oracle jdeveloper and adf events and announcements - Page 816

SQLAuthority News – Public Training Classes In Hyderabad 12-14 May – Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008

- by pinaldave

After successfully delivering many corporate trainings as well as the private training Solid Quality Mentors, India is launching the Public Training in Hyderabad for SQL Server 2008 and SharePoint 2010. This is going to be one of the most unique and one-of-a-kind events in India where Solid Quality Mentors are offering public classes. I will be leading the training on Microsoft SQL Server 2005/2008 Query Optimization & Performance Tuning. This intensive, 3-day course intends to give attendees an in-depth look at Query Optimization and Performance Tuning in SQL Server 2005 and 2008. Designed to prepare SQL Server developers and administrators for a transition into SQL Server 2005 or 2008, the course covers the best practices for a variety of essential tasks in order to maximize the performance. At the end of the course, there would be daily discussions about your real-world problems and find appropriate solutions. Note: Scroll down for course fees, discount, dates and location. Do not forget to take advantage of Discount code ‘SQLAuthority‘. The training premises are very well-equipped as they will be having 1:1 computers. Every participant will be provided with printed course materials. I will pick up your entire lunch tab and we will have lots of SQL talk together. The best participant will receive a special gift at the end of the course. Even though the quality of the material to be delivered together with the course will be of extremely high standard, the course fees are set at a very moderate rate. The fee for the course is INR 14,000/person for the whole 3-day convention. At the rate of 1 USD = 44 INR, this fee converts to less than USD 300. At this rate, it is totally possible to fly from anywhere from the world to India and take the training and still save handsome pocket money. It would be even better if you register using the discount code “SQLAuthority“, for you will instantly get an INR 3000 discount, reducing the total cost of the training to INR 11,000/person for whole 3 days course. This is a onetime offer and will not be available in the future. Please note that there will be a 10.3% service tax on course fees. To register, either send an email to [email protected] or call +91 95940 43399. Feel free to drop me an email at [email protected] for any additional information and clarification. Training Date and Time: May 12-14, 2010 10 AM- 6 PM. Training Venue: Abridge Solutions, #90/B/C/3/1, Ganesh GHR & MSY Plaza, Vittalrao Nagar, Near Image Hospital, Madhapur, Hyderabad – 500 081. The details of the course is as listed below. Day 1 : Strengthen the basics along with SQL Server 2005/2008 New Features Module 01: Subqueries, Ranking Functions, Joins and Set Operations Module 02: Table Expressions Module 03: TOP and APPLY Module 04: SQL Server 2008 Enhancements Day 2: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 1 Module 05: Logical Query Processing Module 06: Query Tuning Module 07: Introduction to the Query Processor Module 08: Review of common query coding which causes poor performance Day 3: Query Optimization & Performance Tuning 2 Module 09: SQL Server Indexing and index maintenance Module 10: Plan Guides, query hints, UDFs, and Computed Columns Module 11: Understanding SQL Server Execution Plans Module 12: Real World Index and Optimization Tips Download the complete PDF brochure. We are also going to have SharePoint 2010 training by Joy Rathnayake on 10-11 May. All the details for discount applies to the same as well. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Training, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

Read the article

Time to stop using “Execute Package Task”– a way to execute package in SSIS catalog taking advantage of the new project deployment model ,and the logging and reporting feature

- by Kevin Shyr

I set out to find a way to dynamically call package in SSIS 2012. The following are 2 excellent blogs I found; I used them heavily. The code below has some addition to parameter types and message types, but was made essentially derived entirely from the blogs. http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/archive/2011/07/16/ssis-logging-in-denali.aspx http://www.ssistalk.com/2012/07/24/quick-tip-run-ssis-2012-packages-synchronously-and-other-execution-options/ The code: Every package will be called by a PackageController package. The packageController is initialized with some information on which package to run and what information to pass in. The following is the stored procedure called from the “Execute SQL Task”. Here is the highlight of the stored procedure It takes in packageName, project name, and folder name (folder in SSIS project deployment to SSIS catalog) The stored procedure sets the package variables of the upcoming package execution Execute package in SSIS Catalog Get the status of the execution. Also, if exists, get the error message’s message_id and store them in the management database. Return value to “Execute SQL Task” to manage failure properly CREATE PROCEDURE [AUDIT].[LaunchPackageExecutionInSSISCatalog] @PackageName NVARCHAR(255) , @ProjectFolder NVARCHAR(255) , @ProjectName NVARCHAR(255) , @AuditKey INT , @DisableNotification BIT , @PackageExecutionLogID INT AS BEGIN TRY DECLARE @execution_id BIGINT = 0; -- Create a package execution EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[create_execution] @package_name=@PackageName, @execution_id=@execution_id OUTPUT, @folder_name=@ProjectFolder, @project_name=@ProjectName, @use32bitruntime=False; UPDATE [AUDIT].[PackageInstanceExecutionLog] WITH(ROWLOCK) SET [SSISCatalogExecutionID] = @execution_id WHERE [PackageInstanceExecutionLogID] = @PackageExecutionLogID -- this is to set the execution synchronized so that I can check the result in the end EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'SYNCHRONIZED', @parameter_value=1; -- true /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: setting parameters Source table: SSISDB.internal.object_parameters object_type list: 20: project level variables 30: package level variables 50: execution parameter ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=30, @parameter_name=N'FromParent_AuditKey', @parameter_value=@AuditKey; -- true EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=30, @parameter_name=N'FromParent_DisableNotification', @parameter_value=@DisableNotification; -- true EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=30, @parameter_name=N'FromParent_PackageInstanceExecutionID', @parameter_value=@PackageExecutionLogID; -- true /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: setting variables END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ /* This section is carried over from example code I don't see a reason to change them yet */ -- Set our package parameters EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_EVENT', @parameter_value=1; -- true EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'DUMP_EVENT_CODE', @parameter_value=N'0x80040E4D;0x80004005'; EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'LOGGING_LEVEL', @parameter_value= 1; -- Basic EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[set_execution_parameter_value] @execution_id, @object_type=50, @parameter_name=N'DUMP_ON_ERROR', @parameter_value=1; -- true /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: EXECUTING ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ EXEC [SSISDB].[catalog].[start_execution] @execution_id; /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: EXECUTING END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: checking execution result Source table: [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions] status: 1: created 2: running 3: cancelled 4: failed 5: pending 6: ended unexpectedly 7: succeeded 8: stopping 9: completed ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ if EXISTS(SELECT TOP 1 1 FROM [SSISDB].[catalog].[executions] WITH(NOLOCK) WHERE [execution_id] = @execution_id AND [status] NOT IN (2, 7, 9)) BEGIN /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: logging error messages Source table: [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages] message type: 10: OnPreValidate 20: OnPostValidate 30: OnPreExecute 40: OnPostExecute 60: OnProgress 70: OnInformation 90: Diagnostic 110: OnWarning 120: OnError 130: Failure 140: DiagnosticEx 200: Custom events 400: OnPipeline message source type: 10: Messages logged by the entry APIs (e.g. T-SQL, CLR Stored procedures) 20: Messages logged by the external process used to run package (ISServerExec) 30: Messages logged by the package-level objects 40: Messages logged by tasks in the control flow 50: Messages logged by containers (For, ForEach, Sequence) in the control flow 60: Messages logged by the Data Flow Task ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ INSERT INTO AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionOperationErrorLink SELECT @PackageExecutionLogID ,[operation_message_id] FROM [SSISDB].[internal].[operation_messages] WITH(NOLOCK) WHERE operation_id = @execution_id AND message_type IN (120, 130) EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, 'SSISDB Internal operation_messages found' GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: checking messages END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ /* This part is not really working, so now using rowcount to pass status --DECLARE @PackageErrorMessage NVARCHAR(4000) --SET @PackageErrorMessage = @PackageName + 'failed with executionID: ' + CONVERT(VARCHAR(20), @execution_id) --RAISERROR (@PackageErrorMessage -- Message text. -- , 18 -- Severity, -- , 1 -- State, -- , N'check table AUDIT.PackageInstanceExecutionErrorMessages' -- First argument. -- ); */ END ELSE BEGIN GOTO ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess END /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: checking execution result END ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ END TRY BEGIN CATCH DECLARE @SSISCatalogCallError NVARCHAR(MAX) SELECT @SSISCatalogCallError = ERROR_MESSAGE() EXEC [AUDIT].[FailPackageInstanceExecution] @PackageExecutionLogID, @SSISCatalogCallError GOTO ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag END CATCH; /******************************************************** ******************************************************** Section: end result ******************************************************** ********************************************************/ ReturnTrueAsErrorFlag: SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 1) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists ReturnFalseAsErrorFlagToSignalSuccess: SELECT CONVERT(BIT, 0) AS PackageExecutionErrorExists GO

Read the article

F# WPF Form – the basics

- by MarkPearl

I was listening to Dot Net Rocks show #560 about F# and during the podcast Richard Campbell brought up a good point with regards to F# and a GUI. In essence what I understood his point to be was that until one could write an end to end application in F#, it would be a hard sell to developers to take it on. In part I agree with him, while I am beginning to really enjoy learning F#, I can’t but help feel that I would be a lot further into the language if I could do my Windows Forms like I do in C# or VB.NET for the simple reason that in “playing” applications I spend the majority of the time in the UI layer… So I have been keeping my eye out for some examples of creating a WPF form in a F# project and came across Tim’s F# Twitter Stream Sample, which had exactly this…. of course he actually had a bit more than a basic form… but it was enough for me to scrap the insides and glean what I needed. So today I am going to make just the very basic WPF form with all the goodness of a XAML window. Getting Started First thing we need to do is create a new solution with a blank F# application project – I have made mine called FSharpWPF. Once you have the project created you will need to change the project type from a Console Application to a Windows Application. You do this by right clicking on the project file and going to its properties… Once that is done you will need to add the appropriate references. You do this by right clicking on the References in the Solution Explorer and clicking “Add Reference'”. You should add the appropriate .Net references below for WPF & XAMl to work. Once these references are added you then need to add your XAML file to the project. You can do this by adding a new item to the project of type xml and simply changing the file extension from xml to xaml. Once the xaml file has been added to the project you will need to add valid window XAML. Example of a very basic xaml file is shown below… <Window xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" Title="F# WPF WPF Form" Height="350" Width="525"> <Grid> </Grid> </Window> Once your xaml file is done… you need to set the build action of the xaml file from “None” to “Resource” as depicted in the picture below. If you do not set this you will get an IOException error when running the completed project with a message along the lines of “Cannot locate resource ‘window.xaml’ You then need to tie everything up by putting the correct F# code in the Program.fs to load the xaml window. In the Program.fs put the following code… module Program open System open System.Collections.ObjectModel open System.IO open System.Windows open System.Windows.Controls open System.Windows.Markup [<STAThread>] [<EntryPoint>] let main(_) = let w = Application.LoadComponent(new System.Uri("/FSharpWPF;component/Window.xaml", System.UriKind.Relative)) :?> Window (new Application()).Run(w) Once all this is done you should be able to build and run your project. What you have done is created a WPF based window inside a FSharp project. It should look something like below… Nothing to exciting, but sufficient to illustrate the very basic WPF form in F#. Hopefully in future posts I will build on this to expose button events etc.

