Search Results

Search found 217 results on 9 pages for 'entertainment'.

Page 9/9 | < Previous Page | 5 6 7 8 9 

• Checking who is connected to your server, with PowerShell.

  - by Fatherjack

  There are many occasions when, as a DBA, you want to see who is connected to your SQL Server, along with how they are connecting and what sort of activities they are carrying out. I’m going to look at a couple of ways of getting this information and compare the effort required and the results achieved of each. SQL Server comes with a couple of stored procedures to help with this sort of task – sp_who and its undocumented counterpart sp_who2. There is also the pumped up version of these called sp_whoisactive, written by Adam Machanic which does way more than these procedures. I wholly recommend you try it out if you don’t already know how it works. When it comes to serious interrogation of your SQL Server activity then it is absolutely indispensable. Anyway, back to the point of this blog, we are going to look at getting the information from sp_who2 for a remote server. I wrote this Powershell script a week or so ago and was quietly happy with it for a while. I’m relatively new to Powershell so forgive both my rather low threshold for entertainment and the fact that something so simple is a moderate achievement for me. $Server = 'SERVERNAME' $SMOServer = New-Object Microsoft.SQLServer.Management.SMO.Server $Server # connection and query stuff         $ConnectionStr = "Server=$Server;Database=Master;Integrated Security=True" $Query = "EXEC sp_who2" $Connection = new-object system.Data.SQLClient.SQLConnection $Table = new-object "System.Data.DataTable" $Connection.connectionstring = $ConnectionStr try{ $Connection.open() $Command = $Connection.CreateCommand() $Command.commandtext = $Query $result = $Command.ExecuteReader() $Table.Load($result) } catch{ # Show error $error[0] | format-list -Force } $Title = "Data access processes (" + $Table.Rows.Count + ")" $Table | Out-GridView -Title $Title $Connection.close() So this is pretty straightforward, create an SMO object that represents our chosen server, define a connection to the database and a table object for the results when we get them, execute our query over the connection, load the results into our table object and then, if everything is error free display these results to the PowerShell grid viewer. The query simply gets the results of ‘EXEC sp_who2′ for us. Depending on how many connections there are will influence how long the query runs. The grid viewer lets me sort and search the results so it can be a pretty handy way to locate troublesome connections. Like I say, I was quite pleased with this, it seems a pretty simple script and was working well for me, I have added a few parameters to control the output and give me more specific details but then I see a script that uses the $SMOServer object itself to provide the process information and saves having to define the connection object and query specifications. $Server = 'SERVERNAME' $SMOServer = New-Object Microsoft.SQLServer.Management.SMO.Server $Server $Processes = $SMOServer.EnumProcesses() $Title = "SMO processes (" + $Processes.Rows.Count + ")" $Processes | Out-GridView -Title $Title Create the SMO object of our server and then call the EnumProcesses method to get all the process information from the server. Staggeringly simple! The results are a little different though. Some columns are the same and we can see the same basic information so my first thought was to which runs faster – so that I can get my results more quickly and also so that I place less stress on my server(s). PowerShell comes with a great way of testing this – the Measure-Command function. All you have to do is wrap your piece of code in Measure-Command {[your code here]} and it will spit out the time taken to execute the code. So, I placed both of the above methods of getting SQL Server process connections in two Measure-Command wrappers and pressed F5! The Powershell console goes blank for a while as the code is executed internally when Measure-Command is used but the grid viewer windows appear and the console shows this. You can take the output from Measure-Command and format it for easier reading but in a simple comparison like this we can simply cross refer the TotalMilliseconds values from the two result sets to see how the two methods performed. The query execution method (running EXEC sp_who2 ) is the first set of timings and the SMO EnumProcesses is the second. I have run these on a variety of servers and while the results vary from execution to execution I have never seen the SMO version slower than the other. The difference has varied and the time for both has ranged from sub-second as we see above to almost 5 seconds on other systems. This difference, I would suggest is partly due to the cost overhead of having to construct the data connection and so on where as the SMO EnumProcesses method has the connection to the server already in place and just needs to call back the process information. There is also the difference in the data sets to consider. Let’s take a look at what we get and where the two methods differ Query execution method (sp_who2) SMO EnumProcesses Description - Urn What looks like an XML or JSON representation of the server name and the process ID SPID Spid The process ID Status Status The status of the process Login Login The login name of the user executing the command HostName Host The name of the computer where the  process originated BlkBy BlockingSpid The SPID of a process that is blocking this one DBName Database The database that this process is connected to Command Command The type of command that is executing CPUTime Cpu The CPU activity related to this process DiskIO - The Disk IO activity related to this process LastBatch - The time the last batch was executed from this process. ProgramName Program The application that is facilitating the process connection to the SQL Server. SPID1 - In my experience this is always the same value as SPID. REQUESTID - In my experience this is always 0 - Name In my experience this is always the same value as SPID and so could be seen as analogous to SPID1 from sp_who2 - MemUsage An indication of the memory used by this process but I don’t know what it is measured in (bytes, Kb, Mb…) - IsSystem True or False depending on whether the process is internal to the SQL Server instance or has been created by an external connection requesting data. - ExecutionContextID In my experience this is always 0 so could be analogous to REQUESTID from sp_who2. Please note, these are my own very brief descriptions of these columns, detail can be found from MSDN for columns in the sp_who results here http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/ms174313.aspx. Where the columns are common then I would use that description, in other cases then the information returned is purely for interpretation by the reader. Rather annoyingly both result sets have useful information that the other doesn’t. sp_who2 returns Disk IO and LastBatch information which is really useful but the SMO processes method give you IsSystem and MemUsage which have their place in fault diagnosis methods too. So which is better? On reflection I think I prefer to use the sp_who2 method primarily but knowing that the SMO Enumprocesses method is there when I need it is really useful and I’m sure I’ll use it regularly. I’m OK with the fact that it is the slower method because Measure-Command has shown me how close it is to the other option and that it really isn’t a large enough margin to matter.

