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• Spending the summer at camp… Web Camp, that is

  - by Jon Galloway

  Microsoft is sponsoring a series of Web Camps this summer. They’re a series of free two day events being held worldwide, and I’m really excited about being taking part. The camp is targeted at a broad range of developer background and experience. Content builds from 101 level introductory material to 200-300 level coverage, but we hit some advanced bits (e.g. MVC 2 features, jQuery templating, IIS 7 features, etc.) that advanced developers may not yet have seen. We start with a lap around ASP.NET & Web Forms, then move on to building and application with ASP.NET MVC 2, jQuery, and Entity Framework 4, and finally deploy to IIS. I got to spend some time working with James before the first Web Camp refining the content, and I think he’s packed about as much goodness into the time available as is scientifically possible. The content is really code focused – we start with File/New Project and spend the day building a real, working application. The second day of the Web Camp provides attendees an opportunity to get hands on. There are two options: Join a team and build an application of your choice Work on a lab or tutorial James Senior and I kicked off the fun with the first Web Camp in Toronto a few weeks ago. It was sold out, lots of fun, and by all accounts a great way to spend two days. I’m really enthusiastic about the format. Rather than just listening to speakers and then forgetting everything in a few days, attendees actually build something of their choice. They get an opportunity to pitch projects they’re interested in, form teams, and build it – getting experience with “real world” problems, with all the help they need from experienced developers. James got help on the second day practical part from the good folks that run Startup Weekend. Startup Weekend is a fantastic program that gathers developers together to build cool apps in a weekend, so their input on how to organize successful teams for weekend projects was invaluable. Nick Seguin joined us in Toronto, and in addition to making sure that everything flowed smoothly, he just added a lot of fun and excitement to the event, reminding us all about how much fun it is to come up with a cool idea and just build it. In addition to the Toronto camp, I’ll be at the Mountain View, London, Munich, and New York camps over the next month. London is sold out, but the rest still have space available, so come join us! Here’s the full list, with the ones I’ll be at bolded because - you know - it’s my blog. The the whole speaker list is great, including Scott Guthrie, Scott Hanselman, James Senior, Rachel Appel, Dan Wahlin, and Christian Wenz. Toronto May 7-8 (James Senior and I were thrown out on our collective ears) Moscow May 19 Beijing May 21-22 Shanghai May 24-25 Mountain View May 27-28 (I’m speaking with Rachel Appel) Sydney May 28-29 Singapore June 04-05 London June 04-05 (I’m speaking with Christian Wenz – SOLD OUT) Munich June 07-08 (I’m speaking with Christian Wenz) Chicago June 11-12 Redmond, WA June 18-19 New York June 25-26 (I’m speaking with Dan Wahlin) Come say hi!

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• How to use crontab, .netrc, and git push?

  - by Jon

  Hi all, I am in the process of automating the backups from various servers to a central point then pushing those config changes into a git repo so i can track any changes over time. The rest of the scripts are working well, I can copy / rsync the files across the network to a central point. The last script is to get the config files to be put into / updated in repository. The script is as follows: #!/bin/bash clear SERVERNAME="betty" SCRIPTDIR="/home/jon" GITROOT="/tmp/git" TEMPROOT="/tmp/backups" BACKUPROOTDIR="/mnt/backups" echo " - running as user: $UID" echo "backingup git config on $SERVERNAME" echo "" # check to see if root backup folder exists, otherwise create it. if [ -d $GITROOT ]; then rm -rf $GITROOT fi mkdir $GITROOT cd $GITROOT echo " - testing if home is where I think it should be!" echo $HOME echo " - testing if it can see netrc" tail $HOME/.netrc git clone http://192.168.10.97:8000/repositories/HOH-config-backups.git cd HOH-config-backups echo " - copy Configuration Folders across" cp -r $BACKUPROOTDIR/Configuration/* $GITROOT/HOH-config-backups/ cp -r $BACKUPROOTDIR/scripts $GITROOT/HOH-config-backups/ git add . git commit -a -m "committing any new configuration changes!" git push origin master echo "" echo "Git repo updated" echo "" echo " - backing up this script" FIREWIGSCRIPTLOC="$BACKUPROOTDIR/scripts/$SERVERNAME" if [ ! -d $FIREWIGSCRIPTLOC ]; then mkdir $FIREWIGSCRIPTLOC fi cp /home/jon/gitConfig.sh $FIREWIGSCRIPTLOC The git repo is on a different machine in the network using Apache and HTTP-backend.exe (smart HTTP protocol). If I run this script as me "jon" it works. If I run it in crontab it fails. git uses the /home/jon/.netrc file for authentication: machine 192.168.10.97 login gitconfig password 1234579 The log from crontab is: TERM environment variable not set. - running as user: 1000 backingup git config on betty - testing if home is where I think it should be! /home/jon - testing if it can see netrc machine 192.168.10.97 login gitconfig password 1234579 got 08de5bc2b27b4940d9412256e76d5e3c3d9dbcdd walk 08de5bc2b27b4940d9412256e76d5e3c3d9dbcdd got be880f2d306778a538d592e7a02eb19f416612f7 got bd387e8def9f77aafa798bf53e80d949aba443e8 got 1bc1a59e12775841d4c59d77c63b8a73823138c2 walk bd387e8def9f77aafa798bf53e80d949aba443e8 Getting alternates list for http://192.168.10.97:8000/repositories/HOH-config-backups.git got 030512237bca72faf211e0e8ec2906164eac34f6 got 9bc2f575240bc1f61ff7d69777ce1a165d06b184 got b8400f7f01429104a9d4786a6bb1a16d293e37c1 got 2403b5bf611010e0b401f776f0e23b09ce744838 got 1a27944c48269ef3608a8f2466e43402d06faac0 got b686f45b7d57af4fa8ca0d528bb85216d6247e19 Getting pack list for http://192.168.10.97:8000/repositories/HOH-config-backups.git Getting index for pack ae881957c0f0e8c22eb6cc889a22ef78eb4ce6ff Getting pack ae881957c0f0e8c22eb6cc889a22ef78eb4ce6ff which contains ff84d6d48e9326066438d167a10251218d612b3d walk b686f45b7d57af4fa8ca0d528bb85216d6247e19 got 364e30daec17814073e668f490bb84af891fe1f7 got 23f6497e7f9b80e0d90adad73bd0407a0e5ac6ce got 9e77c47574b5e23ea669afe0c23ab235e4917ee1 got 6654e0d328a216b3783e98c47206cb2d01b3353d got 28821ffd437d2689ffb82c6e4b9c3f5372c95c4b got 8c384a24f645389e4d4b08013c79e9e73a658342 got d203be0123736ee025ce20c081f1489098648dfc got 1852603bf7709e71417d8ccec02390279d533642 got fb753a26b20b04694419fce8ecdaa8dbec105cf1 got 736028997cd84dd1c135f57e9d246674b9cd0b9d got 7af836249e20096d0476a548d5be702a071cdd4b got 240dc39d9db50df63073fc7927b2d002dfa0f54c got 93abd36e3935a01011eb753b635a1a0e984bf31e got c6269e28fecf4d8d0d98b9358aecb3acff02df44 got b0aa29432f73e64032682a351d436c24b14078ab walk 240dc39d9db50df63073fc7927b2d002dfa0f54c got 58fb66d9f35f8a5e32ff4683309c5f0c2a3a03c5 got 0da2def4de0565483cdbe6b87418ee2beb122e58 got 0f6a86c6f87ed52ad2ed01e5c6edd661d364930c got 437a93d27b5bb89c739a0564a34a616e832c3ebe got fe0385abe5c0acd8462268dac330bae00e934f1b got 24259f8f5c5c9ee974a75fe3d1e07c02e3e20fe9 got d29f624bf1a5eceedaa86c10fee35f62747c7d04 got 0154e4c987132585ea7a92b77d02dba285512d6b got eda8bf526567c25ee70addb2ad3c3c6aa57eac77 got 9f3d9d7262d66f9fa4f6a13b7c86199953f4bc4e got 8e20881e19667aa22245d0598646991067455a4d got abb1123145689b35eb19519952c71253ee45fa98 got dfeff593c79b4156ce2ce1adf043d0e80356488c got e20c5b48b1d360e0bcf34189e3f3d2bbf23e92cc got b13eb81cc274780322ecf786372320343926bec9 walk 8de83868b3fac748b0a55eba16c8f668ec852abb got b5961421bbc42afe7a07cc1c8b615aba26ba74d7 got 2650ba819019df4193b482733e29ca79b29f3f2c got b3111e1be8103e91803a97a817ed81f28025aca1 got b060be934d709684f5eb5dad3c03932a3589e864 got cf70d2043f081d7a4438e9d5a290a9f986c84060 got 80bf0f1cc836feab86d6935bb7968d8555a8d531 got da318d167920e34bc6573e4fc236249ccbbee316 got d82ac853d387b760149599e6e1ab96403f6ec672 got 0005f691d1f46550fdb4e56025f52e30a5b18cc2 Initialized empty Git repository in /tmp/git/HOH-config-backups/.git/ - copy Configuration Folders across Created commit 424df2f: committing any new configuration changes! 3 files changed, 55 insertions(+), 1 deletions(-) create mode 100755 scripts/betty/gitConfig.sh error: Cannot access URL http://192.168.10.97:8000/repositories/HOH-config-backups.git/, return code 22 error: failed to push some refs to 'http://192.168.10.97:8000/repositories/HOH-config-backups.git' Git repo updated - backing up this script cp: cannot create regular file `/mnt/backups/scripts/betty/gitConfig.sh': Permission denied my crontab is: # m h dom mon dow command 04 * * * * /home/jon/gitConfig.sh > /tmp/gitconfig.log 2>&1 I open it by doing: $crontab -e i.e. not as root. I am a bit confused as to why it is not running as my user (or what user id 1000 is). Not sure what I need to do to get the push with git to work within crontab. edit: found out about the userid: jon@betty:~$ id uid=1000(jon) gid=1000(jon) groups=4(adm),20(dialout),24(cdrom),46(plugdev),109(sambashare),114(lpadmin),115(admin),1000(jon) here is my $HOME/.gitconfig file: [user] name = Jon Hawkins email = [email protected] Thanks

