Search Results

Search found 20869 results on 835 pages for 'things i hate'.

Page 759/835 | < Previous Page | 755 756 757 758 759 760 761 762 763 764 765 766  | Next Page >

• About Me

  - by Jeffrey West

  I’m new to blogging.  This is the second blog post that I have written, and before I go too much further I wanted the readers of my blog to know a bit more about me… Kid’s Stuff By trade, I am a programmer (or coder, developer, engineer, architect, etc).  I started programming when I was 12 years old.  When I was 7, we got our first ‘family’ computer – an Apple IIc.  It was great to play games on, and of course what else was a 7-year-old going to do with it.  I did have one problem with it, though.  When I put in my 5.25” floppy to play a game, sometimes, instead loading my game I would get a mysterious ‘]’ on the screen with a flashing cursor.  This, of course, was not my game.  Much like the standard ‘Microsoft fix’ is to reboot, back then you would take the floppy out, shake it, and restart the computer and pray for a different result. One day, I learned at school that I could topple my nemesis – the ‘]’ and flashing cursor – by typing ‘load’ and pressing enter.  Most of the time, this would load my game and then I would get to play.  Problem solved.  However, I began to wonder – what else can I make it do? When I was in 5th grade my dad got a bright idea to buy me a Tandy 1000HX.  He didn’t know what I was going to do with it, and neither did I.  Least of all, my mom wasn’t happy about buying a 5th grader a $1,000 computer.  Nonetheless, Over time, I learned how to write simple basic programs out of the back of my Math book: 10 x=5 20 y=6 30 PRINT x+y That was fun for all of about 5 minutes.  I needed more – more challenges, more things that I could make the computer do.  In order to quench this thirst my parents sent me to National Computer Camps in Connecticut.  It was one of the best experiences of my childhood, and I spent 3 weeks each summer after that learning BASIC, Pascal, Turbo C and some C++.  There weren’t many kids at the time who knew anything about computers, and lets just say my knowledge of and interest in computers didn’t score me many ‘cool’ points.  My experiences at NCC set me on the path that I find myself on now, and I am very thankful for the experience.  Real Life I have held various positions in the past at different levels within the IT layer cake.  I started out as a Software Developer for a startup in the Dallas, TX area building software for semiconductor testing statistical process control and sampling.  I was the second Java developer that was hired, and the ninth employee overall, so I got a great deal of experience developing software.  Since there weren’t that many people in the organization, I also got a lot of field experience which meant that if I screwed up the code, I got yelled at (figuratively) by both my boss AND the customer.  Fun Times!  What made it better was that I got to help run pilot programs in Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia and Malta.  Getting yelled at in Taiwan is slightly less annoying that getting yelled at in Dallas… I spent the next 5 years at Accenture doing systems integration in the ‘SOA’ group.  I joined as a Consultant and left as a Senior Manager.  I started out writing code in WebLogic Integration and left after I wrapped up project where I led a team of 25 to develop the next generation of a digital media platform to deliver HD content in a digital format.  At Accenture, I had the pleasure of working with some truly amazing people – mentoring some and learning from many others – and on some incredible real-world IT projects.  Given my background with the BEA stack of products I was often called in to troubleshoot and tune WebLogic, ALBPM and ALSB installations and have logged many hours digging through thread dumps, running performance tests with SoapUI and decompiling Java classes we didn’t have the source for so I could see what was going on in the code. I am now a Senior Principal Product Manager at Oracle in the Application Grid practice.  The term ‘Application Grid’ refers to a collection of software and hardware products within Oracle that enables customers to build horizontally scalable systems.  This collection of products includes WebLogic, GlassFish, Coherence, Tuxedo and the JRockit/HotSpot JVMs (HotSprocket, maybe?).  Now, with the introduction of Exalogic it has grown to include hardware as well. Wrapping it up… I love technology and have a diverse background ranging from software development to HW and network architecture & tuning.  I have held certifications for being an Oracle Certified DBA, MSCE and Cisco Certified Network Professional (CCNP), among others and I have put those to great use over my career.  I am excited about programming & technology and I enjoy helping people learn and be successful.  If you are having challenges with WebLogic, BPM or Service Bus feel free to reach out to me and I’ll be happy to help as I have time. Thanks for stopping by!   --Jeff

  Read the article

• How do I consistently re-size my game window and elements?

  - by Milo

  In my 2D game, I have a flow layout. Inside the flow layout are tables. I have a slider that lets the user make the tables larger or smaller. This makes the background larger or smaller too. Everything should scale proportionally which means the background should stay at the same position when I make things larger, and it almost does. When the scrollbar is at 0, it does exactly this. As the scrollbar gets further down problems arise. I'll toggle the slider maybe 3 times and on the fourth time, the background jumps a little lower on the Y axis. In order to be efficient, I only start rendering the background near the parent of the flow layout. Here it is: void LobbyTableManager::renderBG( GraphicsContext* g, agui::Rectangle& absRect, agui::Rectangle& childRect ) { int cx, cy, cw, ch; g->getClippingRect(cx,cy,cw,ch); g->setClippingRect(absRect.getX(),absRect.getY(),absRect.getWidth(),absRect.getHeight()); float scale = 0.35f; int w = m_bgSprite->getWidth() * getTableScale() * scale; int h = m_bgSprite->getHeight() * getTableScale() * scale; int numX = ceil(absRect.getWidth() / (float)w) + 2; int numY = ceil(absRect.getHeight() / (float)h) + 2; float offsetX = m_activeTables[0]->getLocation().getX() - w; float offsetY = m_activeTables[0]->getLocation().getY() - h; int startY = childRect.getY(); if(moo) { std::cout << "S=" << startY << ","; } int numAttempts = 0; while(startY + h < absRect.getY() && numAttempts < 1000) { startY += h; if(moo) { std::cout << startY << ","; } numAttempts++; } if(moo) { std::cout << "\n"; moo = false; } g->holdDrawing(); for(int i = 0; i < numX; ++i) { for(int j = 0; j < numY; ++j) { g->drawScaledSprite(m_bgSprite,0,0,m_bgSprite->getWidth(),m_bgSprite->getHeight(), absRect.getX() + (i * w) + (offsetX),absRect.getY() + (j * h) + startY,w,h,0); } } g->unholdDrawing(); g->setClippingRect(cx,cy,cw,ch); } The numeric problem seems to be in the value of startY. I outputted startY figuring out its value: As you can see here, this is me only zooming in, pay attention to the final number before the next s=. You'll notice that, what should happen is, the numbers should be linear, ex: -40, -38, -36, -34, -32, -30, etc. As you'll notice, the start numbers linearly correlate ex: 62k, 64k, 66k, 68k, 70k etc.. but the end result is wrong every third or 4th time. Here is most of the resize code: void LobbyTableManager::setTableScale( float scale ) { scale += 0.3f; scale *= 2.0f; agui::Gui* gotGui = getGui(); float scrollRel = m_vScroll->getRelativeValue(); setScale(scale); rescaleTables(); resizeFlow(); if(gotGui) { gotGui->toggleWidgetLocationChanged(false); } updateScrollBars(); float newVal = scrollRel * m_vScroll->getMaxValue(); if((int)(newVal + 0.5f) > (int)newVal) { newVal++; } m_vScroll->setValue(newVal); static int x = 0; x++; moo = true; //std::cout << m_vScroll->getValue() << std::endl; if(gotGui) { gotGui->toggleWidgetLocationChanged(true); } if(gotGui) { gotGui->_widgetLocationChanged(); } } void LobbyTableManager::valueChanged( agui::VScrollBar* source,int val ) { if(getGui()) { getGui()->toggleWidgetLocationChanged(false); } m_flow->setLocation(0,-val); if(getGui()) { getGui()->toggleWidgetLocationChanged(true); getGui()->_widgetLocationChanged(); } }

  Read the article

• User Productivity Kit - Powerful Packages (Part 2)

  - by [email protected]

  In my first post on packages I described what a package is and how it can be used. I also started explaining some of the considerations that should be taken into account when determining how to arrange your packages. The first is when the files are interrelated and depend on one another such as an HTML file and it's graphics. A second consideration is how the files are used in your outlines. Let's say you're using a dozen Word doc files. You could place them all in a single package or put each Word doc file in a separate package but what's the right thing to do? There are several factors that will influence your decision. To understand the first, let me explain a function of UPK publishing. Take an outline in UPK that has an attachment (concept, frame link, or hyperlink) that points to a file in a package. When you publish this outline, the publishing engine will determine that there is a link to a file in the package and copy the contents of the package to the publishing destination directory. This is done to ensure that any interrelated files are kept together. For the situation where you have an HTML file with links to number of graphics files, this is a good thing. If, however, the package has a dozen unrelated Word doc files and you link to only one of them, all dozen Word documents will be copied to the publishing destination directory.  Whether or not this is a good thing is dependent on two things. First, are all of the files in the package used in the outline that you're publishing? Take an outline that includes links to all of the Word documents in that dozen document package I described earlier. For this situation, you may choose to keep all the files in a single package for convenience. A second consideration is how your organization leverages reuse in UPK. In this context, I'm referring to the link style of reuse such as when you link to the same topic from multiple UPK outlines and changes to the topic appear in both places. Take an example where you have the earlier mentioned dozen Word document package and an outline with a dozen topics in it. Each topic has an attachment pointing to one of the Word documents in the package (frame link, concept, etc.) If you're only publishing this outline, the single package probably works fine but what if you're reusing one of these topics in another outline? As I explained earlier, linking to one file in the package will result in all files in the package being copied to your published output. In this example, linking to one topic in the first outline will result in all dozen Word documents being copied to the published output. This may result in files in the output that you don't want there for business or size reasons. This is a situation in which you should consider placing each of the Word documents in it's own separate package. With each document in it's own package, that link to a single document will result in only that single package and single Word document being copied to the published output. In my last post I had described that packages are documents in the UPK library. When using the multi-user version of the UPK Developer you can leverage standard library capabilities for managing the files in these packages during the development process - capabilities such as check in / check out, history, etc. When structuring your packages take into consideration how the authors are going to be adding, modifying and deleting files from the packages. A single package is a single document in the UPK library. Like any other document in the library, a single user can check out the package and edit it at a time. If you have a large number of files in a single package and these must be modified by many users, you need to consider whether this will cause problems as multiple users compete to update the same package. If the files don't depend on each other consider placing the files in separate packages to reduce contention. I hope you've enjoyed these two posts on how you can leverage the power of packages in your content. In summary, consider the following when structuring your packages: Is the asset a single, standalone file or a set of files that depend on each other? Will all the files always be used together in a single outline or may only some of the files be needed based on how the content is reused across multiple outlines? Will multiple developers need to update the files in a single package or should you break it into multiple packages to reduce contention when checking out the document? We'd like to hear from you on how you're using packages in your content. Please add your comments below! Thank you and I hope these two posts have given you additional insights into how to use packages in your content and structure them for efficient use. John Zaums Senior Director, Product Development Oracle User Productivity Kit