  Read the article

• Feedback on meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius

  Once upon a time in a country far far away... Okay, actually it's not that bad but it has been a while since the last meeting of the Linux User Group of Mauritius (LUGM). There have been plans in the past but it never really happened. Finally, Selven took the opportunity and organised a new meetup with low administrative overhead, proper scheduling on alternative dates and a small attendee's survey on the preferred option. All the pre-work was nicely executed. First, I wasn't sure whether it would be possible to attend. Luckily I got some additional information, like children should come, too, and I was sold to this community gathering. According to other long-term members of the LUGM it was the first time 'ever' that a gathering was organised outside of Quatre Bornes, and I have to admit it was great! LUGM - user group meeting on the 15.06.2013 in L'Escalier Quick overview of Linux & the LUGM With a little bit of delay the LUGM meeting officially started with a quick overview and introduction to Linux presented by Avinash. During the session he told the audience that there had been quite some activity over the island some years ago but unfortunately it had been quiet during recent times. Of course, we also spoke about the acknowledged world dominance of Linux - thanks to Android - and the interesting possibilities for countries like Mauritius. It is known that a couple of public institutions have there back-end infrastructure running on Red Hat Linux systems but the presence on the desktop is still very low. Users are simply hanging on to Windows XP and older versions of Microsoft Office. Following the introduction of the LUGM Ajay joined into the session and it quickly changed into a panel discussion with lots of interesting questions and answers, sharing of first-hand experience either on the job or in private use of Linux, and a couple of ideas about how the LUGM could promote Linux a bit more in Mauritius. It was great to get an insight into other attendee's opinion and activities. Especially taking into consideration that I'm already using Linux since around 1996/97. Frankly speaking, I bought a SuSE 4.x distribution back in those days because I couldn't achieve certain tasks on Windows NT 4.0 without spending a fortune. OpenELEC Mediacenter Next, Selven gave us decent introduction on OpenELEC: Open Embedded Linux Entertainment Center (OpenELEC) is a small Linux distribution built from scratch as a platform to turn your computer into an XBMC media center. OpenELEC is designed to make your system boot fast, and the install is so easy that anyone can turn a blank PC into a media machine in less than 15 minutes. I didn't know about it until this presentation. In the past, I was mainly attached to Video Disk Recorder (VDR) as it allows the use of satellite receiver cards very easily. Hm, somehow I'm still missing my precious HTPC that I had to leave back in Germany years ago. It was great piece of hardware and software; self-built PC in a standard HiFi-sized (43cm) black desktop casing with 2 full-featured Hauppauge DVB-s cards, an old-fashioned Voodoo graphics card, WiFi card, Pioneer slot-in DVD drive, and fully remote controlled via infra-red thanks to Debian, VDR and LIRC. With EP Guide, scheduled recordings and general multimedia centre it offered all the necessary comfort in the living room, besides a Nintendo game console; actually a GameCube at that time... But I have to admit that putting OpenELEC on a Raspberry Pi would be a cool DIY project in the near future. LUGM - our next generation of linux users (15.06.2013) Project Evil Genius (PEG) Don't be scared of the paragraph header. Ish gave us a cool explanation why he named it PEG - Project Evil Genius; it's because of the time of the day when he was scripting down his ideas to be able to build, package and provide software applications to various Linux distributions. The main influence came from openSuSE but the platform didn't cater for his needs and ideas, so he started to work out something on his own. During his passionate session he also talked about the amazing experience he had due to other Linux users from all over the world. During the next couple of days Ish promised to put his script to GitHub... Looking forward to that. Check out Ish's personal blog over at hacklog.in. Highly recommended to read. Why India? Simply because the registration fees per year for an Indian domain are approximately 20 times less than for a Mauritian domain (.mu). Exploring the beach of L'Escalier af the meeting 'After-party' at the beach of L'Escalier Puh, after such interesting sessions, ideas around Linux and good conversation during the breaks and over lunch it was time for a little break-out. Selven suggested that we all should head down to the beach of L'Escalier and get some impressions of nature down here in the south of the island. Talking about 'beach' ;-) - absolutely not comparable to the white-sanded ones here in Flic en Flac... There are no lagoons down at the south coast of Mauriitus, and watching the breaking waves is a different experience and joy after all. Unfortunately, I was a little bit worried about the thoughtless littering at such a remote location. You have to drive on natural paths through the sugar cane fields and I was really shocked by the amount of rubbish lying around almost everywhere. Sad, really sad and it concurs with Yasir's recent article on the same topic. Resumé & outlook It was a great event. I met with new people, had some good conversations, and even my children enjoyed themselves the whole day. The location was well-chosen, enough space for each and everyone, parking spaces and even a playground for the children. Also, a big "Thank You" to Selven and his helpers for the organisation and preparation of lunch. I'm kind of sure that this was an exceptional meeting of LUGM and I'm really looking forward to the next gathering of Linux geeks. Hopefully, soon. All images are courtesy of Avinash Meetoo. More pictures are available on Flickr.