Read the article

Silverlight Cream for February 04, 2011 -- #1040

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Shawn Wildermuth, John Papa, Jesse Liberty(-2-), Mike Wolf, Matt Casto, Levente Mihály, Roy Dallal, Mark Monster, Andrea Boschin, and Oren Gal. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Accept and Cancel Buttons Behavior in Silverlight" Matt Casto WP7: "Windows Phone 7 Runtime Debugging" Mike Wolf Shoutouts: Al Pascual announced a get-together if you're going to be in Phoenix on February 10 (next Thursday)... I just can't tell what time it is from the page: Phoenix Dev Meet-Up From SilverlightCream.com: Ten Pet Peeves of WP7 Applications Check out Shawn Wildermuth's Top 10 annoyances when trying out any new app on the WP7... if you're a dev, you might want to keep these in mind. Silverlight TV 60: Checking Out the Zero Gravity Game, Now on Windows Phone 7 John Papa has Silverlight TV number 60 up and this one features Phoenix' own Ryan Plemons discussing the game Zero Gravity and some of the things he had to do to take the game to WP7 ... and the presentation looks as good from here as it did inside the studio :) The Full Stack: Entity Framework To Phone, The Server Side Jesse Liberty and Jon Galloway have Part 6 of their full-stack podcast up ... this is their exploration of MVC3, ASP.NET, Silverlight, and WP7... pair programming indeed! Life Cycle: Page State Management Jesse Liberty also has episode 29 (can you believe that??) of his Windows Phone From Scratch series up ... he's continuing his previous LifeCycle discussion with Page State Management this time. Windows Phone 7 Runtime Debugging Mike Wolf is one of those guys that when he blogs, we should all pay attention, and this post is no exception... he has contributed a run-time diagnostics logger to the WP7Contrib project ... wow... too cool! Accept and Cancel Buttons Behavior in Silverlight Matt Casto has his blog back up and has a behavior up some intuitive UX on ChildWindows by being able to bind to a default or cancel button and have those events activated when the user hits Enter or Escape... very cool, Matt! A classic memory game: Part 3 - Porting the game to Windows Phone 7 Levente Mihály has Part 3 of his tutorial series up at SilverlightShow, and this go-around is porting his 'memory game' to WP7... and this is pretty all-encompassing... Blend for the UI, Performance, and Tombstoning... plus all the source. Silverlight Memory Leak, Part 1 Roy Dallal completely describes how he used a couple easily-downloadable tools to find the root cause of his memory problems with is Silvleright app. Lots of good investigative information. How to cancel the closing of your Silverlight application (in-browser and out-of-browser) Mark Monster revisits a two-year old post of his on cancelling the closing of a Silverlight app... and he's bringing that concept of warning the user the he's about to exit into the OOB situation as well. Windows Phone 7 - Part #3: Understanding navigation Also continuing his WP7 tutorial series on SilverlightShow, Andrea Boschin has part 3 up which is all about Navigation and preserving state... he also has a video on the page to help demonstrate the GoBack method. Multiple page printing in Silverlight 4 Oren Gal built a Silverlight app for last years' ESRI dev summit, and decided to upgrade it this year with functionality such as save/restore, selecting favorite sessions, and printing. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

Read the article

A debugging experience with "highly compatible" ASP.NET 4.5

- by Jeff

I have to admit that I will pretty much upgrade software for no reason other than being on the latest version. I won't do it if it's super expensive (Adobe gets money from me about once every three or four years at best), but particularly with frameworks and stuff generally available as part of my MSDN subscription, I'll be bleeding edge. CoasterBuzz was running on the MVC 4 framework pretty much as soon as they did a "go live" license for it. I didn't really jump in head-first with Windows 8 and Visual Studio 2012, in part because I just wasn't interested in doing the reinstalls for each new version. Turns out there weren't that many revisions anyway. But when the final versions were released a week and a half ago, I jumped in. I saw on one of the Microsoft sites that .Net 4.5 was a "highly compatible in-place update" to the framework. Good enough for me. I was obviously running it by default in Windows 8, and installed it on my production server. I suppose it's "highly compatible," except when it isn't. Three of my sites are running with various flavors of the MVC version of POP Forums. All of them stopped working under ASP.NET 4.5. It was not immediately obvious what the problem might be beyond an exception indicating that there were no repository classes registered with Ninject, which I use for dependency injection in the forums. This was made all the more weird by the fact that it ran fine locally in the dev Web host. My first instinct was to spin up a Windows Server VM on my local box and put the remote debugger on it. (Side note: running multiple VM's on a Retina MacBook Pro with 16 gigs of RAM is pretty much the most awesome thing ever. I can't believe this computer is for real, and not a 50-pound tower under my desk.) What might have been going on in IIS that doesn't happen in Visual Studio? In the debugging process, I realized that I might be looking in the wrong place. POP Forums creates a Ninject container using a method called from a PreApplicationStartMethod attribute, and at that time registers a module (what Ninject uses to map interfaces to implementations) that maps all of the core dependencies. It also creates an instance of an HttpModule that originally hosted the "services" (search indexing, mailer, etc.), but now just records errors. That's all well and good, but the actual repository mapping, where data is actually read or persisted, happens in Application_Start() in global.asax. The idea there is that you can swap out the SqlSingleWebServer repos for something tuned for multiple servers, Oracle or something else. Of course, if I used something like StructureMap, which does convention-based mapping for dependency injection (a class implementing ISettingsRepository called SettingsRepository is automagically mapped), I wouldn't have to worry about it. In any case, the HttpModule, being instantiated before Application_Start() gets to run, would throw because there was no repo mapped where it could get settings from the database. This makes total sense. The fix is sort of a hack, where I don't setup the innards of the HttpModule until a call to its BeginRequest is made. I say it's a hack, because its primary function, logging exceptions, won't work until the app has warmed up. Still, this brings up an interesting question about the race condition, and what changed in 4.5 when it's running in IIS. In ASP.NET 4, it would appear that the code called via the PreApplicationStartMethod was either failing silently, and running again later, or it was getting to that code after Application_Start was called. In any case, weird thing. The real pain point I'm experiencing now is a bug in MVC 4 that is extremely serious because it renders the mobile/alternate view functionality very much broken.

Read the article

Silverlight Cream for January 04, 2011 -- #1022

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Dennis Doomen, Doug Holland, Kunal Chowdhury, Sacha Barber, Paul Sheriff, Mike Snow(-2-), Peter Kuhn(-2-), and Mike Ormond. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Silverlight: Fixing the BookShelf Sample" Peter Kuhn WP7: "Searching the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Programmatically" Doug Holland Prism/Cinch: "PRISM 4 Custom Transitioning Region" Sacha Barber Shoutouts: Sacha Barber the author of Cinch asks for some advice from users: Cinch V2 : Question For The Reader Michael Crump introduces us to SnippetManager as a way to organize your Silverlight snippets... I'm thinking any snippet: A better way to organize your Silverlight Code Snippets. Andy Beaulieu announced an update of Physics Helper 4.2 using Farseer 3.2 ... check out the breaking changes though! Dennis Doomen blogged about a new release of his Fluent Assertions: A new year with a new release of Fluent Assertions, with a blog post about it below From SilverlightCream.com: Verifying PropertyChanged events in Silverlight using Fluent Assertions Dennis Doomen release his latest Fluent Assertions for .NET and Silverlight and wrote up a big post about the new event monitoring syntax. Searching the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace Programmatically Doug Holland has a post up on MSDN blogs talking about searching the WP7 Marketplace programmatically... ya know you should be able to do it... here's how. Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part - 5) Kunal Chowdhury has Part 5 of a tutorial series on Lightswitch up at SilverlightShow... working with custom validation this time, and for the first time in this series so far actually writes some code! PRISM 4 Custom Transitioning Region Sacha Barber took time to look at Prism4/MEF and Cinch2 and found things to be fine then wrote a custom PRISM region adaptor that uses a TransitionalElement from the Microsoft Transitionals project... code available, blog post to come. Get Application Title from Windows Phone Paul Sheriff has a cool chunk of code up... getting the Application's title programmatically... and other attributes as well, if you were wondering why you might wanna do that. Detecting Users Win7 Mobile Theme Color Mike Snow has a couple as well... first up is how to detect your user's theme... obviously useful if you wanna match it. Selecting an Item in a ComboBox after Adding Items Second for Mike Snow is a general Silverlight issue... setting the selected item on a ComboBox after filling it... if you haven't stumbled across this yet, you will... A Simplified Grid Markup Reloaded Peter Kuhn has a pair of posts up since last time... this first is an extension of Colin Eberhardt's simplified Grid markup system, but it's only useful if you don't plan on using Blend... can we get a show of hands? :) Silverlight: Fixing the BookShelf Sample Next Peter Kuhn has some changes to the Bookshelf code, but more importantly has some excelling tips about shader effects, Effects on Visual Elements and how to make best use of all the above. Displaying HTML Content in Windows Phone 7 Mike Ormond has a WP7 post up describing problems a customer had early on displaying rich text and an attempt to use the WebBrowser control to pull it off and the problems that caused... check out the resultant code, and read the comments as well. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

Read the article

From NaN to Infinity...and Beyond!