  Read the article

• SOA Suite 11g Dynamic Payload Testing with soapUI Free Edition

  - by Greg Mally

  Overview Many web service developers use soapUI for various tests like: smoke test, unit test, and load testing because you can get a free edition that is fairly robust. However, if you need to venture into more complex testing that requires a dynamic payload, then the free edition doesn't necessarily make it easy. This feature does exist in soapUI, but for obvious reasons it is in the Pro version. In this blog I will show you how to use soapUI free edition for dynamic payloads in a simplified example. Hopefully this will open the doors for you to expand into more complex scenarios. The following assumes that you have a working knowledge of soapUI and will not go into concepts like setting up a project etc. For the basics, please review the documentation for soapUI: http://www.soapui.org/Getting-Started/. Additionally, we will be using asynchronous web services and you can review the setup for this in my blog: SOA Suite 11g Asynchronous Testing with soapUI. Features in soapUI Free Edition Relating to this Topic The soapUI test tool provides a very feature rich environment that can do many things provided you are willing to go beyond point and click. For this example, we will be leveraging just a couple features for our dynamic payload example: Test Case Properties Scripting with Groovy Basically, we will be using a property as a global variable and we will manipulate that property using a Groovy script. Setting Up Our Property Properties are available throughout soapUI and here is a snippet from the soapUI website defining the locations: Projects : for handling Project scope values, for example a subscription ID TestSuite : for handling TestSuite scoped values, can be seen as "arguments" to a TestSuite TestCases : for handling TestCase scoped values, can be seen as "arguments" to a TestCase Properties TestStep : for providing local values/state within a TestCase Local TestStep properties : several TestStep types maintain their own list of properties specific to their functionality : DataSource, DataSink, Run TestCase MockServices : for handling MockService scoped values/arguments MockResponses : for handling MockResponse scoped values Global Properties : for handling Global properties, optionally from an external source For our example, we will be defining a custom property in a TestCase called SimpleAsyncPayload. The property can be created in either the Custom Properties tab located at the bottom of the Navigator panel when the TestCase is selected in the Navigator or the Properties label in the TestCase editor: Navigator Panel TestCase Editor You will notice that I set a value of “0” for the custom property. For this simplified example, we will need to retrieve that value and manipulate it prior to making the web service request invocation. In order to accomplish this, we will need to get Groovy ;) Let's Get Groovy We will now add a new Groovy Script step to the TestCase called Manipulate Payload: TestCase Editor > Append Step > Groovy Script Once we have added the Groovy Script step to our TestCase, we can open the Groovy Script editor to add the code to: Get the current value of the property we created called SimpleAsyncPayload. Convert the value of the property to an integer. Increment the value. Store the incremented value back into the TestCase property called SimpleAsyncPayload. The script should look something like the following: Groovy Script Editor – Manipulate Payload At this point we can test the script to see if it is working by simply running the TestCase (left-click on the green triangle in the upper left-hand corner of the TestCase editor). To verify if it ran correctly, we can look at the value of the SimpleAsyncPayload property which should now be 1: TestCase Editor – Run Results All that is left to complete the TestCase is to append another step of type Test Request. The information required to append the request is a name and an operation to invoke. In this example we will use the default name and select the SimpleAsyncBPELProcessBingd -> process as the operation (any other information being requested, simply use the defaults unless you are calling an asynchronous operation then do not add any assertions). We are now in familiar ground with the Test Request editor. Depending upon the type of operation you are invoking (synchronous or asynchronous), please update the request with the necessary information (e.g., callback information for asynchronous operations). We will now tweak the Test Request payload to retrieve the value of the SimpleAsyncPayload property. The soapUI editor makes this very simple: right-click in the payload and navigate to the property (e.g., right-click > Get Data.. > TestCase: [Groovy TestCase] > Property [SimpleAsyncPayload]): Test Request Editor – Insert Property Value Your payload should now look something like the following: Test Request Editor – Inserted Property Value Just like before, we are now ready to run the TestCase. If everything goes as expected we should see a response like the following: Message Viewer – Results of TestCase Run We are now setup to be able to run a stress test where the payload will change for each request. This simple example can be expanded to include multiple payload values, complex calculations in the scripts, or whatever can be done via the soapUI scripting. Hopefully you have found this useful and happy testing to you :)

  Read the article

• In the Mobile and Tablet World, How Much is Too Much?

  - by andrewbrust

  The week of April 26th was a huge one in the world of mobile and tablet devices,  There were so many individual developments, announcements and solidifications of strategy, it’s almost impossible to believe they occurred in the same month, let alone the same week. Things started with Apple and Gizmodo having a Law and Order moment over the latter’s procurement of what appears to be the former’s 4th gen iPhone prototype.  We found out on the 26th that Gizmodo blogger Jason Chen’s apartment was raided by police and, honestly, that was a bit much. But Apple didn’t stop there.  They also published Steve Job’s critique of Adobe Flash and his explanation of Cupertino’s embargo of Flash on iPhones, iPods and iPads.  If you ask me, this too, was a bit much. Apple finished up the week by releasing the 3G version of its iPad product to the US market. I like (iLike?) my WiFi iPad.  The idea of getting a version of it that required a second 3G service monthly subscription, is, well, a bit  much. Microsoft was in the news too.  It killed a project it hadn’t even acknowledged the existence of: the Courier tablet.  That’s a bit much too.  If a tree falls in the woods, and Microsoft says they can’t hear it anyway, could they really have chopped it down? Maybe Microsoft Research should have licensed some of Courier’s technology from other parts of Microsoft.  Then maybe they could have kept the product alive.  Ask HTC: they’re going to be licensing technology from Microsoft because Redmond insists that Google’s Android operating system infringes on certain of their patents.  And since HTC now builds a number of handsets on Android, instead of being beholden, as they once were, to Windows Mobile, that means they can keep making their products.  Why does HTC have to pay the royalties, and not Google?  Maybe Microsoft decided that going after GOOG would have been a bit much, even for them. The agreement came not a moment to soon: HTC released their “Droid Incredible” (that name’s a bit much), an Android 2.1 handset with amazing hardware and HTC’s own Sense UI, on April 30th (this past Friday). This phone is very well-reviewed.  Maybe that’s why Google basically decided to beg off introducing a version of its Nexus One phone (also manufactured by HTC) on the Verizon Wireless network.  Google backing down?  That’s incredible, if not also a bit much. And that brings us to HP.  Which this week announced its acquisition of Palm and its webOS mobile phone touch-oriented operating system.  HP also killed its own Slate initiative.  Apparently HP realized that Windows 7, even with a proprietary HP touch UI added on top, is no match for the iPad.  I’m guessing they think webOS might work a bit better,  And I’m wondering if HP even wants to use webOS for phone handsets, beyond the Pre and Pixi.  Using it just for slate devices would be a bit extreme, but maybe not too much. Honestly, this was not Microsoft’s best week.  It killed a project and a close partner did likewise.  Then that same partner bought a competing OS product, while another partner released their new product that uses yet another competing OS platform. What did Microsoft actually produce this past week? An update to its Windows Phone 7 developer tools that actually works with the version of Visual Studio 2010 released on April 12th, and the version of Silverlight released three days later. That took three weeks to get synced up, and that’s a bit much too. But at least it happened. Windows Phone 7 is Microsoft’s best hope for a comeback in the SmartPhone market and to offer a credible touch-based tablet device.  This week, two of Microsoft’s slate initiatives died, and its only mobile phone victory was around its competitor’s operating system.  I hope the new platform gets Redmond out of the PC ghetto and into the classes of device that get people really excited today.  If it can’t, that would be a bit much; probably too much.  And, as the signs at the Lonestar Cafe in NYC used to say, too much ain’t enough.

  Read the article

• Yet another blog about IValueConverter

  - by codingbloke

  After my previous blog on a Generic Boolean Value Converter I thought I might as well blog up another IValueConverter implementation that I use. The Generic Boolean Value Converter effectively converters an input which only has two possible values to one of two corresponding objects.  The next logical step would be to create a similar converter that can take an input which has multiple (but finite and discrete) values to one of multiple corresponding objects.  To put it more simply a Generic Enum Value Converter. Now we already have a tool that can help us in this area, the ResourceDictionary.  A simple IValueConverter implementation around it would create a StringToObjectConverter like so:- StringToObjectConverter using System; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Data; using System.Linq; using System.Windows.Markup; namespace SilverlightApplication1 {     [ContentProperty("Items")]     public class StringToObjectConverter : IValueConverter     {         public ResourceDictionary Items { get; set; }         public string DefaultKey { get; set; }                  public StringToObjectConverter()         {             DefaultKey = "__default__";         }         public virtual object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             if (value != null && Items.Contains(value.ToString()))                 return Items[value.ToString()];             else                 return Items[DefaultKey];         }         public virtual object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             return Items.FirstOrDefault(kvp => value.Equals(kvp.Value)).Key;         }     } } There are some things to note here.  The bulk of managing the relationship between an object instance and the related string key is handled by the Items property being an ResourceDictionary.  Also there is a catch all “__default__” key value which allows for only a subset of the possible input values to mapped to an object with the rest falling through to the default. We can then set one of these up in Xaml:-             <local:StringToObjectConverter x:Key="StatusToBrush">                 <ResourceDictionary>                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Red" x:Key="Overdue" />                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Orange" x:Key="Urgent" />                     <SolidColorBrush Color="Silver" x:Key="__default__" />                 </ResourceDictionary>             </local:StringToObjectConverter> You could well imagine that in the model being bound these key names would actually be members of an enum.  This still works due to the use of ToString in the Convert method.  Hence the only requirement for the incoming object is that it has a ToString implementation which generates a sensible string instead of simply the type name. I can’t imagine right now a scenario where this converter would be used in a TwoWay binding but there is no reason why it can’t.  I prefer to avoid leaving the ConvertBack throwing an exception if that can be be avoided.  Hence it just enumerates the KeyValuePair entries to find a value that matches and returns the key its mapped to. Ah but now my sense of balance is assaulted again.  Whilst StringToObjectConverter is quite happy to accept an enum type via the Convert method it returns a string from the ConvertBack method not the original input enum type that arrived in the Convert.  Now I could address this by complicating the ConvertBack method and examining the targetType parameter etc.  However I prefer to a different approach, deriving a new EnumToObjectConverter class instead. EnumToObjectConverter using System; namespace SilverlightApplication1 {     public class EnumToObjectConverter : StringToObjectConverter     {         public override object Convert(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             string key = Enum.GetName(value.GetType(), value);             return base.Convert(key, targetType, parameter, culture);         }         public override object ConvertBack(object value, Type targetType, object parameter, System.Globalization.CultureInfo culture)         {             string key = (string)base.ConvertBack(value, typeof(String), parameter, culture);             return Enum.Parse(targetType, key, false);         }     } }   This is a more belts and braces solution with specific use of Enum.GetName and Enum.Parse.  Whilst its more explicit in that the a developer has to  choose to use it, it is only really necessary when using TwoWay binding, in OneWay binding the base StringToObjectConverter would serve just as well. The observant might note that there is actually no “Generic” aspect to this solution in the end.  The use of a ResourceDictionary eliminates the need for that.