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• CQRS &ndash; Questions and Concerns

  - by Dylan Smith

  I’ve been doing a lot of learning on CQRS and Event Sourcing over the last little while and I have a number of questions that I haven’t been able to answer. 1. What is the benefit of CQRS when compared to a typical DDD architecture that uses Event Sourcing and properly captures intent and behavior via verb-based commands? (other than Scalability) 2. When using CQRS what do you do with complex query-based logic? I’m going to elaborate on #1 in this blog post and I’ll do a follow-up post on #2. I watched through Greg Young’s video on the business benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing and first let me say that I thought it was an excellent presentation that really drives home a lot of the benefits to this approach to architecture (I watched it twice in a row I enjoyed it so much!). But it didn’t answer some of my questions fully (I wish I had been there to ask these of Greg in person!). So let me pick apart some of the points he makes and how they relate to my first question above. I’m completely sold on the idea of event sourcing and have a clear understanding of the benefits that it brings to the table, so I’m not going to question that. But you can use event sourcing without going to a CQRS architecture, so my main question is around the benefits of CQRS + Event Sourcing vs Event Sourcing + Typical DDD architecture Architecture with Event Sourcing + Commands on Left, CQRS on Right Greg talks about how the stereotypical architecture doesn’t support DDD, but is that only because his diagram shows DTO’s coming up from the client. If we use the same diagram but allow the client to send commands doesn’t that remove a lot of the arguments that Greg makes against the stereotypical architecture? We can now introduce verbs into the system. We can capture intent now (storing it still requires event sourcing, but you can implement event sourcing without doing CQRS) We can create a rich domain model (as opposed to an anemic domain model) Scalability is obviously a benefit that CQRS brings to the table, but like Greg says, very few of the systems we create truly need significant scalability Greg talks about the ability to scale your development efforts. He says CQRS allows you to split the system into 3 parts (Client, Domain/Commands, Reads) and assign 3 teams of developers to work on them in parallel; letting you scale your development efforts by 3x with nearly linear gains. But in the stereotypical architecture don’t you already have 2 separate modules that you can split your dev efforts between: The client that sends commands/queries and receives DTO’s, and the Domain which accepts commands/queries, and generates events/DTO’s. If this is true it’s not really a 3x scaling you achieve with CQRS but merely a 1.5x scaling which while great doesn’t sound nearly as dramatic (“I can do it with 10 devs in 12 months – let me hire 5 more and we can have it done in 8 months”). Making the Query side “stupid simple” such that you can assign junior developers (or even outsource it) sounds like a valid benefit, but I have some concerns over what you do with complex query-based logic/behavior. I’m going to go into more detail on this in a follow-up blog post shortly. He also seemed to focus on how “stupid-simple” it is doing queries against the de-normalized data store, but I imagine there is still significant complexity in the event handlers that interpret the events and apply them to the de-normalized tables. It sounds like Greg suggests that because we’re doing CQRS that allows us to apply Event Sourcing when we otherwise wouldn’t be able to (~33:30 in the video). I don’t believe this is true. I don’t see why you wouldn’t be able to apply Event Sourcing without separating out the Commands and Queries. The queries would just operate against the domain model instead of the database. But you’d still get the benefits of Event Sourcing. Without CQRS the queries would only be able to operate against the current state rather than the event history, but even in CQRS the domain behaviors can only operate against the current state and I don’t see that being a big limiting factor. If some query needs to operate against something that is not captured by the current state you would just have to update the domain model to capture that information (no different than if that statement were made about a Command under CQRS). Some of the benefits I do see being applicable are that your domain model might end up being simpler/smaller since it only needs to represent the state needed to process commands and not worry about the reads (like the Deactivate Inventory Item and associated comment example that Greg provides). And also commands that can be handled in a Transaction Script style manner by the command handler simply generating events and not touching the domain model. It also makes it easier for your senior developers to focus on the command behavior and ignore the queries, which is usually going to be a better use of their time. And of course scalability. If anybody out there has any thoughts on this and can help educate me further, please either leave a comment or feel free to get in touch with me via email:

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• Windows Azure Use Case: Agility

  - by BuckWoody

  This is one in a series of posts on when and where to use a distributed architecture design in your organization's computing needs. You can find the main post here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/buckwoody/archive/2011/01/18/windows-azure-and-sql-azure-use-cases.aspx  Description: Agility in this context is defined as the ability to quickly develop and deploy an application. In theory, the speed at which your organization can develop and deploy an application on available hardware is identical to what you could deploy in a distributed environment. But in practice, this is not always the case. Having an option to use a distributed environment can be much faster for the deployment and even the development process. Implementation: When an organization designs code, they are essentially becoming a Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) provider to their own organization. To do that, the IT operations team becomes the Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) to the development teams. From there, the software is developed and deployed using an Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) process. A simplified view of an ALM process is as follows: Requirements Analysis Design and Development Implementation Testing Deployment to Production Maintenance In an on-premise environment, this often equates to the following process map: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including physical plant, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to on-premise Testing servers. If no server capacity available, more resources procured through standard budgeting and ordering processes. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Server team involved to select platform and environments with available capacity. If no server capacity available, standard budgeting and procurement process followed. If no server capacity available, systems built, configured and put under standard organizational IT control. Systems configured for proper operating systems, patches, security and virus scans. System maintenance, HA/DR, backups and recovery plans configured and put into place. Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. In a distributed computing environment like Windows Azure, the process maps a bit differently: Requirements Business requirements formed by Business Analysts, Developers and Data Professionals. Analysis Feasibility studies, including budget, security, manpower and other resources. Request is placed on the work task list if approved. Design and Development Code written according to organization’s chosen methodology, either on-premise or to multiple development teams on and off premise. Implementation Code checked into main branch. Code forked as needed. Testing Code deployed to Azure. Manual and automated functional, load, security, etc. performed. Deployment to Production Code deployed to Azure. Point in time backup and recovery plans configured and put into place.(HA/DR and automated backups already present in Azure fabric) Maintenance Code changes evaluated and altered according to need. This means that several steps can be removed or expedited. It also means that the business function requesting the application can be held directly responsible for the funding of that request, speeding the process further since the IT budgeting process may not be involved in the Azure scenario. An additional benefit is the “Azure Marketplace”, In effect this becomes an app store for Enterprises to select pre-defined code and data applications to mesh or bolt-in to their current code, possibly saving development time. Resources: Whitepaper download- What is ALM?  http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743693  Whitepaper download - ALM and Business Strategy: http://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9743690  LiveMeeting Recording on ALM and Windows Azure (registration required, but free): http://www.microsoft.com/uk/msdn/visualstudio/contact-us.aspx?sbj=Developing with Windows Azure (ALM perspective) - 10:00-11:00 - 19th Jan 2011

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• Install GIMP 2.7.1 on Lucid Lynx using PPA

  - by Vivek

  GIMP lovers are going to be disappointed to hear that GIMP is going away in the next release of much awaited Ubuntu 10.04. Today we take a look at installing in on Lucid Lynx using PPA. The reason for getting rid of it as cited by the GIMP developers, is that GIMP is too professional a software to be included in regular desktop version of Ubuntu. And it takes up too much of space on the disk. Also, the fact that it’s too complicated for regular users. If you can’t live without it…let’s see how to install GIMP 2.7.1 on Lucid Lynx (Currently in Alpha). The new version of GIMP supports single window mode and we will also see how to enable this feature as well. First we need to add the official GIMP 2.7.1 PPA in the software sources of Ubuntu 10.04, by opening the terminal window and typing the following command: sudo sh -c “echo ‘deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/matthaeus123/mrw-gimp-svn/ubuntu lucid main’ >> /etc/apt/sources.list” Now that we have added the PPA we need to add the GPG key, so type the following in your Terminal window. sudo apt-key adv –recv-keys –keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 405A15CB Next up we have to update the software repository… sudo apt-get update All that is left is to install GIMP 2.7.1 by typing in the following… sudo apt-get install gimp Click ‘Y’ (for yes) to install GIMP Once GIMP is installed you can start it by going to Applications > Graphics > GNU Image Manipulation Program. You now have your favorite GIMP on your favorite Ubuntu 10.04. As you can see in the image below, GIMP still comes with default 3 windows, which could clog up your lower panel In Ubuntu 10.04. However, now you can run GIMP in single window mode by going to Windows > Single-Window mode. That’s all! Now you have your GIMP running in single window mode with less of hassle to manage 3 windows. It’s unfortunate that GIMP will not be included, but by following these instructions, you’ll be able to enjoy using it in Ubuntu 10.04. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Show the List of Installed Packages on Ubuntu or DebianHow to Install Windows Applications on Linux Using CrossoverInstall VMware Tools on Ubuntu Edgy EftInstall Adobe PDF Reader on Ubuntu EdgyInstall MySQL Server 4.1 on Ubuntu 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Stretch popurls.com with a Stylish Script (Firefox) OldTvShows.org – Find episodes of Hitchcock, Soaps, Game Shows and more Download Microsoft Office Help tab The Growth of Citibank Quickly Switch between Tabs in IE Windows Media Player 12: Tweak Video & Sound with Playback Enhancements

