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• That Escalated Quickly

  - by Jesse Taber

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/GruffCode/archive/2014/05/17/that-escalated-quickly.aspxI have been working remotely out of my home for over 4 years now. All of my coworkers during that time have also worked remotely. Lots of folks have written about the challenges inherent in facilitating communication on remote teams and strategies for overcoming them. A popular theme around this topic is the notion of “escalating communication”. In this context “escalating” means taking a conversation from one mode of communication to a different, higher fidelity mode of communication. Here are the five modes of communication I use at work in order of increasing fidelity: Email – This is the “lowest fidelity” mode of communication that I use. I usually only check it a few times a day (and I’m trying to check it even less frequently than that) and I only keep items in my inbox if they represent an item I need to take action on that I haven’t tracked anywhere else. Forums / Message boards – Being a developer, I’ve gotten into the habit of having other people look over my code before it becomes part of the product I’m working on. These code reviews often happen in “real time” via screen sharing, but I also always have someone else give all of the changes another look using pull requests. A pull request takes my code and lets someone else see the changes I’ve made side-by-side with the existing code so they can see if I did anything dumb. Pull requests can facilitate a conversation about the code changes in an online-forum like style. Some teams I’ve worked on also liked using tools like Trello or Google Groups to have on-going conversations about a topic or task that was being worked on. Chat & Instant Messaging  - Chat and instant messaging are the real workhorses for communication on the remote teams I’ve been a part of. I know some teams that are co-located that also use it pretty extensively for quick messages that don’t warrant walking across the office to talk with someone but reqire more immediacy than an e-mail. For the purposes of this post I think it’s important to note that the terms “chat” and “instant messaging” might insinuate that the conversation is happening in real time, but that’s not always true. Modern chat and IM applications maintain a searchable history so people can easily see what might have been discussed while they were away from their computers. Voice, Video and Screen sharing – Everyone’s got a camera and microphone on their computers now, and there are an abundance of services that will let you use them to talk to other people who have cameras and microphones on their computers. I’m including screen sharing here as well because, in my experience, these discussions typically involve one or more people showing the other participants something that’s happening on their screen. Obviously, this mode of communication is much higher-fidelity than any of the ones listed above. Scheduled meetings are typically conducted using this mode of communication. In Person – No matter how great communication tools become, there’s no substitute for meeting with someone face-to-face. However, opportunities for this kind of communcation are few and far between when you work on a remote team. When a conversation gets escalated that usually means it moves up one or more positions on this list. A lot of people advocate jumping to #4 sooner than later. Like them, I used to believe that, if it was possible, organizing a call with voice and video was automatically better than any kind of text-based communication could be. Lately, however, I’m becoming less convinced that escalating is always the right move. Working Asynchronously Last year I attended a talk at our local code camp given by Drew Miller. Drew works at GitHub and was talking about how they use GitHub internally. Many of the folks at GitHub work remotely, so communication was one of the main themes in Drew’s talk. During the talk Drew used the phrase, “asynchronous communication” to describe their use of chat and pull request comments. That phrase stuck in my head because I hadn’t heard it before but I think it perfectly describes the way in which remote teams often need to communicate. You don’t always know when your co-workers are at their computers or what hours (if any) they are working that day. In order to work this way you need to assume that the person you’re talking to might not respond right away. You can’t always afford to wait until everyone required is online and available to join a voice call, so you need to use text-based, persistent forms of communication so that people can receive and respond to messages when they are available. Going back to my list from the beginning of this post for a second, I characterize items #1-3 as being “asynchronous” modes of communication while we could call items #4 and #5 “synchronous”. When communication gets escalated it’s almost always moving from an asynchronous mode of communication to a synchronous one. Now, to the point of this post: I’ve become increasingly reluctant to escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication for two primary reasons: 1 – You can often find a higher fidelity way to convey your message without holding a synchronous conversation 2 - Asynchronous modes of communication are (usually) persistent and searchable. You Don’t Have to Broadcast Live Let’s start with the first reason I’ve listed. A lot of times you feel like you need to escalate to synchronous communication because you’re having difficulty describing something that you’re seeing in words. You want to provide the people you’re conversing with some audio-visual aids to help them understand the point that you’re trying to make and you think that getting on Skype and sharing your screen with them is the best way to do that. Firing up a screen sharing session does work well, but you can usually accomplish the same thing in an asynchronous manner. For example, you could take a screenshot and annotate it with some text and drawings to illustrate what it is you’re seeing. If a screenshot won’t work, taking a short screen recording while your narrate over it and posting the video to your forum or chat system along with a text-based description of what’s in the recording that can be searched for later can be a great way to effectively communicate with your team asynchronously. I Said What?!? Now for the second reason I listed: most asynchronous modes of communication provide a transcript of what was said and what decisions might have been made during the conversation. There have been many occasions where I’ve used the search feature of my team’s chat application to find a conversation that happened several weeks or months ago to remember what was decided. Unfortunately, I think the benefits associated with the persistence of communicating asynchronously often get overlooked when people decide to escalate to a in-person meeting or voice/video call. I’m becoming much more reluctant to suggest a voice or video call if I suspect that it might lead to codifying some kind of design decision because everyone involved is going to hang up the call and immediately forget what was decided. I recognize that you can record and archive these types of interactions, but without being able to search them the recordings aren’t terribly useful. When and How To Escalate I don’t mean to imply that communicating via voice/video or in person is never a good idea. I probably jump on a Skype call with a co-worker at least once a day to quickly hash something out or show them a bit of code that I’m working on. Also, meeting in person periodically is really important for remote teams. There’s no way around the fact that sometimes it’s easier to jump on a call and show someone my screen so they can see what I’m seeing. So when is it right to escalate? I think the simplest way to answer that is when the communication starts to feel painful. Everyone’s tolerance for that pain is different, but I think you need to let it hurt a little bit before jumping to synchronous communication. When you do escalate from asynchronous to synchronous communication, there are a couple of things you can do to maximize the effectiveness of the communication: Takes notes – This is huge and yet I’ve found that a lot of teams don’t do this. If you’re holding a meeting with  > 2 people you should have someone taking notes. Taking notes while participating in a meeting can be difficult but there are a few strategies to deal with this challenge that probably deserve a short post of their own. After the meeting, make sure the notes are posted to a place where all concerned parties (including those that might not have attended the meeting) can review and search them. Persist decisions made ASAP – If any decisions were made during the meeting, persist those decisions to a searchable medium as soon as possible following the conversation. All the teams I’ve worked on used a web-based system for tracking the on-going work and a backlog of work to be done in the future. I always try to make sure that all of the cards/stories/tasks/whatever in these systems always reflect the latest decisions that were made as the work was being planned and executed. If held a quick call with your team lead and decided that it wasn’t worth the effort to build real-time validation into that new UI you were working on, go and codify that decision in the story associated with that work immediately after you hang up. Even better, write it up in the story while you are both still on the phone. That way when the folks from your QA team pick up the story to test a few days later they’ll know why the real-time validation isn’t there without having to invoke yet another conversation about the work. Communicating Well is Hard At this point you might be thinking that communicating asynchronously is more difficult than having a live conversation. You’re right: it is more difficult. In order to communicate effectively this way you need to very carefully think about the message that you’re trying to convey and craft it in a way that’s easy for your audience to understand. This is almost always harder than just talking through a problem in real time with someone; this is why escalating communication is such a popular idea. Why wouldn’t we want to do the thing that’s easier? Easier isn’t always better. If you and your team can get in the habit of communicating effectively in an asynchronous manner you’ll find that, over time, all of your communications get less painful because you don’t need to re-iterate previously made points over and over again. If you communicate right the first time, you often don’t need to rehash old conversations because you can go back and find the decisions that were made laid out in plain language. You’ll also find that you get better at doing things like writing useful comments in your code, creating written documentation about how the feature that you just built works, or persuading your team to do things in a certain way.

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• It's not just “Single Sign-on” by Steve Knott (aurionPro SENA)

  - by Greg Jensen

  It is true that Oracle Enterprise Single Sign-on (Oracle ESSO) started out as purely an application single sign-on tool but as we have seen in the previous articles in this series the product has matured into a suite of tools that can do more than just automated single sign-on and can also provide rapidly deployed, cost effective solution to many demanding password management problems. In the last article of this series I would like to discuss three cases where customers faced password scenarios that required more than just single sign-on and how some of the less well known tools in the Oracle ESSO suite “kitbag” helped solve these challenges. Case #1 One of the issues often faced by our customers is how to keep their applications compliant. I had a client who liked the idea of automated single sign-on for most of his applications but had a key requirement to actually increase the security for one specific SOX application. For the SOX application he wanted to secure access by using two-factor authentication with a smartcard. The problem was that the application did not support two-factor authentication. The solution was to use a feature from the Oracle ESSO suite called authentication manager. This feature enables you to have multiple authentication methods for the same user which in this case was a smartcard and the Windows password.  Within authentication manager each authenticator can be configured with a security grade so we gave the smartcard a high grade and the Windows password a normal grade. Security grading in Oracle ESSO can be configured on a per application basis so we set the SOX application to require the higher grade smartcard authenticator. The end result for the user was that they enjoyed automated single sign-on for most of the applications apart from the SOX application. When the SOX application was launched, the user was required by ESSO to present their smartcard before being given access to the application. Case #2 Another example solving compliance issues was in the case of a large energy company who had a number of core billing applications. New regulations required that users change their password regularly and use a complex password. The problem facing the customer was that the core billing applications did not have any native user password change functionality. The customer could not replace the core applications because of the cost and time required to re-develop them. With a reputation for innovation aurionPro SENA were approached to provide a solution to this problem using Oracle ESSO. Oracle ESSO has a password expiry feature that can be triggered periodically based on the timestamp of the users’ last password creation therefore our strategy here was to leverage this feature to provide the password change experience. The trigger can launch an application change password event however in this scenario there was no native change password feature that could be launched therefore a “dummy” change password screen was created that could imitate the missing change password function and connect to the application database on behalf of the user. Oracle ESSO was configured to trigger a change password event every 60 days. After this period if the user launched the application Oracle ESSO would detect the logon screen and invoke the password expiry feature. Oracle ESSO would trigger the “dummy screen,” detect it automatically as the application change password screen and insert a complex password on behalf of the user. After the password event had completed the user was logged on to the application with their new password. All this was provided at a fraction of the cost of re-developing the core applications. Case #3 Recent popular initiatives such as the BYOD and working from home schemes bring with them many challenges in administering “unmanaged machines” and sometimes “unmanageable users.” In a recent case, a client had a dispersed community of casual contractors who worked for the business using their own laptops to access applications. To improve security the around password management the security goal was to provision the passwords directly to these contractors. In a previous article we saw how Oracle ESSO has the capability to provision passwords through Provisioning Gateway but the challenge in this scenario was how to get the Oracle ESSO agent to the casual contractor on an unmanaged machine. The answer was to use another tool in the suite, Oracle ESSO Anywhere. This component can compile the normal Oracle ESSO functionality into a deployment package that can be made available from a website in a similar way to a streamed application. The ESSO Anywhere agent does not actually install into the registry or program files but runs in a folder within the user’s profile therefore no local administrator rights are required for installation. The ESSO Anywhere package can also be configured to stay persistent or disable itself at the end of the user’s session. In this case the user just needed to be told where the website package was located and download the package. Once the download was complete the agent started automatically and the user was provided with single sign-on to their applications without ever knowing the application passwords. Finally, as we have seen in these series Oracle ESSO not only has great utilities in its own tool box but also has direct integration with Oracle Privileged Account Manager, Oracle Identity Manager and Oracle Access Manager. Integrated together with these tools provides a complete and complementary platform to address even the most complex identity and access management requirements. So what next for Oracle ESSO? “Agentless ESSO available in the cloud” – but that will be a subject for a future Oracle ESSO series!                                                                                                                               

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• Metro: Promises

  - by Stephen.Walther

  The goal of this blog entry is to describe the Promise class in the WinJS library. You can use promises whenever you need to perform an asynchronous operation such as retrieving data from a remote website or a file from the file system. Promises are used extensively in the WinJS library. Asynchronous Programming Some code executes immediately, some code requires time to complete or might never complete at all. For example, retrieving the value of a local variable is an immediate operation. Retrieving data from a remote website takes longer or might not complete at all. When an operation might take a long time to complete, you should write your code so that it executes asynchronously. Instead of waiting for an operation to complete, you should start the operation and then do something else until you receive a signal that the operation is complete. An analogy. Some telephone customer service lines require you to wait on hold – listening to really bad music – until a customer service representative is available. This is synchronous programming and very wasteful of your time. Some newer customer service lines enable you to enter your telephone number so the customer service representative can call you back when a customer representative becomes available. This approach is much less wasteful of your time because you can do useful things while waiting for the callback. There are several patterns that you can use to write code which executes asynchronously. The most popular pattern in JavaScript is the callback pattern. When you call a function which might take a long time to return a result, you pass a callback function to the function. For example, the following code (which uses jQuery) includes a function named getFlickrPhotos which returns photos from the Flickr website which match a set of tags (such as “dog” and “funny”): function getFlickrPhotos(tags, callback) { $.getJSON( "http://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_public.gne?jsoncallback=?", { tags: tags, tagmode: "all", format: "json" }, function (data) { if (callback) { callback(data.items); } } ); } getFlickrPhotos("funny, dogs", function(data) { $.each(data, function(index, item) { console.log(item); }); }); The getFlickr() function includes a callback parameter. When you call the getFlickr() function, you pass a function to the callback parameter which gets executed when the getFlicker() function finishes retrieving the list of photos from the Flickr web service. In the code above, the callback function simply iterates through the results and writes each result to the console. Using callbacks is a natural way to perform asynchronous programming with JavaScript. Instead of waiting for an operation to complete, sitting there and listening to really bad music, you can get a callback when the operation is complete. Using Promises The CommonJS website defines a promise like this (http://wiki.commonjs.org/wiki/Promises): “Promises provide a well-defined interface for interacting with an object that represents the result of an action that is performed asynchronously, and may or may not be finished at any given point in time. By utilizing a standard interface, different components can return promises for asynchronous actions and consumers can utilize the promises in a predictable manner.” A promise provides a standard pattern for specifying callbacks. In the WinJS library, when you create a promise, you can specify three callbacks: a complete callback, a failure callback, and a progress callback. Promises are used extensively in the WinJS library. The methods in the animation library, the control library, and the binding library all use promises. For example, the xhr() method included in the WinJS base library returns a promise. The xhr() method wraps calls to the standard XmlHttpRequest object in a promise. The following code illustrates how you can use the xhr() method to perform an Ajax request which retrieves a file named Photos.txt: var options = { url: "/data/photos.txt" }; WinJS.xhr(options).then( function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("success"); var data = JSON.parse(xmlHttpRequest.responseText); console.log(data); }, function(xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("fail"); }, function(xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("progress"); } ) The WinJS.xhr() method returns a promise. The Promise class includes a then() method which accepts three callback functions: a complete callback, an error callback, and a progress callback: Promise.then(completeCallback, errorCallback, progressCallback) In the code above, three anonymous functions are passed to the then() method. The three callbacks simply write a message to the JavaScript Console. The complete callback also dumps all of the data retrieved from the photos.txt file. Creating Promises You can create your own promises by creating a new instance of the Promise class. The constructor for the Promise class requires a function which accepts three parameters: a complete, error, and progress function parameter. For example, the code below illustrates how you can create a method named wait10Seconds() which returns a promise. The progress function is called every second and the complete function is not called until 10 seconds have passed: (function () { "use strict"; var app = WinJS.Application; function wait10Seconds() { return new WinJS.Promise(function (complete, error, progress) { var seconds = 0; var intervalId = window.setInterval(function () { seconds++; progress(seconds); if (seconds > 9) { window.clearInterval(intervalId); complete(); } }, 1000); }); } app.onactivated = function (eventObject) { if (eventObject.detail.kind === Windows.ApplicationModel.Activation.ActivationKind.launch) { wait10Seconds().then( function () { console.log("complete") }, function () { console.log("error") }, function (seconds) { console.log("progress:" + seconds) } ); } } app.start(); })(); All of the work happens in the constructor function for the promise. The window.setInterval() method is used to execute code every second. Every second, the progress() callback method is called. If more than 10 seconds have passed then the complete() callback method is called and the clearInterval() method is called. When you execute the code above, you can see the output in the Visual Studio JavaScript Console. Creating a Timeout Promise In the previous section, we created a custom Promise which uses the window.setInterval() method to complete the promise after 10 seconds. We really did not need to create a custom promise because the Promise class already includes a static method for returning promises which complete after a certain interval. The code below illustrates how you can use the timeout() method. The timeout() method returns a promise which completes after a certain number of milliseconds. WinJS.Promise.timeout(3000).then( function(){console.log("complete")}, function(){console.log("error")}, function(){console.log("progress")} ); In the code above, the Promise completes after 3 seconds (3000 milliseconds). The Promise returned by the timeout() method does not support progress events. Therefore, the only message written to the console is the message “complete” after 10 seconds. Canceling Promises Some promises, but not all, support cancellation. When you cancel a promise, the promise’s error callback is executed. For example, the following code uses the WinJS.xhr() method to perform an Ajax request. However, immediately after the Ajax request is made, the request is cancelled. // Specify Ajax request options var options = { url: "/data/photos.txt" }; // Make the Ajax request var request = WinJS.xhr(options).then( function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("success"); }, function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("fail"); }, function (xmlHttpRequest) { console.log("progress"); } ); // Cancel the Ajax request request.cancel(); When you run the code above, the message “fail” is written to the Visual Studio JavaScript Console. Composing Promises You can build promises out of other promises. In other words, you can compose promises. There are two static methods of the Promise class which you can use to compose promises: the join() method and the any() method. When you join promises, a promise is complete when all of the joined promises are complete. When you use the any() method, a promise is complete when any of the promises complete. The following code illustrates how to use the join() method. A new promise is created out of two timeout promises. The new promise does not complete until both of the timeout promises complete: WinJS.Promise.join([WinJS.Promise.timeout(1000), WinJS.Promise.timeout(5000)]) .then(function () { console.log("complete"); }); The message “complete” will not be written to the JavaScript Console until both promises passed to the join() method completes. The message won’t be written for 5 seconds (5,000 milliseconds). The any() method completes when any promise passed to the any() method completes: WinJS.Promise.any([WinJS.Promise.timeout(1000), WinJS.Promise.timeout(5000)]) .then(function () { console.log("complete"); }); The code above writes the message “complete” to the JavaScript Console after 1 second (1,000 milliseconds). The message is written to the JavaScript console immediately after the first promise completes and before the second promise completes. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe WinJS promises. First, we discussed how promises enable you to easily write code which performs asynchronous actions. You learned how to use a promise when performing an Ajax request. Next, we discussed how you can create your own promises. You learned how to create a new promise by creating a constructor function with complete, error, and progress parameters. Finally, you learned about several advanced methods of promises. You learned how to use the timeout() method to create promises which complete after an interval of time. You also learned how to cancel promises and compose promises from other promises.