  Read the article

• Azure Mobile Services: available modules

  - by svdoever

  Azure Mobile Services has documented a set of objects available in your Azure Mobile Services server side scripts at their documentation page Mobile Services server script reference. Although the documented list is a nice list of objects for the common things you want to do, it will be sooner than later that you will look for more functionality to be included in your script, especially with the new provided feature that you can now create your custom API’s. If you use GIT it is now possible to add any NPM module (node package manager module, say the NuGet of the node world), but why include a module if it is already available out of the box. And you can only use GIT with Azure Mobile Services if you are an administrator on your Azure Mobile Service, not if you are a co-administrator (will be solved in the future). Until now I did some trial and error experimentation to test if a certain module was available. This is easiest to do as follows:   Create a custom API, for example named experiment. In this API use the following code: exports.get = function (request, response) { var module = "nonexistingmodule"; var m = require(module); response.send(200, "Module '%s' found.", module); }; You can now test your service with the following request in your browser: https://yourservice.azure-mobile.net/api/experiment If you get the result: {"code":500,"error":"Error: Internal Server Error"} you know that the module does not exist. In your logs you will find the following error: Error in script '/api/experiment.json'. Error: Cannot find module 'nonexistingmodule' [external code] atC:\DWASFiles\Sites\yourservice\VirtualDirectory0\site\wwwroot\App_Data\config\scripts\api\experiment.js:3:13[external code] If you require an existing (undocumented) module like the OAuth module in the following code, you will get success as a result: exports.get = function (request, response) { var module = "oauth"; var m = require(module); response.send(200, "Module '" + module + "' found."); }; If we look at the standard node.js documentation we see an extensive list of modules that can be used from your code. If we look at the list of files available in the Azure Mobile Services platform as documented in the blog post Azure Mobile Services: what files does it consist of? we see a folder node_modules with many more modules are used to build the Azure Mobile Services functionality on, but that can also be utilized from your server side node script code: apn - An interface to the Apple Push Notification service for Node.js. dpush - Send push notifications to Android devices using GCM. mpns - A Node.js interface to the Microsoft Push Notification Service (MPNS) for Windows Phone. wns - Send push notifications to Windows 8 devices using WNS. pusher - Node library for the Pusher server API (see also: http://pusher.com/) azure - Windows Azure Client Library for node. express - Sinatra inspired web development framework. oauth - Library for interacting with OAuth 1.0, 1.0A, 2 and Echo. Provides simplified client access and allows for construction of more complex apis and OAuth providers. request - Simplified HTTP request client. sax - An evented streaming XML parser in JavaScript sendgrid - A NodeJS implementation of the SendGrid Api. sqlserver – In node repository known as msnodesql - Microsoft Driver for Node.js for SQL Server. tripwire - Break out from scripts blocking node.js event loop. underscore - JavaScript's functional programming helper library. underscore.string - String manipulation extensions for Underscore.js javascript library. xml2js - Simple XML to JavaScript object converter. xmlbuilder - An XML builder for node.js. As stated before, many of these modules are used to provide the functionality of Azure Mobile Services platform, and in general should not be used directly. On the other hand, I needed OAuth badly to authenticate to the new v1.1 services of Twitter, and was very happy that a require('oauth') and a few lines of code did the job. Based on the above modules and a lot of code in the other javascript files in the Azure Mobile Services platform a set of global objects is provided that can be used from your server side node.js script code. In future blog posts I will go into more details with respect to how this code is built-up, all starting at the node.js express entry point app.js.

  Read the article

• Kendo UI Mobile with Knockout for Master-Detail Views

  - by Steve Michelotti

  Lately I’ve been playing with Kendo UI Mobile to build iPhone apps. It’s similar to jQuery Mobile in that they are both HTML5/JavaScript based frameworks for buildings mobile apps. The primary thing that drew me to investigate Kendo UI was its innate ability to adaptively render a native looking app based on detecting the device it’s currently running on. In other words, it will render to look like a native iPhone app if it’s running on an iPhone and it will render to look like a native Droid app if it’s running on a Droid. This is in contrast to jQuery Mobile which looks the same on all devices and, therefore, it can never quite look native for whatever device it’s running on. My first impressions of Kendo UI were great. Using HTML5 data-* attributes to define “roles” for UI elements is easy, the rendering looked great, and the basic navigation was simple and intuitive. However, I ran into major confusion when trying to figure out how to “correctly” build master-detail views. Since I was already very family with KnockoutJS, I set out to use that framework in conjunction with Kendo UI Mobile to build the following simple scenario: I wanted to have a simple “Task Manager” application where my first screen just showed a list of tasks like this:   Then clicking on a specific task would navigate to a detail screen that would show all details of the specific task that was selected:   Basic navigation between views in Kendo UI is simple. The href of an <a> tag just needs to specify a hash tag followed by the ID of the view to navigate to as shown in this jsFiddle (notice the href of the <a> tag matches the id of the second view):   Direct link to jsFiddle: here. That is all well and good but the problem I encountered was: how to pass data between the views? Specifically, I need the detail view to display all the details of whichever task was selected. If I was doing this with my typical technique with KnockoutJS, I know exactly what I would do. First I would create a view model that had my collection of tasks and a property for the currently selected task like this: 1: function ViewModel() { 2: var self = this; 3: self.tasks = ko.observableArray(data); 4: self.selectedTask = ko.observable(null); 5: } Then I would bind my list of tasks to the unordered list - I would attach a “click” handler to each item (each <li> in the unordered list) so that it would select the “selectedTask” for the view model. The problem I found is this approach simply wouldn’t work for Kendo UI Mobile. It completely ignored the click handlers that I was trying to attach to the <a> tags – it just wanted to look at the href (at least that’s what I observed). But if I can’t intercept this, then *how* can I pass data or any context to the next view? The only thing I was able to find in the Kendo documentation is that you can pass query string arguments on the view name you’re specifying in the href. This enabled me to do the following: Specify the task ID in each href – something like this: <a href=”#taskDetail?id=3></a> Attach an “init method” (via the “data-show” attribute on the details view) that runs whenever the view is activated Inside this “init method”, grab the task ID passed from the query string to look up the item from my view model’s list of tasks in order to set the selected task I was able to get all that working with about 20 lines of JavaScript as shown in this jsFiddle. If you click on the Results tab, you can navigate between views and see the the detail screen is correctly binding to the selected item:   Direct link to jsFiddle: here.   With all that being done, I was very happy to get it working with the behavior I wanted. However, I have no idea if that is the “correct” way to do it or if there is a “better” way to do it. I know that Kendo UI comes with its own data binding framework but my preference is to be able to use (the well-documented) KnockoutJS since I’m already familiar with that framework rather than having to learn yet another new framework. While I think my solution above is probably “acceptable”, there are still a couple of things that bug me about it. First, it seems odd that I have to loop through my items to *find* my selected item based on the ID that was passed on the query string - normally, with Knockout I can just refer directly to my selected item from where it was used. Second, it didn’t feel exactly right that I had to rely on the “data-show” method of the details view to set my context – normally with Knockout, I could just attach a click handler to the <a> tag that was actually clicked by the user in order to set the “selected item.” I’m not sure if I’m being too picky. I know there are many people that have *way* more expertise in Kendo UI compared to me – I’d be curious to know if there are better ways to achieve the same results.

  Read the article

• Can't connect to Wired Network after installing 12.04

  - by ezz9

  I have installed 12.04 into a used HP Compaq DC 7100 CMT. Plugged in LAN cable into the computer and it says network disconnected. from what I understand on the things I've read, it's not getting the address right, maybe it's just a guess (hardware address 00:16:35:78:47:bb). I know the LAN cable is working I can get on the net with the old computer. (Old computer is using device MAC address; Auto eth0 00:11:11:E6:4F:FE). I have put this address into the newer HP and it shows last used (minutes ago) but no Internet sever not found. I tried the hardware address it says never. I feel and think this should be easy to fix. But I just don't know. Here is the info everyone has asked for, but they never say what I should do. sudo lshw -C network; rfkill list; cat /etc/network/interfaces; cat /etc/lsb-release; lspci -nn; lsusb; uname -a; ifconfig; route -n *-network description: ethernet interface product; NetXtreme BCM5751 Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express vendor: Broadcom Corporation physical id: 0 bus info: pci@0000:40:00.0 logical name: eth0 verson: 01 serial: 00:16:35:78:47:bb size: 100Mbit/s capacity: 1Gbit/s width: 64 bits clock: 33MHz capabilities: pm vpd msi pciexpress bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt 1000-fd configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=tg3 driverversion= 3.121 duplex=full firmware=5751-v3.29a latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes port=twi sted pair speed=100Mbit/s resources: irq:17 memory:f0400000-f040ffff auto lo iface lo inet loopback DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu DISTRIB_RELEASE=12.04 DISTRIB_CODENAME=precise DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION= "Ubuntu 12.04 LTS" 00:00.0 host bridge [0600]: Inter Corporation 82915G/P/GV/GL/PL/910GL Memory Con troller Hub [8086:2580] (rev 04) 00.02.0 VGA compatible controller [0300]: Intel Corporation 82915G/GV/910GL inte grated Graphics Controller [8086:2582] (rev 04) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 1 [8086:2660] (rev 03) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Family) PCI Express Port 2 [8086:2662] (rev 03) 00:1d.0 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Fam ily) USB UHCI #1 [8086:2658] (rev 03) 00:1d.1 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Fam ily) USB UHCI #2 [8086:2659] (rev 03) 00:1d.2 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Fam ily) USB UHCI #3 [8086:265a] (rev 03) 00:1d.3 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Fam ily) USB UHCI #4 [8086:265b] (rev 03) 00:1d.7 USB controller [0c03]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 Fam ily) USB2 UHCI Controller [8086:265c] (rev 03) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge [0604]: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI bridge [8086:244e] (rev d 3) 00:1e.2 Multimedia audio controller [0401]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/ FRW (ICH6 Family) AC'97 Autio conrtroller [8086:266e] (rev 03) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/RF (ICH6/ICH6R) LPC Interfa ce Bridge [8086:2640] (rev 03) 00:1f.1 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FBM/FR/FW/FRW (ICH6 fami ly) IDE Controller [8086:266f] (rev 03) 00:1f.2 IDE interface [0101]: Intel Corporation 82801FB/FW (ICH6/ICH6W) SATA Con troller [8086:2651] (rev 03) 40:00.0 Ethernet controller [0200]: Broadcom Corporation NetXreme BCM5751 Gigab it Ethernet PCI Express [14e4:1677} (rev 01) Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 004 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Bus 005 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub Linux bob-desktop 3.2.0-23-generic-pae #36-Ubuntu SMP Tpr 10 22:19:09 UTC 20 12 i686 i686 i386 GNU/Linux eth0 Link encap:Ethernet HWaddr 00:16:35:78:47:bb inet6 addr: fe80::216:35ff:47bb/64 Scope:link UP BROADCAST RUNNING MULTICAST MTU:1500 Metric:1 RX packets:2517 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:164 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen:1000 RX bytes:164508 (164.5 KB) TX bytes: 40884 (40.0 KB) Interrupt:17 lo Link encap:Local loopback inet addr:127.0.0.1 Mask:255.0.0.0 inet6 addr: ::1/128 Scope:Host UP LOOPBACK RUNNING MTU:16436 Metric:1 RX packets:3290 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0 TX packets:3290 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0 collisions:0 txqueuelen: 0 RX bytes:267212 (267.2 KB) TX bytes: 267212 (267.2 KB) Kernel Ip routing table Destination Gateway Genmask Flags Metric Ref Use Iface ran this sudo dhclient eth0 no reply ran this ip addr 1: lo <LOOPBACK,UP,LOWER_UP> mtu 16436 qdisc noqueue state UNKNOWN link/loopback 00:00:00:00:00:00 brd 00:00:00:00:00:00 inet 127.0.0.1/8 scope host lo inet6 ::1/128 scope host valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever 2: eth0: <BROADCAST ,MULTICAST ,UP ,LOWER_UP> mtu 1500 qdisc mq state UP qlen 1000 link/enter 00:16:35:78:47:BB brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff inet 169.254.7.172/16 brd 169.254.255.255 scope link eth0:avahi inet6 fe80::216:35ff:fe78:47bb/64 scope link valid_lft forever preferred_lft forever Help please.

  Read the article

• The first day of JavaOne is already over!