  Read the article

• Letter to Ballmer: Making Better Consumer Devices

  - by andrewbrust

  Last year, I wrote Steve Ballmer an email, and he was kind enough to write me back.  The email contained a scan of a column I wrote praising Microsoft’s BI strategy.  His reply contained three simple words: “Super nice  thanks.” Well, now I’d like to write to Steve again, in an open letter format, and this time the love may be a bit tougher.  But I’m still super earnest. The past two days have been eventful ones for Microsoft: The company announced the departure of company veterans Robbie Bach and J Allard and the market announced Apple is now besting Microsoft in market capitalization. Plus, announcements were made that make it plain that Ballmer will, in effect, be running Microsoft’s Entertainment & Devices division himself. With that in mind, I’d like to offer my list of a dozen things I think Microsoft’s CEO should do to improve that division’s offerings and, hopefully, its bottom line. So here goes:   1. On Windows Phone 7, Stay the Course The press is teeming with headlines and reader comments proclaiming the death-before-arrival of Windows Phone 7.  That’s plain silly.  You’ve got the makings of a great and unique SmartPhone platform, and you’re the only company (even considering RIM) that can offer full fidelity Exchange integration, not to mention implementing Office on the device.  Let the existing team finish this puppy and ship it. And then have them pump out a few updates, over-the-air, quickly.  Show them that Google Android’s not the only product that can do good, rapid dot releases. And another thing: make sure your OEMs’ devices have flawless touch screens.  If they don’t, then you shouldn’t certify them for delivery to customers.  Period. Oh, and kill the Kin, quietly.  It was DOA, and you know it.   2. Move Media Center to the Xbox Platform Media Center is, at its core, a good product.  But delivering a media distribution and DVR platform on a sophisticated PC operating system like Windows 7 just creates too many moving parts.  Xbox already functions as the best Media Center extender device – it should actually be the hub as well. Media Center is mostly based on .NET code – and XNA is a .NET environment for Xbox – find a way to bridge that small gap and make Media Center a joy to work with instead of a frustration.  Beating Apple TV out of this sub-market is the lowest hanging fruit on the tree (goofy pun, but it’s true).   3. Integrate Media Center with Mediaroom, or Kill the Latter You have two media products with almost identical names.  One is for standalone DVRs and the other is for IPTV cable set tops with DVR capabilities.  Can we merge these please?  My previous request of putting Media Center on Xbox would seem to tie into this nicely, since you’ve announced plans to do that with Mediaroom already.   4. Fix the Red Ring of Death People love the Xbox, but they really don’t love sending their consoles back every 18-24 months, when they get a bunch of red lights flashing on power up.  You’ve handled this defect about as gracefully as possible, but it’s been around for a long time now and it doesn’t seem to be fixed yet.  You can do better.  In fact, you must do better, or you insult your customers.   5. Add Blu Ray to Xbox I know, streaming movies are the future; physical media is legacy technology.  So if that’s true, why did you back HD DVD so hard?  You know why: for now, the film studios won’t allow a large selection of new release, HD, surround sound content be distributed on any medium other than Blu Ray or cable pay per view/on-demand.  Don’t you want home theater buffs to see the Xbox as a fantastic device for their rigs?  Don’t you want to put PlayStation 3 out of its misery?  And if you follow my suggestions above (move Media Center to the Xbox and fix the Red Ring problem), you’d have it all sewn up.  Do I think Blu Ray functionality will move a lot of units?  No.  Do I think that it would move more units with desperately needed influential home theater consumers?  You bet.  And you might sell more ZunePass subscriptions in the process. But while you’re at it, make the fan quieter, please.   6. Make More of Windows Home Server Home Server is a fantastic product.  And for reasons unknown to me, it seems like you’re letting it languish.  Development of the add-in ecosystem seems underfunded.  WHS’ unparalleled ease of use and reliability for home PC backup (and emergency restores) goes unsung.  