append("</DisplayName><Description>"); sb.Append(description); sb.Append("</Description><Thumbnail>"); sb.Append(thumbnail); sb.Append("</Thumbnail><Preview>"); sb.Append(preview); sb.Append("</Preview></Templates>"); root.CreateNavigator().AppendChild(sb.ToString()); spThemes.Save(spThemesPath); } } Just as important, is the code that removes the theme when the feature is deactivated: private static void RemoveThemeFromSpThemes(string id) { XmlDocument spThemes = new XmlDocument(); string spThemesPath = HostingEnvironment.MapPath("/_layouts/") + @"1033\spThemes.xml"; spThemes.Load(spThemesPath); XmlNode root = spThemes.DocumentElement; foreach (XmlNode node in root.ChildNodes) { foreach (XmlNode prop in node.ChildNodes) { if (prop.Name.Equals("TemplateID")) { if (prop.InnerText.Equals(id)) { root.RemoveChild(node); spThemes.Save(spThemesPath); break; } } } } } So, that takes care of deploying the theme.  In order to apply the theme to the web, my activate feature method looks like this: public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { using (SPWeb curweb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent) { curweb.ApplyTheme("myThemeName"); curweb.Update(); } } Deactivating is just as simple: public override void FeatureDeactivating(SPFeatureReceiverProperties properties) { using (SPWeb curweb = (SPWeb)properties.Feature.Parent) { curweb.ApplyTheme("none"); curweb.Update(); } } Ok, that’s the code necessary to deploy, apply, un-apply, and retract the theme.  Also, the solution (WSP file) contains the actual theme files. SO, next is the master page, which I’ll cover in my next blog post.

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• What micro web-framework has the lowest overhead but includes templating

  - by Simon Martin

  I want to rewrite a simple small (10 page) website and besides a contact form it could be written in pure html. It is currently built with classic asp and Dreamweaver templates. The reason I'm not simply writing 10 html pages is that I want to keep the layout all in 1 place so would need either includes or a masterpage. I don't want to use Dreamweaver templates, or batch processing (like org-mode) because I want to be able to edit using notepad (or Visual Studio) because occasionally I might need to edit a file on the server (Go Daddy's IIS admin interface will let me edit text). I don't want to use ASP.NET MVC or WebForms (which I use in my day job) because I don't need all the overhead they bring with them when essentially I'm serving up 9 static files, 1 contact form and 1 list of clubs (that I aim to use jQuery to filter). The shared hosting package I have on Go Daddy seems to take a long time to spin up when serving aspx files. Currently the clubs page is driven from an MS SQL database that I try to keep up to date by manually checking the dojo locator on the main HQ pages and editing the entries myself, this is again way over the top. I aim to get a text file with the club details (probably in JSON or xml format) and use that as the source for the clubs page. There will need to be a bit of programming for this as the HQ site is unable to provide an extract / feed so something will have to scrape the site periodically to update my clubs persistence file. I'd like that to be automated - but I'm happy to have that triggered on a visit to the clubs page so I don't need to worry about scheduling a job. I would probably have a separate process that updates the persistence that has nothing to do with the rest of the site. Ideally I'd like to use Mercurial (or git) to publish, I know Bitbucket (and github) both serve static page sites so they wouldn't work in this scenario (dynamic pages and a contact form) but that's the model I'd like to use if there is such a thing. My requirements are: Simple templating system, 1 place to define header, footers, menu etc., that can be edited using just notepad. Very minimal / lightweight framework. I don't need a monster for 10 pages Must run either on IIS7 (shared Go Daddy Windows hosting) or other free host

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• Exploring packages in code