- by Tony Davis

It is hard to believe that it was once possible to corrupt a SQL Server Database by storing perfectly normal data values into a table; but it is true. In SQL Server 2000 and before, one could inadvertently load invalid data values into certain data types via RPC calls or bulk insert methods rather than DML. In the particular case of the FLOAT data type, this meant that common 'special values' for this type, namely NaN (not-a-number) and +/- infinity, could be quite happily plugged into the database from an application and stored as 'out-of-range' values. This was like a time-bomb. When one then tried to query this data; the values were unsupported and so data pages containing them were flagged as being corrupt. Any query that needed to read a column containing the special value could fail or return unpredictable results. Microsoft even had to issue a hotfix to deal with failures in the automatic recovery process, caused by the presence of these NaN values, which rendered the whole database inaccessible! This problem is history for those of us on more current versions of SQL Server, but its ghost still haunts us. Recently, for example, a developer on Red Gate’s SQL Response team reported a strange problem when attempting to load historical monitoring data into a SQL Server 2005 database via the C# ADO.NET provider. The ratios used in some of their reporting calculations occasionally threw out NaN or infinity values, and the subsequent attempts to load these values resulted in a nasty error. It turns out to be a different manifestation of the same problem. SQL Server 2005 still does not fully support the IEEE 754 standard for floating point numbers, in that the FLOAT data type still cannot handle NaN or infinity values. Instead, they just added validation checks that prevent the 'invalid' values from being loaded in the first place. For people migrating from SQL Server 2000 databases that contained out-of-range FLOAT (or DATETIME etc.) data, to SQL Server 2005, Microsoft have added to the latter's version of the DBCC CHECKDB (or CHECKTABLE) command a DATA_PURITY clause. When enabled, this will seek out the corrupt data, but won’t fix it. You have to do this yourself in what can often be a slow, painful manual process. Our development team, after a quizzical shrug of the shoulders, simply decided to represent NaN and infinity values as NULL, and move on, accepting the minor inconvenience of not being able to tell them apart. However, what of scientific, engineering and other applications that really would like the luxury of being able to both store and access these perfectly-reasonable floating point data values? The sticking point seems to be the stipulation in the IEEE 754 standard that, when NaN is compared to any other value including itself, the answer is "unequal" (i.e. FALSE). This is clearly different from normal number comparisons and has repercussions for such things as indexing operations. Even so, this hardly applies to infinity values, which are single definite values. In fact, there is some encouraging talk in the Connect note on this issue that they might be supported 'in the SQL Server 2008 timeframe'. If didn't happen; SQL 2008 doesn't support NaN or infinity values, though one could be forgiven for thinking otherwise, based on the MSDN documentation for the FLOAT type, which states that "The behavior of float and real follows the IEEE 754 specification on approximate numeric data types". However, the truth is revealed in the XPath documentation, which states that "…float (53) is not exactly IEEE 754. For example, neither NaN (Not-a-Number) nor infinity is used…". Is it really so hard to fix this problem the right way, and properly support in SQL Server the IEEE 754 standard for the floating point data type, NaNs, infinities and all? Oracle seems to have managed it quite nicely with its BINARY_FLOAT and BINARY_DOUBLE types, so it is technically possible. We have an enterprise-class database that is marketed as being part of an 'integrated' Windows platform. Absurdly, we have .NET and XPath libraries that fully support the standard for floating point numbers, and we can't even properly store these values, let alone query them, in the SQL Server database! Cheers, Tony.

Read the article

Asynchrony in C# 5: Dataflow Async Logger Sample

- by javarg

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

Read the article

Help trying to get two-finger scrolling to work on Asus UL80VT

- by Dan2k3k4

Multi-touch works fine on Windows 7 with: two-fingers scroll vertical and horizontally, two-finger tap for middle click, and three-finger tap for right click. However with Ubuntu, I've never been able to get multi-touch to "save" and work, I was able to get it to work a few times but after restarting - it would just reset back. I have the settings for two-finger scrolling on: Mouse and Touchpad Touchpad Two-finger scrolling (selected) Enable horizontal scrolling (ticked) The cursor stops moving when I try to scroll with two fingers, but it doesn't actually scroll the page. When I perform xinput list, I get: Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401 id=13 [slave pointer (2)] I've tried to install some 'synaptics-dkms' bug-fix (from a few years back) but that didn't work, so I removed that. I've tried installing 'uTouch' but that didn't seem to do anything so removed it. Here's what I have installed now: dpkg --get-selections installed-software grep 'touch\|mouse\|track\|synapt' installed-software libsoundtouch0 --- install libutouch-evemu1 --- install libutouch-frame1 --- install libutouch-geis1 --- install libutouch-grail1 --- install printer-driver-ptouch --- install ptouch-driver --- install xserver-xorg-input-multitouch --- install xserver-xorg-input-mouse --- install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse --- install libnetfilter-conntrack3 --- install libxatracker1 --- install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics --- install So, I'll start again, what should I do now to get two-finger scrolling to work and ensure it works after restarting? Also doing: synclient TapButton1=1 TapButton2=2 TapButton3=3 ...works but doesn't save after restarting. However doing: synclient VertTwoFingerScroll=1 HorizTwoFingerScroll=1 Does NOT work to fix the two-finger scrolling. Output of: cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i synaptics [ 4.576] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics" [ 4.577] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.577] (II) Module synaptics: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 4.577] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401' [ 4.577] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: x-axis range 0 - 1088 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: y-axis range 0 - 704 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: pressure range 0 - 255 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: finger width range 0 - 16 [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: buttons: left right middle double triple scroll-buttons [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: Vendor 0x2 Product 0xe [ 4.584] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: touchpad found [ 4.588] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: (accel) MinSpeed is now constant deceleration 2.5 [ 4.588] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: MaxSpeed is now 1.75 [ 4.588] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: AccelFactor is now 0.154 [ 4.589] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech ETF0401: touchpad found Tried installing synaptiks but that didn't seem to work either, so removed it. Temporary Fix (works until I restart) Doing the following commands: modprobe -r psmouse modprobe psmouse proto=imps Works but now xinput list shows up as: Virtual core pointer id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? Virtual core XTEST pointer id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ImPS/2 Generic Wheel Mouse id=13 [slave pointer (2)] Instead of Elantech, and it gets reset when I reboot. Solution (not ideal for most people) So, I ended up reinstalling a fresh 12.04 after indirectly playing around with burg and plymouth then removing plymouth which removed 50+ packages (I saw the warnings but was way too tired and assumed I could just 'reinstall' them all after (except that didn't work). Right now xinput list shows up as: ? Virtual core pointer --- id=2 [master pointer (3)] ? ? Virtual core XTEST pointer --- id=4 [slave pointer (2)] ? ? ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad --- id=13 [slave pointer (2)] grep 'touch\|mouse\|track\|synapt' installed-software libnetfilter-conntrack3 --- install libsoundtouch0 --- install libutouch-evemu1 --- install libutouch-frame1 --- install libutouch-geis1 --- install libutouch-grail1 --- install libxatracker1 --- install mousetweaks --- install printer-driver-ptouch --- install xserver-xorg-input-mouse --- install xserver-xorg-input-synaptics --- install xserver-xorg-input-vmmouse --- install cat /var/log/Xorg.0.log | grep -i synaptics [ 4.890] (II) LoadModule: "synaptics" [ 4.891] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.892] (II) Module synaptics: vendor="X.Org Foundation" [ 4.892] (II) Using input driver 'synaptics' for 'ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad' [ 4.892] (II) Loading /usr/lib/xorg/modules/input/synaptics_drv.so [ 4.956] (II) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: ignoring touch events for semi-multitouch device [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: x-axis range 0 - 1088 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: y-axis range 0 - 704 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: pressure range 0 - 255 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: finger width range 0 - 15 [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: buttons: left right double triple [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: Vendor 0x2 Product 0xe [ 4.956] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found [ 4.980] () synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: (accel) MinSpeed is now constant deceleration 2.5 [ 4.980] () synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: MaxSpeed is now 1.75 [ 4.980] (**) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: AccelFactor is now 0.154 [ 4.980] (--) synaptics: ETPS/2 Elantech Touchpad: touchpad found So, if all else fails, reinstall Linux :/