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• Intermittent Connection Issues to SQL Server 2008 R2 RTM

  - by Chandan Jha

  The problem I am facing is a very complex one and inspite of trying to gather a root cause of the problem, I am standing at the same place after 2 months with just bits and pieces of information.Here is a scenario: There is a windows 2003 server which uses an system DSN ODBC connection. I looked into the driver properties and it is as follows: Name Version File SQL Server 2000.86.3959.00 SQLSRV32.DLL Now, this system DSN has been given configured with TCP\IP in Network Libraries and 'determine port dynamically' is checked. Now, lets come to the database destination. It is hosted on Windows 2008 having SQL 2008 R2 RTM version 64-bit. Now, I will give you a an overview about the events that happen and whatever troubleshooting I could perform: I get an email saying 'blah blah' failed and the only message their application gets is 'cannot connect to database' I go the SQL Server logs and find the following information: Login failed for user ''. Reason: An attempt to login using SQL authentication failed. Server is configured for Windows authentication only. [CLIENT: 10.0.0.xx Error: 18456, Severity: 14, State: 58.] A quick search shows that this error may come when an SQL Server is configured with windows authentication but its not true. We have mixed mode and connection issue is intermittent. This SQL Server is configured to run on a local system account but since we use only SQL Server accounts to connect to this, there should not be any Kerberos errors. When I run a profiler trace and see only 'existing connections', i see a lot of them coming from my client server displaying the sql user but NO hostname is shown. Textdata field shows TCP\IP information along with some arithabort and ansi-null settings. Now, I tried looking into ring connectivity buffer by using following: SELECTCAST(record AS XML) FROM sys.dm_os_ring_buffers WHERE ring_buffer_type = 'RING_BUFFER_CONNECTIVITY' One sample output is: <ConnectivityTraceRecord> <RecordType>Error</RecordType> <RecordSource>Tds</RecordSource> <Spid>118</Spid> <SniConnectionId>5124905D-D1EC-460E-AD78-201050B78C67</SniConnectionId> <OSError>0</OSError> <SniConsumerError>18452</SniConsumerError> <SniProvider>7</SniProvider> <State>1</State> <RemoteHost>10.0.0.21</RemoteHost> <RemotePort>5008</RemotePort> <LocalHost>10.1.0.38</LocalHost> <LocalPort>1433</LocalPort> <RecordTime>6/6/2012 21:14:57.527</RecordTime> <TdsBuffersInformation> <TdsInputBufferError>0</TdsInputBufferError> <TdsOutputBufferError>0</TdsOutputBufferError> <TdsInputBufferBytes>120</TdsInputBufferBytes> </TdsBuffersInformation> <TdsDisconnectFlags> <PhysicalConnectionIsKilled>0</PhysicalConnectionIsKilled> <DisconnectDueToReadError>0</DisconnectDueToReadError> <NetworkErrorFoundInInputStream>0</NetworkErrorFoundInInputStream> <ErrorFoundBeforeLogin>0</ErrorFoundBeforeLogin> <SessionIsKilled>0</SessionIsKilled> <NormalDisconnect>0</NormalDisconnect> </TdsDisconnectFlags> </ConnectivityTraceRecord> <Stack> <frame id="0">0X000000000174C34B</frame> <frame id="1">0X0000000001748FDD</frame> <frame id="2">0X0000000002461001</frame> <frame id="3">0X0000000000C47E98</frame> <frame id="4">0X00000000008015AD</frame> <frame id="5">0X0000000000801492</frame> <frame id="6">0X00000000003CBBD8</frame> <frame id="7">0X00000000003CB8BA</frame> <frame id="8">0X00000000003CB6FF</frame> <frame id="9">0X00000000008E8FB6</frame> <frame id="10">0X00000000008E9175</frame> <frame id="11">0X00000000008E9839</frame> <frame id="12">0X00000000008E9502</frame> <frame id="13">0X0000000074E437D7</frame> <frame id="14">0X0000000074E43894</frame> <frame id="15">0X00000000775A652D</frame> Somehow all the errors show error number 18452 whereas I never found this error in my SQL logs where I see only 18456. I am just stuck on a dead end because this connection issue appears intermittently. Sorry for a long question but I hope if you read this, you can make out that I tried a lot at my end before giving up.

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• Setup and Use SpecFlow BDD with DevExpress XAF

  - by Patrick Liekhus

  Let’s get started with using the SpecFlow BDD syntax for writing tests with the DevExpress XAF EasyTest scripting syntax.  In order for this to work you will need to download and install the prerequisites listed below.  Once they are installed follow the steps outlined below and enjoy. Prerequisites Install the following items: DevExpress eXpress Application Framework (XAF) found here SpecFlow found here Liekhus BDD/XAF Testing library found here Assumptions I am going to assume at this point that you have created your XAF application and have your Module, Win.Module and Win ready for usage.  You should have also set any attributes and/or settings as you see fit. Setup So where to start. Create a new testing project within your solution. I typically call this with a similar naming convention as used by XAF, my project name .FunctionalTests (i.e. AlbumManager.FunctionalTests). Add the following references to your project.  It should look like the reference list below. DevExpress.Data.v11.x DevExpress.Persistent.Base.v11.x DevExpress.Persistent.BaseImpl.v11.x DevExpress.Xpo.v11.2 Liekhus.Testing.BDD.Core Liekhus.Testing.BDD.DevExpress TechTalk.SpecFlow TestExecutor.v11.x (found in %Program Files%\DevExpress 2011.x\eXpressApp Framework\Tools\EasyTest Right click the TestExecutor reference and set the “Copy Local” setting to True.  This forces the TestExecutor executable to be available in the bin directory which is where the EasyTest script will be executed further down in the process. Add an Application Configuration File (app.config) to your test application.  You will need to make a few modifications to have SpecFlow generate Microsoft style unit tests.  First add the section handler for SpecFlow and then set your choice of testing framework.  I prefer MS Tests for my projects. Add the EasyTest configuration file to your project.  Add a new XML file and call it Config.xml. Open the properties window for the Config.xml file and set the “Copy to Ouput Directory” to “Copy Always”. You will setup the Config file according to the specifications of the EasyTest library my mapping to your executable and other settings.  You can find the details for the configuration of EasyTest here.  My file looks like this Create a new folder in your test project called “StepDefinitions”.  Add a new SpecFlow Step Definition file item under the StepDefinitions folder.  I typically call this class StepDefinition.cs. Have your step definition inherit from the Liekhus.Testing.BDD.DevExpress.StepDefinition class.  This will give you the default behaviors for your test in the next section. OK.  Now that we have done this series of steps, we will work on simplifying this.  This is an early preview of this new project and is not fully ready for consumption.  If you would like to experiment with it, please feel free.  Our goals are to make this a installable project on it’s own with it’s own project templates and default settings.  This will be coming in later versions.  Currently this project is in Alpha release. Let’s write our first test Remove the basic test that is created for you. We will not use the default test but rather create our own SpecFlow “Feature” files. Add a new item to your project and select the SpecFlow Feature file under C#. Name your feature file as you do your class files after the test they are performing. Writing a feature file uses the Cucumber syntax of Given… When… Then.  Think of it in these terms.  Givens are the pre-conditions for the test.  The Whens are the actual steps for the test being performed.  The Thens are the verification steps that confirm your test either passed or failed.  All of these steps are generated into a an EasyTest format and executed against your XAF project.  You can find more on the Cucumber syntax by using the Secret Ninja Cucumber Scrolls.  This document has several good styles of tests, plus you can get your fill of Chuck Norris vs Ninjas.  Pretty humorous document but full of great content. My first test is going to test the entry of a new Album into the application and is outlined below. The Feature section at the top is more for your documentation purposes.  Try to be descriptive of the test so that it makes sense to the next person behind you.  The Scenario outline is described in the Ninja Scrolls, but think of it as test template.  You can write one test outline and have multiple datasets (Scenarios) executed against that test.  Here are the steps of my test and their descriptions Given I am starting a new test – tells our test to create a new EasyTest file And (Given) the application is open – tells EasyTest to open our application defined in the Config.xml When I am at the “Albums” screen – tells XAF to navigate to the Albums list view And (When) I click the “New:Album” button – tells XAF to click the New Album button on the ribbon And (When) I enter the following information – tells XAF to find the field on the screen and put the value in that field And (When) I click the “Save and Close” button – tells XAF to click the “Save and Close” button on the detail window Then I verify results as “user” – tells the testing framework to execute the EasyTest as your configured user Once you compile and prepare your tests you should see the following in your Test View.  For each of your CreateNewAlbum lines in your scenarios, you will see a new test ready to execute. From here you will use your testing framework of choice to execute the test.  This in turn will execute the EasyTest framework to call back into your XAF application and test your business application. Again, please remember that this is an early preview and we are still working out the details.  Please let us know if you have any comments/questions/concerns. Thanks and happy testing.

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• 24+ Coda Alternatives for Windows and Linux

  - by Matt

  Coda plays an important role in designing layout on Mac. There are numerous coda alternatives for windows and Linux too. It is not possible to describe each and everyone so some of the coda alternatives, which work on both windows and Linux platforms, are discussed below. EditPlus $35.00 Good thing about EditPlus is that it highlights URLs and email addresses, activating them when you ‘crtl + double-click’. It also has a built in browser for previewing HTML, and FTP and SFTP support. Also supports Macros and RegEx find and replace. UltraEdit $49.99 It is another good coda alternative for windows and Linux. It is the best suited editor for text, HTML and HEX. It also plays an advanced PHP, Perl, Java and JavaScript editor for programmers. It supports disk-based 64-bit or standard file handling on 32-bit Windows platforms or window 2000 and later versions. HippoEdit $39.95 HippoEDIT has the best autocomplete it gives pop a ‘tooltip’ above your cursor as you type, suggesting words you’ve already typed. It does syntax highlighting for over 2 dozen language. Sublime Text $59.00 Sublime Text awesome ‘zoomed out’ view of the file lets you focus on the area you want. It lets you open a local file when you right-click on its link, and there are a few automation features, so this would make a solid choice of a text editor. Textpad $24.70 TextPad is simple editor with nifty features such as column select, drag-and-drop text between files, and hyperlink support. It also supports large files. Aptana Free Aptana Studio is one of the best editors working on both windows and Linux. It is a complete web development setting that has a nice blend of powerful authoring tools with a collection of online hosting and collaboration services. It is quite helpful as it support for PHP, CSS, FTP, and more. SciTE Free It is a SCIntilla based Text Editor. It has gradually developed as a generally useful editor. It provides for building and running programs. It is best to be used for jobs with simple configurations. SciTE is currently available for Intel Win32 and Linux compatible operating systems with GTK+. It has been run on Windows XP and on Fedora 8 and Ubuntu 7.10 with GTK+ 2.12 E Text Editor $34.96 E Text Editor is a new text editor for Windows, which also works on Linux as well. It has powerful editing features and also some unique abilities. It makes text manipulation quite fast and easy, and makes user focus on his writing as it automatically does all the manual work. It can be extend it in any language. It supports Text Mate bundles, thus allows the user to tap into a huge and active community. Editra Free Editra is an upcoming editor, with some fantastic features such as user profiles, auto-completion, session saving, and syntax highlighing for 60+ languages. Plugins can extend the feature set, offering an integrated python console, FTP client, file browser, and calculator, among others. PSPad Free PSPad is a good Template for writing CSS, as it an internal web browser, and a macro recorder to the table. It also supports hex editing, and some degree of code compiling. JEdit Free It is a mature programmer’s text editor and has taken a good deal of time to be developed as it is today. It is better than many costlier development tools due to its features and simplicity of use. It has been released as free software with full source code, provided under the terms of the GPL 2.0. Which also adds to its attractiveness. NEdit Free It is a multi-purpose text editor for the X Window System, which also works on Linux. It combines a standard, easy to use, graphical user interface with the full functionality and stability required by users who edit text for long period a day. It also provides for thorough support for development in various languages. It also facilitates the use of text processors, and other tools at the same time. It can be used productively by anyone who needs to edit text. It is quite a user-friendly tool. Its salient features include syntax highlighting with built in pattern, auto indent, tab emulation, block indentation adjustment etc. As of version 5.1, NEdit may be freely distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. MadEdit Free Mad Edit is an Open-Source and Cross-Platform Text/Hex Editor. It is written in C++ and wxWidgets. MadEdit can edit files in Text/Column/Hex modes. It also supports many useful functions, such as Syntax Highlighting, Word Wrap, Encoding for UTF8/16/32,and others. It also supports word count, which makes it quite a useful text editor for both windows and Linux. It has been recently modified on 10/09/2010. KompoZer Free Kompozer is a complete web authoring system that has a combination of web file management and easy-to-use WYSIWYG web page editing. KompoZer has been designed to be completely and extensively easy to use. It is thus an ideal tool for non-technical computer users who want to create an attractive, professional-looking web site without knowing HTML or web coding. It is based on the NVU source code. Vim Free Vim or “Vi IMproved” is an advanced text editor. Its salient features are syntax highlighting, word completion and it also has a huge amount of contributed content. Vim has several “modes” on offer for editing, which adds to the efficiency in editing. Thus it becomes a non-user-friendly application but it is also strength for its users. The normal mode binds alphanumeric keys to task-oriented commands. The visual mode highlights text. More tools for search & replace, defining functions, etc. are offered through command line mode. Vim comes with complete help. NotePad ++ Free One of the the best free text editor for Windows out there; with support for simple things—like syntax highlighting and folding—all the way up to FTP, Notepad++ should tick most of the boxes Notepad2 Free Notepad2 is also based on the Scintilla editing engine, but it’s much simpler than Notepad++. It bills itself as being fast, light-weight, and Notepad-like. Crimson Editor Free Crimson Editor has the ability to edit remote files, using a built-in FTP client; there’s also a spell checker. TotalEdit Free TotalEdit allows file comparison, RegEx search and replace, and has multiple options for file backup / versioning. For cleanup, it offers (X)HTML and XML customizable formatting, and a spell checker. In-Type Free ConTEXT Free SourceEdit Free SourceEdit includes features such as clipboard history, syntax highlighting and autocompletion for a decent set of languages. A hex editor and FTP client. RJ TextED Free RJ TextED supports integration with TopStyle Lite. Provides HTML validation and formatting. It includes an FTP client, a file browser, and a code browser, as well as a character map and support for email. GEDIT Free It is one of the best coda alternatives for windows and Linux. It has syntax highlighting and is best suitable for programming. It has many attractive features such as full support for UTF-8, undo/redo, and clipboard support, search and replace, configurable syntax highlighting for various languages and many more supportive features. It is extensible with plug ins. Other important coda alternatives for windows and Linux are Redcar, Bluefish Editor, NVU, Ruby Mine, Slick Edit, Geany, Editra, txt2html and CSSED. There are many more. Its up to user to decide which one suits best to his requirements. Related posts:10 Useful Text Editor For Developer Applications to Install & Run Windows on Linux Open Source WYSIWYG Text Editors

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• localhost/phpmyadmin pulls blank page

  - by Atul Modi

  When I tried configuring local machine as a Internet Gateway with website development capabilities over it and I installed all required software into it. I also had disable the selinux into it. But PROBLEM is when I do http://localhost/phpMyAdmin or all lower case than the page shows it as a blank page. I am pasting code from httpd.conf file into this as well as from phpMyAdmin.conf file I am using Fedora 16 for this. httpd.conf ServerTokens OS ServerRoot "/etc/httpd" PidFile run/httpd.pid Timeout 60 KeepAlive Off MaxKeepAliveRequests 100 KeepAliveTimeout 5 StartServers 8 MinSpareServers 5 MaxSpareServers 20 ServerLimit 256 MaxClients 256 MaxRequestsPerChild 4000 StartServers 4 MaxClients 300 MinSpareThreads 25 MaxSpareThreads 75 ThreadsPerChild 25 MaxRequestsPerChild 0 Listen 80 LoadModule auth_basic_module modules/mod_auth_basic.so LoadModule auth_digest_module modules/mod_auth_digest.so LoadModule authn_file_module modules/mod_authn_file.so LoadModule authn_alias_module modules/mod_authn_alias.so LoadModule authn_anon_module modules/mod_authn_anon.so LoadModule authn_dbm_module modules/mod_authn_dbm.so LoadModule authn_default_module modules/mod_authn_default.so LoadModule authz_host_module modules/mod_authz_host.so LoadModule authz_user_module modules/mod_authz_user.so LoadModule authz_owner_module modules/mod_authz_owner.so LoadModule authz_groupfile_module modules/mod_authz_groupfile.so LoadModule authz_dbm_module modules/mod_authz_dbm.so LoadModule authz_default_module modules/mod_authz_default.so LoadModule authn_dbd_module modules/mod_authn_dbd.so LoadModule dbd_module modules/mod_dbd.so LoadModule ldap_module modules/mod_ldap.so LoadModule authnz_ldap_module modules/mod_authnz_ldap.so LoadModule include_module modules/mod_include.so LoadModule log_config_module modules/mod_log_config.so LoadModule logio_module modules/mod_logio.so LoadModule env_module modules/mod_env.so LoadModule ext_filter_module modules/mod_ext_filter.so LoadModule mime_magic_module modules/mod_mime_magic.so LoadModule expires_module modules/mod_expires.so LoadModule deflate_module modules/mod_deflate.so LoadModule headers_module modules/mod_headers.so LoadModule usertrack_module modules/mod_usertrack.so LoadModule setenvif_module modules/mod_setenvif.so LoadModule mime_module modules/mod_mime.so LoadModule dav_module modules/mod_dav.so LoadModule status_module modules/mod_status.so LoadModule autoindex_module modules/mod_autoindex.so LoadModule info_module modules/mod_info.so LoadModule dav_fs_module modules/mod_dav_fs.so LoadModule vhost_alias_module modules/mod_vhost_alias.so LoadModule negotiation_module modules/mod_negotiation.so LoadModule dir_module modules/mod_dir.so LoadModule actions_module modules/mod_actions.so LoadModule speling_module modules/mod_speling.so LoadModule userdir_module modules/mod_userdir.so LoadModule alias_module modules/mod_alias.so LoadModule substitute_module modules/mod_substitute.so LoadModule rewrite_module modules/mod_rewrite.so LoadModule proxy_module modules/mod_proxy.so LoadModule proxy_balancer_module modules/mod_proxy_balancer.so LoadModule proxy_ftp_module modules/mod_proxy_ftp.so LoadModule proxy_http_module modules/mod_proxy_http.so LoadModule proxy_ajp_module modules/mod_proxy_ajp.so LoadModule proxy_connect_module modules/mod_proxy_connect.so LoadModule cache_module modules/mod_cache.so LoadModule suexec_module modules/mod_suexec.so LoadModule disk_cache_module modules/mod_disk_cache.so LoadModule cgi_module modules/mod_cgi.so LoadModule version_module modules/mod_version.so Include conf.d/*.conf User apache Group apache ServerAdmin root@localhost UseCanonicalName Off DocumentRoot "/var/www/html" Options FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Options Indexes FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all UserDir disabled DirectoryIndex index.html index.htm index.php AccessFileName .htaccess Order allow,deny Deny from all Satisfy All TypesConfig /etc/mime.types DefaultType text/plain MIMEMagicFile conf/magic HostnameLookups Off ErrorLog logs/error_log LogLevel warn LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b \"%{Referer}i\" \"%{User-Agent}i\"" combined LogFormat "%h %l %u %t \"%r\" %s %b" common LogFormat "%{Referer}i - %U" referer LogFormat "%{User-agent}i" agent CustomLog logs/access_log combined ServerSignature On Alias /icons/ "/var/www/icons/" Options Indexes MultiViews FollowSymLinks AllowOverride None Order allow,deny Allow from all # Location of the WebDAV lock database. DAVLockDB /var/lib/dav/lockdb ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ "/var/www/cgi-bin/" AllowOverride None Options None Order allow,deny Allow from all IndexOptions FancyIndexing VersionSort NameWidth=* HTMLTable Charset=UTF-8 AddIconByEncoding (CMP,/icons/compressed.gif) x-compress x-gzip AddIconByType (TXT,/icons/text.gif) text/* AddIconByType (IMG,/icons/image2.gif) image/* AddIconByType (SND,/icons/sound2.gif) audio/* AddIconByType (VID,/icons/movie.gif) video/* AddIcon /icons/binary.gif .bin .exe AddIcon /icons/binhex.gif .hqx AddIcon /icons/tar.gif .tar AddIcon /icons/world2.gif .wrl .wrl.gz .vrml .vrm .iv AddIcon /icons/compressed.gif .Z .z .tgz .gz .zip AddIcon /icons/a.gif .ps .ai .eps AddIcon /icons/layout.gif .html .shtml .htm .pdf AddIcon /icons/text.gif .txt AddIcon /icons/c.gif .c AddIcon /icons/p.gif .pl .py AddIcon /icons/f.gif .for AddIcon /icons/dvi.gif .dvi AddIcon /icons/uuencoded.gif .uu AddIcon /icons/script.gif .conf .sh .shar .csh .ksh .tcl AddIcon /icons/tex.gif .tex AddIcon /icons/bomb.gif core AddIcon /icons/back.gif .. AddIcon /icons/hand.right.gif README AddIcon /icons/folder.gif ^^DIRECTORY^^ AddIcon /icons/blank.gif ^^BLANKICON^^ DefaultIcon /icons/unknown.gif ReadmeName README.html HeaderName HEADER.html IndexIgnore .??* *~ # HEADER README* RCS CVS *,v *,t AddLanguage ca .ca AddLanguage cs .cz .cs AddLanguage da .dk AddLanguage de .de AddLanguage el .el AddLanguage en .en AddLanguage eo .eo AddLanguage es .es AddLanguage et .et AddLanguage fr .fr AddLanguage he .he AddLanguage hr .hr AddLanguage it .it AddLanguage ja .ja AddLanguage ko .ko AddLanguage ltz .ltz AddLanguage nl .nl AddLanguage nn .nn AddLanguage no .no AddLanguage pl .po AddLanguage pt .pt AddLanguage pt-BR .pt-br AddLanguage ru .ru AddLanguage sv .sv AddLanguage zh-CN .zh-cn AddLanguage zh-TW .zh-tw LanguagePriority en ca cs da de el eo es et fr he hr it ja ko ltz nl nn no pl pt pt-BR ru sv zh-CN zh-TW ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback AddDefaultCharset UTF-8 AddType application/x-tar .tgz AddType application/x-httpd-php .php AddType application/x-httpd-php .xml AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .xml AddType application/x-compress .Z AddType application/x-gzip .gz .tgz AddType application/x-x509-ca-cert .crt AddType application/x-pkcs7-crl .crl AddHandler type-map var AddType text/html .shtml AddOutputFilter INCLUDES .shtml Alias /error/ "/var/www/error/" AllowOverride None Options IncludesNoExec AddOutputFilter Includes html AddHandler type-map var Order allow,deny Allow from all LanguagePriority en ForceLanguagePriority Prefer Fallback ErrorDocument 400 /error/HTTP_BAD_REQUEST.html.var ErrorDocument 401 /error/HTTP_UNAUTHORIZED.html.var ErrorDocument 403 /error/HTTP_FORBIDDEN.html.var ErrorDocument 404 /error/HTTP_NOT_FOUND.html.var ErrorDocument 405 /error/HTTP_METHOD_NOT_ALLOWED.html.var ErrorDocument 408 /error/HTTP_REQUEST_TIME_OUT.html.var ErrorDocument 500 /error/HTTP_INTERNAL_SERVER_ERROR.html.var ErrorDocument 503 /error/HTTP_SERVICE_UNAVAILABLE.html.var BrowserMatch "Mozilla/2" nokeepalive BrowserMatch "MSIE 4.0b2;" nokeepalive downgrade-1.0 force-response-1.0 BrowserMatch "RealPlayer 4.0" force-response-1.0 BrowserMatch "Java/1.0" force-response-1.0 BrowserMatch "JDK/1.0" force-response-1.0 BrowserMatch "Microsoft Data Access Internet Publishing Provider" redirect-carefully BrowserMatch "MS FrontPage" redirect-carefully BrowserMatch "^WebDrive" redirect-carefully BrowserMatch "^WebDAVFS/1.[0123]" redirect-carefully BrowserMatch "^gnome-vfs/1.0" redirect-carefully BrowserMatch "^XML Spy" redirect-carefully BrowserMatch "^Dreamweaver-WebDAV-SCM1" redirect-carefully Order allow,deny Allow from all # phpMyAdmin.conf Alias /phpMyAdmin /usr/share/phpMyAdmin Alias /phpmyadmin /usr/share/phpMyAdmin Order Allow,Deny Allow from All Allow from 127.0.0.1 Allow from ::1 Order Allow,Deny Allow from All Allow from 127.0.0.1 Allow from ::1 Order Deny,Allow Deny from All Allow from None Order Deny,Allow Deny from All Allow from None Order Deny,Allow Deny from All Allow from None Can anyone help into this area please. Urgent reply will be appreciatable because i am struggling since one and half month for this matter. thank you, Atul