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• BizTalk Server Monitoring &ndash; SharePoint Web Part

  - by SURESH GIRIRAJAN

  I have been worked with customers using BizTalk as shared infrastructure in the enterprise, where we have two or more BizTalk apps running on it for different Business groups. Also these customers are not using BizTalk ESB portal even though they are using BizTalk ESB exception framework. So main issue with all these Business groups are they don’t have visibility into the BizTalk apps running in prod, even though they are using SCOM and other monitoring stuff in place. So I am trying to address few issues I am going to list below and how I try to mitigate them, first one on the list is how to get visibility into prod, how to provision those access to the BizTalk resources with minimal activity and how can we take advantage of the resources we have today. So I was working on creating REST data services for BizTalk RFID a year ago and available on codeplex. I thought to extend that idea to take advantage of BizTalk Data Services available in codeplex. I extended the BizTalk data services I will upload the updated service soon. So let me start thru how my solution works, so first step I am using the BizTalk data service (REST service) which expose most of the BizTalk artifacts as resources such as Applications, Orchestrations, Send ports, Receive ports, Host instances and In process instances etc. BizTalk Server Monitoring – SharePoint Web Part I am hosting the BizTalk data service in IIS with application pool configured to run under BizTalk administrator credentials. So with this setup I am making the service to make accessible anonymous. Next step of this solution I have created a SharePoint Visual web part which consumes the BizTalk data service and display all the BizTalk Application and Platform settings in read only mode. Even though BizTalk data services offers to browse resources as well perform actions like starting, stopping Orchestrations, Send ports, Receive locations, Host instances etc. Host Instances BizTalk Applications BizTalk Running / Suspended Instances So having this BizTalk Monitoring SharePoint web part, will be added to the SharePoint. This eliminates the need for granting access to the BizTalk users explicitly, so when you have BizTalk contractor or BizTalk application user need to have access to the BizTalk environment all the need is have access to the SharePoint website. You can configure the web part point to different end point based on your environment. I am making this as read only as part of this to make easier for the users and in terms of provisioning. This removes the dependency of BizTalk admin at least for viewing the BizTalk application status and errors etc. If we need to make any changes to the BizTalk application then its application owner responsibility to co-ordinate with BizTalk admins. There are options like BizTalk ESB portal, BizTalk 360 etc… but this one of the approach to reduce number of steps required to give access to BizTalk application users and also to maximize the resource we have in enterprise today. Also you can expose this data service thru Azure Service Bus and access from other apps like mobile devices or create a web site hosted in Azure etc. One last thing I have tested only with BizTalk Server 2010 on x64 VM only, but it should work on other version. I will try to upload the code shortly with instructions how to setup etc.… I welcome thoughts and suggestions… Hope this helps….

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• Oracle User Communities and Enterprise Manager

  - by Anand Akela

  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:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Cambria","serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} Contributed by Joe Dimmer, Senior Business Development Manager, Oracle Enterprise Manager Heightened interest and adoption of Oracle Enterprise Manager has led to keen interest in “manageability” within the user group community.  In response, user groups are equipping their membership with the right tools for implementation and use manageability through education opportunities and Special Interest Groups.  Manageability is increasingly viewed not only as a means to enable the Oracle environment to become a competitive business advantage for organizations, but also as a means to advance the individual careers of those who embrace enterprise management.  Two Oracle user groups – the Independent Oracle User Group (IOUG) and the United Kingdom Oracle User Group (UKOUG) – each have Special Interest Groups where manageability is prominently featured.  There are also efforts underway to establish similarly charted SIGs that will be reported in future blogs.  The good news is, there’s a lot of news! First off, the IOUG will be hosting a Summer Series of live webcasts:  “Configuring and Managing a Private Cloud with Enterprise Manager 12c” by Kai Yu of Dell, Inc.              Wednesday, June 20th from Noon – 1 PM CDT , Click here for details & registration “What is User Experience Monitoring and What is Not? A case study of Oracle Global IT’s implementation of Enterprise Manager 12c and RUEI” by Eric Tran Le of Oracle            Wednesday, July 18th from Noon – 1 PM CDT , Click here for details & registration “Shed some light on the ‘bumps in the night’ with Enterprise Manager 12c” by David Start of Johnson Controls            Wednesday, August 22nd from Noon – 1 PM CDT, Click here for details & registration   In addition, the UKOUG Availability and Infrastructure Management (AIM) SIG is hosting its next meeting on Tuesday, July 3rd at the Met in Leeds where EM 12c Cloud Management will be presented.  Click here for details & registration.  In future posts from Joe, look for news related to the following: ·         IOUG Community Page and Newsletter devoted to manageability ·         Full day of manageability featured during Oracle OpenWorld 2012 “SIG Sunday” ·         Happenings from other regional User Groups that feature manageability Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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• Read Mobi eBooks on Kindle for PC

  - by Matthew Guay

  Do you use your PC as a eBook reader?  Kindle for PC makes it easy to read thousands of books from the Kindle Store on your computer. What you may not know is that is also works with .mobi format too, so you can increase the amount of books you can read. Amazon has jumpstarted the eBook market with their popular Kindle device.  Last fall Amazon unveiled Kindle for PC, and we reviewed how you can Read Kindle Books On Your Computer with Kindle for PC.  Whether or not you own a Kindle or other eBook reader, this is a great way to take advantage of the thousands of eBooks available from the Kindle Store today. It supports azw, prc, and tpz format, which are sold from the Kindle store, but it also supports Mobipocket (.mobi) eBooks that are not DRM protected.  Here’s how you can add them to Kindle for PC so you can easily read them on your PC Getting Started: First, make sure you have Kindle for PC (link below) installed on your computer. Sign in with your Amazon account when you first run it. Kindle for PC lets you easily read eBooks downloaded from the Kindle Store, but it doesn’t have any way to add other eBooks directly from the program. To add eBooks, you can sometimes download and double-click on the books, and they will open in Kindle for PC and be automatically added to the library.  However, this does not always seem to work. So instead, browse to your Documents folder (simply click on the Documents link on your Start menu), and double-click on the My Kindle Content folder. This folder contains all the Kindle books you have downloaded.  If you have other eBooks you would like to add to Kindle for PC, simply drag-and-drop or copy and paste them into this folder.  Here we have a .mobi formatted book downloaded from the Gutenberg Project that we’re dragging into the folder. Now, close and reopen Kindle for PC.  It should now show your new eBook right beside the eBooks you have downloaded from the Kindle Store. These eBooks work just the same as the ones downloaded from the Kindle store, and you can change font size and add bookmarks just as with other eBooks. The eBooks downloaded this way may show up with either a Amazon logo or a mobile device icon.  You should only see the mobile device icon on .mobi files formatted for mobile devices; other ones should show up with the Amazon logo.  In this screen, Pilgrim’s Progress is a standard .mobi book, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes is a mobipocket book, and the others are downloaded from the Kindle Store. Conclusion This is a great way to read eBooks from across the internet on Kindle for PC.  Wikipedia’s Kindle page has a list of websites that offer eBooks formatted for the Kindle, so be sure to check it out for more books. Links Download Kindle for PC List of websites that offer eBooks that will work on Kindle – via Wikipedia Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Read Kindle Books On Your Computer with Kindle for PCInstall Adobe PDF Reader on Ubuntu EdgyHow to Access your Box.Net Account from Ubuntu the Easy Way 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 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer Create Talking Photos using Fotobabble

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• Am I right about the differences between Floyd-Warshall, Dijkstra's and Bellman-Ford algorithms?