  - by delabassee

  In the past Sunday used to be a more relaxing day with ‘just’ some JavaOne activities going on. Sunday used to be a soft day to prepare yourself for an exhausting week. This is now over as JavaOne is expanding; Sunday is now an integral part of the conference. One of the side effect of this extra day is that some activities related to JavaOne and OpenWorld such as MySQL Connect are being push to start a day earlier on Saturday (can you spot the pattern here?). On the GlassFish front, Sunday was a very busy day! It started at the Moscone Center with the annual GlassFish Community Event where the Java EE 7 and GF 4 roadmaps were presented and discussed. During the event, different GlassFish users such as ZeroTurnaround (the JRebel guys), Grupo RBS and IDR Solutions shared their views on GF, why they like GF but also what could be improved. The event was also a forum for the GF community to exchange with some of the key Java EE / GlassFish Oracle Executives and the different GF team members. The Strategy keynote and the Technical keynote were held in the Masonic Auditorium later in the after-noon. Oracle executives have presented the plans for Java SE, Java FX and Java EE. As on-demand replays will be available soon, I will not summarize several hours of content but here are some personal takeaways from those keynotes. Modularity Modularity is a big deal. We know by now that Project Jigsaw will not be ready for Java SE 8 but in any case, it is already possible (and encouraged) to test Jigsaw today. In the future, Java EE plan to rely on the modularity features provided by Java SE, so Project Jigsaw is also relevant for Java EE developers. Shorter term, to cover some of the modular requirements, Java SE will adopt the approach that was used for Java EE 6 and the notion of Profiles. This approach does not define a module system per say; Profiles is a way to clearly define different subsets of Java SE to fulfill different needs (e.g. the full JRE is not required for a headless application). The introduction of different Profiles, from the Base profile (10mb) to the Full Profile (+50mb), has been proposed for Java SE 8. Embedded Embedded is a strong theme going forward for the Java Plaform. There is now a dedicated program : Java Embedded @ JavaOne Java by nature (e.g. platform independence, built-in security, ability easily talks to any back-end systems, large set of skills available on the market, etc.) is probably the most suited platform for the Internet of Things. You can quickly be up-to-speed and develop services and applications for that space just by using your current Java skills. All you need to start developing on ARM is a 35$ Raspberry Pi ARM board (25$ if you are cheap and can live without an ethernet connection) and the recently released JDK for Linux/ARM. Obviously, GlassFish runs on Raspberry Pi. If you wan to go further in the embedded space, you should take a look Java SE Embedded, an optimized, low footprint, Java environment that support the major embedded architectures (ARM, PPC and x86). Finally, Oracle has recently introduced Java Embedded Suite, a new solution that brings modern middleware capabilities to the embedded space. Java Embedded Suite is an optimized solution that leverage Java SE Embedded but also GlassFish, Jersey and JavaDB to deploy advanced value added capabilities (eg. sensor data filtering and) deeper in the network, closer to the devices. JavaFX JavaFX is going strong! Starting from Java SE 7u6, JavaFX is bundled with the JDK. JavaFX is now available for all the major desktop platforms (Windows, Linux and Mac OS X). JavaFX is now also available, in developer preview, for low end device running Linux/ARM. During the keynote, JavaFX was shown running on a Raspberry Pi! And as announced during the keynote, JavaFX should be fully open-sourced by the end of the year; contributions are welcome!. There is a strong momentum around JavaFX, it’s the ideal client solution for the Java platform. A client layer that works perfectly with GlassFish on the back-end. If you were not convince by JavaFX, it’s time to reconsider it! As an old Chinese proverb say “One tweet is worth a thousand words!” HTML5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 HTML5 got a lot of airtime too, it was covered during the Java EE 7 section of the keynote. Some details about Project Avatar, Oracle’s incubator project for a TSA (Thin Server Architecture) solution, were diluted and shown during the keynote. On the tooling side, Project Easel running on NetBeans 7.3 beta was demo’ed, including a cool NetBeans debugging session running in Chrome! HTML 5, Project Avatar and Java EE 7 deserve separate posts... Feedback We need your feedback! There are many projects, JSRs and products cooking : GlassFish 4, Project Jigsaw, Concurrency Utilities for Java EE (JSR 236), OpenJFX, OpenJDK to name just a few. Those projects, those specifications will have a profound impact on the Java platform for the years to come! So if you have the opportunity, download, install, learn, tests them and give feedback! Remember, you can "Make the Future Java!" Finally, the traditional GlassFish Party at the Thirsty Bear concluded the first JavaOne day. This party is another place where the community can freely exchange with the GlassFish team in a more relaxed, more friendly (but sometime more noisy) atmosphere. Arun has posted a set of pictures to reflect the atmosphere of the keynotes and the GlassFish party. You can find more details on the others Java EE and GlassFish activities here.

  Read the article

• Developing Schema Compare for Oracle (Part 3): Ghost Objects

  - by Simon Cooper

  In the previous blog post, I covered how we solved the problem of dependencies between objects and between schemas. However, that isn’t the end of the issue. The dependencies algorithm I described works when you’re querying live databases and you can get dependencies for a particular schema direct from the server, and that’s all well and good. To throw a (rather large) spanner in the works, Schema Compare also has the concept of a snapshot, which is a read-only compressed XML representation of a selection of schemas that can be compared in the same way as a live database. This can be useful for keeping historical records or a baseline of a database schema, or comparing a schema on a computer that doesn’t have direct access to the database. So, how do snapshots interact with dependencies? Inter-database dependencies don't pose an issue as we store the dependencies in the snapshot. However, comparing a snapshot to a live database with cross-schema dependencies does cause a problem; what if the live database has a dependency to an object that does not exist in the snapshot? Take a basic example schema, where you’re only populating SchemaA: SOURCE   TARGET (using snapshot) CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER REFERENCES SchemaB.Table1(col1));   CREATE TABLE SchemaA.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100)); CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 NUMBER PRIMARY KEY);   CREATE TABLE SchemaB.Table1 ( Col1 VARCHAR2(100)); In this case, we want to generate a sync script to synchronize SchemaA.Table1 on the database represented by the snapshot. When taking a snapshot, database dependencies are followed, but because you’re not comparing it to anything at the time, the comparison dependencies algorithm described in my last post cannot be used. So, as you only take a snapshot of SchemaA on the target database, SchemaB.Table1 will not be in the snapshot. If this snapshot is then used to compare against the above source schema, SchemaB.Table1 will be included in the source, but the object will not be found in the target snapshot. This is the same problem that was solved with comparison dependencies, but here we cannot use the comparison dependencies algorithm as the snapshot has not got any information on SchemaB! We've now hit quite a big problem - we’re trying to include SchemaB.Table1 in the target, but we simply do not know the status of this object on the database the snapshot was taken from; whether it exists in the database at all, whether it’s the same as the target, whether it’s different... What can we do about this sorry state of affairs? Well, not a lot, it would seem. We can’t query the original database, as it may not be accessible, and we cannot assume any default state as it could be wrong and break the script (and we currently do not have a roll-back mechanism for failed synchronizes). The only way to fix this properly is for the user to go right back to the start and re-create the snapshot, explicitly including the schemas of these 'ghost' objects. So, the only thing we can do is flag up dependent ghost objects in the UI, and ask the user what we should do with it – assume it doesn’t exist, assume it’s the same as the target, or specify a definition for it. Unfortunately, such functionality didn’t make the cut for v1 of Schema Compare (as this is very much an edge case for a non-critical piece of functionality), so we simply flag the ghost objects up in the sync wizard as unsyncable, and let the user sort out what’s going on and edit the sync script as appropriate. There are some things that we do do to alleviate somewhat this rather unhappy situation; if a user creates a snapshot from the source or target of a database comparison, we include all the objects registered from the database, not just the ones in the schemas originally selected for comparison. This includes any extra dependent objects registered through the comparison dependencies algorithm. If the user then compares the resulting snapshot against the same database they were comparing against when it was created, the extra dependencies will be included in the snapshot as required and everything will be good. Fortunately, this problem will come up quite rarely, and only when the user uses snapshots and tries to sync objects with unknown cross-schema dependencies. However, the solution is not an easy one, and lead to some difficult architecture and design decisions within the product. And all this pain follows from the simple decision to allow schema pre-filtering! Next: why adding a column to a table isn't as easy as you would think...

  Read the article

• SQL SERVER – Recover the Accidentally Renamed Table

  - by pinaldave

  I have no answer to following question. I saw a desperate email marked as urgent delivered in my mailbox. “I accidentally renamed table in my SSMS. I was scrolling very fast and I made mistakes. It was either because I double clicked or clicked on F2 (shortcut key for renaming). However, I have made the mistake and now I have no idea how to fix this. I am in big trouble. Help me get my original tablename.” I have seen many similar scenarios in my life and they give me a very good opportunity to preach wisdom but when the house is burning, we cannot talk about how we should have conserved the water earlier. The goal at that point is to put off the fire as fast as we can. I decided to answer this email with my best knowledge. If you have renamed the table, I think you pretty much is out of luck. Here are few things which you can do which can give you idea about what your tablename can be if you are lucky. Method 1: (Not Recommended but try your luck) Check your naming convention of your system. I have often seen that many organizations name their index as IX_TableName_Colms or name their keys as FK_TableName1_TableName2_Cols. If your organization is following the same you can get the name from your table, you may refer your keys. Again, note that this is quite possible that your tablename was already renamed and your keys were not updated. This can easily lead you to select incorrect name. I think follow this if you are confident or move to the next method. Method 2: (Not Recommended but try your luck) This method is also based on your orgs naming convention. If you use the name of the table in any columnname (some organizations use tablename in their incremental identity column name), you can get that name from there. Method 3: (Not Recommended but try your luck) If you know where your table was used in your stored procedures, you can script your stored procedure and find the name of the table back. Method 4: (Try your luck) All the best organizations first create a data model of the schema and there is good chance that this table is used there, you should take your chances and refer original document. If your organization is good at managing docs or source code, you will get the name of the table back for sure. Method 5: (It WORKS but try on a development server) There is no sure way to get you the name of the table which you accidentally renamed however, there is one way which will work for sure. You need to take your latest full backup and restore it on your development server (remember not on production or where you have renamed this column). Now restore latest differential file of the full backup. Now restore all the log files one by one making sure that you are restoring before the point of time of you renamed the tablename. Now go to explore and this will give you the name of the table which you have renamed. If you are confident that the same table existed with the same name when the last full backup was made, you do not have to go to all the steps. You can just get the name of the table directly from last backup’s restore. Read the article about Backup Timeline. Wisdom: How can I miss to preach wisdom when I get the opportunity to do so? Here are a few points to remember. Use a different account to explore production environment. Do not use the same account which have all the rights and permissions all the time. Use the account which has read only permissions if there are no modification required. Use policy based management to prevent changes which are accidental. If there was policy of valid names, the accidental change of the table was not possible unless it was intentional delibarate changes. Have a proper auditing of the system in place. You can use DDL triggers but be careful with its usage (get it reviewed properly first). (Add your suggestion here) I guess Method 5 will work all the time (using point in time restore). Everything else is chance of luck and if you are lucky are bad – you will get further incorrect name. Now go back and read the first line of this blog. Out of five method four methods are just lucky guesses. The method 5 will work but again it is a lengthy process if the size of the database is huge or if you do not have full backup. Did I miss anything obvious? Please leave a comment and I will publish your answer with due credit. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