Product cycles are slow.  Support for your OEMs, who are doing great work, especially in the green space with Atom CPUs, seems lacking.  You’ve married a trophy girl and you keep her cloistered at home!  That’s cruel, unusual and, um, incredibly ill-advised.  Make use of this ace card, and while you’re at it, give it real integration with Media Center.  The integration thus far proof-of-concept quality.  You should go way past that – both products will benefit immeasurably.   7. Set Up a Partner Platform for Custom Installers There’s a whole sub-industry of companies that install, integrate and configure home theater, security and connected home products.  They have an industry group. They are influential in the high-end of the consumer electronics industry, and so are their customers.  They love Media Center and they love Windows Home Server.  But I have talked to several of them at the Consumer Electronics Show and they tell me you don’t love them.  They find it very difficult to do business with Microsoft, even though they want nothing more than to sell and evangelize your platform.  This is a travesty.  Please fix it.  Get Allison Watson and the Microsoft Partner Network on board and have her hire someone who knows how to run a channel program for consumer electronics companies.  Problem solved.  Markets expanded.   8. Make Your Own Hardware In other areas, I know you love your partners.  I help run one, so I appreciate that.  But when it came to Xbox and Zune you built them it yourself (albeit on a contract basis, which is fine).  Windows Phone 7 has a chance to work as an OEM play, but it would work better if you produced the devices.  At least consider building a reference device that sells alongside your OEMs’ offerings.  That’s what Google did with the Nexxus One.  And while that phone was not itself a big seller, it catalyzed two wonderful things : (1) a quality bar was set and (2) partners exceeded it.  Before the Nexxus One, the best Android handset out there was the Motorola Droid. The Nexxus One was better, and the HTC Droid Incredible and Evo 4G are now even better than Google’s phone, which is why Verizon and Sprint decided not to carry it.  Imagine if all Windows Phone 6.x devices were on par with the HTC HD2.  I tend to believe you’d have a lot bigger market share than you do now.   9. Continue with Your Retail Initiative From what I hear, it sounds like it’s going well.  And this goes right along with making your own hardware.  When you build it, they will come.  And then it makes the likes of Best Buy and Staples do better.   10. Make an Acquisition (or Two) TiVo and/or Moxi look ripe for the picking.  With their ability to build stuff people love and your ability to run a business, you might just have something.  But do a better job than you did when you bought Danger.  Buy the ideas, not just the customers, eh?   11. Make Beautiful Stuff You’ve heard this one before, I know.  But I have some head-shrinking advice on this one.  You know that Apple obsesses over its industrial design.  You know that appeals to consumers.  But it seems you think doing so is Apple’s game exclusively and so you shouldn’t even try.  Bull dinky.  Come to New York and visit the Museum of Modern Art’s Architecture and Design gallery.  You’ll see that lots of companies and product categories have had very high design value well before Apple existed.  You can do this, and the Zune HD was a great start.  Now run with that.  Find those negative voices in your head that are telling you that you can’t and shut them up.  For good.   12. Burst the Bubble Some of the products you’ve built seem like they were conceived in a bizarro world.  That would appear to be the result of groupthink.  You must do better.  And there’s lots of people willing to advise you.  This includes just about everyone in the Regional Director program, and probably a bunch of MVPs.  Heck, I bet the guys at Engadget could help out too.  Imagine if you let them see the Kin before it shipped.  Talk to high-end gear consumers.  Talk to Best Buy and CostCo customers too.   Signing Off I hope this was of value to you.  As I wrote this I kept telling myself how obvious, even trite, some of these pieces of advice were and then, because of that, doubting they’d really help.  But I decided that they must not be obvious to Microsoft.  Sometimes when you get wrapped up in stuff, it’s hard to clear your head.  