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• Microsoft Channel 9 Interviews Mei Liang to Introduce Sample Browser Extension for Visual Studio 2012 and 2010

  - by Jialiang

  This morning, Microsoft Channel 9 interviewed Mei Liang - Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - to introduce the newest Sample Browser extension for Visual Studio 2012 &2010.   This extension provides a way for developers to search and download more than 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio, including over 700 Windows 8 samples and more than 1000 All-In-One Code Framework customer-driven code samples. Mei shows us not only the extension, but also the standalone version of the Sample Browser.   http://channel9.msdn.com/Shows/Visual-Studio-Toolbox/Sample-Browser-Visual-Studio-Extension   Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, working in close partnership with the Visual Studio product team and MSDN Samples Gallery, developed the Sample Browser extension for both Visual Studio 2012 and Visual Studio 2010.  As an effort to evolve the code sample use experience and improve developers' productivity, the Sample Browser allows programmers to search, download and open over 4500 code samples from within Visual Studio with just a few simple clicks.  If no existing code sample can meet the needs, developers can even request a code sample easily from Microsoft thanks to the free “Sample Request Service” offered by Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.  Through innovations, the teams hope to put the power of tens of thousands of code samples at developers’ fingertips. In short 3 months, the Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension has been installed by 100K global users.  It is also selected as one of the six most highly regarded and commonly used tools for Visual Studio that will make your programming experience feel like never before.   Got to love the All-In-One Code Framework team! You guys know this is THE go to source for code samples. Get this extension and you'll never need to leave VS2012 (well except for bathroom trips, but that's TMI anyway... ;) Read More... From: Greg Duncan (Author of CoolThingOfTheDay) 9/6/2011 12:00 AM The one software design pattern that I have used in just about every application I’ve written is “cut-and-paste,” so the new “Sample Browser” – read sample as a noun not an adjective – is a great boon to my productivity. Read More... From: Jim O'Neil (Microsoft Developer Evangelist) 9/28/2011 12:00 AM Install: http://aka.ms/samplebrowservsx Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework also offers the standalone version of Sample Browser.   The standalone version is particularly useful to Visual Studio Express edition or Visual Studio 2008 users, who cannot install the Sample Browser Visual Studio extension.   From Grassroots’ Passion for Developers to the Innovation of Sample Browser This Sample Browser has come a very long way improving the code sample use experience.  The history can be traced back to a grass-root innovation three years ago.   In early 2009, a few MSDN forum support engineers observed that lots of developers were struggling to work in Visual Studio without adequate code samples. Programming tasks seem harder than they should be when you only read through the documentation.  Just a couple of lines of sample code could answer a lot of questions.   They had a brilliant idea: What if we produce code samples based on developers’ frequently asked programming tasks in forums, social networks and support incidents, and then aggregate all our sample code in a one-stop library to benefit developers?  And what if developers can request code samples directly from Microsoft, free of charge?  This small group of grassroots at Microsoft devoted their nights and weekends to prototyping such a customer-driven code sample library.  This simple idea eventually turned into “Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework”, aka. OneCode.  With the support from more and more passionate developers at Microsoft and the leaders in the Community and Online Support team and Microsoft Commercial Technical Services (CTS), the idea has become a continually growing library with over 1000 customer-driven code samples covering almost all Microsoft development technologies.  These code samples originated from developers’ common pains and needs should be able to help many developers.  However, if developers cannot easily discover the code samples, the effort would still be in vain.  So in early 2010, the team started the idea of Sample Browser to ease the discovery and access of these samples.  In just two months, the first version of Sample Browser was finished and released by a passionate developer.  It was a very simple application, only supporting the basic sample offline search.  Users had to download the whole 100MB sample package containing all samples first, and run the Sample Browser to search locally.   Though developers could not search and download samples on-demand, this simple application laid a solid foundation for the team’s continuous innovations of Sample Browsing experience. In 2011, MSDN Samples Gallery had a big refresh.  The online sample experience was brought to a new level thanks to its PM Steven Wilssens and the gallery team’s effort.  Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Team saw the opportunity to realize the “on-demand” sample search and download feature with the new gallery.  The two teams formed a strong partnership to upload all the customer-driven code samples to MSDN Samples Gallery, and released the new version of Sample Browser to support “on-demand” sample downloading in April, 2011.  Mei Liang, the Group Manager of Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, was interviewed by Channel 9 to demo the Sample Browser.  Customers love the effort and the innovation!!  This can be clearly seen from the user comments in the publishing page.   It was very encouraging to the team of All-In-One Code Framework. The team continues innovating and evolving the Sample Browser.  They found the Visual Studio product team this time, and integrated the Sample Browsing experience into the latest Visual Studio 2012.  The newly released Sample Browser Visual Studio extension makes good use of Visual Studio 2012 IDE such as the new Quick Launch bar, the code editor, the toolbar and menus to offer easy access to thousands of code samples from within the development environment.   The Visual Studio Senior Program Manager Lead - Anthony Cangialosi, the Program Manager - Murali Krishna Hosabettu Kamalesha, the MSDN Samples Gallery PM – Steven Wilssens, and the Visual Studio Senior Escalation Engineer - Ed Dore shared lots of insightful suggestions with the team.  Thanks to the brilliant cross-group collaboration inside Microsoft, tens of new features including “Local Language Support” and “Favorite Samples”, as well as a face-lifted user interface, were added to further enhance the user experience. Since the new Sample Browser Visual Studio extension was released, it has received over 100 thousand downloads and five-star ratings.  A customer told the team that he officially falls in LOVE with Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework.   The Sample Browser Innovation for Developers Never Stops! The teams would never stop improving the Sample Browser for developers’ easier lives.   The Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework, Visual Studio and MSDN Samples Gallery teams are working closely to develop the next version of Sample Browser.  Here are the key functions in development or in discussion.  We hope to learn your feedback of the effort.  You can submit your suggestions to the official Visual Studio UserVoice site.  We look forward to hearing from you! 1) Offline Sample Search This is one of the top feature requests that we have received for Sample Browser.   The Sample Browser will support the offline search mode so that developers can search downloaded code samples when they do not have internet access.  This is particularly useful to developers in Enterprises with strict proxy settings. 2) Code Snippet Support and Visual Studio Editor Integration Today, the Sample Browser supports downloading and opening sample project.   However, when developers are searching for code samples, a better user experience would be to see the code snippets in the search result first.  Developers can quickly decide if the code snippet is relevant.   They can also drag and drop the code snippet into the Visual Studio Editor to solve some simple programming tasks.  If developers want to learn more about the sample, they can then choose to download the sample project and open it in Visual Studio. 3) Enterprise Sample Sharing and Searching Large enterprises have many code samples for their own internal tools and APIs that are not appropriate to be shared publicly in MSDN Samples Gallery.   In that case, today’s Sample Browser and MSDN Samples Gallery cannot help these Enterprise developers.  The idea is to create a Code Sample Repository in TFS, and provide an additional Visual Studio extension for Enterprise developers to quickly share code samples to TFS.  The Sample Browser can be configured to connect to the TFS Code Sample Repository to search for and download code samples.  This would potentially enable the Enterprise developers to be more productive. 4) Windows Store Sample Browser With the upcoming release of Windows RT and Microsoft Surface, developers are facing a completely new world of application platform.   Not like laptop, people would often use Microsoft Surface in commute and in travel.  Internet may not be available.  Today’s Visual Studio cannot be installed and run on Windows RT, however, our enthusiastic developers would hope to spend every minute on code.  They love code!   The idea is to create a Windows Store version of Sample Browser. Search and download samples from the online Samples Gallery when the user has internet access. Browse the sample code files and learn the sample documentation of downloaded samples with or without internet access.   In addition to the "browse” function, the Sample Browser could further support “bookmark”, “learning notes”, “code review”, and “quick social sharing". Make full use of the new touch and Windows Store App UI to give developers a new “relaxing” code browsing and learning experience, anytime, anywhere. With Windows Store Sample Browser, developers can enjoy A new relaxing and enjoyable experience for developers to learn code samples You do not have to sit in front of desk and formally open Visual Studio to read code samples.  Many developers get sub-health due to staying in front of desk for a very long time.  With Windows RT, Microsoft Surface and this Windows Store Sample Browser combining with the online MSDN Samples Gallery, developers can sit in a sofa, relaxingly hold the tablet and enjoy to learn their beloved sample code with detailed documentation. Anytime, anywhere Whether you have internet access or not, whether you are at home, in office, or in commute/airplane, developers can always easily access and browse the sample code. Lightweight and fast Particularly for learning a small sample project, the Windows Store Sample Browser would be more lightweight and faster to open and browse the sample code. Please submit your feedback and suggestion to Visual Studio UserVoice.  We look forward to hearing from you and deliver a better and better sample use experience.  Happy Coding!   Special Thanks to People working behind the latest release of Sample Browser Visual Studio Extension and the great partnerships!

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012Popular ReleasesKanboxAPI: KanboxAPI beta: ????? Token Info List DownloadMedia Companion: Media Companion 3.502b: It has been a slow week, but this release addresses a couple of recent bugs: Movies Multi-part Movies - Existing .nfo files that differed in name from the first part, were missed and scraped again. Trailers - MC attempted to scrape info for existing trailers. TV Shows Show Scraping - shows available only in the non-default language would not show up in the main browser. The correct language can now be selected using the TV Show Selector for a single show. General Will no longer prompt for ...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.5.2012.0508、XCoder v4.7.2012.0320: X????： 1，????For .Net 4.0?? XCoder????： 1，???????，????X????，?????? XCode????： 1，Insert/Update/Delete???????????????，???SQL???? 2，IEntityOperate?????? 3，????????IEntityTree 4，????????????????? 5，?????????? 6，??????????????dycom: v1.0: DYCom ????????：Silverlight, Windows phone 7.5.NETMF_for_STM32: Beta 1 Release: First public beta release.Google Book Downloader: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports Cpython, IronPython, Jython and Pypy • Python editor with advanced member, signature intellisense and refactoring • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 1: JayData 1.0.0 RC1 Refresh 1 JayData is a unified data access API to webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook and YQL. Overview The major feature of this release is related to OData provider, FunctionImport is now generally supported. Now you can consume OData service operations (WebMethods). We extended the JaySvcUtil to generate the necessary metadata. We included many fixes, such as the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliSense optimalization (RC1 was optimized only to VS11). It's recommended to upgrade...AD Gallery: AD Gallery 1.2.7: NewsFixed a bug which caused the current thumbnail not to be highlighted Added a hook to take complete control over how descriptions are handled, take a look under Documentation for more info Added removeAllImages()51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.4.8: One Click Install from NuGet Data ChangesIncludes 42 new browser properties in both the Lite and Premium data sets. Premium Data includes many new devices including Nokia Lumia 900, BlackBerry 9220 and HTC One, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 range and Samsung Galaxy S III. Lite data includes devices released in January 2012. Changes to Version 2.1.4.81. The IsFirstTime method of the RedirectModule will now return the same value when called multiple times for the same request. This was prevent...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection ver 2.2 (WinRT supported): Added NamedParameterAttribute, OptionalParameterAttribute. Added behaviors ICycleDependencyBehavior, IResolveUnregisteredTypeBehavior. Added WinRT support. Added support for NET 4.5. Added support for MVC 4.NShape - .Net Diagramming Framework for Industrial Applications: NShape 2.0.1: Changes in 2.0.1:Bugfixes: IRepository.Insert(Shape shape) and IRepository.Insert(IEnumerable<Shape> shapes) no longer insert shape connections. Several context menu items did display although the required permission was not granted Display did not reset the visible and active layers when changing the diagram NullReferenceException when pressing Del key and no shape was selected Changed Behavior: LayerCollection.Find("") no longer throws an exception. Improvements: Display does not rese...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.11.6: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????，????1M，????，????，?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????，??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??，????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDo...sb0t: sb0t 4.64: New commands added: #scribble <url> #adminscribble on #adminscribble offDocument.Editor: 2012.4: Whats new for Document.Editor 2012.4: Improved Template support Improved Options Dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 5: New feature - Added ItemIsReference, ItemReferenceLoopHandling, ItemTypeNameHandling, ItemConverterType to JsonPropertyAttribute New feature - Added ItemRequired to JsonObjectAttribute New feature - Added Path to JsonWriterException Change - Improved deserializer call stack memory usage Change - Moved the PDB files out of the NuGet package into a symbols package Fix - Fixed infinite loop from an input error when reading an array and error handling is enabled Fix - Fixed base objec...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.1: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.1 (1)????????????????(Ver5.6.0??)??? (2)HTTP?????SSL????????????（Ver5.6.0??）??? (3)HTTP?????2G??????????????????????????? (4)HTP????　?????????ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.5: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-05-06 v3.1.5 -????????：grid/grid_twogrid.aspx。 +?...SharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.2: Please see http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/15772.aspx for the release announcement.Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.4: Taskbar icon overlay (number of unread items) can now be switched off in preferences (Windows Vista / 7 only) Maximize button now can be toggled to be fullscreen (as befor) or only normal maximize (taskbar stays visible) in preferences List of feeds is now sorted by alphabetNew Projects3D Scene Editor: A generic 3d level editor built using XNA to speed up designing and building game levels.Attribute Based Cache using Unity Interception: Unity interception handler attribute for Caching which allows to apply boiler plate caching pattern to classes, and class members directly, without configuring them in the application configuration file. Configure your choice of Cache Provider (ObjectCache, Azure included) in the Unity IoC Container and apply the attribute to the method which you want to cache AutoCompleteBox for WinRT: None yetBAC2 Bachelor's Thesis Source Code: The source code of my Bachelor's ThesisBAMabase: It's a bamabase.BBSProject: BBSProjectBrain 2 - Game Engine: Brain 2 is a Game Engine that runs on multiple platforms.cobra-winldtp: Cobra - Windows version of Linux Desktop Testing Project (WinLDTP) - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org LDTP is a GUI test automation tool works on both Windows and Linux platform Windows GUI test automation tool written in C# and test scripts can be written in Python for now. Ruby API will be added soon.CS322: C# Programski jezikDoxBotPlugin: The DoxBotPlugin is a Plug-In for Ice-Chat9 that allows a user to use Icechat9 as both a normal IRC client and to switch on bot mode in certain channels to have DoxBotPlugin act on their behalf.dycom: DYCom??(DY Communication)???????????,?????????????????.????????????????. ??????????????????????,?????????????????。Eyes Protector: PL: Program pomagajacy w ochronie oczu przed przemeczeniem zwiazanym ze zbyt dluga praca przy komputerze. EN: ---kshell: ????Linux??????Lumia: This is Lumia project.MacroDoc: MacroDoc is an engine written in C# for composing documents from reusable pieces of structure and content.Mssql: This is Sql Server project.NETMF_for_STM32: This is the Codeplex project for NETMF for STM32 (F4 Edition). Ocular - a free, open source WYSIWYG editor for HTML: Ocular is a free C# WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Adobe Dreamweaver. We are always looking for contributors, so please help us!PeopleCredit: Prototype web service to maintain all employee credits.Project Server workflow: This workflow creates the project site for Basic project plan EPT when workflow task is approved.(This is the correction done over the Branching workflow provided with Project Server 2010 SDK). Workflow task is created using PSWApprovalTask Content type in Project Server Workflow Task List. Quick Reminder: PL: Program pomagajacy zapisac szybkie przypomnienia podczas pracy przy komputerze. EN: ---Random Projects: My random projects...Recommendation Engine Demo: How does the Amazon recommendation works? This is about visualizing the item to item collaborations filtering mechanism using a item-to-item matrix table. The item-to-item matrix, the vectors and the calculated data values are displayed. There are n different items and the item recommendation can display up to m items. There are implemented different item-to-item neighborhood functions. A simple max count of seen neighbor items, the Cosine Similarity and the Jaccard Index. A t...SaveSeaTurtle: Sea TurtleSharpGpx: SharpGpx implements an object model for reading and writing GPX (GPS eXchange Format).SlimDo: SlimDo is a scripting language coded in C#Spring: This is Spring.Net projectSQL Server Quick Tools Pack: SQL Server Quick Tools Pack for your sql server SuLD framework: Supported Link Discovery framework (SuLD) is a tool to discover links to multiple Linked Data datasets. Finding is supported by various features like synonym module or autocomplete.TQuery.Net: .Net??????WAAP - World of warcraft Auction house Analysis Project: A project in which we try to analyse prices and auctioneers on the various World of Warcraft Auction housesxhttp.net: The Xhttp.Net framework is a dotnet implementation of the Extended Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http://www.xhttp.org), with simple service integration, full arguments support including Base64 and DateTime, single and multiple asynchronous requests, data streaming, remote API creation from XHTTP service schemas, and a runtime plugin architecture.