  - by Programming Noob

  I've been studying the three and I'm stating my inferences from them below. Could someone tell me if I have understood them accurately enough or not? Thank you. Dijkstra's algorithm is used only when you have a single source and you want to know the smallest path from one node to another, but fails in cases like this Floyd-Warshall's algorithm is used when any of all the nodes can be a source, so you want the shortest distance to reach any destination node from any source node. This only fails when there are negative cycles (this is the most important one. I mean, this is the one I'm least sure about:) 3.Bellman-Ford is used like Dijkstra's, when there is only one source. This can handle negative weights and its working is the same as Floyd-Warshall's except for one source, right? If you need to have a look, the corresponding algorithms are (courtesy Wikipedia): Bellman-Ford: procedure BellmanFord(list vertices, list edges, vertex source) // This implementation takes in a graph, represented as lists of vertices // and edges, and modifies the vertices so that their distance and // predecessor attributes store the shortest paths. // Step 1: initialize graph for each vertex v in vertices: if v is source then v.distance := 0 else v.distance := infinity v.predecessor := null // Step 2: relax edges repeatedly for i from 1 to size(vertices)-1: for each edge uv in edges: // uv is the edge from u to v u := uv.source v := uv.destination if u.distance + uv.weight < v.distance: v.distance := u.distance + uv.weight v.predecessor := u // Step 3: check for negative-weight cycles for each edge uv in edges: u := uv.source v := uv.destination if u.distance + uv.weight < v.distance: error "Graph contains a negative-weight cycle" Dijkstra: 1 function Dijkstra(Graph, source): 2 for each vertex v in Graph: // Initializations 3 dist[v] := infinity ; // Unknown distance function from 4 // source to v 5 previous[v] := undefined ; // Previous node in optimal path 6 // from source 7 8 dist[source] := 0 ; // Distance from source to source 9 Q := the set of all nodes in Graph ; // All nodes in the graph are 10 // unoptimized - thus are in Q 11 while Q is not empty: // The main loop 12 u := vertex in Q with smallest distance in dist[] ; // Start node in first case 13 if dist[u] = infinity: 14 break ; // all remaining vertices are 15 // inaccessible from source 16 17 remove u from Q ; 18 for each neighbor v of u: // where v has not yet been 19 removed from Q. 20 alt := dist[u] + dist_between(u, v) ; 21 if alt < dist[v]: // Relax (u,v,a) 22 dist[v] := alt ; 23 previous[v] := u ; 24 decrease-key v in Q; // Reorder v in the Queue 25 return dist; Floyd-Warshall: 1 /* Assume a function edgeCost(i,j) which returns the cost of the edge from i to j 2 (infinity if there is none). 3 Also assume that n is the number of vertices and edgeCost(i,i) = 0 4 */ 5 6 int path[][]; 7 /* A 2-dimensional matrix. At each step in the algorithm, path[i][j] is the shortest path 8 from i to j using intermediate vertices (1..k-1). Each path[i][j] is initialized to 9 edgeCost(i,j). 10 */ 11 12 procedure FloydWarshall () 13 for k := 1 to n 14 for i := 1 to n 15 for j := 1 to n 16 path[i][j] = min ( path[i][j], path[i][k]+path[k][j] );

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• Don&rsquo;t Kill the Password

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  A week ago Mr. Honan from Wired.com penned an article on security he titled “Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.” He asserts that the password is not effective and a new solution is needed. Unfortunately, Mr. Honan was a victim of hacking. As a result he has a victim’s vendetta. His conclusion is ill conceived even though there are smatterings of truth and good advice. The password is a security barrier much like a lock on your door. In of itself it’s not guaranteeing protection. You can have a good password akin to a steel reinforced door with the best lock money can buy, or you can have a poor password like “password” which is like a sliding lock like on a bathroom stall. But, just like in the real world a lock isn’t always enough. You can have a lock, security system, video cameras, guard dogs, and even armed security guards; but none of that guarantees your protection. Even top secret government agencies can be breached by someone who is just that good (as dramatized in movies like Mission Impossible). And that’s the crux of it. There are real hackers out there that are that good. Killer coding ninja monkeys do exist! We still have locks on our doors, because they still serve their role. Passwords are no different. Security doesn’t end with the password. Most people would agree that stuffing your mattress with your life savings isn’t a good idea even if you have the best locks and security system. Most people agree its safest to have the money in a bank. Essentially this is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization extends to the online world as well. You’re at risk if your online banking accounts are linked to the same account as your social networks. This is especially true if you’re lackadaisical about linking those social networks to outside sources including apps. The object here is to minimize the damage that can be done. An attacker should not be able to get into your bank account, because they breached your Twitter account. It’s time to prioritize once you’ve compartmentalized. This simply means deciding how much security you want for the different compartments which I’ll call security zones. Social networking applications like Facebook provide a lot of security features. However, security features are almost always a compromise with privacy and convenience. It’s similar to an engineering adage, but in this case it’s security, convenience, and privacy – pick two. For example, you might use a safe instead of bank to store your money, because the convenience of having your money closer or the privacy of not having the bank records is more important than the added security. The following are lists of security do’s and don’ts (these aren’t meant to be exhaustive and each could be an article in of themselves): Security Do’s: Use strong passwords based on a phrase Use encryption whenever you can (e.g. HTTPS in Facebook) Use a firewall (and learn to use it properly) Configure security on your router (including port blocking) Keep your operating system patched Make routine backups of important files Realize that if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product Security Don’ts Link accounts if at all possible Reuse passwords across your security zones Use real answers for security questions (e.g. mother’s maiden name) Trust anything you download Ignore message boxes shown by your system or browser Forget to test your backups Share your primary email indiscriminately Only you can decide your comfort level between convenience, privacy, and security. Attackers are going to find exploits in software. Software is complex and depends on other software. The exploits are the responsibility of the software company. But your security is always your responsibility. Complete security is an illusion. But, there is plenty you can do to minimize the risk online just like you do in the physical world. Be safe and enjoy what the Internet has to offer. I expect passwords to be necessary just as long as locks.

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• Calling XAI Inbound Services from Oracle BI Publisher

  - by ACShorten

  Note: This technique requires Oracle BI Publisher 1.1.3.4.1 which supports Service Complex Types. Web Services require credentials for authentication. Note: The deafults for the product installation are used in this article. If your site uses alternative values then substitute those alternatives where applicable. Note: Examples shown in this article are examples for illustrative purposes only. When building a report in Oracle BI Publisher it may be necessary to call an XAI Inbound Service to get information via the object rather than directly calling the database tables for various reasons: The CLOB fields used in the Object are accessible for a report. Note: CLOB fields cannot be used as criteria in the current release. Objects can take advantage of algorithms to format or calculate additional data that is not stored in the database directly. For example, Information format strings can automatically generated by the object which gives consistent information between a report and the online screens. To use this facility the following process must be performed: Ensure that the product group, cisusers by default, is enabled for the SPLServiceBean in the console. This allows BI Publisher access to call Web Services directly. To ensure this follow the instructions below: Logon to the Oracle WebLogic server console using an appropriate administrator account. By default the user system or weblogic is provided for this purpose. Navigate to the Security Realms section and select your configured realm. This is set to myrealm by default. In the Roles and Policies section, expand the SPLService section of the Deployments option to reveal the SPLServiceBean roles. If there is no role associated with the SPLServiceBean, create a new EJB role and specify the cisusers role, by default. For example:   Add a Role Condition to the role just created, with a Predicate List of Group and specify cisusers as the Group Argument Name. For example: Save all your changes. The XAI Inbound Services to be used by BI Publisher must be defined prior to using the interface. Refer to the XAI Best Practices (Doc Id: 942074.1) from My Oracle Support or via the online help for more information about this process. Inside BI Publisher create your report, according to the BI Publisher documentation. When specifying the dataset, under the Data Model Report option, specify the following to use an XAI Inbound Service as a data source: Parameter Comment Type Web Service Complex Type true Username Any valid user name within the product. This user MUST have security access to the objects referenced in the XAI Inbound Service Password Authentication password for Username Timeout Timeout, in seconds, set for the Web Service call. For example 60 seconds. WSDL URL Use the WSDL URL on the XAI Inbound Service definition as your WSDL URL. It will be in the following format by default:http://<host>:<port>/<server>/XAIApp/xaiserver/<service>?WSDLwhere: <host> - Host Name of Web Application Server <port> - Port allocated to Web Application Server for product access <server> - Server context for server <service> - XAI Inbound Service Name Note: For customers using secure transmission should substitute https instead of http and use the HTTPS port allocated to the product at installation time. Web Service Select the name of the service that shows in the drop-down menu. If no service name shows up, it means that Publisher could not establish a connection with the server or WSDL name provided in the above URL in order to get the service name. See BI Publisher server log for more information. Method Select the name of the Method that shows in the drop-down menu. A method name should show in the Method drop-down menu once the Web Service name is selected. For example: Additionally, filters can be used from the Web Service that can be generated, required or optional, from the WSDL in the Parameter List. For example:

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• Remove Programs from the Open With Menu in Explorer