I think my head’s pretty clear here though (I’m wrapped up in other stuff), so maybe my perspective can help.  If not, well, then, I guess they all can’t be super nice.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 12, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, June 12, 2010New ProjectsAdverTool (Advertisement tool): AdverTool is an online tool which integrates the most popular advertisement networks (such as Microsoft adCenter, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Mar...Authentication Configuration Tool for SharePoint: Helpful tools to automatically configure SharePoint 2007 and 2010 for forms based authentication and other authentication mechanisms.Bacicworx: A C# .Net 3.5 helper library containing functionality for compression, encryption, hashes, downloading, PayPal API, text analysis and generation, a...BlogEngine.Net iPhone Theme: A port of BETouch originally created by soundbbgBT UPnP Nat Library: This Library makes it extremly simple to add NAT upnp port forwarding to your .net applications. Developed in C# using .Net 4.0CheckBox & CheckBoxList Validators: These validators fill the much needed gap in the Asp.Net Server controlsDataFactories: The DataFactories project was created to provide a standardized interface to SSAS and MSSQL data. However, as it is implemented using the Abstract ...DVD Swarm: Converts unprotected DVD video & audio streams to H.264 with AAC/Vorbis.Frio IM: Frio IM - is cross protocol instant messenger.jiuyuan: jiuyuan management systemMGM: MyGroupManager is a simple graphical interface written in PowerShell that can be deployed to Active Directory users to simplify the managed of grou...MGR2010: This the MA thesis by Witold Stanik & Michał Sereja, PJWSTK.Nauplius.ActiveDirectory: Web-based Active Directory management.Partial rendering control using JQuery: This article show a web custom control that allows partial rendering using JQueryREG - The Random Entertainment Generator: A simple tool to make your mid up when you can't figure out what you want to do!Runes of Magic - Heilerrechner: Heilerrechner für die Heiler von Runes of Magic (www.runes.ofmagic.com)Semagsoft Calculator: Basic calculator for Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.SO League Tables: SOLT: Stack Overflow League Tables. A fun little app that lets you compare your stack overflow performance for each month, relative to other member...Stacky StackApps .Net Client Library: StackApps is a REST API for which provides access to the stackoverflow.com family of websites. Stacky is a .net client for that API. Stacky current...TwitterDotNet: TwitterDotNet is a TwitterLibrary for .NET Framework.ValiVIN: VIN (Vehicle Identification Number) Validator Validate Vin NumberWorkLogger: Simple work hour logger in WPFNew ReleasesAdverTool (Advertisement tool): Official releases: Please visit http://advertool.org to access the complete source code and downloads.Authentication Configuration Tool for SharePoint: Auth Config Tool (WSS 3.0, MOSS 2007 version): This tool automates the setup of dual authentication web applications in SharePoint that use Windows Authentication and Forms Based Authentication....BlogEngine.Net iPhone Theme: Version 0.1: Original version 0.1 from soundbbgBraintree Client Library: Braintree-2.3.0: Return AvsErrorResponseCode, AvsPostalCodeResponseCode, AvsStreetAddressResponseCode, CurrencyIsoCode, CvvResponseCode with Transaction Return Cr...BT UPnP Nat Library: Bt_Upnp Nat Library Alpha: Alpha Release of the libraryCNZK Library: Silverlight Behaviors - Deep Zoom Tag Filter: Behavior library for Silverlight 4 containing a Deep Zoom Tag Filter Behavior. Sample at the Expression Gallery http://gallery.expression.microsof...Demina: Demina Binaries version 0.2: Updated binaries. This release contains all of the new features, including simple animation transitions.DTLoggedExec: 1.0.0.2: -Fixed a bug that prevented loading packages from SSIS Package Store -Added support for {filename} placeholder in both Data Flow Profiling and CSV ...DVD Swarm: v0.8.10.611: Initial release, mostly stable.Exchange 2010 RBAC Editor (RBAC GUI) - updated on 6/11/2010: RBAC Editor 0.9.5.1: now supports creating and editing Role Assignment Policies; rest of the stuff is the same - still a lot of way to go :) Please use email address i...Extend SmallBasic: Teaching Extensions v.021: Compatible with SmallBasic v0.9 Lame version of TicTacToe Added - more coming later.Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.1.1 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.1.1 GA with the following features: * Logarithmic Axis * ShowIndicator() in Chart. * HideIndica...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.5.4 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.1.1 GA with the following features: Logarithmic Axis ShowIndicator() in Chart. HideIndicator() in Chart...Keep Focused - an enhanced tool for Time Management using Pomodoro Technique: Release 0.3.1 Alpha: Release 0.3.1 Alpha Technical patch. The previous release 0.3 Alpha had some errors and missing features. It was probably not build from the source...Mesopotamia Experiment: Mesopotamia 1.2.96: Bug Fixes - Fixed duplicate cells being added on creating new cells via mutations - Fixed bug where organisms without IO synapses where getting ios...NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.11.001: Changes since the last build:No changes. Unit test results:Passed 243/243 (100%) Passed 243/243 (100%) Passed 267/267 (100%) Passed 269/269 (100%)...Partial rendering control using JQuery: JQuery Web Control V 1.0: This is the first release of the code. It includes the source code and a web application to see how it worksphpxw: Phpxw2.0: 框架目录说明 ./_mod 模块存放目录 ./phpxw/ 框架核心目录 ./phpxw/common/ 框架核心函数 ./phpxw/system/ 框架核心基础类存放目录 ./phpxw/userlib/ 用户继承类存放目录 ./temp...Questionable Content Screensaver: Questionable Content Screensaver: Should be pretty self explanatory, install the appropriate version for your computer (x64 or x86). Features Include Cache comics for offline viewi...Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.4.1: Added option to change the 'minimum' maximum value visible on the graph at run-time. Also fixed a number of other bugs.Refix - .NET dependency management: Refix v0.1.0.82 ALPHA: This has now been run against a real life project to tease out some of the issues. While this remains alpha software, which you use at your own ris...Rhyduino - Arduino and Managed Code: Beta Release (v0.8.2): ContentsSample Project - Demonstrates basic functionality and is flooded with code comments, so it's capable of being used as a learning tool. It d...Runes of Magic - Heilerrechner: Rom_Heiler_0.1: Erste Version von "RoM Heilerrechner". .Net 4.0 Framework wird vorausgesetzt. Das erhälst du hier: http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?...Semagsoft Calculator: 2.0: new theme and bug fix'sSilverlight Reporting: Release 2: Updated to correct issue in report footer xaml, and to add support for a calculated report footer.Stacky StackApps .Net Client Library: Beta Preview: This is a beta preview to go along with the StackApps beta.TwitterDotNet: TwitterDotNet Library: first versionUnOfficial AW Wrapper dot Net: Aw Wrapper 1.0.0.0 (5.0): New Functions :DValiVIN: ValiVIN first release: First Iteration. METHODS: IsValid(string vin) - Checks if a string is a valid VIN (returns true or false) GetCheckSumValue(string vin) - Returns...VCC: Latest build, v2.1.30611.0: Automatic drop of latest buildViewModelSupport: ViewModelSupport 1.0: Version 1.0 More information: http://houseofbilz.net/archives/2010/05/08/adventures-in-mvvm-my-viewmodel-base/ http://houseofbilz.net/archives/201...VolgaTransTelecomClient: v.1.0.3.0: v.1.0.3.0WCF Client Generator: Version 0.9.3.19259: Changed: - Always generate full type names for parameters and return typesWCF Client Generator: Version 0.9.3.21153: Fixed: - Service contracts namespace generation Added: - Templates assembly code base read from configurationXen: Graphics API for XNA: Xen 2.0 ALPHA: This is a very early alpha for Xen 2.0. Please note: The documentation for this alpha has not been updated yet. Xen 2.0 is not backwards compatib...ZGuideTV.NET: ZGuideTV.NET 0.93: Vendredi 11 avril 2010 (ZGuideTV.NET bêta 9 build 0.93) - English below Ajout : - Classement du contenu dans la description (affichage légende si...Most Popular ProjectsCAML GeneratorSharePoint Geographic Data VisualizerDbIdiom for ADO.NET CorestudyDTSRun Job RunnerXBStudio.asp.net.automationSilverlight load on demand with MEFCloud Business ServicesSharePoint 2010 Taxonomy Import UtilitySTS Federation Metadata EditorMost Active ProjectsRhyduino - Arduino and Managed Codepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeCassandraemonBlogEngine.NETMediaCoder.NETMicrosoft Silverlight Media FrameworkAndrew's XNA Helpers