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• tfs 2010 RC Agile Process template update New Task progress report

  Maybe my next post will just be about why I am so excited and impressed with the out of the box templates.  But, for this first blog with my new focus, I thought I would just walk through the process I went through to create a task progress report (to enhance the out of the box Agile template). So, I started with the MSF for Agile Development 5.0 RC template.  After reviewing the template, I came away pretty excited about many of the new reports.  I am especially excited about the reporting services reports.  The big advantage I see here is that these are querying the Warehouse directly instead of the Analysis Services Cube which means that they are much closer to real-time which I find very important for reports like Burndown and task status.  One report that I focused on right away was the User Story Progress Report.  An overview is shown below: This report is very useful, but a lot of our internal managers really prefer to manage at the task level and either dont have stories in TFS or would like to view this type of report for tasks in addition to the User Stories.  So, what did I do? Step 1: Download the Agile Template In VS 2010 RC, open Process Template Manager from Team->Team Project Collection Settings.  Download the MSF for Agile Development template to your local file system.  A project template is a folder of xml files.  There is a ProcessTemplate.xml in the root and then a bunch of directories for things like Work Item Definitions and Queries, Reports, Shared Documents and Source Control Settings.  Step 2: Copy the folder My plan here is to make a new template with all of my modifications.  You can also just enhance update the MSF template.  However, I think it is cleaner when you start making modifications to make your own template.  So, copy the folder and name it with your new template name. Step 3: Change Template Name Open ProcessTemplate.xml and change the <name> of the template. Step 4: Copy the rdl of the Report you want to use a starting point In my case, I copied Stories Progress.rdl and named the file Task Progress Breakdown.rdl.  I reviewed the requirements for the new report with some of the users here and came up with this plan.  Should show tasks and be expandable to show subtasks.  Should add Assigned To and Estimated Finish Date as 2 extra columns. Step 5: Walkthrough the existing report to understand how it works The main thing that I do here is try to get the sql to run in SQL Management Studio.  So, I can walkthrough the process of building up the data for the report. After analyzing this particular report I found a couple of very useful things.  One, this report is already built to display subtasks if I just flip the IncludeTasks flag to 1.  So, if you are using Stories and have tasks assigned to each story.  This might give you everything you want.  For my purposes, I did make that change to the Stories Progress report as I find it to be a more useful report to be able to see the tasks that comprise each story.  But, I still wanted a task only version with the additional fields. Step 6: Update the report definition I tend to work on rdl in visual studio directly as xml.  Especially when I am just altering an existing report, I find it easier than trying to deal with the BI Studio designer.  For my report I made the following changes. Updated Fields Removed Stack Rank and Replaced with Priority since we dont use Stack Rank Added FinishDate and AssignedTo Changed the root deliverable SQL to pull @tasks instead of @deliverablecategory and added a join CurrentWorkItemView for FinishDate and Assigned to SELECT cwi.[System_Id] AS ID FROM [CurrentWorkItemView] cwi             WHERE cwi.[System_WorkItemType] IN (@Task)             AND cwi.[ProjectNodeGUID] = @ProjectGuid SELECT lh.SourceWorkItemID AS ID FROM FactWorkItemLinkHistory lh             INNER JOIN [CurrentWorkItemView] cwi ON lh.TargetWorkItemID = cwi.[System_Id]             WHERE lh.WorkItemLinkTypeSK = @ParentWorkItemLinkTypeSK                 AND lh.RemovedDate = CONVERT(DATETIME, '9999', 126)                 AND lh.TeamProjectCollectionSK = @TeamProjectCollectionSK                 AND cwi.[System_WorkItemType] NOT IN (@DeliverableCategory) Added AssignedTo and FinishDate columns to the @Rollups table Added two columns to the table used for column headers <Tablix Name="ProgressTable">         <TablixBody>           <TablixColumns>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>2.7625in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>0.5125in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>3.4625in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>0.7625in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>1.25in</Width>             </TablixColumn>             <TablixColumn>               <Width>1.25in</Width>             </TablixColumn>           </TablixColumns> Added Cells for the two new headers Added Cells to the data table to include the two new values (Assigned to & Finish Date) Changed a bunch of widths that would change the format of the report to display landscape and have room for the two additional columns Set the Value of the IncludeTasks Parameter to 1 <ReportParameter Name="IncludeTasks">       <DataType>Integer</DataType>       <DefaultValue>         <Values>           <Value>=1</Value>         </Values>       </DefaultValue>       <Prompt>IncludeTasks</Prompt>       <Hidden>true</Hidden>     </ReportParameter> Change a few descriptions on how the report should be used This is the resulting report I have attached the final rdl. Step 7: Update ReportTasks.xml Last step before the template is ready for use is to update the reportTasks.xml file in the reports folder.  This file defines the reports that are available in the template.           <report name="Task Progress Breakdown" filename="Reports\Task Progress Breakdown.rdl" folder="Project Management" cacheExpiration="30">             <parameters>               <parameter name="ExplicitProject" value="" />             </parameters>             <datasources>               <reference name="/Tfs2010ReportDS" dsname="TfsReportDS" />             </datasources>           </report> Step 8: Upload the template Open the process Template Manager just like Step 1.  And upload the new template. Thats it.  One other note, if you want to add this report to existing team project you will have to go into reportmanager (the reporting services portal) and upload the rdl to that projects directory.Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• The APEX of Business Value...or...the Business Value of APEX? Oracle Cloud Takes Oracle APEX to New Heights!

  - by Gene Eun

  The attraction of Oracle Application Express (APEX) has increased tremendously with the recent launch of the Oracle Cloud. APEX already supported departmental development and deployment of business applications with minimal involvement from the IT department. Positioned as the ideal replacement for MS Access, APEX probably has managed better to capture the eye of developers and was used for enterprise application development at least as much as for the kind of tactical applications that Oracle strategically positioned it for. With APEX as PaaS from the Oracle Cloud, a leap is made to a much higher level of business value. Now the IT department is not even needed to make infrastructure available with a database running  on it. All the business needs is a credit card. And the business application that is developed, managed and used from the cloud through a standard browser can now just as easily be accessed by users from around the world as by users from the business department itself. As a bonus – the development of the APEX application is also done in the cloud – with no special demands on the location or the enterprise access privileges of the developers. To sum it up: APEX from Oracle Cloud Database Service get the development environment up and running in minutes no involvement from the internal IT department required (not for infrastructure, platform, or development) superior availability and scalability is offered by Oracle users from anywhere in the world can be invited to access the application developers from anywhere in the world can participate in creating and maintaining the application In addition: because the Oracle Cloud platform is the same as the on-premise platform, you can still decide to move the APEX application between the cloud and the local environment – and back again. The REST-ful services that are available through APEX allow programmatic interaction with the database under the APEX application. That means that this database can be synchronized with on premise databases or data stores in (other) clouds. Through the Oracle Cloud Messaging Service, the APEX application can easily enter into asynchronous conversations with other APEX applications, Fusion Middleware applications (ADF, SOA, BPM) and any other type of REST-enabled application. In my opinion, now, for the first time perhaps, APEX offers the attraction to the business that has been suggested before: because of the cloud, all the business needs is  a credit card (a budget of $175 per month), an internet-connection and a browser. Not like before, with a PC hidden under a desk or a database running somewhere in the data center. No matter how unattended: equipment is needed, power is consumed, the database needs to be kept running and if Oracle Database XE does not suffice, software licenses are required as well. And this set up always has a security challenge associated with it. The cloud fee for the Oracle Cloud Database Service includes infrastructure, power, licenses, availability, platform upgrades, a collection of reusable application components and the development and runtime environments containing the APEX platform. Of course this not only means that business departments can move quickly without having to convince their IT colleagues to move along – it also means that small organizations that do not even have IT colleagues can do the same. Getting tailored applications or applications up and running to get in touch with users and customers all over the world is now within easy reach for small outfits – without any investment. My misunderstanding For a long time, I was under the impression that the essence of APEX was that the business could create applications themselves – meaning that business ‘people’ would actually go into APEX to create the application. To me APEX was too much of a developers’ tool to see that happen – apart from the odd business analyst who missed his or her calling as an IT developer. Having looked at various other cloud based development offerings – including Force.com, Mendix, WaveMaker, WorkXpress, OrangeScape, Caspio and Cordys- I have come to realize my mistake. All these platforms are positioned for 'the business' but require a fair amount of coding and technical expertise. However, they make the business happy nevertheless, because they allow the  business to completely circumvent the IT department. That is the essence. Not having to go through the red tape, not having to wait for IT staff who (justifiably) need weeks or months to provide an environment, not having to deal with administrators (again, justifiably) refusing to take on that 'strange environment'. Being able to think of an initiative and turn into action right away. The business does not have to build the application - it can easily hire some external developers or even that nerdy boy next door. They can get started, get an application up and running and invite users in – especially external users such as customers. They will worry later about upgrades and life cycle management and integration. To get applications up and running quickly and start turning ideas into action and results rightaway. That is the key selling point for all these cloud offerings, including APEX from the Cloud. And it is a compelling story. For APEX probably even more so than for the others. While I consider APEX a somewhat proprietary framework compared with ‘regular’ Java/JEE web development (or even .NET and PHP  development), it is still far more open than most cloud environments. APEX is SQL and PL/SQL based – nothing special about those languages – and can run just as easily on site as in the cloud. It has been around since 2004 (that is not including several predecessors that fed straight into APEX) so it can be considered pretty mature. Oracle as a company seems pretty stable – so investments in its technology are bound to last for some time to come. By the way: neither APEX nor the other Cloud DevaaS offerings are targeted at creating applications with enormous life times. They fit into a trend of agile development and rapid life cycle management, with fairly light weight user interfaces that quickly adapt to taste, technology trends and functional requirements and that are easily replaced. APEX and ADF – a match made in heaven?! (or at least in the sky) Note that using APEX only for cloud based database with REST-ful Services is also a perfectly viable scenario: any UI – mobile or browser based – capable of consuming REST-ful services can be created against such a business tier. Creating an ADF Mobile application for example that runs aginst REST-ful services is a best practice for mobile development. Such REST-ful services can be consumed from any service provider – including the Cloud based APEX powered REST-ful services running against the Oracle Cloud Database Service! The ADF Mobile architecture overview can easily be morphed to fit the APEX services in – allowing for a cloud based mobile app: Want to learn more about Oracle Database Cloud Service or Oracle Cloud, just visit cloud.oracle.com  or oracle.com/cloud. Repost of a blog entry by Rick Greenwald, Director of Product Management, Oracle Database Cloud Service.

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• Unable to SSH into EC2 instance on Fedora 17

  - by abhishek

  I did following steps But I am not able to SSH to it(Same steps work fine on Fedora 14 image). I am getting Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic) I created new instance using fedora 17 amazon community image(ami-2ea50247). I copied my ssh keys under /home/usertest/.ssh/ after creating a usertest I have SELINUX=disabled here is Debug info: $ ssh -vvv ec2-54-243-101-41.compute-1.amazonaws.com ssh -vvv ec2-54-243-101-41.compute-1.amazonaws.com OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 1.0.0b-fips 16 Nov 2010 debug1: Reading configuration data /etc/ssh/ssh_config debug1: Applying options for * debug2: ssh_connect: needpriv 0 debug1: Connecting to ec2-54-243-101-41.compute-1.amazonaws.com [54.243.101.41] port 22. debug1: Connection established. debug1: identity file /home/usertest/.ssh/identity type -1 debug1: identity file /home/usertest/.ssh/id_rsa type -1 debug3: Not a RSA1 key file /home/usertest/.ssh/id_dsa. debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----BEGIN' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type 'Proc-Type:' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type 'DEK-Info:' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug3: key_read: missing whitespace debug2: key_type_from_name: unknown key type '-----END' debug3: key_read: missing keytype debug1: identity file /home/usertest/.ssh/id_dsa type 2 debug1: Remote protocol version 2.0, remote software version OpenSSH_5.9 debug1: match: OpenSSH_5.9 pat OpenSSH* debug1: Enabling compatibility mode for protocol 2.0 debug1: Local version string SSH-2.0-OpenSSH_5.2 debug2: fd 3 setting O_NONBLOCK debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT sent debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEXINIT received debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected],zlib debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected],zlib debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: first_kex_follows 0 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: reserved 0 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha256,diffie-hellman-group-exchange-sha1,diffie-hellman-group14-sha1,diffie-hellman-group1-sha1 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: ssh-rsa,ssh-dss debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: aes128-ctr,aes192-ctr,aes256-ctr,arcfour256,arcfour128,aes128-cbc,3des-cbc,blowfish-cbc,cast128-cbc,aes192-cbc,aes256-cbc,arcfour,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-256-96,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-512-96,hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: hmac-md5,hmac-sha1,[email protected],hmac-sha2-256,hmac-sha2-256-96,hmac-sha2-512,hmac-sha2-512-96,hmac-ripemd160,[email protected],hmac-sha1-96,hmac-md5-96 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: none,[email protected] debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: first_kex_follows 0 debug2: kex_parse_kexinit: reserved 0 debug2: mac_setup: found hmac-md5 debug1: kex: server->client aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug2: mac_setup: found hmac-md5 debug1: kex: client->server aes128-ctr hmac-md5 none debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REQUEST(1024<1024<8192) sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_GROUP debug2: dh_gen_key: priv key bits set: 131/256 debug2: bits set: 506/1024 debug1: SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_INIT sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_KEX_DH_GEX_REPLY debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /home/usertest/.ssh/known_hosts debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: match line 17 debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: filename /home/usertest/.ssh/known_hosts debug3: check_host_in_hostfile: match line 17 debug1: Host 'ec2-54-243-101-41.compute-1.amazonaws.com' is known and matches the RSA host key. debug1: Found key in /home/usertest/.ssh/known_hosts:17 debug2: bits set: 500/1024 debug1: ssh_rsa_verify: signature correct debug2: kex_derive_keys debug2: set_newkeys: mode 1 debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS sent debug1: expecting SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS debug2: set_newkeys: mode 0 debug1: SSH2_MSG_NEWKEYS received debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_REQUEST sent debug2: service_accept: ssh-userauth debug1: SSH2_MSG_SERVICE_ACCEPT received debug2: key: /home/usertest/.ssh/identity ((nil)) debug2: key: /home/usertest/.ssh/id_rsa ((nil)) debug2: key: /home/usertest/.ssh/id_dsa (0x7f904b5ae260) debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic debug3: start over, passed a different list publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic debug3: preferred gssapi-with-mic,publickey,keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_lookup gssapi-with-mic debug3: remaining preferred: publickey,keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_is_enabled gssapi-with-mic debug1: Next authentication method: gssapi-with-mic debug3: Trying to reverse map address 54.243.101.41. debug1: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_500' not found debug1: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information Credentials cache file '/tmp/krb5cc_500' not found debug1: Unspecified GSS failure. Minor code may provide more information debug2: we did not send a packet, disable method debug3: authmethod_lookup publickey debug3: remaining preferred: keyboard-interactive,password debug3: authmethod_is_enabled publickey debug1: Next authentication method: publickey debug1: Trying private key: /home/usertest/.ssh/identity debug3: no such identity: /home/usertest/.ssh/identity debug1: Trying private key: /home/usertest/.ssh/id_rsa debug3: no such identity: /home/usertest/.ssh/id_rsa debug1: Offering public key: /home/usertest/.ssh/id_dsa debug3: send_pubkey_test debug2: we sent a publickey packet, wait for reply debug1: Authentications that can continue: publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic debug2: we did not send a packet, disable method debug1: No more authentication methods to try. Permission denied (publickey,gssapi-keyex,gssapi-with-mic).

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• Windows 8.1 Will Start Encrypting Hard Drives By Default: Everything You Need to Know

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Windows 8.1 will automatically encrypt the storage on modern Windows PCs. This will help protect your files in case someone steals your laptop and tries to get at them, but it has important ramifications for data recovery. Previously, “BitLocker” was available on Professional and Enterprise editions of Windows, while “Device Encryption” was available on Windows RT and Windows Phone. Device encryption is included with all editions of Windows 8.1 — and it’s on by default. When Your Hard Drive Will Be Encrypted Windows 8.1 includes “Pervasive Device Encryption.” This works a bit differently from the standard BitLocker feature that has been included in Professional, Enterprise, and Ultimate editions of Windows for the past few versions. Before Windows 8.1 automatically enables Device Encryption, the following must be true: The Windows device “must support connected standby and meet the Windows Hardware Certification Kit (HCK) requirements for TPM and SecureBoot on ConnectedStandby systems.”  (Source) Older Windows PCs won’t support this feature, while new Windows 8.1 devices you pick up will have this feature enabled by default. When Windows 8.1 installs cleanly and the computer is prepared, device encryption is “initialized” on the system drive and other internal drives. Windows uses a clear key at this point, which is removed later when the recovery key is successfully backed up. The PC’s user must log in with a Microsoft account with administrator privileges or join the PC to a domain. If a Microsoft account is used, a recovery key will be backed up to Microsoft’s servers and encryption will be enabled. If a domain account is used, a recovery key will be backed up to Active Directory Domain Services and encryption will be enabled. If you have an older Windows computer that you’ve upgraded to Windows 8.1, it may not support Device Encryption. If you log in with a local user account, Device Encryption won’t be enabled. If you upgrade your Windows 8 device to Windows 8.1, you’ll need to enable device encryption, as it’s off by default when upgrading. Recovering An Encrypted Hard Drive Device encryption means that a thief can’t just pick up your laptop, insert a Linux live CD or Windows installer disc, and boot the alternate operating system to view your files without knowing your Windows password. It means that no one can just pull the hard drive from your device, connect the hard drive to another computer, and view the files. We’ve previously explained that your Windows password doesn’t actually secure your files. With Windows 8.1, average Windows users will finally be protected with encryption by default. However, there’s a problem — if you forget your password and are unable to log in, you’d also be unable to recover your files. This is likely why encryption is only enabled when a user logs in with a Microsoft account (or connects to a domain). Microsoft holds a recovery key, so you can gain access to your files by going through a recovery process. As long as you’re able to authenticate using your Microsoft account credentials — for example, by receiving an SMS message on the cell phone number connected to your Microsoft account — you’ll be able to recover your encrypted data. With Windows 8.1, it’s more important than ever to configure your Microsoft account’s security settings and recovery methods so you’ll be able to recover your files if you ever get locked out of your Microsoft account. Microsoft does hold the recovery key and would be capable of providing it to law enforcement if it was requested, which is certainly a legitimate concern in the age of PRISM. However, this encryption still provides protection from thieves picking up your hard drive and digging through your personal or business files. If you’re worried about a government or a determined thief who’s capable of gaining access to your Microsoft account, you’ll want to encrypt your hard drive with software that doesn’t upload a copy of your recovery key to the Internet, such as TrueCrypt. How to Disable Device Encryption There should be no real reason to disable device encryption. If nothing else, it’s a useful feature that will hopefully protect sensitive data in the real world where people — and even businesses — don’t enable encryption on their own. As encryption is only enabled on devices with the appropriate hardware and will be enabled by default, Microsoft has hopefully ensured that users won’t see noticeable slow-downs in performance. Encryption adds some overhead, but the overhead can hopefully be handled by dedicated hardware. If you’d like to enable a different encryption solution or just disable encryption entirely, you can control this yourself. To do so, open the PC settings app — swipe in from the right edge of the screen or press Windows Key + C, click the Settings icon, and select Change PC settings. Navigate to PC and devices -> PC info. At the bottom of the PC info pane, you’ll see a Device Encryption section. Select Turn Off if you want to disable device encryption, or select Turn On if you want to enable it — users upgrading from Windows 8 will have to enable it manually in this way. Note that Device Encryption can’t be disabled on Windows RT devices, such as Microsoft’s Surface RT and Surface 2. If you don’t see the Device Encryption section in this window, you’re likely using an older device that doesn’t meet the requirements and thus doesn’t support Device Encryption. For example, our Windows 8.1 virtual machine doesn’t offer Device Encryption configuration options. This is the new normal for Windows PCs, tablets, and devices in general. Where files on typical PCs were once ripe for easy access by thieves, Windows PCs are now encrypted by default and recovery keys are sent to Microsoft’s servers for safe keeping. This last part may be a bit creepy, but it’s easy to imagine average users forgetting their passwords — they’d be very upset if they lost all their files because they had to reset their passwords. It’s also an improvement over Windows PCs being completely unprotected by default.     