  In my previous post Searching for tasks with code you can see how to explore the control flow side of packages, drilling down through containers, task, and event handlers, but it didn’t cover the data flow. I recently saw a post on the MSDN forum asking how to edit an existing package programmatically, and the sticking point was how to find the the data flow and the components inside. This post builds on some of the previous code and shows how you can explore all objects inside a package. I took the sample Task Search application I’d written previously, and came up with a totally pointless little console application that just walks through the package and writes out the basic type and name of every object it finds, starting with the package itself e.g. Package – MyPackage . The sample package we used last time showed nested objects as well an event handler; a OnPreExecute event tucked away on the task SQL In FEL. The output of this sample tool would look like this: PackageObjects v1.0.0.0 (1.0.0.26627) Copyright (C) 2009 Konesans Ltd Processing File - Z:\Users\Darren Green\Documents\Visual Studio 2005\Projects\SSISTestProject\EventsAndContainersWithExe cSQLForSearch.dtsx Package - EventsAndContainersWithExecSQLForSearch For Loop - FOR Counter Loop Task - SQL In Counter Loop Sequence Container - SEQ For Each Loop Wrapper For Each Loop - FEL Simple Loop Task - SQL In FEL Task - SQL On Pre Execute for FEL SQL Task Sequence Container - SEQ Top Level Sequence Container - SEQ Nested Lvl 1 Sequence Container - SEQ Nested Lvl 2 Task - SQL In Nested Lvl 2 Task - SQL In Nested Lvl 1 #1 Task - SQL In Nested Lvl 1 #2 Connection Manager – LocalHost The code is very similar to what we had previously, but there are a couple of extra bits to deal with connections and to look more closely at a task and see if it is a Data Flow task. For connections your just examine the package's Connections collection as shown in the abridged snippets below. First you can see the call to the ProcessConnections method, followed by the method itself. // Load the package file Application application = new Application(); using (Package package = application.LoadPackage(filename, null)) { // Write out the package name Console.WriteLine("Package - {0}", package.Name); ... More ... // Look and the connections ProcessConnections(package.Connections); } private static void ProcessConnections(Connections connections) { foreach (ConnectionManager connectionManager in connections) { Console.WriteLine("Connection Manager - {0}", connectionManager.Name); } } What we didn’t see in the sample output above was anything to do with the Data Flow, but rest assured the code now handles it too. The following snippet shows how each task is examined to see if it is a Data Flow task, and if so we can then loop through all of the components inside the data flow. private static void ProcessTaskHost(TaskHost taskHost) { if (taskHost == null) { return; } Console.WriteLine("Task - {0}", taskHost.Name); // Check if the task is a Data Flow task MainPipe pipeline = taskHost.InnerObject as MainPipe; if (pipeline != null) { ProcessPipeline(pipeline); } } private static void ProcessPipeline(MainPipe pipeline) { foreach (IDTSComponentMetaData90 componentMetadata in pipeline.ComponentMetaDataCollection) { Console.WriteLine("Pipeline Component - {0}", componentMetadata.Name); // If you wish to make changes to the component then you should really use the managed wrapper. // CManagedComponentWrapper wrapper = componentMetadata.Instantiate(); // wrapper.SetComponentProperty("PropertyName", "Value"); } } Hopefully you can see how we get a reference to the Data Flow task, and then use the ComponentMetaDataCollection to find out what components we have inside the pipeline. If you wanted to know more about the component you could look at the ObjectType or ComponentClassID properties. After that it gets a bit harder and you should get a reference to the wrapper object as the comment suggest and start using the properties, just like you would in the create packages samples, see our Code Development category for some for these examples. Download Sample code project PackageObjects.zip (5KB)

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• Using MVP, how to create a view from another view, linked with the same model object

  - by Dinaiz

  Background We use the Model-View-Presenter design pattern along with the abstract factory pattern and the "signal/slot" pattern in our application, to fullfill 2 main requirements Enhance testability (very lightweight GUI, every action can be simulated in unit tests) Make the "view" totally independant from the rest, so we can change the actual view implementation, without changing anything else In order to do so our code is divided in 4 layers : Core : which holds the model Presenter : which manages interactions between the view interfaces (see bellow) and the core View Interfaces : they define the signals and slots for a View, but not the implementation Views : the actual implementation of the views When the presenter creates or deals with views, it uses an abstract factory and only knows about the view interfaces. It does the signal/slot binding between views interfaces. It doesn't care about the actual implementation. In the "views" layer, we have a concrete factory which deals with implementations. The signal/slot mechanism is implemented using a custom framework built upon boost::function. Really, what we have is something like that : http://martinfowler.com/eaaDev/PassiveScreen.html Everything works fine. The problem However, there's a problem I don't know how to solve. Let's take for example a very simple drag and drop example. I have two ContainersViews (ContainerView1, ContainerView2). ContainerView1 has an ItemView1. I drag the ItemView1 from ContainerView1 to ContainerView2. ContainerView2 must create an ItemView2, of a different type, but which "points" to the same model object as ItemView1. So the ContainerView2 gets a callback called for the drop action with ItemView1 as a parameter. It calls ContainerPresenterB passing it ItemViewB In this case we are only dealing with views. In MVP-PV, views aren't supposed to know anything about the presenter nor the model, right ? How can I create the ItemView2 from the ItemView1, not knowing which model object is ItemView1 representing ? I thought about adding an "itemId" to every view, this id being the id of the core object the view represents. So in pseudo code, ContainerPresenter2 would do something like itemView2=abstractWidgetFactory.createItemView2(); this.add(itemView2,itemView1.getCoreObjectId()) I don't get too much into details. That just work. The problem I have here is that those itemIds are just like pointers. And pointers can be dangling. Imagine that by mistake, I delete itemView1, and this deletes coreObject1. The itemView2 will have a coreObjectId which represents an invalid coreObject. Isn't there a more elegant and "bulletproof" solution ? Even though I never did ObjectiveC or macOSX programming, I couldn't help but notice that our framework is very similar to Cocoa framework. How do they deal with this kind of problem ? Couldn't find more in-depth information about that on google. If someone could shed some light on this. I hope this question isn't too confusing ...