  Read the article

• Heaps of Trouble?

  - by Paul White NZ

  If you’re not already a regular reader of Brad Schulz’s blog, you’re missing out on some great material.  In his latest entry, he is tasked with optimizing a query run against tables that have no indexes at all.  The problem is, predictably, that performance is not very good.  The catch is that we are not allowed to create any indexes (or even new statistics) as part of our optimization efforts. In this post, I’m going to look at the problem from a slightly different angle, and present an alternative solution to the one Brad found.  Inevitably, there’s going to be some overlap between our entries, and while you don’t necessarily need to read Brad’s post before this one, I do strongly recommend that you read it at some stage; he covers some important points that I won’t cover again here. The Example We’ll use data from the AdventureWorks database, copied to temporary unindexed tables.  A script to create these structures is shown below: CREATE TABLE #Custs ( CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, TerritoryID INTEGER NULL, CustomerType NCHAR(1) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #Prods ( ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, Name NVARCHAR(50) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderDate DATETIME NOT NULL, SalesOrderNumber NVARCHAR(25) COLLATE SQL_Latin1_General_CP1_CI_AI NOT NULL, CustomerID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO CREATE TABLE #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID INTEGER NOT NULL, OrderQty SMALLINT NOT NULL, LineTotal NUMERIC(38,6) NOT NULL, ProductMainID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ProductSubSubID INTEGER NOT NULL, ); GO INSERT #Custs ( CustomerID, TerritoryID, CustomerType ) SELECT C.CustomerID, C.TerritoryID, C.CustomerType FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.Customer C WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #Prods ( ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID, Name ) SELECT P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.ProductID, P.Name FROM AdventureWorks.Production.Product P WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdHeader ( SalesOrderID, OrderDate, SalesOrderNumber, CustomerID ) SELECT H.SalesOrderID, H.OrderDate, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.CustomerID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderHeader H WITH (TABLOCK); GO INSERT #OrdDetail ( SalesOrderID, OrderQty, LineTotal, ProductMainID, ProductSubID, ProductSubSubID ) SELECT D.SalesOrderID, D.OrderQty, D.LineTotal, D.ProductID, D.ProductID, D.ProductID FROM AdventureWorks.Sales.SalesOrderDetail D WITH (TABLOCK); The query itself is a simple join of the four tables: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #OrdDetail D ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID ORDER BY P.ProductMainID ASC OPTION (RECOMPILE, MAXDOP 1); Remember that these tables have no indexes at all, and only the single-column sampled statistics SQL Server automatically creates (assuming default settings).  The estimated query plan produced for the test query looks like this (click to enlarge): The Problem The problem here is one of cardinality estimation – the number of rows SQL Server expects to find at each step of the plan.  The lack of indexes and useful statistical information means that SQL Server does not have the information it needs to make a good estimate.  Every join in the plan shown above estimates that it will produce just a single row as output.  Brad covers the factors that lead to the low estimates in his post. In reality, the join between the #Prods and #OrdDetail tables will produce 121,317 rows.  It should not surprise you that this has rather dire consequences for the remainder of the query plan.  In particular, it makes a nonsense of the optimizer’s decision to use Nested Loops to join to the two remaining tables.  