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• Commit in SQL

  - by PRajkumar

  SQL Transaction Control Language Commands (TCL)                                           (COMMIT) Commit Transaction As a SQL language we use transaction control language very frequently. Committing a transaction means making permanent the changes performed by the SQL statements within the transaction. A transaction is a sequence of SQL statements that Oracle Database treats as a single unit. This statement also erases all save points in the transaction and releases transaction locks. Oracle Database issues an implicit COMMIT before and after any data definition language (DDL) statement. Oracle recommends that you explicitly end every transaction in your application programs with a COMMIT or ROLLBACK statement, including the last transaction, before disconnecting from Oracle Database. If you do not explicitly commit the transaction and the program terminates abnormally, then the last uncommitted transaction is automatically rolled back.   Until you commit a transaction: ·         You can see any changes you have made during the transaction by querying the modified tables, but other users cannot see the changes. After you commit the transaction, the changes are visible to other users' statements that execute after the commit ·         You can roll back (undo) any changes made during the transaction with the ROLLBACK statement   Note: Most of the people think that when we type commit data or changes of what you have made has been written to data files, but this is wrong when you type commit it means that you are saying that your job has been completed and respective verification will be done by oracle engine that means it checks whether your transaction achieved consistency when it finds ok it sends a commit message to the user from log buffer but not from data buffer, so after writing data in log buffer it insists data buffer to write data in to data files, this is how it works.   Before a transaction that modifies data is committed, the following has occurred: ·         Oracle has generated undo information. The undo information contains the old data values changed by the SQL statements of the transaction ·         Oracle has generated redo log entries in the redo log buffer of the System Global Area (SGA). The redo log record contains the change to the data block and the change to the rollback block. These changes may go to disk before a transaction is committed ·         The changes have been made to the database buffers of the SGA. These changes may go to disk before a transaction is committed   Note:   The data changes for a committed transaction, stored in the database buffers of the SGA, are not necessarily written immediately to the data files by the database writer (DBWn) background process. This writing takes place when it is most efficient for the database to do so. It can happen before the transaction commits or, alternatively, it can happen some times after the transaction commits.   When a transaction is committed, the following occurs: 1.      The internal transaction table for the associated undo table space records that the transaction has committed, and the corresponding unique system change number (SCN) of the transaction is assigned and recorded in the table 2.      The log writer process (LGWR) writes redo log entries in the SGA's redo log buffers to the redo log file. It also writes the transaction's SCN to the redo log file. This atomic event constitutes the commit of the transaction 3.      Oracle releases locks held on rows and tables 4.      Oracle marks the transaction complete   Note:   The default behavior is for LGWR to write redo to the online redo log files synchronously and for transactions to wait for the redo to go to disk before returning a commit to the user. However, for lower transaction commit latency application developers can specify that redo be written asynchronously and that transaction do not need to wait for the redo to be on disk.   The syntax of Commit Statement is   COMMIT [WORK] [COMMENT ‘your comment’]; ·         WORK is optional. The WORK keyword is supported for compliance with standard SQL. The statements COMMIT and COMMIT WORK are equivalent. Examples Committing an Insert INSERT INTO table_name VALUES (val1, val2); COMMIT WORK; ·         COMMENT Comment is also optional. This clause is supported for backward compatibility. Oracle recommends that you used named transactions instead of commit comments. Specify a comment to be associated with the current transaction. The 'text' is a quoted literal of up to 255 bytes that Oracle Database stores in the data dictionary view DBA_2PC_PENDING along with the transaction ID if a distributed transaction becomes in doubt. This comment can help you diagnose the failure of a distributed transaction. Examples The following statement commits the current transaction and associates a comment with it: COMMIT     COMMENT 'In-doubt transaction Code 36, Call (415) 555-2637'; ·         WRITE Clause Use this clause to specify the priority with which the redo information generated by the commit operation is written to the redo log. This clause can improve performance by reducing latency, thus eliminating the wait for an I/O to the redo log. Use this clause to improve response time in environments with stringent response time requirements where the following conditions apply: The volume of update transactions is large, requiring that the redo log be written to disk frequently. The application can tolerate the loss of an asynchronously committed transaction. The latency contributed by waiting for the redo log write to occur contributes significantly to overall response time. You can specify the WAIT | NOWAIT and IMMEDIATE | BATCH clauses in any order. Examples To commit the same insert operation and instruct the database to buffer the change to the redo log, without initiating disk I/O, use the following COMMIT statement: COMMIT WRITE BATCH; Note: If you omit this clause, then the behavior of the commit operation is controlled by the COMMIT_WRITE initialization parameter, if it has been set. The default value of the parameter is the same as the default for this clause. Therefore, if the parameter has not been set and you omit this clause, then commit records are written to disk before control is returned to the user. WAIT | NOWAIT Use these clauses to specify when control returns to the user. The WAIT parameter ensures that the commit will return only after the corresponding redo is persistent in the online redo log. Whether in BATCH or IMMEDIATE mode, when the client receives a successful return from this COMMIT statement, the transaction has been committed to durable media. A crash occurring after a successful write to the log can prevent the success message from returning to the client. In this case the client cannot tell whether or not the transaction committed. The NOWAIT parameter causes the commit to return to the client whether or not the write to the redo log has completed. This behavior can increase transaction throughput. With the WAIT parameter, if the commit message is received, then you can be sure that no data has been lost. Caution: With NOWAIT, a crash occurring after the commit message is received, but before the redo log record(s) are written, can falsely indicate to a transaction that its changes are persistent. If you omit this clause, then the transaction commits with the WAIT behavior. IMMEDIATE | BATCH Use these clauses to specify when the redo is written to the log. The IMMEDIATE parameter causes the log writer process (LGWR) to write the transaction's redo information to the log. This operation option forces a disk I/O, so it can reduce transaction throughput. The BATCH parameter causes the redo to be buffered to the redo log, along with other concurrently executing transactions. When sufficient redo information is collected, a disk write of the redo log is initiated. This behavior is called "group commit", as redo for multiple transactions is written to the log in a single I/O operation. If you omit this clause, then the transaction commits with the IMMEDIATE behavior. ·         FORCE Clause Use this clause to manually commit an in-doubt distributed transaction or a corrupt transaction. ·         In a distributed database system, the FORCE string [, integer] clause lets you manually commit an in-doubt distributed transaction. The transaction is identified by the 'string' containing its local or global transaction ID. To find the IDs of such transactions, query the data dictionary view DBA_2PC_PENDING. You can use integer to specifically assign the transaction a system change number (SCN). If you omit integer, then the transaction is committed using the current SCN. ·         The FORCE CORRUPT_XID 'string' clause lets you manually commit a single corrupt transaction, where string is the ID of the corrupt transaction. Query the V$CORRUPT_XID_LIST data dictionary view to find the transaction IDs of corrupt transactions. You must have DBA privileges to view the V$CORRUPT_XID_LIST and to specify this clause. ·         Specify FORCE CORRUPT_XID_ALL to manually commit all corrupt transactions. You must have DBA privileges to specify this clause. Examples Forcing an in doubt transaction. Example The following statement manually commits a hypothetical in-doubt distributed transaction. Query the V$CORRUPT_XID_LIST data dictionary view to find the transaction IDs of corrupt transactions. You must have DBA privileges to view the V$CORRUPT_XID_LIST and to issue this statement. COMMIT FORCE '22.57.53';

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, June 11, 2010New ProjectsBIxPress Community Edition: SSIS Toolset BIDS Addin,Audit,Notify,Deploy,Template: BI xPress is a BIDS Addin/standalone application for SQL Developer/DBA. This tool has many features including Auditing, Notification, Deployment, P...C# Shell (cash): Cash is a command-line interpreter (shell), written in C#. It is part of an project to produce tools which replace the traditional GNU/Linux user-l...Chernarus Life Revivved: Chernarus life revivved for arma 2 multiplayerDKAL: DKAL is a distributed authorization policy language. This project contains an engine for running DKAL policies. It is implemented primarly in F#.ImageResizer for Albulle: Application permettant de déployer le contenu pour une la galerie photos php Albulle. L'objectif est de faciliter et automatiser le redimensionnem...Intraweb Active Directory Authentication Demo: A simple demo created using Delphi 7 and Intraweb 9.0.42 with the Active Directory Helper interface to authenticate a user to Active Directory. ...Lokad CQRS - build scalable web sites and enterprise solutions on Windows Azure: Lokad CQRS helps to build scalable cloud applications for Windows Azure. It provides time-proven guidance and .NET Application Blocks to help arc...LRS: Write a concise, reader-focused summary. Write a concise, reader-focused summary. Write a concise, reader-focused summary. ManagementPeople99: ...MEDILIG - MEDICAL LIFE GUARD: Cross-platform EHR/EMR software for the design, implementation and use of autonomous, open database models for multilingual clinical data managemen...NETris - ASP .NET, AJAX, Web Service based Tetris Game: Tetris game with business logic provided via Web Services.Peace Through Force: Peace Through Force is a 2D side scrolling tactical shooter developed in XNA Game Studio 3.1 using C#. The game is targeted to be made available o...Powwa: Util to show battery status and cpu speed on laptop. Uses jWMI's for interfacing with Windows' WMI.Resource Management System: Resource Management system for Internal purpose using WPF,WCF and SilverlighttChat - ASP.NET, Ajax & Web Service based Chat Room: Simple chat room application. Technology: ASP .NET, Ajax, Web Services and MS SQL Server Database. Uses ASP .NET authentication mechanism.Test Project (ignore): This is used to demonstrate CodePlex at meetings. Please ignore this project.Transform Config: Transfom Config lets you use the new configuration transformation feature in Visual Studio 2010 without performing a publish on a web application p...unsocialcity: trying to make a game for facebook called <projectname> - just seemed like a fun idea http://apps.facebook.com/unsocialcityVorbisPlayer: VorbisPlayer is the audio user control for Silverlight games. It plays loop-sets seamless, it solves the short sound problem, and it can play sound...New ReleasesA Guide to Parallel Programming: Drop 5 - Guide Preface, Chapters 1 - 7, and code: This is Drop 5 with Guide Preface, Chapters 1 - 7, Appendix B, Glossary, and References, and the accompanying code samples. This drop requires Visu...CC.Hearts Screen Saver: CC.Hearts Screen Saver 1.0.10.610: The third release of CC.Hearts Screen Saver. Key features are: Further performance enhancements Keyboard commands (Press ? for help) Help Popu...Fiddler Delayed Responses Extension: v1 beta: UI improvement . drag and drop . session markers . icons . layout Algorithm review . Performance issues Thanks to Eric Lawrence for his ideas.FontViewer 2010: FontViewer 2010 (Codename Eraser): This is the installer for the development version ("Eraser") of FontViewer 2010. Because many of the features are under development, functionality...Genuilder: Genuilder 1.2: First release of Genuilder.Extensibility.ImageResizer for Albulle: ImageResizer1.0-bin: Première version. Permet de déployer des images dans un système de fichier (local).imdb movie downloader: myImdb 0.9.5: myImdb 0.9.5KooBoo Image Gallery: Beta 4: This new version has a new example using s3slider script http://www.serie3.info/s3slider/demonstration.html thanks to mshimao Now there are two pl...LogikBug's IoC Container: LogikBug's IoC Container v1.1.1: In this release: I extended the Extensibility namespace. Fixed a few minor issues with the Extensibility namespace.LRS: jlrs: asdfaLRS: jlrs src: jlrs srcMiniTwitter: 1.14: MiniTwitter 1.14 更新内容 修正 リストのインポートをキャンセルしてもタイムラインの名前がリストの名前になるバグを修正 OAuth の承認を取り消した後、再ログインできないバグを修正 インポートするリストを選択せずにインポートをクリックすると落ちるバグを修正 追加 ...NETris - ASP .NET, AJAX, Web Service based Tetris Game: NETris - Source Code and Documentation: Fully functional prototype. Please note that documentation is written in the form of a report as the project was an assignment at Coventry University.Object/Relational Mapper & Code Generator in Net 2.0 for Relational & XML Schema: 2.10: Minor release, incremental changes to sample website and UI templates.Opalis Community Releases: Integration Pack for Standard OIS Logging: The Integration Pack for Standard OIS Logging provides extended Policy Logging functions to OIS and MSSQL. This Integration Pack adds the followin...PicassoCms: 0.6: More intuitive UI, new controlsPowerAuras: PowerAuras-3.0.0K-beta2: New Auras: Item Name Equipment Slot Tracking Changes from beta1 5 new aura textures Fixed Tracking bug Added graphical equipment slot sele...PowerPivot Sample Data: PowerPivot for Excel Tutorial Sample Data-v.2: The PowerPivot Tutorial Sample Data-Version 2 download includes a variety of data sources that you can use to complete the tutorial in the PowerPiv...Powwa: First build: Unpack & built with NetBean 6.8Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.4: Added functionality to add and remove performance counters at run time. Also added saving and loading to file so sets of performance counters can b...Resonance: TrainNode Client Library: Libraries to access the TrainNode ServiceSharePoint 2010 Taxonomy Import Utility: TaxonomyBuilder Version 1.0.2: New Features Added support for additional term labels per term Added support for Term Set Owners Added support for Term Set stakeholders Upda...Silverlight for Umbraco Media Objects (SUMO): Community Tech Preview: The CTP for SUMO is now live, feedback appreciated!Silverlight Reporting: Initial Release: This is the first release of the code. It includes the source code from Pete's blog post article on Silverlight reporting.Simple.NET: Simple.Mocking 1.0.0.7: Initial version of a new mocking framework for .NET Revision 1: Expect.AnyInocationOn<T>(T target) changed to Expect.AnyInocationOn(object target...Smart Voice: Smart Voice 0.2.2: Changelog: Fixed more bugs Added a readme into the archiveSoulHackers Demon Unite(Chinese version): WPFClient pre alpha 2: pre alpha 2, need your feedbackSquiggle - A Free open source Lan Messenger: Squiggle 1.5: File Transfer capability added (With drag/drop support) Message text box maintains history of last 10 messages and you can retrieve them by CTRL+U...SSIS Expression Editor & Tester: Expression Editor and Tester v1.0.1.0: Minor updated release of expression editor tool and editor control. Download and extract the files to get started, no install required. Changes Si...StreamInsight Samples: GregLow HighwayMonitor Samples: Initial Upload of GregLow HighwayMonitor StreamInsight samples. These samples are used in the upcoming free eClinic for StreamInsight and have been...tChat - ASP.NET, Ajax & Web Service based Chat Room: tChat Source Code and Documentation: Functional prototype. T-SQL scripts can be found in the SQL folder. Please note that the documentation is written in a format of a report for a "du...Transform Config: Initial Release: This is the initial release of the project. It's all been thrown together quickly so it's lacking error handling etc, but it's still fully function...UrzaGatherer: UrzaGatherer v2.0.2: Integrate the support of SQL Server Compact Edition 3.5 SP2 for a better portability.Value Injecter: map anything to anything anyway you might imagine: ValueInjecter 1.9: Features map anything to anything flattening unflattening includes sample projects for: asp.net mvc asp.net web-forms win-formsVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30610.0: Automatic drop of latest buildVisual Studio DSite: Picture SlideShow Viewer (Visual C++ 2008): A picture slidershow viewer.VorbisPlayer: VorbisPlayer: The first release of the Silverlight VorbisPlayer, including source code and example files.WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: AnonymousOverHttps Template: Produces a WCF service application configured for anonymous calls over HTTPS/SSL. Supplies a BasicHttpBinding default configured for Transport secu...Most Popular ProjectsHaoRan_TokyoTyrantClient.NET Transactional File ManagerSOLID by exampleMemetic NPC Behavior ToolkitSharpotify - Spotify .Net LibraryWCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NETUltimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NETAnurag Pallaprolu's Code RepositoryBigfootMVCMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgejQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesRhyduino - Arduino and Managed Codepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleCassandraemonBlogEngine.NETMediaCoder.NETAndrew's XNA HelpersStyleCop

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• Login loop in Snow Leopard