  Read the article

• Red Gate in the Community

  - by Nick Harrison

  Much has been said recently about Red Gate's community involvement and commitment to the DotNet community. Much of this has been unduly negative. Before you start throwing stones and spewing obscenities, consider some additional facts: Red Gate's software is actually very good. I have worked on many projects where Red Gate's software was instrumental in finishing successfully. Red Gate is VERY good to the community. I have spoken at many user groups and code camps where Red Gate has been a sponsor. Red Gate consistently offers up money to pay for the venue or food, and they will often give away licenses as door prizes. There are many such community events that would not take place without Red Gate's support. All I have ever seen them ask for is to have their products mentioned or be listed as a sponsor. They don't insist on anyone following a specific script. They don't monitor how their products are showcased. They let their products speak for themselves. Red Gate sponsors the Simple Talk web site. I publish there regularly. Red Gate has never exerted editorial pressure on me. No one has ever told me we can't publish this unless you mention Red Gate products. No one has ever said, you need to say nice things about Red Gate products in order to be published. They have told me, "you need to make this less academic, so you don't alienate too many readers. "You need to actually write an introduction so people will know what you are talking about". "You need to write this so that someone who isn't a reflection nut will follow what you are trying to say." In short, they have been good editors worried about the quality of the content and what the readers are likely to be interested in. For me personally, Red Gate and Simple Talk have both been excellent to work with. As for the developer outrage… I am a little embarrassed by so much of the response that I am seeing. So much of the complaints remind me of little children whining "but you promised" Semantics aside. A promise is just a promise. It's not like they "pinky sweared". Sadly no amount name calling or "double dog daring" will change the economics of the situation. Red Gate is not a multibillion dollar corporation. They are a mid size company doing the best they can. Without a doubt, their pockets are not as deep as Microsoft's. I honestly believe that they did try to make the "freemium" model work. Sadly it did not. I have no doubt that they intended for it to work and that they tried to make it work. I also have no doubt that they labored over making this decision. This could not have been an easy decision to make. Many people are gleefully proclaiming a massive backlash against Red Gate swearing off their wonderful products and promising to bash them at every opportunity from now on. This is childish behavior that does not represent professionals. This type of behavior is more in line with bullies in the school yard than professionals in a professional community. Now for my own prediction… This back lash against Red Gate is not likely to last very long. We will all realize that we still need their products. We may look around for alternatives, but realize that they really do have the best in class for every product that they produce, and that they really are not exorbitantly priced. We will see them sponsoring Code Camps and User Groups and be reminded, "hey this isn't such a bad company". On the other hand, software shops like Red Gate, will remember this back lash and give a second thought to supporting open source projects. They will worry about getting involved when an individual wants to turn over control for a product that they developed but can no longer support alone. Who wants to run the risk of not being able to follow through on their best intentions. In the end we may all suffer, even the toddlers among us throwing the temper tantrum, "BUT YOU PROMISED!" Disclaimer Before anyone asks or jumps to conclusions, I do not get paid by Red Gate to say any of this. I have often written about their products, and I have long thought that they are a wonderful company with amazing products. If they ever open an office in the SE United States, I will be one of the first to apply.

  Read the article

• T-SQL Tuesday #21 - Crap!

  - by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

  Adam Machanic's (blog | twitter) ever popular T-SQL Tuesday series is being held on Wednesday this time, and the topic is… SHIT CRAP. No, not fecal material.  But crap code.  Crap SQL.  Crap ideas that you thought were good at the time, or were forced to do due (doo-doo?) to lack of time. The challenge for me is to look back on my SQL Server career and find something that WASN'T crap.  Well, there's a lot that wasn't, but for some reason I don't remember those that well.  So the additional challenge is to pick one particular turd that I really wish I hadn't squeezed out.  Let's see if this outline fits the bill: An ETL process on text files; That had to interface between SQL Server and an AS/400 system; That didn't use SSIS (should have) or BizTalk (ummm, no) but command-line scripting, using Unix utilities(!) via: xp_cmdshell; That had to email reports and financial data, some of it sensitive Yep, the stench smell is coming back to me now, as if it was yesterday… As to why SSIS and BizTalk were not options, basically I didn't know either of them well enough to get the job done (and I still don't).  I also had a strict deadline of 3 days, in addition to all the other responsibilities I had, so no time to learn them.  And seeing how screwed up the rest of the process was: Payment files from multiple vendors in multiple formats; Sent via FTP, PGP encrypted email, or some other wizardry; Manually opened/downloaded and saved to a particular set of folders (couldn't change this); Once processed, had to be placed BACK in the same folders with the original archived; x2 divisions that had to run separately; Plus an additional vendor file in another format on a completely different schedule; So that they could be MANUALLY uploaded into the AS/400 system (couldn't change this either, even if it was technically possible) I didn't feel so bad about the solution I came up with, which was naturally: Copy the payment files to the local SQL Server drives, using xp_cmdshell Run batch files (via xp_cmdshell) to parse the different formats using sed, a Unix utility (this was before Powershell) Use other Unix utilities (join, split, grep, wc) to process parsed files and generate metadata (size, date, checksum, line count) Run sqlcmd to execute a stored procedure that passed the parsed file names so it would bulk load the data to do a comparison bcp the compared data out to ANOTHER text file so that I could grep that data out of the original file Run another stored procedure to import the matched data into SQL Server so it could process the payments, including file metadata Process payment batches and log which division and vendor they belong to Email the payment details to the finance group (since it was too hard for them to run a web report with the same data…which they ran anyway to compare the emailed file against…which always matched, surprisingly) Email another report showing unmatched payments so they could manually void them…about 3 months afterward All in "Excel" format, using xp_sendmail (SQL 2000 system) Copy the unmatched data back to the original folder locations, making sure to match the file format exactly (if you've ever worked with ACH files, you'll understand why this sucked) If you're one of the 10 people who have read my blog before, you know that I love the DOS "for" command.  Like passionately.  Like fairy-tale love.  So my batch files were riddled with for loops, nested within other for loops, that called other batch files containing for loops.  I think there was one section that had 4 or 5 nested for commands.  It was wrong, disturbed, and completely un-maintainable by anyone, even myself.  Months, even a year, after I left the company I got calls from someone who had to make a minor change to it, and they called me to talk them out of spraying the office with an AK-47 after looking at this code.  (for you Star Trek TOS fans) The funniest part of this, well, one of the funniest, is that I made the deadline…sort of, I was only a day late…and the DAMN THING WORKED practically unchanged for 3 years.  Most of the problems came from the manual parts of the overall process, like forgetting to decrypt the files, or missing/late files, or saved to the wrong folders.  I'm definitely not trying to toot my own horn here, because this was truly one of the dumbest, crappiest solutions I ever came up with.  Fortunately as far as I know it's no longer in use and someone has written a proper replacement.  Today I would knuckle down and do it in SSIS or Powershell, even if it took me weeks to get it right. The real lesson from this crap code is to make things MAINTAINABLE and UNDERSTANDABLE.  sed scripting regular expressions doesn't fit that criteria in any way.  If you ever find yourself under pressure to do something fast at all costs, DON'T DO IT.  Stop and consider long-term maintainability, not just for yourself but for others on your team.  If you can't explain the basic approach in under 5 minutes, it ultimately won't succeed.  And while you may love to leave all that crap behind, it may follow you anyway, and you'll step in it again.   P.S. - if you're wondering about all the manual stuff that couldn't be changed, it was because the entire process had gone through Six Sigma, and was deemed the best possible way.  Phew!  Talk about stink!

  Read the article

• Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

  Read the article

• Some notes on Reflector 7

  - by CliveT

  Both Bart and I have blogged about some of the changes that we (and other members of the team) have made to .NET Reflector for version 7, including the new tabbed browsing model, the inclusion of Jason Haley's PowerCommands add-in and some improvements to decompilation such as handling iterator blocks. The intention of this blog post is to cover all of the main new features in one place, and to describe the three new editions of .NET Reflector 7. If you'd simply like to try out the latest version of the beta for yourself you can do so here. Three new editions .NET Reflector 7 will come in three new editions: .NET Reflector .NET Reflector VS .NET Reflector VSPro The first edition is just the standalone Windows application. The latter two editions include the Windows application, but also add the power of Reflector into Visual Studio so that you can save time switching tools and quickly get to the bottom of a debugging issue that involves third-party code. Let's take a look at some of the new features in each edition. Tabbed browsing .NET Reflector now has a tabbed browsing model, in which the individual tabs have independent histories. You can open a new tab to view the selected object by using CTRL+CLICK. I've found this really useful when I'm investigating a particular piece of code but then want to focus on some other methods that I find along the way. For version 7, we wanted to implement the basic idea of tabs to see whether it is something that users will find helpful. If it is something that enhances productivity, we will add more tab-based features in a future version. PowerCommands add-in We have also included Jason Haley's PowerCommands add-in as part of version 7. This add-in provides a number of useful commands, including support for opening .xap files and extracting the constituent assemblies, and a query editor that allows C# queries to be written and executed against the Reflector object model . All of the PowerCommands features can be turned on from the options menu. We will be really interested to see what people are finding useful for further integration into the main tool in the future. My personal favourite part of the PowerCommands add-in is the query editor. You can set up as many of your own queries as you like, but we provide 25 to get you started. These do useful things like listing all extension methods in a given assembly, and displaying other lower-level information, such as the number of times that a given method uses the box IL instruction. These queries can be extracted and then executed from the 'Run Query' context menu within the assembly explorer. Moreover, the queries can be loaded, modified, and saved using the built-in editor, allowing very specific user customization and sharing of queries. The PowerCommands add-in contains many other useful utilities. For example, you can open an item using an external application, work with enumeration bit flags, or generate assembly binding redirect files. You can see Bart's earlier post for a more complete list. .NET Reflector VS .NET Reflector VS adds a brand new Reflector object browser into Visual Studio to save you time opening .NET Reflector separately and browsing for an object. A 'Decompile and Explore' option is also added to the context menu of references in the Solution Explorer, so you don't need to leave Visual Studio to look through decompiled code. We've also added some simple navigation features to allow you to move through the decompiled code as quickly and easily as you can in .NET Reflector. When this is selected, the add-in decompiles the given assembly, Once the decompilation has finished, a clone of the Reflector assembly explorer can be used inside Visual Studio. When Reflector generates the source code, it records the location information. You can therefore navigate from the source file to other decompiled source using the 'Go To Definition' context menu item. This then takes you to the definition in another decompiled assembly. .NET Reflector VSPro .NET Reflector VSPro builds on the features in .NET Reflector VS to add the ability to debug any source code you decompile. When you decompile with .NET Reflector VSPro, a matching .pdb is generated, so you can use Visual Studio to debug the source code as if it were part of the project. You can now use all the standard debugging techniques that you are used to in the Visual Studio debugger, and step through decompiled code as if it were your own. Again, you can select assemblies for decompilation. They are then decompiled. And then you can debug as if they were one of your own source code files. The future of .NET Reflector As I have mentioned throughout this post, most of the new features in version 7 are exploratory steps and we will be watching feedback closely. Although we don't want to speculate now about any other new features or bugs that will or won't be fixed in the next few versions of .NET Reflector, Bart has mentioned in a previous post that there are lots of improvements we intend to make. We plan to do this with great care and without taking anything away from the simplicity of the core product. User experience is something that we pride ourselves on at Red Gate, and it is clear that Reflector is still a long way off our usual standards. We plan for the next few versions of Reflector to be worked on by some of our top usability specialists who have been involved with our other market-leading products such as the ANTS Profilers and SQL Compare. I re-iterate the need for the really great simple mode in .NET Reflector to remain intact regardless of any other improvements we are planning to make. I really hope that you enjoy using some of the new features in version 7 and that Reflector continues to be your favourite .NET development tool for a long time to come.