  - by Matthew Guay

  Would you like to clean up the Open with menu in Windows Explorer?  Here’s how you can remove program entries you don’t want in this menu on any version of Windows. Have you ever accidently opened an mp3 with Notepad, or a zip file with Word?  If so, you’re also likely irritated that these programs now show up in the Open with menu in Windows Explorer every time you select one of those files.  Whenever you open a file type with a particular program, Windows will add an entry for it to the Open with menu.  Usually this is helpful, but it can also clutter up the menu with wrong entries. On our computer, we have tried to open a PDF file with Word and Notepad, neither which can actually view the PDF itself.  Let’s remove these entries.  To do this, we need to remove the registry entries for these programs.  Enter regedit in your Start menu search or in the Run command to open the Registry editor. Backup your registry first just in case, so you can roll-back any changes you make if you accidently delete the wrong value.  Now, browse to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER \Software \Microsoft \Windows \CurrentVersion \ Explorer \FileExts\ Here you’ll see a list of all the file extensions that are registered on your computer. Browse to the file extension you wish to edit, click the white triangle beside it to see the subfolders, and select OpenWithList.  In our test, we want to change the programs associated with PDF files, so we select the OpenWithList folder under .pdf. Notice the names of the programs under the Data column on the right.  Right-click the value for the program you don’t want to see in the Open With menu and select Delete. Click Yes at the prompt to confirm that you want to delete this value. Repeat these steps with all the programs you want to remove from this file type’s Open with menu.  You can go ahead and remove entries from other file types as well if you wish. Once you’ve removed the entries you didn’t want to see, check out the Open with menu in Explorer again.  Now it will be much more streamlined and will only show the programs you want to see. Conclusion This simple trick can help you keep your Open with menu tidy, and only show the programs you want in the list.  It can be irritating to accidently open files in programs that can’t even read them.  This trick works in all versions of Windows, including 2000, XP, Vista, and Windows 7. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Remove ISP Text or Corporate Branding from Internet Explorer Title BarRemove the Username From the Start Menu in XPKeep Start Menu From Closing After Opening ApplicationsRemove PartyPoker (Or Other Items) from the Internet Explorer Tools MenuUninstall, Disable, or Delete Internet Explorer 8 from Windows 7 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 All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 OpenDNS Guide Google TV The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app

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• Post MIX10 Decompression

  - by Dave Campbell

  With a big dose of reality, I walked into this place this morning and found out "yeah, I really do write .NET web apps and MS Access for a living" :( ... but it pays the bills and I've gotten *way* used to eating 3 times a day :) MIX10 was great, although the buzz didn't seem as big as MIX09, and I'm not sure why. It also seemed like a different crowd and other folks I talked to agreed with that. Of course now I can outwardly admit that the "Windows Phone 7 Series" is programmed with Silverlight ... how cool is that? I've been biting my tongue about that info for over a month! I cloistered myself in Ballroom A for the week, not counting the Keynotes. That's where the phone sessions were located. I tried to collect the full set, but ended up bailing on the last one because it was ending at the time that MIX10 was ending, and I hadn't spent a whole lot of time in 'The Commons'. I met a bunch of folks I've blogged about, or exchanged email with, and that's always fun. Renewed associations with folks I only see once or twice a year and way too long a list and don't want to mention some and leave off others... I did have an opportunity to meet Charles Petzold... wow that was interesting... I got into Windows development through Charles' Programming Windows 3.1 book 'back in the day' ... couldn't find anyone at Honeywell wanted to join my journey, so it was just me and 'Chuck' :) ... read every word of that book more than once... all marked up, tags sticking out of it. And now he's writing a WP7 book ... gotta get it: Free ebook: Programming Windows Phone 7 Series (DRAFT Preview) I went through my Big List-o-BlogsTM last night and it took over 2 hours because of all the new content since MIX10. I've got 90 posts tagged as of 9PM on 3/21. If everybody stopped right now, it would take me 9 days to push what I have now, so you'll have to be patient! I had another event on Thursday that was *extremely* tiring, so I ended up staying over another night. I drove back into the strip on Friday morning to try to find a non-cheesy souvenir for my wife, and didn't find much. Then I went to Blueberry Hill restaurant for 3 eggs, 3 strips of bacon, and 3 awesome potato pancakes. Check them out if you have time! And then hit the road. In case anyone is wondering, the 2-1/2 hour drive I took across Hoover Dam on Sunday afternoon only took 30 minutes on Friday afternoon... that was a more normal trip! I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent with everyone. Thanks to John Papa and his crew for the great Insider's party on Monday night... the Blues Brothers were a fun surprise and they did a good job! And the swag was great... thanks to all the contributors for a fun evening at their expense! All I can say is stay tuned, go to live.visitmix.com/videos and watch everything, get the phone tools, start working... everything's different and everything's fun... jump in, it's all Silverlight! Stay in the 'Light! Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone     MIX10

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• Expert F# &ndash; Pattern Matching with Adam and Eve

  - by MarkPearl

  So I am loving my Expert F# book. I wish I had more time with it, but the little time I get I really enjoy. However today I was completely stumped by what the book was trying to get across with regards to pattern matching. On Page 38 – Chapter 3, it briefly describes F# option values. On this page it gives the code snippet along the code lines below and then goes on to speak briefly about pattern matching... open System type 'a option = | None | Some of 'a let people = [ ("Adam", None); ("Eve", None); ("Cain", Some("Adam", "Eve")); ("Abel", Some("Adam", "Eve")) ] let showParents(name, parents) = match parents with | Some(dad, mum) -> printfn "%s has father %s, mother %s" name dad mum | None -> printfn "%s has no parents!" name Console.WriteLine(showParents("Adam", None))   Originally when I read this code I think I misunderstood the purpose of the example code. I for some reason thought that the showParents function would magically be parsing the people array and looking for a match of name and then showing the parents. But obviously it cannot do this since there is no reference to the people array in the showParents method. After rereading the page I realized that I had just combined the two segments of code together, possibly incorrectly, and that a better example would have been to have a code snippet like the following. let showParents(name, parents) = match parents with | Some(dad, mum) -> printfn "%s has father %s, mother %s" name dad mum | None -> printfn "%s has no parents!" name Console.WriteLine(showParents("Adam", None)) Console.WriteLine(showParents("Cain", Some("Adam", "Eve"))) Console.ReadLine()   However, what if I wanted to have a function that was passed a list of people and a name would then show the parents of the name if there were any, and if not would show that they had no parents… so that doesnt seem to difficult does it… lets look at my very unoptimized noob F# code to try and achieve this… open System let people = [ ("Adam", None); ("Eve", None); ("Cain", Some("Adam", "Eve")); ("Abel", Some("Adam", "Eve")) ] // // returns the name of the person // let showName(person : string * (string * string) option) = let name = fst(person) name // // Returns a string with the parents details or not // let showParents(itemData : string * (string * string) option) = let name = fst(itemData) let parents = snd(itemData) match parents with | Some(dad, mum) -> "Father " + dad + " and Mother " + mum | None -> "Has no parents!" // // Prints the details // let showDetails(person : string * (string * string) option) = Console.WriteLine(showName(person)) Console.WriteLine(showParents(person)) // // Check if the name matches the first portion of person // if so, return true, else return false // let nameMatch(name : string , person : string * (string * string) option) = match name with | x when x = fst(person) -> true | _ -> false // // Searches an array of people and looks for a match of names // let findPerson(name : string, people : (string * (string * string) option) list) = let o = Seq.tryFind(fun x -> nameMatch(name, x)) people if Option.isSome o then o else Option.None // // Try and find a person, if found show their details // else show no match // let FoundPerson = findPerson("Cain", people) match FoundPerson with | None -> Console.WriteLine("Not found") | Some(x) -> showDetails(x) Console.ReadLine() So, my code isn’t the cleanest but it did teach me a bit more F#. The area that I learnt about was the option keyword. The challenge being, if a match of the name isn’t found – and if a name is found but the person doesn’t have parents it should react accordingly. I’m pretty sure I can optimize this code quite a bit more and I think I may come back to it sometime in the future and relook at it, but for now at least I was able to achieve what I wanted.. and my brain has gone just that wee little bit more functional.

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• ASP.NET Routing not working on IIS 7.0

  - by Rick Strahl

  I ran into a nasty little problem today when deploying an application using ASP.NET 4.0 Routing to my live server. The application and its Routing were working just fine on my dev machine (Windows 7 and IIS 7.5), but when I deployed (Windows 2008 R1 and IIS 7.0) Routing would just not work. Every time I hit a routed url IIS would just throw up a 404 error: This is an IIS error, not an ASP.NET error so this doesn’t actually come from ASP.NET’s routing engine but from IIS’s handling of expressionless URLs. Note that it’s clearly falling through all the way to the StaticFile handler which is the last handler to fire in the typical IIS handler list. In other words IIS is trying to parse the extension less URL and not firing it into ASP.NET but failing. As I mentioned on my local machine this all worked fine and to make sure local and live setups match I re-copied my Web.config, double checked handler mappings in IIS and re-copied the actual application assemblies to the server. It all looked exactly matched. However no workey on the server with IIS 7.0!!! Finally, totally by chance, I remembered the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute flag on the modules key in web.config and set it to true: <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"> <add name="ScriptCompressionModule" type="Westwind.Web.ScriptCompressionModule,Westwind.Web" /> </modules> </system.webServer> And lo and behold, Routing started working on the live server and IIS 7.0! This seems really obvious now of course, but the really tricky thing about this is that on IIS 7.5 this key is not necessary. So on my Windows 7 machine ASP.NET Routing was working just fine without the key set. However on IIS 7.0 on my live server the same missing setting was not working. On IIS 7.0 this key must be present or Routing will not work. Oddly on IIS 7.5 it appears that you can’t even turn off the behavior – setting runtAllManagedModuleForAllRequests="false" had no effect at all and Routing continued to work just fine even with the flag set to false, which is NOT what I would have expected. Kind of disappointing too that Windows Server 2008 (R1) can’t be upgraded to IIS 7.5. It sure seems like that should have been possible since the OS server core changes in R2 are pretty minor. For the future I really hope Microsoft will allow updating IIS versions without tying them explicitly to the OS. It looks like that with the release of IIS Express Microsoft has taken some steps to untie some of those tight OS links from IIS. Let’s hope that’s the case for the future – it sure is nice to run the same IIS version on dev and live boxes, but upgrading live servers is too big a deal to do just because an updated OS release came out. Moral of the story – never assume that your dev setup will work as is on the live setup. It took me forever to figure this out because I assumed that because my web.config on the local machine was fine and working and I copied all relevant web.config data to the server it can’t be the configuration settings. I was looking everywhere but in the .config file forever before getting desperate and remembering the flag when I accidentally checked the intellisense settings in the modules key. Never assume anything. The other moral is: Try to keep your dev machine and server OS’s in sync whenever possible. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2 after all. More info on Extensionless URLs in IIS Want to find out more exactly on how extensionless Urls work on IIS 7? The check out  How ASP.NET MVC Routing Works and its Impact on the Performance of Static Requests which goes into great detail on the complexities of the process. Thanks to Jeff Graves for pointing me at this article – a great linked reference for this topic!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in IIS7  Windows  