Read the article

Java Resources for Windows Azure

- by BuckWoody

Windows Azure is a Platform as a Service – a PaaS – that runs code you write. That code doesn’t just mean the languages on the .NET platform – you can run code from multiple languages, including Java. In fact, you can develop for Windows and SQL Azure using not only Visual Studio but the Eclipse Integrated Development Environment (IDE) as well. Although not an exhaustive list, here are several links that deal with Java and Windows Azure: Resource Link Windows Azure Java Development Center http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/java/ Java Development Guidance http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh690943(VS.103).aspx Running a Java Environment on Windows Azure http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/archive/2010/10/28/running-a-java-environment-on-windows-azure.aspx Running a Java Environment on Windows Azure http://blogs.technet.com/b/port25/archive/2010/10/28/running-a-java-environment-on-windows-azure.aspx Run Java with Jetty in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2010/03/21/run-java-with-jetty-in-windows-azure.aspx Using the plugin for Eclipse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/craig/archive/2011/03/22/new-plugin-for-eclipse-to-get-java-developers-off-the-ground-with-windows-azure.aspx Run Java with GlassFish in Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/dachou/archive/2011/01/17/run-java-with-glassfish-in-windows-azure.aspx Improving experience for Java developers with Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/interoperability/archive/2011/02/23/improving-experience-for-java-developers-with-windows-azure.aspx Java Access to SQL Azure via the JDBC Driver for SQL Server http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/2011/03/29/java-access-to-sql-azure-via-the-jdbc-driver-for-sql-server.aspx How to Get Started with Java, Tomcat on Windows Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/usisvde/archive/2011/03/04/how-to-get-started-with-java-tomcat-on-windows-azure.aspx Deploying Java Applications in Azure http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mariok/archive/2011/01/05/deploying-java-applications-in-azure.aspx Using the Windows Azure Storage Explorer in Eclipse http://blogs.msdn.com/b/brian_swan/archive/2011/01/11/using-the-windows-azure-storage-explorer-in-eclipse.aspx Windows Azure Tomcat Solution Accelerator http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/winazuretomcat Deploying a Java application to Windows Azure with Command-line Ant http://java.interoperabilitybridges.com/articles/deploying-a-java-application-to-windows-azure-with-command-line-ant Video: Open in the Cloud: Windows Azure and Java http://channel9.msdn.com/Events/PDC/PDC10/CS10 AzureRunMe http://azurerunme.codeplex.com/ Windows Azure SDK for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/windows-azure-sdk-for-java AppFabric SDK for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/azure-java-sdk-for-net-services Information Cards for Java http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/information-card-for-java Apache Stonehenge http://www.interoperabilitybridges.com/projects/apache-stonehenge Channel 9 Case Study on Java and Windows Azure http://www.microsoft.com/casestudies/Windows-Azure/Gigaspaces/Solution-Provider-Streamlines-Java-Application-Deployment-in-the-Cloud/400000000081

Read the article

How to Watch NCAA March Madness Online

- by DigitalGeekery

You’ve filled out your brackets and now you are ready for one of America’s most popular sporting events. But what if you are you stuck at work or away from your TV? Or your local affiliate is showing a different game? Today we show how to catch all the March Madness online. March Madness on Demand You’ll need a broadband connection, 512 MB RAM or higher, with cookies and Javascript enabled in your browser. March Madness on Demand offers two viewing options, a Standard Player and a High Quality player. The High Quality player is not, unfortunately, high definition. Standard Player Requirements Windows XP/Vista/7 or Mac OS X IE 6+ (We also successfully tested it in Firefox, Chrome, & Opera) Adobe Flash Player 9 or higher High Quality Player Requirements 2.4 GHz Pentium 4 or Intel-based Macintosh Mac OS 10.4.8+ (Intel-based) Windows: XP SP2, Vista, Server 2003, Server 2008, Windows 7 Firefox 1.5+ or IE 6/7/8 Silverlight 3 browser plug-in Watching March Madness on Demand Go to the March Madness on Demand website. (Link below) Check the “Watch in High Quality” section to see if your browser is ready and compatible for the High Quality viewer. If not, you’ll see a message indicating either your browser and system are incompatible… Or that you need to install Silverlight. To install Silverlight, click on the “Get HQ” button and follow the prompts to download and install Silverlight. To launch the player, click the large red “Launch Player” button. At the top of the screen, you’ll see the current and upcoming games. Click on “Watch Now” below to begin watching. At the bottom left, is where you click to watch with the High Quality player. If to many people are watching the High Quality player, you’ll see the following message and have to go back to the Standard Player. At the lower right are volume controls, a “Full Screen” button, and a “Share” button which allows you to share the game you are watching on various social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter. Perhaps most importantly for those who want to steal a bit of viewing time while at work is the “Boss Button” at the top right. Clicking on the “Boss Button” will open a fake Office document so it may appear at first glance like you’re actually doing legitimate work. To return to the game, click anywhere on the screen with your mouse. You’ll be able to catch every single game of the tournament from the first round all the way through the championship with March Madness on Demand. If your computer and Internet connection can handle it, you can even watch multiple games at the same time by opening March Madness on Demand in multiple browser windows. Watch March Madness online Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Weekend Fun: Watch Television on Your PC with AnyTVWatch NFL Sunday Night Football On Your PCWatch TV On Your PC with FreeZ Online TVGeek Fun: Download Favorite NBC Programs for FreeDitch the RealPlayer Bloat with Real Alternative TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet

Read the article

Personal Technology – Excel Tip: Comparing Excel Files

- by Pinal Dave

This guest post is by Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar has worked with SQL Server extensively since joining the industry over a decade ago. Working on various versionsfrom SQL Server 7.0, Oracle 7.3 and other database technologies – he now works with the Microsoft Technology Center (MTC) as a Technology Architect. Let us read the blog post in Vinod’s own voice. I have been writing about Excel Tips over my blog and thought it would be great to share one interesting tips here as a guest blog here. Assume a situation where you want to compare multiple excel files. Here is a typical scenario I have encountered as a common activity. Assume you are sending an Excel file with tons of data, formulae and multiple sheets. Now you are requesting your colleague to validate the file and if required change content for correctness. After receiving the file from your colleague, now you want to know what changes were made by this person to your document. Now here is a cool new addition to Excel 2013 that can help you achieve this task. To get to this option, click the INQUIRE Tab. Incase you don’t have the INQUIRE Tab, check Options using INQUIRE blog. In that post, we discuss all the other options of INQUIRE tab. Once you are on the INQUIRE Tab, select “Compare Files” button as shown in the figure above. This brings a dialog as below. If you are on Windows 8 or Windows 7 OS, search for an application called “Spreadsheet Compare 2013”. Ultimately both the options lead us to the same application. If you are using the stand alone app, once the App initializes, click the “Compare files” options from the toolbar. Make sure to give two different Excel files as shown in the figure above. After selecting the Excel Sheets, you can see the Compare tool has a number of other options to play from. We will talk about some of them later in this post. Just below our toolbar is a colorful side-by-side comparison of both our excel sheets. We can also see the various Tab’s from each file. There is a meaning for each of our color coding which will be discussed next. As you saw above, the color coding has a meaning. For example the bottom pane lists each of the color coding and most importantly each of the changes as compared side-by-side. The detailed information shown below can be exported using the “Export Results” options from the toolbar as a separate Excel Workbook or can be copied to clipboard to be used later. The final piece of the puzzle is to show a graphical view of these differences results based on each category. We cannot drill down per se, but this is a great way to know that the maximum changes seem to be based on “Cell Formats” and then few “Calculated Values” have changed. The INQUIRE option and Spreadsheet Compare 2013 tool is part of Excel 2013. So as you explore using the new version of Excel, there are many such hidden features that are worth exploring. Do let us know if you enjoyed learning a new feature today and I hope you will play around with this feature in your day-today challenges when working with Excel files. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Excel, Personal Technology

Read the article

MvcExtensions - PerRequestTask

- by kazimanzurrashid

In the previous post, we have seen the BootstrapperTask which executes when the application starts and ends, similarly there are times when we need to execute some custom logic when a request starts and ends. Usually, for this kind of scenario we create HttpModule and hook the begin and end request events. There is nothing wrong with this approach, except HttpModules are not at all IoC containers friendly, also defining the HttpModule execution order is bit cumbersome, you either have to modify the machine.config or clear the HttpModules and add it again in web.config. Instead, you can use the PerRequestTask which is very much container friendly as well as supports execution orders. Lets few examples where it can be used. Remove www Subdomain Lets say we want to remove the www subdomain, so that if anybody types http://www.mydomain.com it will automatically redirects to http://mydomain.com. public class RemoveWwwSubdomain : PerRequestTask { public RemoveWww() { Order = DefaultOrder - 1; } protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(PerRequestExecutionContext executionContext) { const string Prefix = "http://www."; Check.Argument.IsNotNull(executionContext, "executionContext"); HttpContextBase httpContext = executionContext.HttpContext; string url = httpContext.Request.Url.ToString(); bool startsWith3W = url.StartsWith(Prefix, StringComparison.OrdinalIgnoreCase); bool shouldContinue = true; if (startsWith3W) { string newUrl = "http://" + url.Substring(Prefix.Length); HttpResponseBase response = httpContext.Response; response.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.MovedPermanently; response.Status = "301 Moved Permanently"; response.RedirectLocation = newUrl; response.SuppressContent = true; shouldContinue = false; } return shouldContinue ? TaskContinuation.Continue : TaskContinuation.Break; } } As you can see, first, we are setting the order so that we do not have to execute the remaining tasks of the chain when we are redirecting, next in the ExecuteCore, we checking the whether www is present, if present we are sending a permanently moved http status code and breaking the task execution chain otherwise we are continuing with the chain. Blocking IP Address Lets take another scenario, your application is hosted in a shared hosting environment where you do not have the permission to change the IIS setting and you want to block certain IP addresses from visiting your application. Lets say, you maintain a list of IP address in database/xml files which you want to block, you have a IBannedIPAddressRepository service which is used to match banned IP Address. public class BlockRestrictedIPAddress : PerRequestTask { protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(PerRequestExecutionContext executionContext) { bool shouldContinue = true; HttpContextBase httpContext = executionContext.HttpContext; if (!httpContext.Request.IsLocal) { string ipAddress = httpContext.Request.UserHostAddress; HttpResponseBase httpResponse = httpContext.Response; if (executionContext.ServiceLocator.GetInstance<IBannedIPAddressRepository>().IsMatching(ipAddress)) { httpResponse.StatusCode = (int)HttpStatusCode.Forbidden; httpResponse.StatusDescription = "IPAddress blocked."; shouldContinue = false; } } return shouldContinue ? TaskContinuation.Continue : TaskContinuation.Break; } } Managing Database Session Now, let see how it can be used to manage NHibernate session, assuming that ISessionFactory of NHibernate is already registered in our container. public class ManageNHibernateSession : PerRequestTask { private ISession session; protected override TaskContinuation ExecuteCore(PerRequestExecutionContext executionContext) { ISessionFactory factory = executionContext.ServiceLocator.GetInstance<ISessionFactory>(); session = factory.OpenSession(); return TaskContinuation.Continue; } protected override void DisposeCore() { session.Close(); session.Dispose(); } } As you can see PerRequestTask can be used to execute small and precise tasks in the begin/end request, certainly if you want to execute other than begin/end request there is no other alternate of HttpModule. That’s it for today, in the next post, we will discuss about the Action Filters, so stay tuned.