  Read the article

• C# async and actors

  - by Alex.Davies

  If you read my last post about async, you might be wondering what drove me to write such odd code in the first place. The short answer is that .NET Demon is written using NAct Actors. Actors are an old idea, which I believe deserve a renaissance under C# 5. The idea is to isolate each stateful object so that only one thread has access to its state at any point in time. That much should be familiar, it's equivalent to traditional lock-based synchronization. The different part is that actors pass "messages" to each other rather than calling a method and waiting for it to return. By doing that, each thread can only ever be holding one lock. This completely eliminates deadlocks, my least favourite concurrency problem. Most people who use actors take this quite literally, and there are plenty of frameworks which help you to create message classes and loops which can receive the messages, inspect what type of message they are, and process them accordingly. But I write C# for a reason. Do I really have to choose between using actors and everything I love about object orientation in C#? Type safety Interfaces Inheritance Generics As it turns out, no. You don't need to choose between messages and method calls. A method call makes a perfectly good message, as long as you don't wait for it to return. This is where asynchonous methods come in. I have used NAct for a while to wrap my objects in a proxy layer. As long as I followed the rule that methods must always return void, NAct queued up the call for later, and immediately released my thread. When I needed to get information out of other actors, I could use EventHandlers and callbacks (continuation passing style, for any CS geeks reading), and NAct would call me back in my isolated thread without blocking the actor that raised the event. Using callbacks looks horrible though. To remind you: m_BuildControl.FilterEnabledForBuilding(    projects,    enabledProjects = m_OutOfDateProjectFinder.FilterNeedsBuilding(        enabledProjects,             newDirtyProjects =             {                 ....... Which is why I'm really happy that NAct now supports async methods. Now, methods are allowed to return Task rather than just void. I can await those methods, and C# 5 will turn the rest of my method into a continuation for me. NAct will run the other method in the other actor's context, but will make sure that when my method resumes, we're back in my context. Neither actor was ever blocked waiting for the other one. Apart from when they were actually busy doing something, they were responsive to concurrent messages from other sources. To be fair, you could use async methods with lock statements to achieve exactly the same thing, but it's ugly. Here's a realistic example of an object that has a queue of data that gets passed to another object to be processed: class QueueProcessor {    private readonly ItemProcessor m_ItemProcessor = ...     private readonly object m_Sync = new object();    private Queue<object> m_DataQueue = ...    private List<object> m_Results = ...     public async Task ProcessOne() {         object data = null;         lock (m_Sync)         {             data = m_DataQueue.Dequeue();         }         var processedData = await m_ItemProcessor.ProcessData(data); lock (m_Sync)         {             m_Results.Add(processedData);         }     } } We needed to write two lock blocks, one to get the data to process, one to store the result. The worrying part is how easily we could have forgotten one of the locks. Compare that to the version using NAct: class QueueProcessorActor : IActor { private readonly ItemProcessor m_ItemProcessor = ... private Queue<object> m_DataQueue = ... private List<object> m_Results = ... public async Task ProcessOne()     {         // We are an actor, it's always thread-safe to access our private fields         var data = m_DataQueue.Dequeue();         var processedData = await m_ItemProcessor.ProcessData(data);         m_Results.Add(processedData);     } } You don't have to explicitly lock anywhere, NAct ensures that your code will only ever run on one thread, because it's an actor. Either way, async is definitely better than traditional synchronous code. Here's a diagram of what a typical synchronous implementation might do: The left side shows what is running on the thread that has the lock required to access the QueueProcessor's data. The red section is where that lock is held, but doesn't need to be. Contrast that with the async version we wrote above: Here, the lock is released in the middle. The QueueProcessor is free to do something else. Most importantly, even if the ItemProcessor sometimes calls the QueueProcessor, they can never deadlock waiting for each other. So I thoroughly recommend you use async for all code that has to wait a while for things. And if you find yourself writing lots of lock statements, think about using actors as well. Using actors and async together really takes the misery out of concurrent programming.

  Read the article

• Stand-Up Desk 2012 Update

  - by BuckWoody

  One of the more popular topics here on my technical blog doesn't have to do with technology, per-se - it's about the choice I made to go to a stand-up desk work environment. If you're interested in the history of those, check here: Stand-Up Desk Part One Stand-Up Desk Part Two I have made some changes and I was asked to post those here.Yes, I'm still standing - I think the experiment has worked well, so I'm continuing to work this way. I've become so used to it that I notice when I sit for a long time. If I'm flying, or driving a long way, or have long meetings, I take breaks to stand up and move around. That being said, I don't stand as much as I did. I started out by standing the entire day - which did not end well. As you can read in my second post, I found that sitting down for a few minutes each hour worked out much better. And over time I would say that I now stand about 70-80% of the day, depending on the day. Some days I don't even notice I'm standing, so I don't sit as often. Other days I find that I really tire quickly - so I sit more often. But in both cases, I stand more than I sit. In the first post you can read about how I used a simple coffee-table from Ikea to elevate my desktop to the right height. I then adjusted the height where I stand by using a small plastic square and some carpet. Over time I found this did not work as well as I'd like. The primary reason is that the front of these are at the same depth - so my knees would hit the desk or table when I sat down. Also, the desk was at a certain height, and I had to adjust, rather than the other way around.  Also, I like a lot of surface area on top of a desk - almost more of a table. Routing cables and wiring was a pain, and of course moving it was out of the question.   So I've changed what I use. I found a perfect solution for what I was looking for - industrial wire shelving: I bought one, built only half of it (for the right height I wanted) and arranged the shelves the way I wanted. I then got a 5'x4' piece of wood from Lowes, and mounted it to where the top was balanced, but had an over-hang  I could get my knees under easily.My wife sewed a piece of fake-leather for the top. This arrangement provides the following benefits: Very strong Rolls easily, wheels can lock to prevent rolling Long, wide shelves Wire-frame allows me to route any kind of wiring and other things all over the desk I plugged in my UPS and ran it's longer power-cable to the wall outlet. I then ran the router's LAN connection along that wire, and covered both with a large insulation sleeve. I then plugged in everything to the UPS, and routed all the wiring. I can now roll the desk almost anywhere in the room so that I can record, look out the window, get closer to or farther away from the door and more. I put a few boxes on the shelves as "drawers" and tidied that part up. Even my printer fits on a shelf. Laser-dog not included - some assembly required In the second post you can read about the bar-stool I purchased from Target for the desk. I cheaped-out on this one, and it proved to be a bad choice. Because I had to raise it so high, and was constantly sitting on it and then standing up, the gas-cylinder in it just gave out. So it became a very short stool that I ended up getting rid of. In the end, this one from Ikea proved to be a better choice: And so this arrangement is working out perfectly. I'm finding myself VERY productive this way. I hope these posts help you if you decide to try working at a stand-up desk. Although I was skeptical at first, I've found it to be a very healthy, easy way to code, design and especially present over a web-cam. It's natural to stand to speak when you're presenting, and it feels more energetic than sitting down to talk to others.

  Read the article

• Microsoft TechEd 2010 - Day 2 @ Bangalore

  - by sathya

  Microsoft TechEd 2010 - Day 2 @ Bangalore Today is the day 2 @ Microsoft TechEd 2010. We had lot of technical sessions as usual there were many tracks going on side by side and I was attending the Web simplified track, Which comprised of the following sessions :   Developing a scalable Media Application using ASP.NET MVC - This was a kind of little advanced stuff. Anyways I couldn't understand much because this was not my piece of cake and I havent worked on this before ASP.Net MVC Unplugged - This was really great because this session covered from the basics of MVC showing what is Model,View and Controller and how it worked and the speaker went into the details of the same. Building RESTful Applications with the Open Data Protocol - There were some concepts explained about this from the basics on how to build RESTful Services and it went on till some advanced configurations of the same. Developing Scalable Web Applications with AppFabric Caching - This session showed about the integration of AppFabric with the .Net Web Applications. Instead of using Inproc Sessions, we can use this AppFabric as a substitute for Caching and outofProc Session Storage without writing code and doing a little bit of configurations which brings in High Scalability, performance to our applications. (But unfortunately there were no demos for this session ) Deep Dive : WCF RIA Services - This session was also an interactive one, in this the speaker presented from the basics of WCF and took a Book Store Application as a sample and explained all details concepts on linking with RIA Services   Apart from these sessions, in between there happened some small events in the breaks like Some discussions about Technology, Innovations Music Jokes Mimicry, etc. And on doing all these things, the developers were given some kool gifts / goodies like USBs, T-Shirts, etc. And today I got a chance to do the following certification : (70-562) Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist in .NET 3.5 Web Applications Since I already have an MCTS in .NET 2.0, I wanted to do an MCPD and for doing the same I was required to do an update to my MCTS with the .NET 3.5 framework and I did the same I cleared it and now am an MCTS in .NET 3.5 Web Apps And on doing this I got a T-Shirt and they gave something called Learning $ of worth 30$. And in various stalls for attending each quiz or some game or some referrals we got some Learning $ which we can redeem later based on our Total Learning $. I got 105 $ which i was able to redeem and got a Microsoft Learning BagPack, 1 free Microsoft certification offer, a laptop light and an e-learning content activated. And after all these sessions and small events, we had something called Demo Extravaganza like I mentioned yesterday. This was a great funfilled event with lot of goodies for the attendees. There were some lucky draw which enabled 2 attendees to get Netbooks (Sponsored by Intel) and 1 attendee to get X-box (Sponsored by Citrix). After Choosing the raffle in the lucky draw they kept it on a device called Microsoft Surface which is a kind of big touch screen device and on putting the raffle on that it detected the code of the attendee and said intelligently how many sessions that person has attended and if he has attended more than 5 he got a Netbook and this was coded by a guy called Imran. Apart from they showed demos on : Research by 2 Tamilnadu students from Krishna Arts and Science college, taken 1200 photographs of their college from different angles and put that up in Bing maps using silverlight and linked with Photosynth, which showed a 3d view of their college based on the photos they uploaded Reasearch by Microsoft on Panaramic HD views of the images. One young guy from Microsoft Research showed a demo of this on Srivilliputhur Andal Temple, in Tamil Nadu and its history with a panoramic view of the temple and the near by places with narration of the historical information on the same and with the videos embedded in it with high definition images which we can zoom to a very detailed level. Some Demo on a business app with Silverlight, Business Intelligence (BI) and maps integrated. It showed the sales of a particular product across locations. Some kool demos by 2 geeks who used Robots to show their development talents. 2 Robots fought with each other 2 Robots danced in sync for the A.R. Rehman song Humma Humma... A dream home project by Raman. He is currently using the same in his home too. Robots are controlling his home currently. They showed a video on this. Here are the list of activities that Robot does for him When he reads a book, robot automatically scans that and shows that image of that person in the screen (TV or comp) in front of him. It shows a wikipedia about that person. It says that person is not in linked in. do you want to add him If he sees an IPL Match news in the book and smiles it understands he is interested in that and opens a website related to that and shows the current game and the scorecard. It cooks for him It cleans the room for him whenever he leaves the house when he is doing something if some intruder comes inside his house his computer automatically switches his screen showing the video of the person coming inside. When he wakes up it automatically opens up the system, loads his mails and the news by the side, etc. Some Demos on Microsoft Pivot. This was there in livelabs but it is now available in getpivot.com its a pivoting of the pictorial data based on some categories and filters on the searches that we do. And finally on filling up some feedback forms we got T-Shirts and Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 Training Kit CDs. Whats more on TechEd??? Stay tuned!!! Will update you soon on the other happenings!! PS : I typed a lot of content for more than a hour but I pressed a backspace and it went to the previous page and all my content were lost and I was not able to retrieve the same and I typed everything again.