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• Review: A Quick Look at Reflector

  - by James Michael Hare

  I, like many, was disappointed when I heard that Reflector 7 was not free, and perhaps that’s why I waited so long to try it and just kept using my version 6 (which continues to be free).  But though I resisted for so long, I longed for the better features that were being developed, and began to wonder if I should upgrade.  Thus, I began to look into the features being offered in Reflector 7.5 to see what was new. Multiple Editions Reflector 7.5 comes in three flavors, each building on the features of the previous version: Standard – Contains just the Standalone application ($70) VS – Same as Standard but adds Reflector Object Browser for Visual Studio ($130) VSPro – Same as VS but adds ability to set breakpoints and step into decompiled code ($190) So let’s examine each of these features. The Standalone Application (Standard, VS, VSPro editions) Popping open Reflector 7.5 and looking at the GUI, we see much of the same familiar features, with a few new ones as well: Most notably, the disassembler window now has a tabbed window with navigation buttons.  This makes it much easier to back out of a deep-dive into many layers of decompiled code back to a previous point. Also, there is now an analyzer which can be used to determine dependencies for a given method, property, type, etc. For example, if we select System.Net.Sockets.TcpClient and hit the Analyze button, we’d see a window with the following nodes we could expand: This gives us the ability to see what a given type uses, what uses it, who exposes it, and who instantiates it. Now obviously, for low-level types (like DateTime) this list would be enormous, but this can give a lot of information on how a given type is connected to the larger code ecosystem. One of the other things I like about using Reflector 7.5 is that it does a much better job of displaying iterator blocks than Reflector 6 did. For example, if you were to take a look at the Enumerable.Cast() extension method in System.Linq, and dive into the CastIterator in Reflector 6, you’d see this: But now, in Reflector 7.5, we see the iterator logic much more clearly: This is a big improvement in the quality of their code disassembler and for me was one of the main reasons I decided to take the plunge and get version 7.5. The Reflector Object Browser (VS, VSPro editions) If you have the .NET Reflector VS or VSPro editions, you’ll find you have in Visual Studio a Reflector Object Browser window available where you can select and decompile any assembly right in Visual Studio. For example, if you want to take a peek at how System.Collections.Generic.List<T> works, you can either select List<T> in the Reflector Object Browser, or even simpler just select a usage of it in your code and CTRL + Click to dive in. – And it takes you right to a source window with the decompiled source: Setting Breakpoints and Stepping Into Decompiled Code (VSPro) If you have the VSPro edition, in addition to all the things said above, you also get the additional ability to set breakpoints in this decompiled code and step through it as if it were your own code: This can be a handy feature when you need to see why your code’s use of a BCL or other third-party library isn’t working as you expect. Summary Yes, Reflector is no longer free, and yes, that’s a bit of a bummer. But it always was and still is a very fine tool. If you still have Reflector 6, you aren’t forced to upgrade any longer, but getting the nicer disassembler (especially for iterator blocks) and the handy VS integration is worth at least considering upgrading for.  So I leave it up to you, these are some of the features of Reflector 7.5, what’s your thoughts? Technorati Tags: .NET,Reflector

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