Read the article

Silverlight Cream for January 13, 2011 -- #1026

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: András Velvárt, Tony Champion, Joost van Schaik, Jesse Liberty, Shawn Wildermuth, John Papa, Michael Crump, Sacha Barber, Alex Knight, Peter Kuhn, Senthil Kumar, Mike Hole, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight." Michael Crump WP7: "Architecting WP7 - Part 9 of 10: Threading" Shawn Wildermuth Expression Blend: "PathListBox: Text on the path" Alex Knight From SilverlightCream.com: Behaviors for accessing the Windows Phone 7 MarketPlace and getting feedback András Velvárt shares almost insider information about how to get some user interaction with your WP7 app in the form of feedback ... he has 4 behaviors taken straight from his very cool SufCube app that he's sharing. Reloading a Collection in the PivotViewer Tony Champion keeps working with the PivotViewer ... this time discussing the fact that you can't Reload or Refresh the current collection from the server ... at least not initially, but he did find one :) Tombstoning MVVMLight ViewModels with SilverlightSerializer on Windows Phone 7 Joost van Schaik takes a shot at helping us all with Tombstoning a WP7 app... he's using Mike Talbot's SilverlightSerializer and created extension methods for it for tombstoning that he's willing to share with us. Windows Phone From Scratch #17: MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts Part 2 Jesse Liberty is up to Part 17 in his WP7 series, and this is the 2nd post on MVVMLight and WP7, and is digging into behaviors. Architecting WP7 - Part 9 of 10: Threading Shawn Wildermuth is up to part 9 of 10 in his series on Architecting WP7 apps. This episode finds Shawn discussing Threading ... know how to use and choose between BackgroundWorker and ThreadPool? ... Shawn will explain. Silverlight TV 57: Performance Tuning Your Apps In the latest Silverlight TV, John Papa chats with Mike Cook about tuning your Silverlight app to get the performance up there where your users will be happy. Create Custom Speech Bubbles in Silverlight. Michael Crump's already gotten a lot of airplay out of this, but it's so cool.. comic-style callout shapes without using the dlls that you normally would... in other words, paths, and very cool hand-drawn looks on some too... very cool, Michael! Showcasing Cinch MVVM framework / PRISM 4 interoperability Sacha Barber has a post up on CodeProject that demonstratest using Cinch and Prism4 together... handily using MEF since Cinch relies on MEFedMVVM... this is a heck of a post... lots of code, lots of explanations. PathListBox: Text on the path Alex Knight keeps making this PathListBox series better ... this time he is putting text on the path... moving text... too cool, Alex! Windows Phone 7: Pinch Gesture Sample Peter Kuhn digs into the WP7 toolkit and examines GestureListener, pinch events, and clipping... examples and code supplied. How to change the StartPage of the Windows Phone 7 Application in Visual Studio 2010 ? Senthil Kumar discusses how to change the StartPage of your WP7 app, or get the program running if you happen to move or rename MainPage.xaml WP7 Text Boxes – OnEnter (my 1st Behaviour) Mike Hole has a post up about the issue with the keyboard appearing in front of the textbox, and maybe using the enter key to drop it... and he's developed a behavior for that process. WP7 ContextMenu in depth | Part1: key concepts and API WindowsPhoneGeek has some good articles that I haven't posted, but I'll catch up. This one is a nice tutorial on the WP7 Context menu... good explanation, diagrams, and code. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

Read the article

SQLAuthority News – Book Signing Event – SQLPASS 2011 Event Log

- by pinaldave

I have been dreaming of writing book for really long time, and I finally got the chance – in fact, two chances! I recently wrote two books: SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008 [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle] and SQL Wait Stats Joes 2 Pros: SQL Performance Tuning Techniques Using Wait Statistics, Types & Queues [Amazon] | [Flipkart] | [Kindle]. I had a lot of fun writing these two books, even though sometimes I had to sacrifice some family time and time for other personal development to write the books. The good side of writing book is that when the efforts put in writing books are recognize by books readers and kind organizations like expressor studio. Book Signing Event Book writing is a complex process. Even after you spend months, maybe years, writing the material you still have to go through the editing and fact checking processes. And, once the book is out there, there is no way to take back all the copies to change mistakes or add something you forgot. Most of the time it is a one-way street. Book Signing Event Just like every author, I had a dream that after the books were written, they would be loved by people and gain acceptance by an audience. My first book, SQL Programming Joes 2 Pros: Programming and Development for Microsoft SQL Server 2008, is extremely popular because it helps lots of people learn various fundamental topics. My second book covers beginning to learn SQL Server Wait Stats, which is a relatively new subject. This book has had very good acceptance in the community. Book Signing Event Helping my community is my primary focus, so I was happy to see this year’s SQLPASS tag line: ‘This is a Community.‘ At the event, the expressor studio guys came up with a very novel idea. They had previously used my books and they had found them very useful. They got 100 copies of the book and decided to give it away to community folks. They invited me and my co-author Rick Morelan to hold a book signing event. We did a book signing on Thursday between 1 pm and 2 pm. Book Signing Event This event was one of the best events for me. This was my first book signing event outside of India. I reached the book signing location around 20 minutes before the scheduled time and what I saw was a big line for the book signing event. I felt very honored looking at the crowd and all the people around the event location. I felt very humbled when I saw some of my very close friends standing in the line to get my signature. It was really heartwarming to see so many enthusiasts waiting for more than an hour to get my signature. While standing in line I had the chance to have a conversation with every single person who showed up for the signature. I made sure that I repeated every single name and wrote it in every book with my signature. There is saying that if we write a name once we will remember it forever. I want to remember all of you who saw me at the book signing. Your comments were wonderful, your feedback was amazing and you were all very supportive. Book Signing Event I have made a note of every conversation I had with all of you when I was signing the books. Once again, I just want to express my thanks for coming to my book signing event. The whole experience was very humbling. On the top of it, I want to thank the expressor studio people who made it possible, who organized the whole signing event. I am so thankful to them for facilitating the whole experience, which is going to be hard to beat by any future experience. My books Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL PASS, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology

Read the article

Silverlight Cream for January 16, 2011 -- #1029

- by Dave Campbell

In this Issue: Michael Washington, Jesse Liberty, Deborah Kurata(-2-, -3-, -4-), Sergey Barskiy(-2-), Miroslav Nedyalkov, Jeff Prosise, and Matthias Shapiro(-2-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application" Deborah Kurata WP7: "Windows Phone 7 [Controls] Project" Sergey Barskiy Sketchflow: "Sketchflow To Final" Michael Washington From SilverlightCream.com: Sketchflow To Final Check out this post by Michael Washington detailing the Sketchflow he did of his app, and how the final result tracks amazingly well. Windows Phone From Scratch #19 – MVVM Light Toolkit Soup To Nuts #4 Continuing to try to catch up to Jesse Liberty is this post, number 19 in the Windows Phone series and the 4th in that series about MVVMLight, and discussing binding a collection in the ViewModel to a ListBox in the view. Building a Multi-Page Silverlight LOB Application Deborah Kurata has the first 4 parts up (in 2 days) in a 6-part tutorial series she's doing on building a Silverlight LOB app. The first post was an intro and link to the rest as they become available. This 2nd post is getting the app newed up and making sure you've got your head wrapped around multiple pages. Theming a Silverlight Application using Existing Themes Deborah Kurata's next part is about getting started with themes in your app using the themes provided in the toolkit specifically. Theming a Silverlight Application using Custom Themes Deborah Kurata's next tutorial in the series is also about themes, but this time it's about custom themes... or rather customized from a 'standard' one in this case. Adding a New Page to a Multi-Page Silverlight Application Deborah Kurata's last available post in the tutorial series is this one on adding a new page to the app. Windows Phone 7 Project Sergey Barskiy has a pair of posts up about a calendar control that he is building and has out on CodePlex... nice-looking control too! Windows Phone 7 Controls Project Update Sergey Barskiy's second post is an update to the calendar... the biggest update being the ability to use the Toolkit context menu. How to Create Ad Rotator with Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow control for Silverlight Miroslav Nedyalkov uses the Telerik TransitionControl and CoverFlow controls to produce a great-looking ad rotator using any ContentControl or ListBox... very nice demo on the page.... Building Touch Interfaces for Windows Phones, Part 2 Jeff Prosise has part 2 of his tutorial series on WP7 Touch Interfaces up... and he's processing touch events directly in this one. Fixing the ListPicker / ScrollViewer Problem in Windows Phone 7 Matthias Shapiro has a couple of posts out that I've missed... this one is on an issue with ListPickers in a ScrollViewer where the listpicker gets hit rather than the scroll, and of course he has a work-around... but you'll need the source for the ListPicker to do it. Embedding a Sound File in Windows Phone 7 app (Silverlight) The next post by Matthias Shapiro is an explanation of embedding a sound file in a WP7 app with 2 conditions: 1) it downloads with your app, and 2) it plays no matter what. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight Silverlight 3 Silverlight 4 Windows Phone MIX10