  Read the article

• WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections

  - by Kevin Smith

  Kyle has a good post on how to modify the size and number of WebCenter Content (WCC) trace files. His post reminded me I have been meaning to write a post on WCC trace sections for a while. searchcache - Tells you if you query was found in the WCC search cache. searchquery - Shows the processing of the query as it is converted form what the user submitted to the end query that will be sent to the database. Shows conversion from the universal query syntax to the syntax specific to the search solution WCC is configured to use. services (verbose) - Lists the filters that are called for each service. This will let you know what filters are available for each service and will also tell you what filters are used by WCC add-on components and any custom components you have installed. The How To Component Sample has a list of filters, but it has not been updated since 7.5, so it is a little outdated now. With each new release WCC adds more filters. If you have a filter that has no code attached to it you will see output like this: services/6    09.25 06:40:26.270    IdcServer-423    Called filter event computeDocName with no filter plugins registered When a WCC add-on or custom component uses a filter you will see trace output like this: services/6    09.25 06:40:26.275    IdcServer-423    Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionValidateCheckinData with parameter postValidateCheckinDataservices/6    09.25 06:40:26.275    IdcServer-423    Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionFilters with parameter postValidateCheckinData As you can see from this sample output it is possible to have multiple code points using the same filter. systemdatabase - Dumps the database call AFTER it executes. This can be somewhat troublesome if you are trying to track down some weird database problems. We had a problem where WCC was getting into a deadlock situation. We turned on the systemdatabase trace section and thought we had the problem database call, but it turned out since it printed out the database call after it was executed we were looking at the database call BEFORE the one causing the deadlock. We ended up having to turn on tracing at the database level to see the database call WCC was making that was causing the deadlock. socketrequests (verbose) - dumps the actual messages received and sent over the socket connection by WCC for a service. If you have gzip enabled you will see junk on the response coming back from WCC. For debugging disable the gzip of the WCC response.Here is an example of the dump of the request for a GET_SEARCH_RESULTS service call. socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: REMOTE_USER=sysadmin.USER-AGENT=Java;.Stel socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: lent.CIS.11g.CONTENT_TYPE=text/html.HEADER socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: _ENCODING=UTF-8.REQUEST_METHOD=POST.CONTEN socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: T_LENGTH=270.HTTP_HOST=CIS.$$$$.NoHttpHead socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: ers=0.IsJava=1.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESUL socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: [email protected] socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: calData.SortField=dDocName.ClientEncoding= socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: UTF-8.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESULTS.UserTi socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: meZone=UTC.UserDateFormat=iso8601.SortDesc socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: =ASC.QueryText=dDocType..matches..`Documen socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: t`.@end. userstorage, jps - Provides trace details for user authentication and authorization. Includes information on the determination of what roles and accounts a user has access to. In 11g a new trace section, jps, was added with the addition of the JpsUserProvider to communicate with WebLogic Server. The WCC developers decide when to use the verbose option for their trace output, so sometime you need to try verbose to see what different information you get. One of the things I would always have liked to see if the ability to turn on verbose output selectively for individual trace sections. When you turn on verbose output you get it for all trace sections you have enabled. This can quickly fill up your trace files with a lot of information if you have the socket trace section turned on.

  Read the article

• What Counts For A DBA: Foresight

  - by drsql

  Of all the valuable attributes of a DBA covered so far in this series, ranging from passion to humility to practicality, perhaps one of the most important attributes may turn out to be the most seemingly-nebulous: foresight. According to Free Dictionary foresight is the "perception of the significance and nature of events before they have occurred". Foresight does not come naturally to most people, as the parent of any teenager will attest. No matter how clearly you see their problems coming they won't listen, and have to fail before eventually (hopefully) learning for themselves. Having graduated from the school of hard knocks, the DBA, the naive teenager no longer, acquires the ability to foretell how events will unfold in response to certain actions or attitudes with the unerring accuracy of a doom-laden prophet. Like Simba in the Lion King, after a few blows to the head, we foretell that a sore head that will be the inevitable consequence of a swing of Rafiki's stick, and we take evasive action. However, foresight is about more than simply learning when to duck. It's about taking the time to understand and prevent the habits that caused the stick to swing in the first place. And based on this definition, I often think there is a lot less foresight on display in my industry than there ought to be. Most DBAs reading this blog will spot a line such as the following in a piece of "working" code, understand immediately why it is less than optimimum, and take evasive action. …WHERE CAST (columnName as int) = 1 However, the programmers who regularly write this sort of code clearly lack that foresight, and this and numerous other examples of similarly-malodorous code prevail throughout our industry (and provide premium-grade fertilizer for the healthy growth of many a consultant's bank account). Sometimes, perhaps harried by impatient managers and painfully tight deadlines, everyone makes mistakes. Yes, I too occasionally write code that "works", but basically stinks. When the problems manifest, it is sometimes accompanied by a sense of grim recognition that somewhere in me existed the foresight to know that that approach would lead to this problem. However, in the headlong rush, warning signs got overlooked, lessons learned previously, which could supply the foresight to the current project, were lost and not applied.   Of course, the problem often is a simple lack of skills, training and knowledge in the relevant technology and/or business space; programmers and DBAs forced to do their best in the face of inadequate training, or to apply their skills in areas where they lack experience. However, often the problem goes deeper than this; I detect in some DBAs and programmers a certain laziness of attitude.   They veer from one project to the next, going with "whatever works", unwilling or unable to take the time to understand where their actions are leading them. Of course, the whole "Agile" mindset is often interpreted to favor flexibility and rapid production over aiming to get things right the first time. The faster you try to travel in the dark, frequently changing direction, the more important it is to have someone who has the foresight to know at least roughly where you are heading. This is doubly true for the data tier which, no matter how you try to deny it, simply cannot be "redone" every month as you learn aspects of the world you are trying to model that, with a little bit of foresight, you would have seen coming.   Sometimes, when as a DBA you can glance briefly at 200 lines of working SQL code and know instinctively why it will cause problems, foresight can feel like magic, but it isn't; it's more like muscle memory. It is acquired as the consequence of good experience, useful communication with those around you, and a willingness to learn continually, through continued education as well as from failure. Foresight can be deployed only by finding time to understand how the lessons learned from other DBAs, and other projects, can help steer the current project in the right direction.   C.S. Lewis once said "The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, whatever he does, whoever he is." It cannot be avoided; the quality of what you build now is going to affect you, and others, at some point in the future. Take the time to acquire foresight; it is a love letter to your future self, to say you cared.

  Read the article

• Must-see sessions at TCUK11

  - by Roger Hart

  Technical Communication UK is probably the best professional conference I've been to. Last year, I spoke there on content strategy, and this year I'll be co-hosting a workshop on embedded user assistance. Obviously, I'd love people to come along to that; but there are some other sessions I'd like to flag up for anybody thinking of attending. Tuesday 20th Sept - workshops This will be my first year at the pre-conference workshop day, and I'm massively glad that our workshop hasn't been scheduled along-side the one I'm really interested in. My picks: It looks like you're embedding user assistance. Would you like help? My colleague Dom and I are presenting this one. It's our paen to Clippy, to the brilliant idea he represented, and the crashing failure he was. Less precociously, we'll be teaching embedded user assistance, Red Gate style. Statistics without maths: acquiring, visualising and interpreting your data This doesn't need to do anything apart from what it says on the tin in order to be gold dust. But given the speakers, I suspect it will. A data-informed approach is a great asset to technical communications, so I'd recommend this session to anybody event faintly interested. The speakers here have a great track record of giving practical, accessible introductions to big topics. Go along. Wednesday 21st Sept - day one There's no real need to recommend the keynote for a conference, but I will just point out that this year it's Google's Patrick Hofmann. That's cool. You know what else is cool: Focus on the user, the rest follows An intro to modelling customer experience. This is a really exciting area for tech comms, and potentially touches on one of my personal hobby-horses: the convergence of technical communication and marketing. It's all part of delivering customer experience, and knowing what your users need lets you help them, sell to them, and delight them. Content strategy year 1: a tale from the trenches It's often been observed that content strategy is great at banging its own drum, but not so hot on compelling case studies. Here you go, folks. This is the presentation I'm most excited about so far. On a mission to communicate! Skype help their users communicate, but how do they communicate with them? I guess we'll find out. Then there's the stuff that I'm not too excited by, but you might just be. The standards geeks and agile freaks can get together in a presentation on the forthcoming ISO standards for agile authoring. Plus, there's a session on VBA for tech comms. I do have one gripe about day 1. The other big UK tech comms conference, UA Europe, have - I think - netted the more interesting presentation from Ellis Pratt. While I have no doubt that his TCUK case study on producing risk assessments will be useful, I'd far rather go to his talk on game theory for tech comms. Hopefully UA Europe will record it. Thursday 22nd Sept - day two Day two has a couple of slots yet to be confirmed. The rumour is that one of them will be the brilliant "Questions and rants" session from last year. I hope so. It's not ranting, but I'll be going to: RTFMobile: beyond stating the obvious Ultan O'Broin is an engaging speaker with a lot to say, and mobile is one of the most interesting and challenging new areas for tech comms. Even if this weren't a research-based presentation from a company with buckets of technology experience, I'd be going. It is, and you should too. Pattern recognition for technical communicators One of the best things about TCUK is the tendency to include sessions that tackle the theoretical and bring them towards the practical. Kai and Chris delivered cracking and well-received talks last year, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they've got for us on some of the conceptual underpinning of technical communication. Developing an interactive non-text learning programme Annoyingly, this clashes with Pattern Recognition, so I hope at least one of the streams is recorded again this year. The idea of communicating complex information without words us fascinating and this sounds like a great example of this year's third stream: "anything but text". For the localization and DITA crowds, there's rich pickings on day two, though I'm not sure how many of those sessions I'm interested in. In the 13:00 - 13:40 slot, there's an interesting clash between Linda Urban on re-use and training content, and a piece on minimalism I'm sorely tempted by. That's my pick of #TCUK11. I'll be doing a round-up blog after the event, and probably talking a bit more about it beforehand. I'm also reliably assured that there are still plenty of tickets.