  - by hgpc

  I can't get out of a login loop of a particular admin user. After entering the password the login screen is shown again after about a minute. Other users work fine. It started happening after a simple reboot. Can you please help me? Thank you! Tried to no avail: Change the password Remove the password Repair disk (no errors) Boot in safe mode Reinstall Snow Leopard and updating to 10.6.6 Remove content of ~/Library/Caches Removed content of ~/Library/Preferences Replaced /etc/authorization with Install DVD copy The system.log mentions a crash report. I'm including both below. system.log Jan 8 02:43:30 loginwindow218: Login Window - Returned from Security Agent Jan 8 02:43:30 loginwindow218: USER_PROCESS: 218 console Jan 8 02:44:42 kernel[0]: Jan 8 02:44:43: --- last message repeated 1 time --- Jan 8 02:44:43 com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.loginwindow218): Job appears to have crashed: Bus error Jan 8 02:44:43 com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow223: ALF error: cannot find useragent 1102 Jan 8 02:44:43 com.apple.UserEventAgent-LoginWindow223: plugin.UserEventAgentFactory: called with typeID=FC86416D-6164-2070-726F-70735C216EC0 Jan 8 02:44:43 /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow233: Login Window Application Started Jan 8 02:44:43 SecurityAgent228: CGSShutdownServerConnections: Detaching application from window server Jan 8 02:44:43 com.apple.ReportCrash.Root232: 2011-01-08 02:44:43.936 ReportCrash232:2903 Saved crash report for loginwindow218 version ??? (???) to /Library/Logs/DiagnosticReports/loginwindow_2011-01-08-024443_localhost.crash Jan 8 02:44:44 SecurityAgent228: MIG: server died: CGSReleaseShmem : Cannot release shared memory Jan 8 02:44:44 SecurityAgent228: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged. Jan 8 02:44:44 SecurityAgent228: CGSDisplayServerShutdown: Detaching display subsystem from window server Jan 8 02:44:44 SecurityAgent228: HIToolbox: received notification of WindowServer event port death. Jan 8 02:44:44 SecurityAgent228: port matched the WindowServer port created in BindCGSToRunLoop Jan 8 02:44:44 loginwindow233: Login Window Started Security Agent Jan 8 02:44:44 WindowServer234: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged. Jan 8 02:44:44 com.apple.WindowServer234: Sat Jan 8 02:44:44 .local WindowServer234 <Error>: kCGErrorFailure: Set a breakpoint @ CGErrorBreakpoint() to catch errors as they are logged. Jan 8 02:44:54 SecurityAgent243: NSSecureTextFieldCell detected a field editor ((null)) that is not a NSTextView subclass designed to work with the cell. Ignoring... Crash report Process: loginwindow 218 Path: /System/Library/CoreServices/loginwindow.app/Contents/MacOS/loginwindow Identifier: loginwindow Version: ??? (???) Code Type: X86-64 (Native) Parent Process: launchd [1] Date/Time: 2011-01-08 02:44:42.748 +0100 OS Version: Mac OS X 10.6.6 (10J567) Report Version: 6 Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGBUS) Exception Codes: 0x000000000000000a, 0x000000010075b000 Crashed Thread: 0 Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread Thread 0 Crashed: Dispatch queue: com.apple.main-thread 0 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c6e8b Security::ReadSection::at(unsigned int) const + 25 1 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c632f Security::DbVersion::open() + 123 2 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c5e41 Security::DbVersion::DbVersion(Security::AppleDatabase const&, Security::RefPointer<Security::AtomicBufferedFile> const&) + 179 3 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c594e Security::DbModifier::getDbVersion(bool) + 330 4 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c57f5 Security::DbModifier::openDatabase() + 33 5 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c5439 Security::Database::_dbOpen(Security::DatabaseSession&, unsigned int, Security::AccessCredentials const*, void const*) + 221 6 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c4841 Security::DatabaseManager::dbOpen(Security::DatabaseSession&, Security::DbName const&, unsigned int, Security::AccessCredentials const*, void const*) + 77 7 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801c4723 Security::DatabaseSession::DbOpen(char const*, cssm_net_address const*, unsigned int, Security::AccessCredentials const*, void const*, long&) + 285 8 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d8414 cssm_DbOpen(long, char const*, cssm_net_address const*, unsigned int, cssm_access_credentials const*, void const*, long*) + 108 9 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d7fba CSSM_DL_DbOpen + 106 10 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d62f6 Security::CssmClient::DbImpl::open() + 162 11 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d8977 SSDatabaseImpl::open(Security::DLDbIdentifier const&) + 53 12 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d8715 SSDLSession::DbOpen(char const*, cssm_net_address const*, unsigned int, Security::AccessCredentials const*, void const*, long&) + 263 13 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d8414 cssm_DbOpen(long, char const*, cssm_net_address const*, unsigned int, cssm_access_credentials const*, void const*, long*) + 108 14 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d7fba CSSM_DL_DbOpen + 106 15 com.apple.security 0x00007fff801d62f6 Security::CssmClient::DbImpl::open() + 162 16 com.apple.security 0x00007fff802fa786 Security::CssmClient::DbImpl::unlock(cssm_data const&) + 28 17 com.apple.security 0x00007fff80275b5d Security::KeychainCore::KeychainImpl::unlock(Security::CssmData const&) + 89 18 com.apple.security 0x00007fff80291a06 Security::KeychainCore::StorageManager::login(unsigned int, void const*, unsigned int, void const*) + 3336 19 com.apple.security 0x00007fff802854d3 SecKeychainLogin + 91 20 com.apple.loginwindow 0x000000010000dfc5 0x100000000 + 57285 21 com.apple.loginwindow 0x000000010000cfb4 0x100000000 + 53172 22 com.apple.Foundation 0x00007fff8721e44f __NSThreadPerformPerform + 219 23 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff82627401 __CFRunLoopDoSources0 + 1361 24 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff826255f9 __CFRunLoopRun + 873 25 com.apple.CoreFoundation 0x00007fff82624dbf CFRunLoopRunSpecific + 575 26 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff8444493a RunCurrentEventLoopInMode + 333 27 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff8444473f ReceiveNextEventCommon + 310 28 com.apple.HIToolbox 0x00007fff844445f8 BlockUntilNextEventMatchingListInMode + 59 29 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff80b01e64 _DPSNextEvent + 718 30 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff80b017a9 -NSApplication nextEventMatchingMask:untilDate:inMode:dequeue: + 155 31 com.apple.AppKit 0x00007fff80ac748b -NSApplication run + 395 32 com.apple.loginwindow 0x0000000100004b16 0x100000000 + 19222 33 com.apple.loginwindow 0x0000000100004580 0x100000000 + 17792 Thread 1: Dispatch queue: com.apple.libdispatch-manager 0 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8755216a kevent + 10 1 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8755403d _dispatch_mgr_invoke + 154 2 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff87553d14 _dispatch_queue_invoke + 185 3 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff8755383e _dispatch_worker_thread2 + 252 4 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff87553168 _pthread_wqthread + 353 5 libSystem.B.dylib 0x00007fff87553005 start_wqthread + 13 Thread 0 crashed with X86 Thread State (64-bit): rax: 0x000000010075b000 rbx: 0x00007fff5fbfd990 rcx: 0x00007fff875439da rdx: 0x0000000000000000 rdi: 0x00007fff5fbfd990 rsi: 0x0000000000000000 rbp: 0x00007fff5fbfd5d0 rsp: 0x00007fff5fbfd5d0 r8: 0x0000000000000007 r9: 0x0000000000000000 r10: 0x00007fff8753beda r11: 0x0000000000000202 r12: 0x0000000100133e78 r13: 0x00007fff5fbfda50 r14: 0x00007fff5fbfda50 r15: 0x00007fff5fbfdaa0 rip: 0x00007fff801c6e8b rfl: 0x0000000000010287 cr2: 0x000000010075b000

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 20, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, March 20, 2010New ProjectsaMaze Mapa Generator: Parte do Projeto aMazeASP.Net RIA Controls: Simple ASP.Net server controls to integrate Flash and Silverlight controls into your web applications. Included controls don't use any JavaScript,...BMap.NET: BMaps.NET is a .NET application written in C#, for access Bing Maps from your computer without web browsers. With it you can access to Bing Maps an...DaliNet: A .NET API for the Tridonic.Atco DALI USB device.Fabrica7: This is the main project of Fabrica 7 Corp.Image Ripper: A Winform application parse & fetch various HD pictures in specific photo galleries.IoCWrap: Provides interfaces which wrap various IoC container implementations so that it is possible to switch to a different provider without changing any ...NetSockets: NetSockets is a .NET class library that provides easy-to-use, multi-threaded, event-based, client and server network communication.Network Backup: Network Backup is a home and small company backup solution for workstations and a backup server. It incorporates a backup service, scheduler, data ...NUnit.Specs: Specification extensions for NUnit.Nutrivida: Sistema para avaliação de especialização.OHTB Snake: OHTB Snake is a multiplayer game. In this incarnation, snakes may eat 3 types of powerups: standard berries, causing them to grow; sawberries, caus...Playground TDrouen: Tjerk's PlaygroundPower Plan Chooser: This is my first endeavor into a C# Windows application with XAML. The program sits in the notification area (task bar) and lets you quickly activa...Search IMDB in C#: In lack of an IMDB API most of us resort to screen scraping utilities to query the Internet Movie Database. This one is written in C# (.NET 2.0 sta...SIGPRO Desktop: FUNCERNSql2008 PerfMonCounter Fix: Small console application to Fix the SQL 2008 Express Edition installation error: Pequena aplicação para Corrigir o seguinte erro de Instalação do...TwiztedTracker: TwiztedTracker designed to make your bug tracking easy.UmbracoXsltLogHelper: I needed a way to easily add log rows from my xslt macros, and added a single-line-extension for that reason. Then I played around with the umbraco...VisualStock: VisualStock is stock data visualization, analysis application build on the Micorsoft Composite Application Library.WHS File Mover: A Windows Home Server Plugin to move files from a local directory ("drop" or "staging" directory to a folder share)XML based Content Deployment in SharePoint: XML based Content Deployment in Sharepoint helps you to easy deploy content into SharePoint, including webs, lists, items, files and folder. You wi...New ReleasesASP.Net RIA Controls: Version 1.0 Beta: The first functionnal version.BMap.NET: BMap.NET 1: This is the 1st version of BMap.NETDigital Media Processing Project 1: Image Processor: Image Processor 1.0: All features implemented. Added: clipping imageFamily Tree Analyzer: Version 1.3.1.0: Version 1.3.1.0 Added a cancel button to marriage and children IGI Searches Opening Results window now automatically shows first record Updated IGI...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts 3.0.5 Released: Hi, This release contains fix for the following bug: * Chart threw exception if ZoomingEnabled property was set to True at real-time. You ca...Homework Helper: Homework Helper v.1.1: Sorry but the latest release didn't seem to be the latest. This should be the right one!Image Ripper: Image Ripper: Image Ripper based on HtmlAgilityPack and GData library.ManPowerEngine: 0.1: UpdatesSound System added. Bitmap Collider in Physics System works now. Improved the performance of HTTP download in images Physics Framework...NIPO Data Processing Component Framework: NIPO 1.0: The first release of NIPO. Includes the NIPO binary dll and documentation. This release does not include a starter application since it is still in...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG2010 Drop7: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices ****************************************** ***************************************...Photosynth Point Cloud Exporter: Photosynth Point Cloud Exporter 1.0.2: Photosynth webservice reference updated to work with the new site OBJ file format support added (Note: this format doesn't support vertex colors)Power Plan Chooser: Power Plan Chooser 1.0.0: Power Plan Chooser is a small utility that sits in the notification area (task bar) in Windows 7 and allows the user to quickly activate one of the...Restart Explorer: RestartExplorer Release 1.00.0001: Initial release: Start, stop and restart Windows Explorer with this utility.Search IMDB in C#: Search IMDB 1.0: Source code included with compiled example.SIMD Detector: 3rd Release: Added Intel AES instruction check Added a CSharp Winform NetSIMDDetector application. Changes the red ball and green ball images to red cross a...Sql2008 PerfMonCounter Fix: Sql2008FIx_PerfMonCounter.zip: Small console application to Fix the SQL 2008 Express Edition installation error: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/300956 Rule Name PerfMonCounter...UmbracoXsltLogHelper: 0.9 Working Beta: First version. XsltLogHelper09 is the installable package.VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30319.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWCF RIA Services Contrib: RIA Services Contrib RC Release: This version is recompiled against the RC release of WCF RIA Services.XML based Content Deployment in SharePoint: SPContentDeployment 1.0.0.0: The first link contains the resources and a sample project. The second link contains everything included in the first package and an additional fo...Yet Another GPS: YAGPS Alfa.2: Yet another GPS tracker is a very powerful GPS track application for Windows Mobile Speed Guage, Sat Count number, KML for google map file formatZGuideTV.NET: ZGuideTV.NET 0.92: Vendredi 19 mars 2010 (ZGuideTV.NET bêta 9 build 0.92) - English below Corrections : - Gestion de certains contrôles dans l'écran principal. - Div...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerSilverlight ToolkitASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsLINQ to TwitterRawrOData SDK for PHPjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesDirectQPHPExcelpatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryBlogEngine.NETFarseer Physics EngineNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog Module

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 22, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 22, 2010New ProjectsDocument Toolkit Extensions: Document Toolkit Extensions provide a variety of samples, document converters and helpers for Document Toolkit, a fast, feature-rich and 100% clien...dream: dreamEnhanced Web Controls: The Enhanced Web Control Library Contains web controls that enhance the functionality of the microsoft input controls. New functionality includes l...Europe Engulfed: Europe Engulfed is a PC version of the classic GMT board war game of the same name simulating World War II in the European theater. It is develope...eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) Toolkit: eXpress Persistent Objects (XPO) Toolkit provides extensions to the DevExpress Object-Relational Mapping Suite.FBGraph.NET: Write apps for Facebook's Graph API using .NET. Includes support for C#, VB.NET, ASP.NET WebForms and ASP.NET MVC.HugeFlow.OOB: Silverlight OOB Library It supports useful custom controls. WindowChrome, InstallScreen. LivePad: LivePad, It can be used to record your life journey. LivePad，可以用来记录您的人生历程。Management listings: The project is management adsMerthin: Merthin is an F# based Framework which boundaries are not defined yet. For now a bit of linear algebra.Mobile Exchange: Mobile Exchange is a .NET Compact Framework library and sample application for accessing the Stack Exchange API available on sites like Stack Overf...PC/SC Micro: PC/SC Micro is an API and a library. The API is a subset of the PC/SC Lite API and allows a .NET Micro Framework application to communicate with ...SerialPortLogger: SerialPortLogger is a simple monitoring application which montors the serial port and outputs to a database.SharePoint NNTP List Sync: Syncronizes NNTP groups with SharePoint lists and offers post/reply capability. Sets item date as post date and attempts to lookup user in local d...Simple Help System: Simple Help System (SHS) je jednoduchý nápovědný systém jak pro vývojáře tak pro obyčejné lidi. Vyvýjeno v C#.SoulHackers Demon Unite(Chinese version): SoulHackers Demon Unite calculate program, for Chinese version on PlayStationTPager: Mercurial pager with color support on WindowsWork Item Query Administration: Work Item Query Administration (wiqadmin) is command-line utility to manage work item queries in Team Foundation Server. For any TeamProject you ca...XPlatformCPP: A cross platform C++ rendering API, that uses either OpenGL 2.1 or Direct3D 9.0c as a backend. Works with Win32API (Windows), Xlib (Linux,etc...), ...Xshell: Xshell is a replacement for the Windows Explorer shell designed for Media Center/Home Theater PCs.عبر السـدم: عبر السدم هي لعبة ثلاثية الأبعاد من إنجاز أعضاء الشبكة العربية لمطوري الألعاب بالاعتماد على تقنية XNA. http://www.agdn-online.com http://www.ag...New ReleasesAzure Publish-Subscribe: Azure Pub-Sub Developer Manual v0.1: Very early alpha of the documentation. It's an early look at the architecture only.Chaow Framework: Chaow Framework V1.00: Project Description Chaow Framework is the set of class libraries designed for enhancing standard .NET framework. It allows you to write more simpl...Document Toolkit Extensions: Document Toolkit Extensions Beta 1: The first public beta release of Document Toolkit and Document Toolkit Extensions.DotNetNuke Russian Language packs: Core Russian Language Pack for DNN 05.04.02: Core Russian Language Pack for DNN 05.04.02 Добавлены несколько ресурсов из новой редакции... Исправлены ошибки и описки.DynamicJson: Release 1.2.0.0: Fix - Deserialize(cast) can't convert to dynamic[] Fix - Deserialize(cast) throw exception if has getonly propertyEnhanced Web Controls: Enhanced Web Controls: This download includes the Enhanced Web Control Library DLL. Also inlcuded is the most recently tested version of the Ajax Control Toolkit, you may...Europe Engulfed: Europe Engulfed: This is the first release for the Codeplex-based project. It includes all source code changes up to and including Change Set 50762. To use: copy ...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.017: added a quiz for spiderweb recipeFree Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.1.0 Released: Hi, This release contains the following enhancements: Mouse events for TrendLine have been implemented. You can go through Visifire documentation...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.3 Released: Hi, This release contains the following enhancements: Mouse events for TrendLine have been implemented. You can go through Visifire documentation...GreedyRSS: GreedyRSS 2.1: SuchSofts GreedyRSS平台整体更新至2.1版，重写了大量代码，可见还不够成熟稳定。此外还有以下几点主要更新： 增加一个辅助类Settings，参见http://semify.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!7CB96C25969B3811!2345.entry...HugeFlow.OOB: HugeFlow.OOB 0.9 Beta for SL4: First release!NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.05.21.001: Changes since the last build:2010-05-20 23:20:17 Jarek Kowalski added tests for CsvLayout, refactored TargetWithLayoutHeaderAndFooter 2010-05-20 2...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SPG 2010 Drop11: SharePoint Guidance Drop Notes Microsoft patterns and practices What's in this Drop: Docs/CHM ** *DropLocation\CHM\SharePointGuidance.chm ...Persian Date/Time support for MsSQL: Build 59 (STABLE): Removed CreateDateTimeWmS() ! Use public static PersianDateTime CreateDateTime(int year, int month, int day, int hour, int min, int sec) instead. ...PiPiBugNet: 增加了创建新Bug界面: 增加了创建新Bug界面，尚未编写代码Rule 18 - Love your clipboard: Rule 18 (Beta version): This is the beta of the next release for Rule 18. Use if you feel comfortable with software that has minimal real world testing applied. Current...Scrum Sprint Monitor: v1.0.0.48591: What is new in this release? #6132 - Bug with open work hours; Added support for MSF for Agile process template; Improved data reporting in the...sGSHOPedit: sGSHOPedit v1.0 (Alpha): -SharePoint NNTP List Sync: 1.0 Release: You may need to change the posting server within the layouts, it is hard coded A webpart wsp is not provided because you should customize the sou...Silverlight Report Library: Version 2.0: - Upgraded to Silverlight 4.0 RTW - ReportHeader control added which is templateable - PagePrinting and PagePrinted events added - PageBreak ad...Snoop, the WPF Spy Utility: Snoop 2.5.1: This is a minor bug fix release for Snoop. In particular, I have fixed the installers so that they create separately named shortcuts ... for each ...SoulHackers Demon Unite(Chinese version): WCFTestClient: This program is using WCF and .NET 4.0. This version is include unite 2 and unite 3 and check what can unite. Element unite is not included yet.SqlServerExtensions: V 0.1 beta: Version 0.1 BetaStackOverflow.Net: StackOverflow.Net for Silverlight public beta: The beta version of StackOverflow.Net for silverlight 4StackOverflow.Net: StackOverflow.Net for Windows Phone 7 public beta: The Windows Phone 7 version of StackOverflow.netStackOverflow.Net: StackOverflow.Net public beta: A public beta to go along with with the public beta of the Stack Exchange APIStyleCop+: StyleCop+ 0.8: Added new extended rule for SA1502. SP1502 has an option which allows constructors to be placed on a single line.SynthExport: SynthExport 1.1.0: Added support for extraction of camera parameters The number of images in coordinate systems is now shown Added status label Improved user ex...TPager: TPager-20100521: First releaseVCC: Latest build, v2.1.30521.0: Automatic drop of latest buildWcfDoc: 1.0.5: Targeting .NET 4.0.Work Item Query Administration: 1.0: This is the first release an contains the following commands: list import export rename deleteMost Popular ProjectsRawrWBFS ManagerAJAX Control ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)patterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryPHPExcelMicrosoft SQL Server Community & SamplesASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrpatterns & practices – Enterprise Librarypatterns & practices: Windows Azure Security GuidanceCaliburn: An Application Framework for WPF and SilverlightSQL Server PowerShell ExtensionsGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationBlogEngine.NETCodeReviewNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModulePHPExcel

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• If Nvidia Shield can stream a game via WiFi (~150-300Mbps), where is the 1-10Gbps wired streaming?