Read the article

Windows Azure Recipe: Mobile Computing

- by Clint Edmonson

A while back, mashups were all the rage. The idea was to compose solutions that provided aggregation and integration across applications and services to make information more available, useful, and personal. Mashups ushered in the era of Web 2.0 in all it’s socially connected goodness. They taught us that to be successful, we needed to add web service APIs to our web applications. Web and client based mashups met with great success and have evolved even further with the introduction of the internet connected smartphone. Nothing is more available, useful, or personal than our smartphones. The current generation of cloud connected mobile computing mashups allow our mobilized workforces to receive, process, and react to information from disparate sources faster than ever before. Drivers Integration Reach Time to market Solution Here’s a sketch of a prototypical mobile computing solution using Windows Azure: Ingredients Web Role – with the phone running a dedicated client application, the web role is responsible for serving up backend web services that implement the solution’s core connected functionality. Database – used to store core operational and workflow data for the solution’s web services. Access Control – this service is used to authenticate and manage users identity, roles, and groups, possibly in conjunction with 3rd identity providers such as Windows LiveID, Google, Yahoo!, and Facebook. Worker Role – this role is used to handle the orchestration of long-running, complex, asynchronous operations. While much of the integration and interaction with other services can be handled directly by the mobile client application, it’s possible that the backend may need to integrate with 3rd party services as well. Offloading this work to a worker role better distributes computing resources and keeps the web roles focused on direct client interaction. Queues – these provide reliable, persistent messaging between applications and processes. They are an absolute necessity once asynchronous processing is involved. Queues facilitate the flow of distributed events and allow a solution to send push notifications back to mobile devices at appropriate times. Training & Resources These links point to online Windows Azure training labs and resources where you can learn more about the individual ingredients described above. (Note: The entire Windows Azure Training Kit can also be downloaded for offline use.) Windows Azure (16 labs) Windows Azure is an internet-scale cloud computing and services platform hosted in Microsoft data centers, which provides an operating system and a set of developer services which can be used individually or together. It gives developers the choice to build web applications; applications running on connected devices, PCs, or servers; or hybrid solutions offering the best of both worlds. New or enhanced applications can be built using existing skills with the Visual Studio development environment and the .NET Framework. With its standards-based and interoperable approach, the services platform supports multiple internet protocols, including HTTP, REST, SOAP, and plain XML SQL Azure (7 labs) Microsoft SQL Azure delivers on the Microsoft Data Platform vision of extending the SQL Server capabilities to the cloud as web-based services, enabling you to store structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. Windows Azure Services (9 labs) As applications collaborate across organizational boundaries, ensuring secure transactions across disparate security domains is crucial but difficult to implement. Windows Azure Services provides hosted authentication and access control using powerful, secure, standards-based infrastructure. Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone is designed to make it easier for you to build mobile applications that leverage cloud services running in Windows Azure. The toolkit includes Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone and Windows Azure, class libraries optimized for use on the phone, sample applications, and documentation Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS The Windows Azure Toolkit for iOS is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to access Windows Azure storage services from native iOS applications. The toolkit can be used for both iPhone and iPad applications, developed using Objective-C and XCode. Windows Azure Toolkit for Android The Windows Azure Toolkit for Android is a toolkit for developers to make it easy to work with Windows Azure from native Android applications. The toolkit can be used for native Android applications developed using Eclipse and the Android SDK. See my Windows Azure Resource Guide for more guidance on how to get started, including links web portals, training kits, samples, and blogs related to Windows Azure.

Read the article

Welcome 2011

- by WeigeltRo

Things that happened in 2010 MIX10 was absolutely fantastic. Read my report of MIX10 to see why. The dotnet Cologne 2010, the community conference organized by the .NET user group Köln and my own group Bonn-to-Code.Net became an even bigger success than I dared to dream of. There was a huge discrepancy between the efforts by Microsoft to support .NET user groups to organize public live streaming events of the PDC keynote (the dotnet Cologne team joined forces with netug Niederrhein to organize the PDCologne) and the actual content of the keynote. The reaction of the audience at our event was “meh” and even worse I seriously doubt we’ll ever get that number of people to such an event (which on top of that suffered from technical difficulties beyond our control). What definitely would have deserved the public live streaming event treatment was the Silverlight Firestarter (aka “Silverlight Damage Control”) event. And maybe we would have thought about organizing something if it weren’t for the “burned earth” left by the PDC keynote. Anyway, the stuff shown at the firestarter keynote was the topic of conversations among colleagues days later (“did you see that? oh yeah, that was seriously cool”). Things that I have learned/observed/noticed in 2010 In the long run, there’s a huge difference between “It works pretty well” and “it just works and I never have to think about it”. I had to get rid of my USB graphics adapter powering the third monitor (read about it in this blog post). Various small issues (desktop icons sometimes moving their positions after a reboot for no apparent reasons, at least one game I couldn’t get run at all, all three monitors sometimes simply refusing to wake up after standby) finally made me buy a PCIe 1x graphics adapter. If you’re interested: The combination of a NVIDIA GTX 460 and a GT 220 is running in “don’t make me think” mode for a couple of months now. PowerPoint 2010 is a seriously cool piece of software. Not only the new hardware-accelerated effects, but also features like built-in background removal and picture processing (which in many cases are simply “good enough” and save a lot of time) or the smart guides. Outlook 2010 crashes on me a lot. I haven’t been successful in reproducing these crashes, they just happen when every couple of days on different occasions (only thing in common: I clicked something in the main window – yeah, very helpful observation) Visual Studio 2010 reminds me of Visual Studio 2005 before SP1, which is actually not a good thing to say about a piece of software. I think it’s telling that Microsoft’s message regarding the beta of SP1 has been different from earlier service pack betas (promising an upgrade path for a beta to the RTM sounds to me like “please, please use it NOW!”). I have a love/hate relationship with ReSharper. I don’t want to develop without it, but at the same time I can’t fail to notice that ReSharper is taking a heavy toll in terms of performance and sometimes stability. Things I’m looking forward to in 2011 Obviously, the dotnet Cologne 2011. We already have been able to score some big name sponsors (Microsoft, Intel), but we’re still looking for more sponsors. And be assured that we’ll make sure that our partners get the most out of their contribution, regardless of how big or small. MIX11, period. Silverlight 5 is going to be great. The only thing I’m a bit nervous about is that I still haven’t read anything official on whether C# next version’s async/await will be in it. Leaving that out would be really stupid considering the end-of-2011 release of SL5 (moving the next release way into the future).

Read the article

BlueTooth not working on my HP Probook 4720s

- by mtrento

the blue tooth on my ubuntu 11.10 does not work. When i try to ad a device it scans indefinitely and never find anything. Wireless is working perfeclty and with windows 7 it is detected. As i read somewhere , the bluetooth is not listed in the usb devices. Is it supported under ubuntu? here are the output of the various debug command i tested : hciconfig -a hci0: Type: BR/EDR Bus: USB BD Address: E0:2A:82:7A:8B:04 ACL MTU: 310:10 SCO MTU: 64:8 UP RUNNING PSCAN ISCAN RX bytes:1895 acl:0 sco:0 events:70 errors:0 TX bytes:1986 acl:0 sco:0 commands:64 errors:0 Features: 0xff 0xff 0x8f 0xfe 0x9b 0xff 0x59 0x83 Packet type: DM1 DM3 DM5 DH1 DH3 DH5 HV1 HV2 HV3 Link policy: RSWITCH HOLD SNIFF PARK Link mode: SLAVE ACCEPT Name: 'PC543host-0' Class: 0x5a0100 Service Classes: Networking, Capturing, Object Transfer, Telephony Device Class: Computer, Uncategorized HCI Version: 2.1 (0x4) Revision: 0x149c LMP Version: 2.1 (0x4) Subversion: 0x149c Manufacturer: Cambridge Silicon Radio (10) hcitool scan hcitool scan Scanning ... lsusb Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub Bus 001 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 002 Device 002: ID 8087:0020 Intel Corp. Integrated Rate Matching Hub Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04f2:b1ac Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd Bus 002 Device 003: ID 413c:3010 Dell Computer Corp. Optical Wheel Mouse Bus 002 Device 004: ID 148f:1000 Ralink Technology, Corp. lsmod | grep -i bluetooth bluetooth 166112 23 bnep,rfcomm,btusb dmesg | grep -i bluetooth [ 18.543947] Bluetooth: Core ver 2.16 [ 18.544017] Bluetooth: HCI device and connection manager initialized [ 18.544020] Bluetooth: HCI socket layer initialized [ 18.544021] Bluetooth: L2CAP socket layer initialized [ 18.545469] Bluetooth: SCO socket layer initialized [ 18.548890] Bluetooth: Generic Bluetooth USB driver ver 0.6 [ 30.204776] Bluetooth: RFCOMM TTY layer initialized [ 30.204782] Bluetooth: RFCOMM socket layer initialized [ 30.204784] Bluetooth: RFCOMM ver 1.11 [ 30.247291] Bluetooth: BNEP (Ethernet Emulation) ver 1.3 [ 30.247295] Bluetooth: BNEP filters: protocol multicast lspci 00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor DRAM Controller (rev 02) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor PCI Express x16 Root Port (rev 02) 00:16.0 Communication controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset HECI Controller (rev 06) 00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset High Definition Audio (rev 05) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 1 (rev 05) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 2 (rev 05) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 4 (rev 05) 00:1c.5 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset PCI Express Root Port 6 (rev 05) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset USB2 Enhanced Host Controller (rev 05) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev a5) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 5 Series Chipset LPC Interface Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset 6 port SATA AHCI Controller (rev 05) 00:1f.6 Signal processing controller: Intel Corporation 5 Series/3400 Series Chipset Thermal Subsystem (rev 05) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan [Mobility Radeon HD 5400 Series] 01:00.1 Audio device: ATI Technologies Inc Manhattan HDMI Audio [Mobility Radeon HD 5000 Series] 44:00.0 Network controller: Ralink corp. RT3090 Wireless 802.11n 1T/1R PCIe 45:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168B PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet controller (rev 03) ff:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture Generic Non-core Registers (rev 02) ff:00.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QuickPath Architecture System Address Decoder (rev 02) ff:02.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Link 0 (rev 02) ff:02.1 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor QPI Physical 0 (rev 02) ff:02.2 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) ff:02.3 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Core Processor Reserved (rev 02) rfkill list 0: phy0: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 1: hci0: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 2: hp-wifi: Wireless LAN Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no 3: hp-bluetooth: Bluetooth Soft blocked: no Hard blocked: no