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• Listen to Online Radio with Antenna

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you looking for some fresh new music to listen to at home or at work? With Antenna you can listen to online radio stations from all over the world. Note: Requires Adobe AIR (download link at bottom of article). Antenna in Action Once you have completed the installation and started Antenna up this is the window that you will see. The left side will have a “browsing pane” where you can search for the stations that you would like to listen to using the various categories. Based on the stations that you choose the background map will change location to match the stations locations. Here is a closer look at the “Categories Bar”. For our first example we used the “Country Category” to find our first station to listen to. When you choose a country you will be presented with a list of the stations available for that country. To start listening to a particular station just double click on the appropriate entry line. A closer look at the “browser pane” with our first station playing. Notice the “Reliability Indicator” that will be available for each listing…some may be better than others and you can use this to choose the best streaming stations from the list. In the upper left corner you will notice three icons…each will open a small pop-up window with a specific purpose. The first icon will open up the “About Window”. If you need to contact Antenna’s creator or would like to place a request for a station to be added to the app then this is the best way to do it. The second icon will open up a Antenna specific chat window. The third icon will allow you to set a default location and make adjustments to some of the app’s settings. Recording Audio The “Recording Function” is the only area where we experienced some “quirkiness” with the app. To start recording press the “Round White Button”… Note: Based on feedback on the app creator’s webpage some people have experienced the same problem as we did during our tests with the app failing to complete the recordings. Hopefully this bug will be fixed with the next release. Once recording has started the button will turn red. Click on the button again to stop recording. Once you have stopped recording you will see the following message window appear and the main window will be shaded over with a whitish color until you click “OK”. Conclusion Regardless of the slight quirkiness in recording online music Antenna more than makes up for it with the terrific selection of online stations and streaming capability. New fresh music for you to listen to is only a click or two away… Links Download Antenna (Antenna Homepage) Download Antenna at Softpedia Download Adobe AIR Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Listen to Local FM Radio in Windows 7 Media CenterListen to Over 100,000 Radio Stations in Windows Media CenterListen To XM Radio with Windows Media Center in Windows 7Listen and Record Over 12,000 Online Radio Stations with RadioSureWeekend Fun: Watch Television on Your PC with AnyTV 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 Will it Blend? iPad Edition Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic

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• When to implement: Together with or after the source product?

  - by Jeremy Oosthuizen

  Somebody recently relayed a prospect's question to me: How hard would it be to implement OUBI after the source product (CC&B, WAM or NMS) has already been implemented? Fact is that MOST non-OUBI Data Warehouse / Business Intelligence implementations take place after the source application(s) are in place and hopefully stable. If an organization decides that they need better reporting and management information, then the logical path (see The Data Warehouse Institute's Data Warehouse Maturity Model) is to a Data Warehouse -- no matter when their last applications were implemented. If there is a pre-built Data Warehouse for their specific application, or even for the desired business process in their industry, they're in luck. Else they have to design and build from scratch, using a toolset. The implementation of a toolset is unlike the implementation of OUBI which, like OBI Apps, contain pre-built ETL routines and user content. Much has been written before about the advantages of that. So, because OUBI is designed specifically for Oracle Utilities transactional products, we often implement them in parallel -- with OUBI lagging a little behind by necessity, like Reporting. Customers know from the start they're going to need the solution, and therefore purchase the products at the same time. My biggest argument FOR a parallel installation/implementation of OUBI with the source product is two-fold: - There could be things (which is the technical term for data elements) that customers figure out they need when implementing OUBI, which are often easier added to the source product's implementation project, than to add later; - OUBI's ETL often points out errors (severe or not) with converted data, which are easier to fix during the source product's implementation project, or it may even be impossible to fix afterwards. The Conversion routines sometimes miss these errors, because the source system can live with the not-quite-perfect converted data. If the data can't be properly extracted, i.e. the proper Dimensions linked to the Facts, then it can't get into OUBI. That means it can't be analyzed effectively along with the rest of the organization's data. Then there is also the throw-away-work argument, which may be significant. The operational / transactional system cannot go live without reports on Day 1. A lot of those reports would be taken care of by the implementation of OUBI. If OUBI is implemented after go-live, those reports STILL have to be built during the source product's implementation project, but they become throw-away after the OUBI implementation. I have sometimes been told that it is better to implement OUBI after the source product, because it cuts down on scope and risk for the source product's implementation project. All I can say to that, is bah humbug. No, seriously, given the arguments above, planning has to include the OUBI implementation and it has to be managed properly -- just like any other implementation. If so, it should not add any risk and it should be included in the scope from the start. The answer to the prospect's question is therefore that it is not that much more difficult; after all, most DW/BI implemenations are done like that. They just have to consider the points above.

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• What I Expect From Myself This Year

  - by Lee Brandt

  I am making it a point not to call them resolutions, because the word has become an institution and is beginning to have no meaning. That's why I end up not keeping my resolutions, I think. So in the spirit of holding myself to my own commitments, I will make a plan and some realistic goals. 1.) Lose weight. Everyone has this on their list, but I am going to be conservative and specific. I currently weigh 393lbs. (yeah, I know). So I want to plan to lose 10lbs per month, that's 1lb. every three days, that shouldn't be difficult if I stick to my diet and exercise plan. - How do I do this?     - Diet: vegetarian. Since I already know I have high blood pressure and borderline high cholesterol, a meat-free diet is in order. I was vegan for a little over 2 years in 2006-2008, I think I can handle vegetarian.     - Exercise: at least 3 times (preferably every day) a week for 30 minutes. It has to be something that gets my heart rate up, or burns in my muscles. I can walk for cardio to start and mild calisthenics (girly push-ups, crunches, etc.).         - Move: I spend all my time behind the computer. I have recently started to use a slight variation of the Pomodoro Technique (my Pomodoros are 50 minutes instead of 25). During my 10 minutes every hour to answer emails, chats, etc., I will take a few minutes to stretch. 2.) Get my wife pregnant. We've been talking about it for years. Now that she is done with graduate school and I have a great job, now's the time. We'll be the oldest parents in the PTA most likely, but I don't care. 3.) Blog More. Another favorite among bloggers, but I do have about six drafts for blog posts started. The topics are there all I need to do is flesh out the post. This can be the first hour of any computer time I have after work. As soon as I am done exercising, shower and post. 4.) Speak less. Most people want to speak more. I want to concentrate on the places that I enjoy and that can really use the speakers (like local code camps), rather than trying to be some national speaker. I love speaking at conferences, but I need to spend some more time at home if we're going to get pregnant. 5.) Read more. I got a Kindle for Christmas and I am loving it so far. I have almost finished Treasure Island, and am getting ready to pick my next book. I will probably read a lot of classics for 2 reasons: (1) they teach deep lessons and (2) most are free for the Kindle. 6.) Find my religion. I was raised Southern Baptist, but I want to find my own way. I've been wanting to go to the local Unitarian Church, so I will make a point to go before the end of March. I also want to add a few religious books to my reading list. My boss bought me a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus , and I have a copy of Bruce Feiler's Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (P.S.) . I will start there. Seems like a lot now that I spell it out like this. But these are only starters. I am forty years old. I cannot keep living like I am twenty anymore. So here we go, 2011.