  - by Enigma

  Facts: It is surprising and uncharacteristic that a wireless game streaming solution is the *first to hit the market when a 1000mbps+ Ethernet connection would accomplish the same feat with roughly 6x the available bandwidth. 150-300mbps WiFi is in no way superior to a 1000mbps+ LAN connection aside from well wireless mobility. Throughout time, (since the internet was created) wired services have **always come first yet in this particular case, the opposite seems to be true. We had wired internet first, wired audio streaming, and wired video streaming all before their wireless counterparts. Why? Largely because the wireless bandwidth was and is inferior. Even today despite being significantly better and capable of a lot more, it is still inferior to a wired connection. Situation: Chief among these is that NVIDIA’s Shield handheld game console will be getting a microconsole-like mode, dubbed “Shield Console Mode”, that will allow the handheld to be converted into a more traditional TV-connected console. In console mode Shield can be controlled with a Bluetooth controller, and in accordance with the higher resolution of TVs will accept 1080p game streaming from a suitably equipped PC, versus 720p in handheld mode. With that said 1080p streaming will require additional bandwidth, and while 720p can be done over WiFi NVIDIA will be requiring a hardline GigE connection for 1080p streaming (note that Shield doesn’t have Ethernet, so this is presumably being done over USB). Streaming aside, in console mode Shield will also support its traditional local gaming/application functionality. - http://www.anandtech.com/show/7435/nvidia-consolidates-game-streaming-tech-under-gamestream-brand-announces-shield-console-mode ^ This is not acceptable to me for a number of reasons not to mention the ridiculousness of having a little screen+controller unit sitting there while using a secondary controller and screen instead. That kind of redundant absurdity exemplifies how wrong of a solution that is. They need a second product for this solution without the screen or controller for it to make sense... at which point your just buying a little computer that does what most other larger computers do better. While this secondary project will provide a wired connection, it still shouldn't be necessary to purchase a Shield to have this benefit. Not only this but Intel's WiDi claims game streaming support as well - wirelessly. Where is the wired streaming? All that is required, by my understanding, is the ability to decode H.264 video compression and transmit control/feedback so by any logical comparison, one (Nvidia especially) should have no difficulty in creating an application for PC's (win32/64 environment) that does the exact same thing their android app does. I have 2 video cards capable of streaming (encoding) H.264 so by right they must be capable of decoding it I would think. I should be able to stream to my second desktop or my laptop both of which by hardware comparison are superior to the Shield. I haven't found anything stating plans to allow non-shield owners to do this. Can a third party create this software or does it hinge on some limitation that only Nvidia can overcome? Reiteration of questions: Is there a technical reason (non marketing) for why Nvidia opted to bottleneck the streaming service with a wireless connection limiting the resolution to 720p and introducing intermittent video choppiness when on a wired connection one could achieve, presumably, 1080p with significantly less or zero choppiness? Is there anything limiting developers from creating a PC/Desktop application emulating the same H.264 decoding functionality that circumvents the need to get an Nvidia Shield altogether? (It is not a matter of being too cheap to support Nvidia - I have many Nvidia cards that aren't being used. One should not have to purchase specialty hardware when = hardware already exists) Same questions go for Intel Widi also. I am just utterly perplexed that there are wireless live streaming solution and yet no wired. How on earth can wireless be the goto transmission medium? Is there another solution that takes advantage of H.264 video compression allowing live streaming over a wired connection? (*) - Perhaps this isn't the first but afaik it is the first complete package. (**) - I cant back that up with hard evidence/links but someone probably could. Edit: Maybe this will be the solution I am looking for but I still find it hard to believe that they would be the first and after wireless solutions already exist. In-home Streaming You can play all your Windows and Mac games on your SteamOS machine, too. Just turn on your existing computer and run Steam as you always have - then your SteamOS machine can stream those games over your home network straight to your TV! - http://store.steampowered.com/livingroom/SteamOS/

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• Building Simple Workflows in Oozie

  - by dan.mcclary

  Introduction More often than not, data doesn't come packaged exactly as we'd like it for analysis. Transformation, match-merge operations, and a host of data munging tasks are usually needed before we can extract insights from our Big Data sources. Few people find data munging exciting, but it has to be done. Once we've suffered that boredom, we should take steps to automate the process. We want codify our work into repeatable units and create workflows which we can leverage over and over again without having to write new code. In this article, we'll look at how to use Oozie to create a workflow for the parallel machine learning task I described on Cloudera's site. Hive Actions: Prepping for Pig In my parallel machine learning article, I use data from the National Climatic Data Center to build weather models on a state-by-state basis. NCDC makes the data freely available as gzipped files of day-over-day observations stretching from the 1930s to today. In reading that post, one might get the impression that the data came in a handy, ready-to-model files with convenient delimiters. The truth of it is that I need to perform some parsing and projection on the dataset before it can be modeled. If I get more observations, I'll want to retrain and test those models, which will require more parsing and projection. This is a good opportunity to start building up a workflow with Oozie. I store the data from the NCDC in HDFS and create an external Hive table partitioned by year. This gives me flexibility of Hive's query language when I want it, but let's me put the dataset in a directory of my choosing in case I want to treat the same data with Pig or MapReduce code. CREATE EXTERNAL TABLE IF NOT EXISTS historic_weather(column 1, column2) PARTITIONED BY (yr string) STORED AS ... LOCATION '/user/oracle/weather/historic'; As new weather data comes in from NCDC, I'll need to add partitions to my table. That's an action I should put in the workflow. Similarly, the weather data requires parsing in order to be useful as a set of columns. Because of their long history, the weather data is broken up into fields of specific byte lengths: x bytes for the station ID, y bytes for the dew point, and so on. The delimiting is consistent from year to year, so writing SerDe or a parser for transformation is simple. Once that's done, I want to select columns on which to train, classify certain features, and place the training data in an HDFS directory for my Pig script to access. ALTER TABLE historic_weather ADD IF NOT EXISTS PARTITION (yr='2010') LOCATION '/user/oracle/weather/historic/yr=2011'; INSERT OVERWRITE DIRECTORY '/user/oracle/weather/cleaned_history' SELECT w.stn, w.wban, w.weather_year, w.weather_month, w.weather_day, w.temp, w.dewp, w.weather FROM ( FROM historic_weather SELECT TRANSFORM(...) USING '/path/to/hive/filters/ncdc_parser.py' as stn, wban, weather_year, weather_month, weather_day, temp, dewp, weather ) w; Since I'm going to prepare training directories with at least the same frequency that I add partitions, I should also add that to my workflow. Oozie is going to invoke these Hive actions using what's somewhat obviously referred to as a Hive action. Hive actions amount to Oozie running a script file containing our query language statements, so we can place them in a file called weather_train.hql. Starting Our Workflow Oozie offers two types of jobs: workflows and coordinator jobs. Workflows are straightforward: they define a set of actions to perform as a sequence or directed acyclic graph. Coordinator jobs can take all the same actions of Workflow jobs, but they can be automatically started either periodically or when new data arrives in a specified location. To keep things simple we'll make a workflow job; coordinator jobs simply require another XML file for scheduling. The bare minimum for workflow XML defines a name, a starting point, and an end point: <workflow-app name="WeatherMan" xmlns="uri:oozie:workflow:0.1"> <start to="ParseNCDCData"/> <end name="end"/> </workflow-app> To this we need to add an action, and within that we'll specify the hive parameters Also, keep in mind that actions require <ok> and <error> tags to direct the next action on success or failure. <action name="ParseNCDCData"> <hive xmlns="uri:oozie:hive-action:0.2"> <job-tracker>localhost:8021</job-tracker> <name-node>localhost:8020</name-node> <configuration> <property> <name>oozie.hive.defaults</name> <value>/user/oracle/weather_ooze/hive-default.xml</value> </property> </configuration> <script>ncdc_parse.hql</script> </hive> <ok to="WeatherMan"/> <error to="end"/> </action> There are a couple of things to note here: I have to give the FQDN (or IP) and port of my JobTracker and NameNode. I have to include a hive-default.xml file. I have to include a script file. The hive-default.xml and script file must be stored in HDFS That last point is particularly important. Oozie doesn't make assumptions about where a given workflow is being run. You might submit workflows against different clusters, or have different hive-defaults.xml on different clusters (e.g. MySQL or Postgres-backed metastores). A quick way to ensure that all the assets end up in the right place in HDFS is just to make a working directory locally, build your workflow.xml in it, and copy the assets you'll need to it as you add actions to workflow.xml. At this point, our local directory should contain: workflow.xml hive-defaults.xml (make sure this file contains your metastore connection data) ncdc_parse.hql Adding Pig to the Ooze Adding our Pig script as an action is slightly simpler from an XML standpoint. All we do is add an action to workflow.xml as follows: <action name="WeatherMan"> <pig> <job-tracker>localhost:8021</job-tracker> <name-node>localhost:8020</name-node> <script>weather_train.pig</script> </pig> <ok to="end"/> <error to="end"/> </action> Once we've done this, we'll copy weather_train.pig to our working directory. However, there's a bit of a "gotcha" here. My pig script registers the Weka Jar and a chunk of jython. If those aren't also in HDFS, our action will fail from the outset -- but where do we put them? The Jython script goes into the working directory at the same level as the pig script, because pig attempts to load Jython files in the directory from which the script executes. However, that's not where our Weka jar goes. While Oozie doesn't assume much, it does make an assumption about the Pig classpath. Anything under working_directory/lib gets automatically added to the Pig classpath and no longer requires a REGISTER statement in the script. Anything that uses a REGISTER statement cannot be in the working_directory/lib directory. Instead, it needs to be in a different HDFS directory and attached to the pig action with an <archive> tag. Yes, that's as confusing as you think it is. You can get the exact rules for adding Jars to the distributed cache from Oozie's Pig Cookbook. Making the Workflow Work We've got a workflow defined and have collected all the components we'll need to run. But we can't run anything yet, because we still have to define some properties about the job and submit it to Oozie. We need to start with the job properties, as this is essentially the "request" we'll submit to the Oozie server. In the same working directory, we'll make a file called job.properties as follows: nameNode=hdfs://localhost:8020 jobTracker=localhost:8021 queueName=default weatherRoot=weather_ooze mapreduce.jobtracker.kerberos.principal=foo dfs.namenode.kerberos.principal=foo oozie.libpath=${nameNode}/user/oozie/share/lib oozie.wf.application.path=${nameNode}/user/${user.name}/${weatherRoot} outputDir=weather-ooze While some of the pieces of the properties file are familiar (e.g., JobTracker address), others take a bit of explaining. The first is weatherRoot: this is essentially an environment variable for the script (as are jobTracker and queueName). We're simply using them to simplify the directives for the Oozie job. The oozie.libpath pieces is extremely important. This is a directory in HDFS which holds Oozie's shared libraries: a collection of Jars necessary for invoking Hive, Pig, and other actions. It's a good idea to make sure this has been installed and copied up to HDFS. The last two lines are straightforward: run the application defined by workflow.xml at the application path listed and write the output to the output directory. We're finally ready to submit our job! After all that work we only need to do a few more things: Validate our workflow.xml Copy our working directory to HDFS Submit our job to the Oozie server Run our workflow Let's do them in order. First validate the workflow: oozie validate workflow.xml Next, copy the working directory up to HDFS: hadoop fs -put working_dir /user/oracle/working_dir Now we submit the job to the Oozie server. We need to ensure that we've got the correct URL for the Oozie server, and we need to specify our job.properties file as an argument. oozie job -oozie http://url.to.oozie.server:port_number/ -config /path/to/working_dir/job.properties -submit We've submitted the job, but we don't see any activity on the JobTracker? All I got was this funny bit of output: 14-20120525161321-oozie-oracle This is because submitting a job to Oozie creates an entry for the job and places it in PREP status. What we got back, in essence, is a ticket for our workflow to ride the Oozie train. We're responsible for redeeming our ticket and running the job. oozie -oozie http://url.to.oozie.server:port_number/ -start 14-20120525161321-oozie-oracle Of course, if we really want to run the job from the outset, we can change the "-submit" argument above to "-run." This will prep and run the workflow immediately. Takeaway So, there you have it: the somewhat laborious process of building an Oozie workflow. It's a bit tedious the first time out, but it does present a pair of real benefits to those of us who spend a great deal of time data munging. First, when new data arrives that requires the same processing, we already have the workflow defined and ready to run. Second, as we build up a set of useful action definitions over time, creating new workflows becomes quicker and quicker.

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• Replication Services as ETL extraction tool

  - by jorg

  In my last blog post I explained the principles of Replication Services and the possibilities it offers in a BI environment. One of the possibilities I described was the use of snapshot replication as an ETL extraction tool: “Snapshot Replication can also be useful in BI environments, if you don’t need a near real-time copy of the database, you can choose to use this form of replication. Next to an alternative for Transactional Replication it can be used to stage data so it can be transformed and moved into the data warehousing environment afterwards. In many solutions I have seen developers create multiple SSIS packages that simply copies data from one or more source systems to a staging database that figures as source for the ETL process. The creation of these packages takes a lot of (boring) time, while Replication Services can do the same in minutes. It is possible to filter out columns and/or records and it can even apply schema changes automatically so I think it offers enough features here. I don’t know how the performance will be and if it really works as good for this purpose as I expect, but I want to try this out soon!” Well I have tried it out and I must say it worked well. I was able to let replication services do work in a fraction of the time it would cost me to do the same in SSIS. What I did was the following: Configure snapshot replication for some Adventure Works tables, this was quite simple and straightforward. Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication on demand and waits for its completion. This is something that you can’t do with out of the box functionality. While configuring the snapshot replication two SQL Agent Jobs are created, one for the creation of the snapshot and one for the distribution of the snapshot. Unfortunately these jobs are  asynchronous which means that if you execute them they immediately report back if the job started successfully or not, they do not wait for completion and report its result afterwards. So I had to create an SSIS package that executes the jobs and waits for their completion before the rest of the ETL process continues. Fortunately I was able to create the SSIS package with the desired functionality. I have made a step-by-step guide that will help you configure the snapshot replication and I have uploaded the SSIS package you need to execute it. Configure snapshot replication   The first step is to create a publication on the database you want to replicate. Connect to SQL Server Management Studio and right-click Replication, choose for New.. Publication…   The New Publication Wizard appears, click Next Choose your “source” database and click Next Choose Snapshot publication and click Next   You can now select tables and other objects that you want to publish Expand Tables and select the tables that are needed in your ETL process In the next screen you can add filters on the selected tables which can be very useful. Think about selecting only the last x days of data for example. Its possible to filter out rows and/or columns. In this example I did not apply any filters. Schedule the Snapshot Agent to run at a desired time, by doing this a SQL Agent Job is created which we need to execute from a SSIS package later on. Next you need to set the Security Settings for the Snapshot Agent. Click on the Security Settings button.   In this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. This is not recommended as a security best practice. Fortunately there is an excellent article on TechNet which tells you exactly how to set up the security for replication services. Read it here and make sure you follow the guidelines!   On the next screen choose to create the publication at the end of the wizard Give the publication a name (SnapshotTest) and complete the wizard   The publication is created and the articles (tables in this case) are added Now the publication is created successfully its time to create a new subscription for this publication.   Expand the Replication folder in SSMS and right click Local Subscriptions, choose New Subscriptions   The New Subscription Wizard appears   Select the publisher on which you just created your publication and select the database and publication (SnapshotTest)   You can now choose where the Distribution Agent should run. If it runs at the distributor (push subscriptions) it causes extra processing overhead. If you use a separate server for your ETL process and databases choose to run each agent at its subscriber (pull subscriptions) to reduce the processing overhead at the distributor. Of course we need a database for the subscription and fortunately the Wizard can create it for you. Choose for New database   Give the database the desired name, set the desired options and click OK You can now add multiple SQL Server Subscribers which is not necessary in this case but can be very useful.   You now need to set the security settings for the Distribution Agent. Click on the …. button Again, in this example I ran the Agent under the SQL Server Agent service account. Read the security best practices here   Click Next   Make sure you create a synchronization job schedule again. This job is also necessary in the SSIS package later on. Initialize the subscription at first synchronization Select the first box to create the subscription when finishing this wizard Complete the wizard by clicking Finish The subscription will be created In SSMS you see a new database is created, the subscriber. There are no tables or other objects in the database available yet because the replication jobs did not ran yet. Now expand the SQL Server Agent, go to Jobs and search for the job that creates the snapshot:   Rename this job to “CreateSnapshot” Now search for the job that distributes the snapshot:   Rename this job to “DistributeSnapshot” Create an SSIS package that executes the snapshot replication We now need an SSIS package that will take care of the execution of both jobs. The CreateSnapshot job needs to execute and finish before the DistributeSnapshot job runs. After the DistributeSnapshot job has started the package needs to wait until its finished before the package execution finishes. The Execute SQL Server Agent Job Task is designed to execute SQL Agent Jobs from SSIS. Unfortunately this SSIS task only executes the job and reports back if the job started succesfully or not, it does not report if the job actually completed with success or failure. This is because these jobs are asynchronous. The SSIS package I’ve created does the following: It runs the CreateSnapshot job It checks every 5 seconds if the job is completed with a for loop When the CreateSnapshot job is completed it starts the DistributeSnapshot job And again it waits until the snapshot is delivered before the package will finish successfully Quite simple and the package is ready to use as standalone extract mechanism. After executing the package the replicated tables are added to the subscriber database and are filled with data:   Download the SSIS package here (SSIS 2008) Conclusion In this example I only replicated 5 tables, I could create a SSIS package that does the same in approximately the same amount of time. But if I replicated all the 70+ AdventureWorks tables I would save a lot of time and boring work! With replication services you also benefit from the feature that schema changes are applied automatically which means your entire extract phase wont break. Because a snapshot is created using the bcp utility (bulk copy) it’s also quite fast, so the performance will be quite good. Disadvantages of using snapshot replication as extraction tool is the limitation on source systems. You can only choose SQL Server or Oracle databases to act as a publisher. So if you plan to build an extract phase for your ETL process that will invoke a lot of tables think about replication services, it would save you a lot of time and thanks to the Extract SSIS package I’ve created you can perfectly fit it in your usual SSIS ETL process.

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• The fastest way to resize images from ASP.NET. And it’s (more) supported-ish.

  - by Bertrand Le Roy

  I’ve shown before how to resize images using GDI, which is fairly common but is explicitly unsupported because we know of very real problems that this can cause. Still, many sites still use that method because those problems are fairly rare, and because most people assume it’s the only way to get the job done. Plus, it works in medium trust. More recently, I’ve shown how you can use WPF APIs to do the same thing and get JPEG thumbnails, only 2.5 times faster than GDI (even now that GDI really ultimately uses WIC to read and write images). The boost in performance is great, but it comes at a cost, that you may or may not care about: it won’t work in medium trust. It’s also just as unsupported as the GDI option. What I want to show today is how to use the Windows Imaging Components from ASP.NET APIs directly, without going through WPF. The approach has the great advantage that it’s been tested and proven to scale very well. The WIC team tells me you should be able to call support and get answers if you hit problems. Caveats exist though. First, this is using interop, so until a signed wrapper sits in the GAC, it will require full trust. Second, the APIs have a very strong smell of native code and are definitely not .NET-friendly. And finally, the most serious problem is that older versions of Windows don’t offer MTA support for image decoding. MTA support is only available on Windows 7, Vista and Windows Server 2008. But on 2003 and XP, you’ll only get STA support. that means that the thread safety that we so badly need for server applications is not guaranteed on those operating systems. To make it work, you’d have to spin specialized threads yourself and manage the lifetime of your objects, which is outside the scope of this article. We’ll assume that we’re fine with al this and that we’re running on 7 or 2008 under full trust. Be warned that the code that follows is not simple or very readable. This is definitely not the easiest way to resize an image in .NET. Wrapping native APIs such as WIC in a managed wrapper is never easy, but fortunately we won’t have to: the WIC team already did it for us and released the results under MS-PL. The InteropServices folder, which contains the wrappers we need, is in the WicCop project but I’ve also included it in the sample that you can download from the link at the end of the article. In order to produce a thumbnail, we first have to obtain a decoding frame object that WIC can use. Like with WPF, that object will contain the command to decode a frame from the source image but won’t do the actual decoding until necessary. Getting the frame is done by reading the image bytes through a special WIC stream that you can obtain from a factory object that we’re going to reuse for lots of other tasks: var photo = File.ReadAllBytes(photoPath); var factory = (IWICComponentFactory)new WICImagingFactory(); var inputStream = factory.CreateStream(); inputStream.InitializeFromMemory(photo, (uint)photo.Length); var decoder = factory.CreateDecoderFromStream( inputStream, null, WICDecodeOptions.WICDecodeMetadataCacheOnLoad); var frame = decoder.GetFrame(0); We can read the dimensions of the frame using the following (somewhat ugly) code: uint width, height; frame.GetSize(out width, out height); This enables us to compute the dimensions of the thumbnail, as I’ve shown in previous articles. We now need to prepare the output stream for the thumbnail. WIC requires a special kind of stream, IStream (not implemented by System.IO.Stream) and doesn’t directlyunderstand .NET streams. It does provide a number of implementations but not exactly what we need here. We need to output to memory because we’ll want to persist the same bytes to the response stream and to a local file for caching. The memory-bound version of IStream requires a fixed-length buffer but we won’t know the length of the buffer before we resize. To solve that problem, I’ve built a derived class from MemoryStream that also implements IStream. The implementation is not very complicated, it just delegates the IStream methods to the base class, but it involves some native pointer manipulation. Once we have a stream, we need to build the encoder for the output format, which could be anything that WIC supports. For web thumbnails, our only reasonable options are PNG and JPEG. I explored PNG because it’s a lossless format, and because WIC does support PNG compression. That compression is not very efficient though and JPEG offers good quality with much smaller file sizes. On the web, it matters. I found the best PNG compression option (adaptive) to give files that are about twice as big as 100%-quality JPEG (an absurd setting), 4.5 times bigger than 95%-quality JPEG and 7 times larger than 85%-quality JPEG, which is more than acceptable quality. As a consequence, we’ll use JPEG. The JPEG encoder can be prepared as follows: var encoder = factory.CreateEncoder( Consts.GUID_ContainerFormatJpeg, null); encoder.Initialize(outputStream, WICBitmapEncoderCacheOption.WICBitmapEncoderNoCache); The next operation is to create the output frame: IWICBitmapFrameEncode outputFrame; var arg = new IPropertyBag2[1]; encoder.CreateNewFrame(out outputFrame, arg); Notice that we are passing in a property bag. This is where we’re going to specify our only parameter for encoding, the JPEG quality setting: var propBag = arg[0]; var propertyBagOption = new PROPBAG2[1]; propertyBagOption[0].pstrName = "ImageQuality"; propBag.Write(1, propertyBagOption, new object[] { 0.85F }); outputFrame.Initialize(propBag); We can then set the resolution for the thumbnail to be 96, something we weren’t able to do with WPF and had to hack around: outputFrame.SetResolution(96, 96); Next, we set the size of the output frame and create a scaler from the input frame and the computed dimensions of the target thumbnail: outputFrame.SetSize(thumbWidth, thumbHeight); var scaler = factory.CreateBitmapScaler(); scaler.Initialize(frame, thumbWidth, thumbHeight, WICBitmapInterpolationMode.WICBitmapInterpolationModeFant); The scaler is using the Fant method, which I think is the best looking one even if it seems a little softer than cubic (zoomed here to better show the defects): Cubic Fant Linear Nearest neighbor We can write the source image to the output frame through the scaler: outputFrame.WriteSource(scaler, new WICRect { X = 0, Y = 0, Width = (int)thumbWidth, Height = (int)thumbHeight }); And finally we commit the pipeline that we built and get the byte array for the thumbnail out of our memory stream: outputFrame.Commit(); encoder.Commit(); var outputArray = outputStream.ToArray(); outputStream.Close(); That byte array can then be sent to the output stream and to the cache file. Once we’ve gone through this exercise, it’s only natural to wonder whether it was worth the trouble. I ran this method, as well as GDI and WPF resizing over thirty twelve megapixel images for JPEG qualities between 70% and 100% and measured the file size and time to resize. Here are the results: Size of resized images   Time to resize thirty 12 megapixel images Not much to see on the size graph: sizes from WPF and WIC are equivalent, which is hardly surprising as WPF calls into WIC. There is just an anomaly for 75% for WPF that I noted in my previous article and that disappears when using WIC directly. But overall, using WPF or WIC over GDI represents a slight win in file size. The time to resize is more interesting. WPF and WIC get similar times although WIC seems to always be a little faster. Not surprising considering WPF is using WIC. The margin of error on this results is probably fairly close to the time difference. As we already knew, the time to resize does not depend on the quality level, only the size does. This means that the only decision you have to make here is size versus visual quality. This third approach to server-side image resizing on ASP.NET seems to converge on the fastest possible one. We have marginally better performance than WPF, but with some additional peace of mind that this approach is sanctioned for server-side usage by the Windows Imaging team. It still doesn’t work in medium trust. That is a problem and shows the way for future server-friendly managed wrappers around WIC. The sample code for this article can be downloaded from: http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicResize.zip The benchmark code can be found here (you’ll need to add your own images to the Images directory and then add those to the project, with content and copy if newer in the properties of the files in the solution explorer): http://weblogs.asp.net/blogs/bleroy/Samples/WicWpfGdiImageResizeBenchmark.zip WIC tools can be downloaded from: http://code.msdn.microsoft.com/wictools To conclude, here are some of the resized thumbnails at 85% fant:

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• Windows XP Ubuntu Installer (version 11.10) error dialog - Permission Denied

  - by MacGyver

  When installing Ubuntu 11.10 on Windows XP (2nd option in installer), the install failed with popup. How can I fix this? Here is the contents of file "C:\Documents and Settings\Keith\Local Settings\Temp\wubi-11.10-rev241.log". I only pasted the last few lines because of the question size limit. \Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp is a valid Kubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp is a valid Kubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp is a valid Xubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp is a valid Xubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp is a valid Mythbuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp is a valid Mythbuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Ubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Ubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Kubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Kubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Xubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Xubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Mythbuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether D:\ is a valid Mythbuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain D:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Ubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Ubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Kubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Kubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Xubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Xubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Mythbuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether E:\ is a valid Mythbuntu CD 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: does not contain E:\casper\filesystem.squashfs 03-25 22:29 DEBUG Distro: checking whether Y:\ is a valid Ubuntu CD 03-25 22:29 INFO Distro: Found a valid CD for Ubuntu: Y:\ 03-25 22:29 INFO root: Running the installer... 03-25 22:29 INFO WinuiPage: appname=wubi, localedir=C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\translations, languages=['en_US', 'en'] 03-25 22:29 INFO WinuiPage: appname=wubi, localedir=C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\translations, languages=['en_US', 'en'] 03-25 22:29 DEBUG WinuiInstallationPage: target_drive=C:, installation_size=18000MB, distro_name=Ubuntu, language=en_US, locale=en_US.UTF-8, username=keith 03-25 22:29 INFO root: Received settings 03-25 22:29 INFO WinuiPage: appname=wubi, localedir=C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\translations, languages=['en_US', 'en'] 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: # Running tasklist... 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running select_target_dir... 03-25 22:29 INFO WindowsBackend: Installing into C:\ubuntu 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished select_target_dir 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running create_dir_structure... 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu\disks 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu\install 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu\install\boot 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu\disks\boot 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu\disks\boot\grub 03-25 22:29 DEBUG CommonBackend: Creating dir C:\ubuntu\install\boot\grub 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished create_dir_structure 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running uncompress_target_dir... 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished uncompress_target_dir 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running create_uninstaller... 03-25 22:29 DEBUG WindowsBackend: Copying uninstaller Y:\wubi.exe -> C:\ubuntu\uninstall-wubi.exe 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi UninstallString C:\ubuntu\uninstall-wubi.exe 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi InstallationDir C:\ubuntu 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi DisplayName Ubuntu 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi DisplayIcon C:\ubuntu\Ubuntu.ico 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi DisplayVersion 11.10-rev241 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi Publisher Ubuntu 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi URLInfoAbout http://www.ubuntu.com 03-25 22:29 DEBUG registry: Setting registry key -2147483646 Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Uninstall\Wubi HelpLink http://www.ubuntu.com/support 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished create_uninstaller 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running copy_installation_files... 03-25 22:29 DEBUG WindowsBackend: Copying C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\data\custom-installation -> C:\ubuntu\install\custom-installation 03-25 22:29 DEBUG WindowsBackend: Copying C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\winboot -> C:\ubuntu\winboot 03-25 22:29 DEBUG WindowsBackend: Copying C:\DOCUME~1\Keith\LOCALS~1\Temp\pyl1.tmp\data\images\Ubuntu.ico -> C:\ubuntu\Ubuntu.ico 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Finished copy_installation_files 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ## Running get_iso... 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: New task copy_file 03-25 22:29 DEBUG TaskList: ### Running copy_file... 03-25 22:32 ERROR TaskList: [Errno 13] Permission denied Traceback (most recent call last): File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\tasklist.py", line 197, in __call__ File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\utils.py", line 202, in copy_file IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied 03-25 22:32 DEBUG TaskList: # Cancelling tasklist 03-25 22:32 DEBUG TaskList: New task check_iso 03-25 22:32 ERROR root: [Errno 13] Permission denied Traceback (most recent call last): File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 58, in run File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 130, in select_task File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 205, in run_cd_menu File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 120, in select_task File "\lib\wubi\application.py", line 158, in run_installer File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\tasklist.py", line 197, in __call__ File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\utils.py", line 202, in copy_file IOError: [Errno 13] Permission denied 03-25 22:32 ERROR TaskList: 'WindowsBackend' object has no attribute 'iso_path' Traceback (most recent call last): File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\tasklist.py", line 197, in __call__ File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\backend.py", line 579, in get_iso File "\lib\wubi\backends\common\backend.py", line 565, in use_iso AttributeError: 'WindowsBackend' object has no attribute 'iso_path' 03-25 22:32 DEBUG TaskList: # Cancelling tasklist 03-25 22:32 DEBUG TaskList: # Finished tasklist

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• VLOOKUP in Excel, part 2: Using VLOOKUP without a database

  - by Mark Virtue

  In a recent article, we introduced the Excel function called VLOOKUP and explained how it could be used to retrieve information from a database into a cell in a local worksheet.  In that article we mentioned that there were two uses for VLOOKUP, and only one of them dealt with querying databases.  In this article, the second and final in the VLOOKUP series, we examine this other, lesser known use for the VLOOKUP function. If you haven’t already done so, please read the first VLOOKUP article – this article will assume that many of the concepts explained in that article are already known to the reader. When working with databases, VLOOKUP is passed a “unique identifier” that serves to identify which data record we wish to find in the database (e.g. a product code or customer ID).  This unique identifier must exist in the database, otherwise VLOOKUP returns us an error.  In this article, we will examine a way of using VLOOKUP where the identifier doesn’t need to exist in the database at all.  It’s almost as if VLOOKUP can adopt a “near enough is good enough” approach to returning the data we’re looking for.  In certain circumstances, this is exactly what we need. We will illustrate this article with a real-world example – that of calculating the commissions that are generated on a set of sales figures.  We will start with a very simple scenario, and then progressively make it more complex, until the only rational solution to the problem is to use VLOOKUP.  The initial scenario in our fictitious company works like this:  If a salesperson creates more than $30,000 worth of sales in a given year, the commission they earn on those sales is 30%.  Otherwise their commission is only 20%.  So far this is a pretty simple worksheet: To use this worksheet, the salesperson enters their sales figures in cell B1, and the formula in cell B2 calculates the correct commission rate they are entitled to receive, which is used in cell B3 to calculate the total commission that the salesperson is owed (which is a simple multiplication of B1 and B2). The cell B2 contains the only interesting part of this worksheet – the formula for deciding which commission rate to use: the one below the threshold of $30,000, or the one above the threshold.  This formula makes use of the Excel function called IF.  For those readers that are not familiar with IF, it works like this: IF(condition,value if true,value if false) Where the condition is an expression that evaluates to either true or false.  In the example above, the condition is the expression B1<B5, which can be read as “Is B1 less than B5?”, or, put another way, “Are the total sales less than the threshold”.  If the answer to this question is “yes” (true), then we use the value if true parameter of the function, namely B6 in this case – the commission rate if the sales total was below the threshold.  If the answer to the question is “no” (false), then we use the value if false parameter of the function, namely B7 in this case – the commission rate if the sales total was above the threshold. As you can see, using a sales total of $20,000 gives us a commission rate of 20% in cell B2.  If we enter a value of $40,000, we get a different commission rate: So our spreadsheet is working. Let’s make it more complex.  Let’s introduce a second threshold:  If the salesperson earns more than $40,000, then their commission rate increases to 40%: Easy enough to understand in the real world, but in cell B2 our formula is getting more complex.  If you look closely at the formula, you’ll see that the third parameter of the original IF function (the value if false) is now an entire IF function in its own right.  This is called a nested function (a function within a function).  It’s perfectly valid in Excel (it even works!), but it’s harder to read and understand. We’re not going to go into the nuts and bolts of how and why this works, nor will we examine the nuances of nested functions.  This is a tutorial on VLOOKUP, not on Excel in general. Anyway, it gets worse!  What about when we decide that if they earn more than $50,000 then they’re entitled to 50% commission, and if they earn more than $60,000 then they’re entitled to 60% commission? Now the formula in cell B2, while correct, has become virtually unreadable.  No-one should have to write formulae where the functions are nested four levels deep!  Surely there must be a simpler way? There certainly is.  VLOOKUP to the rescue! Let’s redesign the worksheet a bit.  We’ll keep all the same figures, but organize it in a new way, a more tabular way: Take a moment and verify for yourself that the new Rate Table works exactly the same as the series of thresholds above. Conceptually, what we’re about to do is use VLOOKUP to look up the salesperson’s sales total (from B1) in the rate table and return to us the corresponding commission rate.  Note that the salesperson may have indeed created sales that are not one of the five values in the rate table ($0, $30,000, $40,000, $50,000 or $60,000).  They may have created sales of $34,988.  It’s important to note that $34,988 does not appear in the rate table.  Let’s see if VLOOKUP can solve our problem anyway… We select cell B2 (the location we want to put our formula), and then insert the VLOOKUP function from the Formulas tab: The Function Arguments box for VLOOKUP appears.  We fill in the arguments (parameters) one by one, starting with the Lookup_value, which is, in this case, the sales total from cell B1.  We place the cursor in the Lookup_value field and then click once on cell B1: Next we need to specify to VLOOKUP what table to lookup this data in.  In this example, it’s the rate table, of course.  We place the cursor in the Table_array field, and then highlight the entire rate table – excluding the headings: Next we must specify which column in the table contains the information we want our formula to return to us.  In this case we want the commission rate, which is found in the second column in the table, so we therefore enter a 2 into the Col_index_num field: Finally we enter a value in the Range_lookup field. Important:  It is the use of this field that differentiates the two ways of using VLOOKUP.  To use VLOOKUP with a database, this final parameter, Range_lookup, must always be set to FALSE, but with this other use of VLOOKUP, we must either leave it blank or enter a value of TRUE.  When using VLOOKUP, it is vital that you make the correct choice for this final parameter. To be explicit, we will enter a value of true in the Range_lookup field.  It would also be fine to leave it blank, as this is the default value: We have completed all the parameters.  We now click the OK button, and Excel builds our VLOOKUP formula for us: If we experiment with a few different sales total amounts, we can satisfy ourselves that the formula is working. Conclusion In the “database” version of VLOOKUP, where the Range_lookup parameter is FALSE, the value passed in the first parameter (Lookup_value) must be present in the database.  In other words, we’re looking for an exact match. But in this other use of VLOOKUP, we are not necessarily looking for an exact match.  In this case, “near enough is good enough”.  But what do we mean by “near enough”?  Let’s use an example:  When searching for a commission rate on a sales total of $34,988, our VLOOKUP formula will return us a value of 30%, which is the correct answer.  Why did it choose the row in the table containing 30% ?  What, in fact, does “near enough” mean in this case?  Let’s be precise: When Range_lookup is set to TRUE (or omitted), VLOOKUP will look in column 1 and match the highest value that is not greater than the Lookup_value parameter. It’s also important to note that for this system to work, the table must be sorted in ascending order on column 1! If you would like to practice with VLOOKUP, the sample file illustrated in this article can be downloaded from here. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Using VLOOKUP in ExcelImport Microsoft Access Data Into ExcelImport an Access Database into ExcelCopy a Group of Cells in Excel 2007 to the Clipboard as an ImageShare Access Data with Excel in Office 2010 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 Quickly Schedule Meetings With NeedtoMeet Share Flickr Photos On Facebook Automatically Are You Blocked On Gtalk? Find out Discover Latest Android Apps On AppBrain The Ultimate Guide For YouTube Lovers Will it Blend? iPad Edition

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• Week in Geek: IPv6 Capable Smartphones Compromise User Privacy Edition

  - by Asian Angel

  This week we learned how to “clone a disk, resize static windows, and create system function shortcuts”, use 45 different services, sites, and apps to help read favorite sites, add MP3 support to Audacity (for saving in MP3 format), install a Wii game loader for easy backups and fast load times, create a Blue Screen of Death in any color, and more. Photo by legofenris. Weekly News Links Photo by The H Security. IPv6: Smartphones compromise users’ privacy Since version 4 of the iOS operating system, Apple’s iPhones, iPads and iPods have been capable of handling IPv6, and most Android devices have been capable since version 2.1. However, the operating systems transfer an ID that discloses information about their users. Dumb phones can be attacked too Much of the discussion of security threats to mobile phones revolves around smartphones, but researchers have found that less advanced “feature phones,” still used by the majority of people around the world, also are vulnerable to attack. SCADA exploit – the dragon awakes The recent publication of an exploit for KingView, a software package for visualising industrial process control systems, appears to be having an effect. Threatpost reports that both the Chinese vendor Wellintech and Chinese CERT (CN-CERT) have now reacted. Sophos: Spam to get more malicious Spam is becoming more malicious in nature as trickery tactics change in line with current user interests, according to a new report released Tuesday by Sophos. Global spam traffic rebounds as Rustock wakes Spam is on the rise after the Rustock botnet awoke from its Christmas slumber, according to Symantec. Cracking WPA keys in the cloud At the forthcoming Black Hat conference, blogger Thomas Roth plans to demonstrate how weak WPA PSKs can be cracked quickly and easily using Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) service. Microsoft Security Advisory: Vulnerability in Internet Explorer could allow remote code execution Provides a link to more details about the vulnerability and shows a work-around/fix for the problem. Adobe plans to make it easier to delete Flash cookies in web browsers The new API, NPAPI:ClearSiteData, will allow Flash cookies – also known as Local Shared Objects (LSO) – to be deleted directly in the browser’s settings. Firefox beta getting new database standard The ninth beta version of Firefox is set to get support for a standard called IndexedDB that provides a database interface useful for offline data storage and other tasks needing information on a browser’s computer. MetroPCS accused of blocking certain Net content MetroPCS is violating the FCC’s recently approved Net neutrality rules by blocking certain Internet content, say several public interest groups. Server and Tools chief Muglia to leave Microsoft in summer 2011 Microsoft veteran and Server & Tools Business (STB) President Bob Muglia is leaving Microsoft, according to an email that CEO Steve Ballmer sent to employees on January 10. Report: DOJ nearing decision on Google-ITA The U.S. Department of Justice is gearing up for a possible formal antitrust investigation into whether or not Google should be allowed to purchase travel software company ITA Software, according to a report. South Korea says Google Street View broke law Police in South Korea reportedly say Google broke the country’s law when its Street View service captured personal data from unsecure Wi-Fi networks. The backlash over Google’s HTML5 video bet Choosing strategies based on what you believe to be long-term benefits is generally a good idea when running a business, but if you manage to alienate the world in the process, the long term may become irrelevant. Google answers critics on HTML5 Web video move Google responded to critics of its decision to drop support for a popular HTML5 video codec by declaring that a royalty-supported standard for Web video will hold the Web hostage. Random TinyHacker Links A Special GiveAway: a Great Book & Great Security Software The team from 7 Tutorials has a special giveaway running during the month of January. Signed copies of their latest book, full 1-year licenses of BitDefender Internet Security 2011 and free 3-month trials for everyone willing to participate. One Click Rooting For Android Phones Here’s a nice tool that helps you root your Android phone effortlessly. New Angry Birds Free version 1.0 Available in the App Store. Google Code University Learn programming at Google Code University. Capture and Share Your Favorite Part Of a YouTube Video SnipSnip.it lets you share only the part of the video that you like. Super User Questions More great questions and answers from this past week’s popular topics at Super User. What are the Windows A: and B: drives used for? Does OS X support linux-like features? What is the easiest way to make a backup of an entire hard disk? Will shifting from Wireless to Wired network result in better performance? Is it legal to install Windows 7 Home Premium Retail inside VMware virtual machine? How-To Geek Weekly Article Recap Enjoy reading through our hottest articles from this past week. The 50 Best Ways to Disable Built-in Windows Features You Don’t Want The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal One Year Ago on How-To Geek More great articles from one year ago filled with helpful geeky goodness for you to enjoy. Share Text & Images the Easy Way with JustPaste.it Start Portable Firefox in Safe Mode Firefox 3.6 Release Candidate Available, Here’s How to Fix Your Incompatible Extensions Protect Your Computer from “Little Hands” with KidSafe Lock Prying Eyes Out of Your Minimized Windows Custom Crocheted Cylon-Cthulhu Hybrid What happens when you let your Cylon Centurion figure and your crocheted Cthulhu spend too many lonely nights together? A Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid, of course! You can get your own from the Cthulhu Chick store over on Etsy. Note: This is not an ad…Ruth is a friend of ours, and this Cylon-Cthulhu hybrid makes the perfect guard for the new MVP trophy in our office. The Geek Note Whether it is a geeky indoor project or just getting outside, we hope that you and your families have a terrific fun-filled weekend! Remember to keep sending those great tips in to us at [email protected]. Photo by qwrrty. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Upgrade Windows 7 Easily (And Understand Whether You Should) The How-To Geek Guide to Audio Editing: Basic Noise Removal Install a Wii Game Loader for Easy Backups and Fast Load Times The Best of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 The Worst of CES (Consumer Electronics Show) in 2011 HTG Projects: How to Create Your Own Custom Papercraft Toy Firefox 4.0 Beta 9 Available for Download – Get Your Copy Now The Frustrations of a Computer Literate Watching a Newbie Use a Computer [Humorous Video] Season0nPass Jailbreaks Current Gen Apple TVs IBM’s Jeopardy Playing Computer Watson Shows The Pros How It’s Done [Video] Tranquil Juice Drop Abstract Wallpaper Pulse Is a Sleek Newsreader for iOS and Android Devices

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