  Read the article

• How to Tell If Your Computer is Overheating and What to Do About It

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Heat is a computer’s enemy. Computers are designed with heat dispersion and ventilation in mind so they don’t overheat. If too much heat builds up, your computer may become unstable or suddenly shut down. The CPU and graphics card produce much more heat when running demanding applications. If there’s a problem with your computer’s cooling system, an excess of heat could even physically damage its components. Is Your Computer Overheating? When using a typical computer in a typical way, you shouldn’t have to worry about overheating at all. However, if you’re encountering system instability issues like abrupt shut downs, blue screens, and freezes — especially while doing something demanding like playing PC games or encoding video — your computer may be overheating. This can happen for several reasons. Your computer’s case may be full of dust, a fan may have failed, something may be blocking your computer’s vents, or you may have a compact laptop that was never designed to run at maximum performance for hours on end. Monitoring Your Computer’s Temperature First, bear in mind that different CPUs and GPUs (graphics cards) have different optimal temperature ranges. Before getting too worried about a temperature, be sure to check your computer’s documentation — or its CPU or graphics card specifications — and ensure you know the temperature ranges your hardware can handle. You can monitor your computer’s temperatures in a variety of different ways. First, you may have a way to monitor temperature that is already built into your system. You can often view temperature values in your computer’s BIOS or UEFI settings screen. This allows you to quickly see your computer’s temperature if Windows freezes or blue screens on you — just boot the computer, enter the BIOS or UEFI screen, and check the temperatures displayed there. Note that not all BIOSes or UEFI screens will display this information, but it is very common. There are also programs that will display your computer’s temperature. Such programs just read the sensors inside your computer and show you the temperature value they report, so there are a wide variety of tools you can use for this, from the simple Speccy system information utility to an advanced tool like SpeedFan. HWMonitor also offer this feature, displaying a wide variety of sensor information. Be sure to look at your CPU and graphics card temperatures. You can also find other temperatures, such as the temperature of your hard drive, but these components will generally only overheat if it becomes extremely hot in the computer’s case. They shouldn’t generate too much heat on their own. If you think your computer may be overheating, don’t just glance as these sensors once and ignore them. Do something demanding with your computer, such as running a CPU burn-in test with Prime 95, playing a PC game, or running a graphical benchmark. Monitor the computer’s temperature while you do this, even checking a few hours later — does any component overheat after you push it hard for a while? Preventing Your Computer From Overheating If your computer is overheating, here are some things you can do about it: Dust Out Your Computer’s Case: Dust accumulates in desktop PC cases and even laptops over time, clogging fans and blocking air flow. This dust can cause ventilation problems, trapping heat and preventing your PC from cooling itself properly. Be sure to clean your computer’s case occasionally to prevent dust build-up. Unfortunately, it’s often more difficult to dust out overheating laptops. Ensure Proper Ventilation: Put the computer in a location where it can properly ventilate itself. If it’s a desktop, don’t push the case up against a wall so that the computer’s vents become blocked or leave it near a radiator or heating vent. If it’s a laptop, be careful to not block its air vents, particularly when doing something demanding. For example, putting a laptop down on a mattress, allowing it to sink in, and leaving it there can lead to overheating — especially if the laptop is doing something demanding and generating heat it can’t get rid of. Check if Fans Are Running: If you’re not sure why your computer started overheating, open its case and check that all the fans are running. It’s possible that a CPU, graphics card, or case fan failed or became unplugged, reducing air flow. Tune Up Heat Sinks: If your CPU is overheating, its heat sink may not be seated correctly or its thermal paste may be old. You may need to remove the heat sink and re-apply new thermal paste before reseating the heat sink properly. This tip applies more to tweakers, overclockers, and people who build their own PCs, especially if they may have made a mistake when originally applying the thermal paste. This is often much more difficult when it comes to laptops, which generally aren’t designed to be user-serviceable. That can lead to trouble if the laptop becomes filled with dust and needs to be cleaned out, especially if the laptop was never designed to be opened by users at all. Consult our guide to diagnosing and fixing an overheating laptop for help with cooling down a hot laptop. Overheating is a definite danger when overclocking your CPU or graphics card. Overclocking will cause your components to run hotter, and the additional heat will cause problems unless you can properly cool your components. If you’ve overclocked your hardware and it has started to overheat — well, throttle back the overclock! Image Credit: Vinni Malek on Flickr     

  Read the article

• BIP and Mapviewer Mash Up I

  - by Tim Dexter

  I was out in Yellowstone last week soaking up various wildlife and a bit too much rain ... good to be back until the 95F heat yesterday. Taking a little break from the Excel templates; the dev folks are planing an Excel patch in the next week or so that will add a mass of new functionality. At the risk of completely mis leading you I'm going to hang back a while. What I have written so far holds true and will continue to do so. This week, I have been mostly eating 'mapviewer' ... answers on a post card please, TV show and character. I had a request to show how BIP can call mapviewer and render a dynamic map in an output. So I hit the books and colleagues for some answers. Mapviewer is Oracle's geographic information system, hereby known as GIS. I use it a lot in our BIEE demos where the interaction with the maps is very impressive. Need a map of California and its congressional districts? I have contacts; Jerry and David with their little black box of maps. Once in my possession I can build highly interactive, clickable maps that allow the user to drill into more information using a very friendly interface driving BIEE content and navigation. But what about maps in BIP output? Bryan Wise, who has written some articles on this blog did some work a while back with the PL/SQL API interface. The extract for the report called a function that in turn called the mapviewer server, passing a set of mapping requirements, it then returned a URL to a cached copy of that map. Easy to then have BIP render that image. Thats still very doable. You need to install a couple of packages and then load the mapviewer java APIs into the database. Then you can write your function to the APIs. A little involved? Maybe, but the database is doing all the heavy lifting for you. I thought I would investigate another method for getting the maps back into BIP. There is a URL interface you can call, this involves building an XML message to be passed to the mapviewer server. It's pretty straightforward to use on the mapviewer side. On the BIP side things are little more tricksy. After some unexpected messing about I finally got the ubiquitous Hello World map to render using the URL method. Not the most exciting map in the world, lots of ocean and a rather long URL to get it to render. http://127.0.0.1:9704/mapviewer/omserver?xml_request=%3Cmap_request%20title=%22Hello%20World%22%20datasource=%22cagis%22%20format=%22GIF_STREAM%22/%3E Notice all of the encoding in the URL string to handle the spaces, quotes, etc. All necessary to get BIP to make the call to the mapviewer server correctly without truncating the URL if it hits a real space rather than a %20. With that in mind constructing the URL was pretty simple. I'm not going to get into the content of the URL too much, for that you need to bone up on the mapviewer XML API. Check out the home page here and the documentation here. To make the template portable I used the standard CURRENT_SERVER_URL parameter from the BIP server and declared that in my template. <?param@begin:CURRENT_SERVER_URL;'myserver'?> Ignore the 'myserver', that was just a dummy value for testing at runtime it will resolve to: 'http://yourserver:port/xmlpserver' Not quite what we need as mapviewer has its own server path, in my case I needed 'mapviewer/omserver?xml_request=' as the fixed path to the mapviewer request URL. A little concatenation and substringing later I came up with <?param@begin:mURL;concat(substring($CURRENT_SERVER_URL,1,22),'mapviewer/omserver?xml_request=')?> Thats the basic URL that I can then build on. To get the Hello World map I need to add the following: <map_request title="Hello World" datasource="cagis" format="GIF_STREAM"/> Those angle brackets were the source of my headache, BIPs XSLT engine was attempting to process them rather than just pass them. Hok Min to the rescue ... again. I owe him lunch when I get out to HQ again! To solve the problem, I needed to escape all the characters and white space and then use native XSL to assign the string to a parameter. <xsl:param xdofo:ctx="begin"name="pXML">%3Cmap_request%20title=%22Hello%20World%22 %20datasource=%22cagis%22%20format=%22GIF_STREAM%22/%3E</xsl:param> I did not need to assign it to a parameter but I felt that if I were going to do anything more serious than Hello World like plotting points of interest on the map. I would need to dynamically build the URL, so using a set of parameters or variables that I then concatenated would be easier. Now I had the initial server string and the request all I then did was combine the two using a concat: concat($mURL,$pXML) Embedding that into an image tag: <fo:external-graphic src="url({concat($mURL,$pXML)})"/> and I was done. Notice the curly braces to get the concat evaluated prior to the image call. As you will see next time, building the XML message to go onto the URL can get quite complex but I have used it with some data. Ultimately, it would be easier to build an extension to BIP to handle the data to be plotted, it would then build the XML message, call mapviewer and return a URL to the map image for BIP to render. More on that next time ...

  Read the article

• PeopleSoft at Alliance 2012 Executive Forum

  - by John Webb

  Guest Posting From Rebekah Jackson This week I jointed over 4,800 Higher Ed and Public Sector customers and partners in Nashville at our annual Alliance conference.   I got lost easily in the hallways of the sprawling Gaylord Opryland Hotel. I carried the resort map with me, and I would still stand for several minutes at a very confusing junction, studying the map and the signage on the walls. Hallways led off in many directions, some with elevators going down here and stairs going up there. When I took a wrong turn I would instantly feel stuck, lose my bearings, and occasionally even have to send out a call for help.    It strikes me that the theme for the Executive Forum this year outlines a less tangible but equally disorienting set of challenges that our higher education customer’s CIOs are facing: Making Decisions at the Intersection of Business Value, Strategic Investment, and Enterprise Technology. The forces acting upon higher education institutions today are not neat, straight-forward decision points, where one can glance to the right, glance to the left, and then quickly choose the best course of action. The operational, technological, and strategic factors that must be considered are complex, interrelated, messy…and the stakes are high. Michael Horn, co-author of “Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns”, set the tone for the day. He introduced the model of disruptive innovation, which grew out of the research he and his colleagues have done on ‘Why Successful Organizations Fail’. Highly simplified, the pattern he shared is that things start out decentralized, take a leap to extreme centralization, and then experience progressive decentralization. Using computers as an example, we started with a slide rule, then developed the computer which centralized in the form of mainframes, and gradually decentralized to mini-computers, desktop computers, laptops, and now mobile devices. According to Michael, you have more computing power in your cell phone than existed on the planet 60 years ago, or was on the first rocket that went to the moon. Applying this pattern to Higher Education means the introduction of expensive and prestigious private universities, followed by the advent of state schools, then by community colleges, and now online education. Michael shared statistics that indicate 50% of students will be taking at least one on line course by 2014…and by some measures, that’s already the case today. The implication is that technology moves from being the backbone of the campus, the IT department’s domain, and pushes into the academic core of the institution. Innovative programs are underway at many schools like Bellevue and BYU Idaho, joined by startups and disruptive new players like the Khan Academy.   This presents both threat and opportunity for higher education institutions, and means that IT decisions cannot afford to be disconnected from the institution’s strategic plan. Subsequent sessions explored this theme.    Theo Bosnak, from Attain, discussed the model they use for assessing the complete picture of an institution’s financial health. Compounding the issue are the dramatic trends occurring in technology and the vendors that provide it. Ovum analyst Nicole Engelbert, shared her insights next and suggested that incremental changes are no longer an option, instead fundamental changes are affecting the landscape of enterprise technology in higher ed.    Nicole closed with her recommendation that institutions focus on the trends in higher education with an eye towards the strategic requirements and business value first. Technology then is the enabler.   The last presentation of the day was from Tom Fisher, Sr. Vice President of Cloud Services at Oracle. Tom runs the delivery arm of the Cloud Services group, and shared his thoughts candidly about his experiences with cloud deployments as well as key issues around managing costs and security in cloud deployments. Okay, we’ve covered a lot of ground at this point, from financials planning, business strategy, and cloud computing, with the possibility that half of the institutions in the US might not be around in their current form 10 years from now. Did I forget to mention that was raised in the morning session? Seems a little hard to believe, and yet Michael Horn made a compelling point. Apparently 100 years ago, 8 of the top 10 education institutions in the world were German. Today, the leading German school is ranked somewhere in the 40’s or 50’s. What will the landscape be 100 years from now? Will there be an institution from China, India, or Brazil in the top 10? As Nicole suggested, maybe US parents will be sending their children to schools overseas much sooner, faced with the ever-increasing costs of a US based education. Will corporations begin to view skill-based certification from an online provider as a viable alternative to a 4 year degree from an accredited institution, fundamentally altering the education industry as we know it?

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 755 756 757 758 759 760 761 762 763 764 765 766  | Next Page >