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• Asynchrony in C# 5: Dataflow Async Logger Sample

  - by javarg

  Check out this (very simple) code examples for TPL Dataflow. Suppose you are developing an Async Logger to register application events to different sinks or log writers. The logger architecture would be as follow: Note how blocks can be composed to achieved desired behavior. The BufferBlock<T> is the pool of log entries to be process whereas linked ActionBlock<TInput> represent the log writers or sinks. The previous composition would allows only one ActionBlock to consume entries at a time. Implementation code would be something similar to (add reference to System.Threading.Tasks.Dataflow.dll in %User Documents%\Microsoft Visual Studio Async CTP\Documentation): TPL Dataflow Logger var bufferBlock = new BufferBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> infoLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Info: {0}", e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> errorLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e.Item2)); bufferBlock.LinkTo(infoLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Info) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.LinkTo(errorLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Error) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Info, "info message")); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Error, "error message")); Note the filter applied to each link (in this case, the Logging Level selects the writer used). We can specify message filters using Predicate functions on each link. Now, the previous sample is useless for a Logger since Logging Level is not exclusive (thus, several writers could be used to process a single message). Let´s use a Broadcast<T> buffer instead of a BufferBlock<T>. Broadcast Logger var bufferBlock = new BroadcastBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(     e => new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(e.Item1, e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> infoLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Info: {0}", e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> errorLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(         e => Console.WriteLine("Error: {0}", e.Item2)); ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>> allLogger =     new ActionBlock<Tuple<LogLevel, string>>(     e => Console.WriteLine("All: {0}", e.Item2)); bufferBlock.LinkTo(infoLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Info) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.LinkTo(errorLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.Error) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.LinkTo(allLogger, e => (e.Item1 & LogLevel.All) != LogLevel.None); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Info, "info message")); bufferBlock.Post(new Tuple<LogLevel, string>(LogLevel.Error, "error message")); As this block copies the message to all its outputs, we need to define the copy function in the block constructor. In this case we create a new Tuple, but you can always use the Identity function if passing the same reference to every output. Try both scenarios and compare the results.

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• Unable to apt-get upgrade in ubuntu 11.10

  - by blackhole

  These are the errors shows by different client Update Manager: Traceback (most recent call last): File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 968, in simulate trans.unauthenticated = self._simulate_helper(trans) File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/aptdaemon/worker.py", line 1092, in _simulate_helper return depends, self._cache.required_download, \ File "/usr/lib/python2.7/dist-packages/apt/cache.py", line 235, in required_download pm.get_archives(fetcher, self._list, self._records) SystemError: E:Method has died unexpectedly!, E:Sub-process returned an error code (100), E:Method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ did not start correctly Synaptic package Manager E: Method has died unexpectedly! E: Sub-process returned an error code (100) E: Method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ did not start correctly E: Unable to lock the download directory Command: sudo apt-get upgrade Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following packages will be upgraded: libfreetype6 libfreetype6-dev 2 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Failed to exec method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ E: Method has died unexpectedly! E: Sub-process returned an error code (100) E: Method /usr/lib/apt/methods/ did not start correctly Can anyone one tell me how to resolve these issues ? I have no volatile packages or anything so i am even posting the preview of my sources.list file. # deb cdrom:[Ubuntu 10.10 _Maverick Meerkat_ - Release i386 (20101007)]/ maverick main restricted # See http://help.ubuntu.com/community/UpgradeNotes for how to upgrade to # newer versions of the distribution. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric main restricted ## Major bug fix updates produced after the final release of the ## distribution. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates main restricted ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team. Also, please note that software in universe WILL NOT receive any ## review or updates from the Ubuntu security team. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric universe deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates universe ## N.B. software from this repository is ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu ## team, and may not be under a free licence. Please satisfy yourself as to ## your rights to use the software. Also, please note that software in ## multiverse WILL NOT receive any review or updates from the Ubuntu ## security team. deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric multiverse deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-updates multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from the 'backports' ## repository. ## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as ## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes ## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features. ## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review ## or updates from the Ubuntu security team. # deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports main restricted universe multiverse # deb-src http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ maverick-backports main restricted universe multiverse ## Uncomment the following two lines to add software from Canonical's ## 'partner' repository. ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by Canonical and the ## respective vendors as a service to Ubuntu users. deb http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner deb-src http://archive.canonical.com/ubuntu oneiric partner ## This software is not part of Ubuntu, but is offered by third-party ## developers who want to ship their latest software. deb http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main deb-src http://extras.ubuntu.com/ubuntu oneiric main deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-security main restricted deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-security universe deb http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric-security multiverse # deb http://archive.canonical.com/ lucid partner Here is the preview of my sources.list file

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• SQL SERVER – Solution of Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement

  - by pinaldave

  Earlier this week I asked a question where I asked how to Swap Values of the column without using CASE Statement. Read here: SQL SERVER – A Puzzle – Swap Value of Column Without Case Statement. I have proposed 3 different solutions in the blog posts itself. I had requested the help of the community to come up with alternate solutions and honestly I am stunned and amazed by the qualified entries. I will be not able to cover every single solution which is posted as a comment, however, I would like to for sure cover few interesting entries. However, I am selecting 5 solutions which are different (not necessary they are most optimal or best – just different and interesting). Just for clarity I am involving the original problem statement here. USE tempdb GO CREATE TABLE SimpleTable (ID INT, Gender VARCHAR(10)) GO INSERT INTO SimpleTable (ID, Gender) SELECT 1, 'female' UNION ALL SELECT 2, 'male' UNION ALL SELECT 3, 'male' GO SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO -- Insert Your Solutions here -- Swap value of Column Gender SELECT * FROM SimpleTable GO DROP TABLE SimpleTable GO Here are the five most interesting and different solutions I have received. Solution by Roji P Thomas UPDATE S SET S.Gender = D.Gender FROM SimpleTable S INNER JOIN SimpleTable D ON S.Gender != D.Gender I really loved the solutions as it is very simple and drives the point home – elegant and will work pretty much for any values (not necessarily restricted by the option in original question ‘male’ or ‘female’). Solution by Aneel CREATE TABLE #temp(id INT, datacolumn CHAR(4)) INSERT INTO #temp VALUES(1,'gent'),(2,'lady'),(3,'lady') DECLARE @value1 CHAR(4), @value2 CHAR(4) SET @value1 = 'lady' SET @value2 = 'gent' UPDATE #temp SET datacolumn = REPLACE(@value1 + @value2,datacolumn,'') Aneel has very interesting solution where he combined both the values and replace the original value. I personally liked this creativity of the solution. Solution by SIJIN KUMAR V P UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender = RIGHT(('fe'+Gender), DIFFERENCE((Gender),SOUNDEX(Gender))*2) Sijin has amazed me with Difference and Soundex function. I have never visualized that above two functions can resolve the problem. Hats off to you Sijin. Solution by Nikhildas UPDATE St SET St.Gender = t.Gender FROM SimpleTable St CROSS Apply (SELECT DISTINCT gender FROM SimpleTable WHERE St.Gender != Gender) t I was expecting that someone will come up with this solution where they use CROSS APPLY. This is indeed very neat and for sure interesting exercise. If you do not know how CROSS APPLY works this is the time to learn. Solution by mistermagooo UPDATE SimpleTable SET Gender=X.NewGender FROM (VALUES('male','female'),('female','male')) AS X(OldGender,NewGender) WHERE SimpleTable.Gender=X.OldGender As per author this is a slow solution but I love how syntaxes are placed and used here. I love how he used syntax here. I will say this is the most beautifully written solution (not necessarily it is best). Bonus: Solution by Madhivanan Somehow I was confident Madhi – SQL Server MVP will come up with something which I will be compelled to read. He has written a complete blog post on this subject and I encourage all of you to go ahead and read it. Now personally I wanted to list every single comment here. There are some so good that I am just amazed with the creativity. I will write a part of this blog post in future. However, here is the challenge for you. Challenge: Go over 50+ various solutions listed to the simple problem here. Here are my two asks for you. 1) Pick your best solution and list here in the comment. This exercise will for sure teach us one or two things. 2) Write your own solution which is yet not covered already listed 50 solutions. I am confident that there is no end to creativity. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Create Custom Windows Key Keyboard Shortcuts in Windows

  - by Asian Angel

  Nearly everyone uses keyboard shortcuts of some sort on their Windows system but what if you could create new ones for your favorite apps or folders? You might just be amazed at how simple it can be with just a few clicks and no programming using WinKey. WinKey in Action During the installation process you will see this window that gives you a good basic idea of just what can be accomplished with this wonderful little app. As soon as the installation process has finished you will see the “Main App Window”. It provides a simple straightforward listing of all the keyboard shortcuts that it is currently managing. Note: WinKey will automatically add an entry to the “Startup Listing” in your “Start Menu” during installation. To see the regular built-in Windows keyboard shortcuts that it is managing click “Standard Shortcuts” to select it and then click on “Properties”. For those who are curious WinKey does have a “System Tray Icon” that can be disabled if desired. Now onto creating those new keyboard shortcuts… For our example we decided to create a keyboard shortcut for an app rather than a folder. To create a shortcut for an app click on the small “Paper Icon” as shown here. Once you have done that browse to the appropriate folder and select the exe file. The second step will be choosing which keyboard shortcut you would like to associate with that particular app. You can use the drop-down list to choose from a listing of available keyboard combinations. For our example we chose “Windows Key + A”. The final step is choosing the “Run Mode”. There are three options available in the drop-down list…choose the one that best suits your needs. Here is what our example looked like once finished. All that is left to do at this point is click “OK” to finish the process. And just like that your new keyboard shortcut is now listed in the “Main App Window”. Time to try out your new keyboard shortcut! One quick use of our new keyboard shortcut and Iron Browser opened right up. WinKey really does make creating new keyboard shortcuts as simple as possible. Conclusion If you have been wanting to create new keyboard shortcuts for your favorite apps and folders then it really does not get any simpler than with WinKey. This is definitely a recommended app for anyone who loves “get it done” software. Links Download WinKey at Softpedia Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Show Keyboard Shortcut Access Keys in Windows VistaCreate a Keyboard Shortcut to Access Hidden Desktop Icons and FilesKeyboard Ninja: 21 Keyboard Shortcut ArticlesAnother Desktop Cube for Windows XP/VistaHow-To Geek on Lifehacker: Control Your Computer with Shortcuts & Speed Up Vista Setup 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 Recycle ! Find That Elusive Icon with FindIcons Looking for Good Windows Media Player 12 Plug-ins? Find Out the Celebrity You Resemble With FaceDouble Whoa ! Use Printflush to Solve Printing Problems