Read the article

Implementing features in an Entity System

- by Bane

After asking two questions on Entity Systems (1, 2), and reading some articles on them, I think that I understand them much better than before. But, I still have some uncertainties, and mainly they are about building a Particle Emitter, an Input system, and a Camera. I obviously still have some problems understanding Entity Systems, and they might apply to a whole other range of objects, but I chose these three because they are very different concepts and should cover a pretty big ground, and help me understand Entity Systems and how to handle problems like these myself, as they come along. I am building an engine in Javascript, and I've implemented most of the core features, which include: input handling, flexible animation system, particle emitter, math classes and functions, scene handling, a camera and a render, and a whole bunch of other things that engines usually support. Then, I read Byte56's answer that got me interested into making the engine into an Entity System one. It would still remain an HTML5 game engine with the basic Scene philosophy, but it should support dynamic creation of entities from components. These are some of the definitions from the previous questions, updated: An Entity is an identifier. It doesn't have any data, it's not an object, it's a simple id that represents an index in the Scene's list of all entities (which I actually plan to implement as a component matrix). A Component is a data holder, but with methods that can operate on that data. The best example is a Vector2D, or a "Position" component. It has data: x and y, but also some methods that make operating on the data a bit easier: add(), normalize(), and so on. A System is something that can operate on a set of entities that meet the certain requirements, usually they (the entities) need to have a specified (by the system itself) set of components to be operated upon. The system is the "logic" part, the "algorithm" part, all the functionality supplied by components is purely for easier data management. The problem that I have now is fitting my old engine concept into this new programming paradigm. Lets start with the simplest one, a Camera. The camera has a position property (Vector2D), a rotation property and some methods for centering it around a point. Each frame, it is fed to a renderer, along with a scene, and all the objects are translated according to it's position. Then the scene is rendered. How could I represent this kind of an object in an Entity System? Would the camera be an entity or simply a component? A combination (see my answer)? Another issues that is bothering me is implementing a Particle Emitter. For what exactly I mean by that, you can check out my video of it: http://youtu.be/BObargIMQsE. The problem I have with this is, again, what should be what. I'm pretty sure that particles themselves shouldn't be entities, as I want to support 10k+ of them, and creating that much entities would be a heavy blow on my performance, I believe. Or maybe not? Depends on the implementation, but anyone with experience: please, do answer. The last bit I wan't to talk about, which is also bugging me the most, is how input should be handled. In my current version of the engine, there is a class called Input. It's a handler that subscribes to browser's events, such as keypresses, and mouse position changes, and also it maintains an internal state. Then, the player class has a react() method, which accepts an input object as an argument. The advantage of this is that the input object could be serialized into JSON and then shared over the network, allowing for smooth multiplayer simulations. But how does this translate into an Entity System?

Read the article

Database Mirroring on SQL Server Express Edition

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

Like most SQL Server users I'm rather frustrated by Microsoft's insistence on making the really cool features only available in Enterprise Edition. And it really doesn't help that they changed the licensing for SQL 2012 to be core-based, so now it's like 4 times as expensive! It almost makes you want to go with Oracle. That, and a desire to have Larry Ellison do things to your orifices. And since they've introduced Availability Groups, and marked database mirroring as deprecated, you'd think they'd make make mirroring available in all editions. Alas…they don't…officially anyway. Thanks to my constant poking around in places I'm not "supposed" to, I've discovered the low-level code that implements database mirroring, and found that it's available in all editions! It turns out that the query processor in all SQL Server editions prepends a simple check before every edition-specific DDL statement: IF CAST(SERVERPROPERTY('Edition') as nvarchar(max)) NOT LIKE '%e%e%e% Edition%' print 'Lame' else print 'Cool' If that statement returns true, it fails. (the print statements are just placeholders) Go ahead and test it on Standard, Workgroup, and Express editions compared to an Enterprise or Developer edition instance (which support everything). Once again thanks to Argenis Fernandez (b | t) and his awesome sessions on using Sysinternals, I was able to watch the exact process SQL Server performs when setting up a mirror. Surprisingly, it's not actually implemented in SQL Server! Some of it is, but that's something of a smokescreen, the real meat of it is simple filesystem primitives. The NTFS filesystem supports links, both hard links and symbolic, so that you can create two entries for the same file in different directories and/or different names. You can create them using the MKLINK command in a command prompt: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Log D:\Log This creates a symbolic link from my data and log folders to my Skydrive folder. Any file saved in either location will instantly appear in the other. And since my Skydrive will be automatically synchronized with the cloud, any changes I make will be copied instantly (depending on my internet bandwidth of course). So what does this have to do with database mirroring? Well, it seems that the mirroring endpoint that you have to create between mirror and principal servers is really nothing more than a Skydrive link. Although it doesn't actually use Skydrive, it performs the same function. So in effect, the following statement: ALTER DATABASE Mir SET PARTNER='TCP://MyOtherServer.domain.com:5022' Is turned into: mklink /D "D:\Data" "\\MyOtherServer.domain.com\5022$" The 5022$ "port" is actually a hidden system directory on the principal and mirror servers. I haven't quite figured out how the log files are included in this, or why you have to SET PARTNER on both principal and mirror servers, except maybe that mklink has to do something special when linking across servers. I couldn't get the above statement to work correctly, but found that doing mklink to a local Skydrive folder gave me similar functionality. To wrap this up, all you have to do is the following: Install Skydrive on both SQL Servers (principal and mirror) and set the local Skydrive folder (D:\SkyDrive in these examples) On the principal server, run mklink /D on the data and log folders to point to SkyDrive: mklink /D D:\SkyDrive\Data D:\Data On the mirror server, run the complementary linking: mklink /D D:\Data D:\SkyDrive\Data Create your database and make sure the files map to the principal data and log folders (D:\Data and D:\Log) Viola! Your databases are kept in sync on multiple servers! One wrinkle you will encounter is that the mirror server will show the data and log files, but you won't be able to attach them to the mirror SQL instance while they are attached to the principal. I think this is a bug in the Skydrive, but as it turns out that's fine: you can't access a mirror while it's hosted on the principal either. So you don't quite get automatic failover, but you can attach the files to the mirror if the principal goes offline. It's also not exactly synchronous, but it's better than nothing, and easier than either replication or log shipping with a lot less latency. I will end this with the obvious "not supported by Microsoft" and "Don't do this in production without an updated resume" spiel that you should by now assume with every one of my blog posts, especially considering the date.

Read the article

Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and things I were more intuitive

- by pjohnson

I've started using Windows Workflow Foundation, and so far ran into a few things that aren't incredibly obvious. Microsoft did a good job of providing a ton of samples, which is handy because you need them to get anywhere with WF. The docs are thin, so I've been bouncing between samples and downloadable labs to figure out how to implement various activities in a workflow. Code separation or not? You can create a workflow and activity in Visual Studio with or without code separation, i.e. just a .cs "Component" style object with a Designer.cs file, or a .xoml XML markup file with code behind (beside?) it. Absence any obvious advantage to one or the other, I used code separation for workflows and any complex custom activities, and without code separation for custom activities that just inherit from the Activity class and thus don't have anything special in the designer. So far, so good. Service - In the WF world, this is simply a class that talks to the workflow about things outside the workflow, not to be confused with how the term "service" is used in every other context I've seen in the Windows and .NET world, i.e. an executable that waits for events or requests from a client and services them (Windows service, web service, WCF service, etc.). ListenActivity - Such a great concept, yet so unintuitive. It seems you need at least two branches (EventDrivenActivity instances), one for your positive condition and one for a timeout. The positive condition has a HandleExternalEventActivity, and the timeout has a DelayActivity followed by however you want to handle the delay, e.g. a ThrowActivity. The timeout is simple enough; wiring up the HandleExternalEventActivity is where things get fun. You need to create a service (see above), and an interface for that service (this seems more complex than should be necessary--why not have activities just wire to a service directly?). And you need to create a custom EventArgs class that inherits from ExternalDataEventArgs--you can't create an ExternalDataEventArgs event handler directly, even if you don't need to add any more information to the event args, despite ExternalDataEventArgs not being marked as an abstract class, nor a compiler error nor warning nor any other indication that you're doing something wrong, until you run it and find that it always times out and get to check every place mentioned here to see why. Your interface and service need an event that consumes your custom EventArgs class, and a method to fire that event. You need to call that method from somewhere. Then you get to hope that you did everything just right, or that you can step through code in the debugger before your Delay timeout expires. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. TransactionScopeActivity - I had the bright idea of putting one in as a placeholder, then filling in the database updates later. That caused this error: The workflow hosting environment does not have a persistence service as required by an operation on the workflow instance "[GUID]". ...which is about as helpful as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and even more fun to debug. Google led me to this Microsoft Forums hit, and from there I figured out it didn't like that the activity had no children. Again, a Validator on TransactionScopeActivity would have pointed this out to me at design time, rather than handing me a nearly useless error at runtime. Easily enough, I disabled the activity and that fixed it. I still see huge potential in my work where WF could make things easier and more flexible, but there are some seriously rough edges at the moment. Maybe I'm just spoiled by how much easier and more intuitive development elsewhere in the .NET Framework is.

Read the article

MIXing it Up a Bit

- by andrewbrust

Another March, another MIX. For the fifth year running now, Microsoft has chosen to put on a conference aimed less at software development, per se, and more at the products, experiences and designs that software development can generate. In all four prior MIX events, the focus of the show, its keynotes and breakout sessions has been on Web products. On day 1 of MIX 2010 that focus shifted to Windows Phone 7 Series (WP7). What little we had seen of WP7 had been shown to us in a keynote presentation, given by Microsoft’s Joe Belfiore, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain last month. And today, Mr. Belfiore reprised his showmanship for the MIX 2010 audience. Joe showed us the ins and outs of WP7 and, in a breakout session, even gave us a sneak peek of Office (specifically, Excel) on WP7. We didn’t get to see that one month ago in Barcelona, nor did get to see email messages opened for reading, which we saw today. But beyond a tour of the phone itself, impressive though that is, we got to see apps running on it. Those apps included Associated Press news, Seesmic (a major Twitter client) and Foursquare (a social media darling). All three ran, ran well, and looked markedly different and better from their corresponding versions on iPhone and Android. And the games we saw looked even better. To me though, the best demos involved the creation of WP7 apps, using Silverlight in Visual Studio and Expression Blend. These demos were so effective because they showed important apps being built in very few steps, and by Microsoft executives to boot. Scott Guthrie showed us how to build a Twitter API app in Visual Strudio. Jon Harris showed us how to build a photo management and viewer application in Expression Blend, using virtually no code. Demos of apps built from scratch to F5 without the benefit of a teacher, could be challenging. But they went off fine, without a hitch and without a ton of opaque, generated code. Everything written, be it C# or XAML, was easily understood, and the results were impressive. That means lots of developers can do this, and I think it means a lot will. What I’ve seen, thus far, of iPhone and Android development looks very tedious by comparison. Development for those platforms involve a collection of tools that integrate only to a point. Dev work for WP7 involves use of Visual Studio, Silverlight and the same debugging experience .NET developers already know. This was very exciting for me. All the demos harkened back to days of building apps for with Visual Basic…design the front-end, put in code-behind and then hit F5. And that makes sense, because the phone platform, and the PC of the early 90s are both, essentially, client OS machines. The Web was minimal and the “device” was everything. Same is true of this phone. It’s a client app contraption that fits in your pocket. And if the platforms are comparable, hopefully so too will be the draw of ease-of-development. WP7 has the potential to make mobile developers want to switch over, and to convince enterprise developers to get into the phone scene. Will this propel the new phone platform to new heights, and restore Microsoft’s competiveness in the mobile arena? I hope so. I think so. And if Microsoft uses developers to build themselves a victory, that would be beneficial and would show that Microsoft has learned from its failures, as well as its successes. Today I saw a few beautiful apps. Tomorrow I hope I see a slew of others; maybe not as polished, but plentiful, attractive and stable. That would be a victory for Microsoft, and for developers. And it would show everyone else that developers are the kingmakers. They need cheap, efficient dev tools and lots of respect. Microsoft has always been the company to provide that. Hopefully, with WP7, they will return to that persona and see how very timeless it is.

Read the article

SFML fail to load image as texture

- by zyeek

I have come to a problem with the code below ... Using SFML 2.0 #include <SFML/Graphics.hpp> #include <iostream> #include <list> int main() { float speed = 5.0f; // create the window sf::RenderWindow window(sf::VideoMode(sf::VideoMode::getDesktopMode().height - 300, 800), "Bricks"); // Set game window position on the screen window.setPosition( sf::Vector2i(sf::VideoMode::getDesktopMode().width/4 + sf::VideoMode::getDesktopMode().width/16 , 0) ); // Allow library to accept repeatitive key presses (i.e. holding key) window.setKeyRepeatEnabled(true); // Hide mouse cursor //window.setMouseCursorVisible(false); // Limit 30 frames per sec; the minimum for all games window.setFramerateLimit(30); sf::Texture texture; if (!texture.loadFromFile("tile.png", sf::IntRect(0, 0, 125, 32))) { std::cout<<"Could not load image\n"; return -1; } // Empty list of sprites std::list<sf::Sprite> spriteContainer; bool gameFocus = true; // run the program as long as the window is open while (window.isOpen()) { sf::Vector2i mousePos = sf::Mouse::getPosition(window); // check all the window's events that were triggered since the last iteration of the loop sf::Event event; while (window.pollEvent(event)) { float offsetX = 0.0f, offsetY = 0.0f; if(event.type == sf::Event::GainedFocus) gameFocus = !gameFocus; else if(event.type == sf::Event::LostFocus) gameFocus = !gameFocus; if(event.type == sf::Event::KeyPressed) { if (event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::Space) { if(gameFocus) { // Create sprite and add features before putting it into container sf::Sprite sprite(texture); sprite.scale(.9f,.7f); sf::Vector2u textSize = texture.getSize(); sprite.setPosition(sf::Vector2f(mousePos.x-textSize.x/2.0f, mousePos.y - textSize.y/2.0f)); spriteContainer.push_front(sprite); } } if(event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::P) std::cout << spriteContainer.size() << std::endl; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::W ) offsetY -= speed; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::A ) offsetX -= speed; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::S ) offsetY += speed; if( event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::D ) offsetX += speed; } // "close requested" event: we close the window if (event.type == sf::Event::Closed || event.key.code == sf::Keyboard::Escape) window.close(); // Move all sprites synchronously for (std::list<sf::Sprite>::iterator sprite = spriteContainer.begin(); sprite != spriteContainer.end(); ++sprite) sprite->move(offsetX, offsetY); //sprite.move(offsetX,offsetY); } // clear the window with black color window.clear(sf::Color::Black); // draw everything here... // window.draw(...); // Draw all sprites in the container for (std::list<sf::Sprite>::iterator sprite = spriteContainer.begin(); sprite != spriteContainer.end(); ++sprite) window.draw(*sprite); // end the current frame window.display(); } return 0; } A couple weeks ago it worked flawlessly to my expectation, but now that I come back to it and I am having problems importing the image as a texture "tile.png". I don't understand why this is evening happening and the only message I get via the terminal is "Cannot load image ..." then a bunch of random characters. My libraries are for sure working, but now I am not sure why the image is not loading. My image is in the same directory as with my .h and .cpp files. This is an irritating problem that keep coming up for some reason and is always a problem to fix it. I import my libraries via my own directory "locals" which contain many APIs, but I specifically get SFML, and done appropriately as I am able to open a window and many other stuff.

Read the article

Stay on Schedule in Chrome with DayHiker

- by Matthew Guay

Do you keep your schedule and tasks in Google Calendar? Here’s a handy extension for Google Chrome that can keep you on top of your appointments without having to open Google Calendar in another tab. Integrate Google Calendar with Chrome DayHiker is a handy extension for Google Chrome that can help you stay on schedule in your browser. Desktop applications typically can keep you notified easier with popups or alerts, but webapps require you to visit them to view your information. DayHiker takes the best of both, and can make your Google Calendar work more like a desktop application. To get started, open the DayHiker page from the Chrome Extensions Gallery (link below), and click Install. Confirm you wish to install it at the prompt. Now you’ll have a new extension button in your Chrome toolbar. Click the calendar icon to view your Google Calendar. You’ll need to be signed into your Google account for your calendar to display; click the key icon to select your account if it doesn’t show your appointments automatically. If you’re signed into multiple Google accounts, such as your public Gmail and a Google Apps account, you can select the calendar you wish and click Continue. Now you can quickly see your upcoming appointments. Simply hover over the icon to see your upcoming events. Or, just glance at it to see if there are any appointments coming up, as the indicator icon will change colors to show how long you have until your next appointment. Click the icon to see more information about your appointments. Or, click the Add link to add a new appointment. If you need to edit the appointment details, click Edit Details and the appointment will open in Google Calendar for you to edit. You can also view and manage your tasks in Google Calendar. Click the checkmark icon, and then add or check-off tasks directly from the extension pane. You can also set an alarm clock in DayHiker. Click the green circle icon, and then enter the time for the alarm to go off. Strangely it will only chime if the extension pane is left open, so if you click anywhere else in the browser or even switch to another program it will not chime. If you’d like to customize DayHiker’s settings, right-click on it and select Options, or select Options in the Chrome Extensions page. Here you can customize your badges and the DayHiker icon, or enter a custom domain for your Google Apps Pro calendar. Conclusion If you rely on Google Calendar to stay on top of your schedule, DayHiker can help you stay scheduled and know what’s coming up. We wish DayHiker supported multiple calendars so we could combine our Google Apps calendars with our personal Google Calendar, but even still, it is a very useful tool. Whether you’re a tightly scheduled person or just like to jot down to-dos and keep track of them, this extension will help you do this efficiently with familiar Google tools. Link Download DayHiker from the Chrome Extensions Gallery Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Configure Disk Defragmenter Schedule in Windows 7 or VistaSchedule Updates for Windows Media CenterOpen Multiple Sites Without Reopening the Menus in FirefoxFind a Website’s Actual Location with Chrome FlagsSubscribe to RSS Feeds in Chrome with a Single Click TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips HippoRemote Pro 2.2 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Dual Boot Ubuntu and Windows 7 What is HTML5? Default Programs Editor – One great tool for Setting Defaults Convert BMP, TIFF, PCX to Vector files with RasterVect Free Identify Fonts using WhatFontis.com Windows 7’s WordPad is Actually Good

Search Results

Search found 21396 results on 856 pages for 'oracle jdeveloper and adf events and announcements'.

Page 816/856 | < Previous Page | 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820 821 822 823 | Next Page >

- by pinaldave

- by Kevin Shyr

- by MarkPearl

- by Dave Campbell

- by Jeff

- by Dave Campbell

- by Tony Davis

- by javarg

- by Dan2k3k4

- by BuckWoody

- by DigitalGeekery

- by Pinal Dave

- by kazimanzurrashid

- by Dave Campbell

- by pinaldave

- by Dave Campbell

- by Clint Edmonson

- by WeigeltRo

- by mtrento

- by Bane

- by Most Valuable Yak (Rob Volk)

- by pjohnson

- by andrewbrust

- by zyeek

- by Matthew Guay

< Previous Page | 812 813 814 815 816 817 818 819 820 821 822 823 | Next Page >