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• Anatomy of a serialization killer

  - by Brian Donahue

  As I had mentioned last month, I have been working on a project to create an easy-to-use managed debugger. It's still an internal tool that we use at Red Gate as part of product support to analyze application errors on customer's computers, and as such, should be easy to use and not require installation. Since the project has got rather large and important, I had decided to use SmartAssembly to protect all of my hard work. This was trivial for the most part, but the loading and saving of results was broken by SA after using the obfuscation, rendering the loading and saving of XML results basically useless, although the merging and error reporting was an absolute godsend and definitely worth the price of admission. (Well, I get my Red Gate licenses for free, but you know what I mean!)My initial reaction was to simply exclude the serializable results class and all of its' members from obfuscation, and that was just dandy, but a few weeks on I decided to look into exactly why serialization had broken and change the code to work with SA so I could write any new code to be compatible with SmartAssembly and save me some additional testing and changes to the SA project.In simple terms, SA does all that it can to prevent serialization problems, for instance, it will not obfuscate public members of a DLL and it will exclude any types with the Serializable attribute from obfuscation. This prevents public members and properties from being made private and having the name changed. If the serialization is done inside the executable, however, public members have the access changed to private and are renamed. That was my first problem, because my types were in the executable assembly and implemented ISerializable, but did not have the Serializable attribute set on them!public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {        }The second problem caused by the pruning feature. Although RedFlagResults had public members, they were not truly properties, and used the GetObjectData() method of ISerializable to serialize the members. For that reason, SA could not exclude these members from pruning and further broke the serialization. public class RedFlagResults : ISerializable        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions;                 #region ISerializable Members                 public void GetObjectData(SerializationInfo info, StreamingContext context)                {                                info.AddValue("Exceptions", Exceptions);                }                 #endregionSo to fix this, it was necessary to make Exceptions a proper property by implementing get and set on it. Also, I added the Serializable attribute so that I don't have to exclude the class from obfuscation in the SA project any more. The DoNotPrune attribute means I do not need to exclude the class from pruning.[Serializable, SmartAssembly.Attributes.DoNotPrune]        public class RedFlagResults        {                public List<RedFlag.Exception> Exceptions {get;set;}        }Similarly, the Exception class gets the Serializable and DoNotPrune attributes applied so all of its' properties are excluded from obfuscation.Now my project has some protection from prying eyes by scrambling up the code so it's harder to reverse-engineer, without breaking anything. SmartAssembly has also provided the benefit of merging so that the end-user doesn't need to extract all of the DLL files needed by RedFlag into a directory, and can be run directly from the .zip archive. When an error occurs (hey, I'm only human!), an exception report can be sent to me so I can see what went wrong without having to, er, debug the debugger.

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• Code Structure / Level Design: Plants vs Zombies game level dissection

  - by lalan

  Hi Friends, I am interested in learning the class structure of Plants vs Zombies, particularly level design; for those who haven't played it - this video contains nice play-through: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=89DfdOIJ4xw. How would I go ahead and design the code, mostly structure & classes, which allows for maximum flexibility & clean development? I am familiar with data driven design concepts, and would use events to handle most of dynamic behavior. Dissection at macro level: (Once every Level) Load tilemap, props, etc -- basically build the map (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) Show Enemies you'll face during present level (Once every Level) Unit Selection Window/Panel - selection of defensive plants (Once every Level) Camera Movement - might consider it as short cut-scene (Once every Level) HUD Creation - based on unit selection (Level Loop) Enemy creation - based on types of zombies allowed (Level Loop) Sun/Resource generation (Level Loop) Show messages like 'huge wave of zombies coming', 'final wave' (Level Loop) Other unique events - Spawn gifts, money, tombstones, etc (Once every Level) Unlock new plant Potential game scripts: a) Level definitions: Level_1_1.xml, Level_1_2.xml, etc. Level_1_1.xml :: Sample script <map> <tilemap>tilemapFrontLawn</tilemap> <SpawnPoints> tiles where particular type of zombies (land vs water) may spawn</spawnPoints> <props> position, entity array -- lawnmower, </props> </map> <zombies> <... list of zombies who gonna attack by ids...> </zombies> <plants> <... list by plants which are available for defense by ids...> </plants> <progression> <ZombieWave name='first wave' spawnScript='zombieLightWave.lua' unlock='null'> <startMessages time=1.5>Ready</startMessages> <endMessages time=1.5>Huge wave of zombies incoming</endMessages> </ZombieWave> </progression> b) Entities definitions: .xmls containing zombies, plants, sun, lawnmower, coins, etc description. Potential classes: //LevelManager - Based on the level under play, it will load level script. Few of the // functions it may have: class LevelManager { public: bool load(string levelFileName); bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); private: LevelData* mLevelData; } // LevelData - Contains the details of level loaded by LevelManager. class LevelData { private: string file; // array of camera,dialog,attackwaves, etc in active level LevelCutSceneCamera** mArrayCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog** mArrayCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave** mArrayAttackWave; .... // which camera,dialog,attackwave is active in level uint mCursorCutSceneCamera; uint mCursorCutSceneDialog; uint mCursorAttackWave; public: // based on cursor, get the next camera,dialog,attackwave,etc in active level // return false/true based on failure/success bool nextCutSceneCamera(LevelCutSceneCamera**); bool nextCutSceneDialog(LevelCutSceneDialog**); } // LevelUnderPlay- LevelManager class LevelUnderPlay { private: LevelCutSceneCamera* mCutSceneCamera; LevelCutSceneDialog* mCutSceneDialog; LevelAttackWave* mAttackWave; Entities** mSelectedPlants; Entities** mAllowedZombies; bool isCutSceneCameraActive; public: bool enter(); bool update(float deltatime); bool exit(); } I am totally confused.. :( Does it make sense of using class composition (have flat class hierarchy) for managing levels. Is it a good idea to just add/remove/update sprites (or any drawable stuff) to current scene from LevelManager or LevelUnderPlay? If I want to make non-linear level design, how should I go ahead? Perhaps I would need a LevelProgression class, which would decide what to do based on decision tree. Any suggestions would be appreciated very much. Thank for your time, lalan

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• C# Multiple Property Sort

  - by Ben Griswold

  As you can see in the snippet below, sorting is easy with Linq.  Simply provide your OrderBy criteria and you’re done.  If you want a secondary sort field, add a ThenBy expression to the chain.  Want a third level sort?  Just add ThenBy along with another sort expression. var projects = new List<Project>     {         new Project {Description = "A", ProjectStatusTypeId = 1},         new Project {Description = "B", ProjectStatusTypeId = 3},         new Project {Description = "C", ProjectStatusTypeId = 3},         new Project {Description = "C", ProjectStatusTypeId = 2},         new Project {Description = "E", ProjectStatusTypeId = 1},         new Project {Description = "A", ProjectStatusTypeId = 2},         new Project {Description = "C", ProjectStatusTypeId = 4},         new Project {Description = "A", ProjectStatusTypeId = 3}     };   projects = projects     .OrderBy(x => x.Description)     .ThenBy(x => x.ProjectStatusTypeId)     .ToList();   foreach (var project in projects) {     Console.Out.WriteLine("{0} {1}", project.Description,         project.ProjectStatusTypeId); } Linq offers a great sort solution most of the time, but what if you want or need to do it the old fashioned way? projects.Sort ((x, y) =>         Comparer<String>.Default             .Compare(x.Description, y.Description) != 0 ?         Comparer<String>.Default             .Compare(x.Description, y.Description) :         Comparer<Int32>.Default             .Compare(x.ProjectStatusTypeId, y.ProjectStatusTypeId));   foreach (var project in projects) {     Console.Out.WriteLine("{0} {1}", project.Description,         project.ProjectStatusTypeId); } It’s not that bad, right? Just for fun, let add some additional logic to our sort.  Let’s say we wanted our secondary sort to be based on the name associated with the ProjectStatusTypeId.  projects.Sort((x, y) =>        Comparer<String>.Default             .Compare(x.Description, y.Description) != 0 ?        Comparer<String>.Default             .Compare(x.Description, y.Description) :        Comparer<String>.Default             .Compare(GetProjectStatusTypeName(x.ProjectStatusTypeId),                 GetProjectStatusTypeName(y.ProjectStatusTypeId)));   foreach (var project in projects) {     Console.Out.WriteLine("{0} {1}", project.Description,         GetProjectStatusTypeName(project.ProjectStatusTypeId)); } The comparer will now consider the result of the GetProjectStatusTypeName and order the list accordingly.  Of course, you can take this same approach with Linq as well.

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