Instead of scanning the #OrdHeader and #Custs tables once (as it expected), it has to perform 121,317 full scans of each.  The query takes somewhere in the region of twenty minutes to run to completion on my development machine. A Solution At this point, you may be thinking the same thing I was: if we really are stuck with no indexes, the best we can do is to use hash joins everywhere. We can force the exclusive use of hash joins in several ways, the two most common being join and query hints.  A join hint means writing the query using the INNER HASH JOIN syntax; using a query hint involves adding OPTION (HASH JOIN) at the bottom of the query.  The difference is that using join hints also forces the order of the join, whereas the query hint gives the optimizer freedom to reorder the joins at its discretion. Adding the OPTION (HASH JOIN) hint results in this estimated plan: That produces the correct output in around seven seconds, which is quite an improvement!  As a purely practical matter, and given the rigid rules of the environment we find ourselves in, we might leave things there.  (We can improve the hashing solution a bit – I’ll come back to that later on). Faster Nested Loops It might surprise you to hear that we can beat the performance of the hash join solution shown above using nested loops joins exclusively, and without breaking the rules we have been set. The key to this part is to realize that a condition like (A = B) can be expressed as (A <= B) AND (A >= B).  Armed with this tremendous new insight, we can rewrite the join predicates like so: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #OrdDetail D JOIN #OrdHeader H ON D.SalesOrderID >= H.SalesOrderID AND D.SalesOrderID <= H.SalesOrderID JOIN #Custs C ON H.CustomerID >= C.CustomerID AND H.CustomerID <= C.CustomerID JOIN #Prods P ON P.ProductMainID >= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductMainID <= D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (RECOMPILE, LOOP JOIN, MAXDOP 1, FORCE ORDER); I’ve also added LOOP JOIN and FORCE ORDER query hints to ensure that only nested loops joins are used, and that the tables are joined in the order they appear.  The new estimated execution plan is: This new query runs in under 2 seconds. Why Is It Faster? The main reason for the improvement is the appearance of the eager Index Spools, which are also known as index-on-the-fly spools.  If you read my Inside The Optimiser series you might be interested to know that the rule responsible is called JoinToIndexOnTheFly. An eager index spool consumes all rows from the table it sits above, and builds a index suitable for the join to seek on.  Taking the index spool above the #Custs table as an example, it reads all the CustomerID and TerritoryID values with a single scan of the table, and builds an index keyed on CustomerID.  The term ‘eager’ means that the spool consumes all of its input rows when it starts up.  The index is built in a work table in tempdb, has no associated statistics, and only exists until the query finishes executing. The result is that each unindexed table is only scanned once, and just for the columns necessary to build the temporary index.  From that point on, every execution of the inner side of the join is answered by a seek on the temporary index – not the base table. A second optimization is that the sort on ProductMainID (required by the ORDER BY clause) is performed early, on just the rows coming from the #OrdDetail table.  The optimizer has a good estimate for the number of rows it needs to sort at that stage – it is just the cardinality of the table itself.  The accuracy of the estimate there is important because it helps determine the memory grant given to the sort operation.  Nested loops join preserves the order of rows on its outer input, so sorting early is safe.  (Hash joins do not preserve order in this way, of course). The extra lazy spool on the #Prods branch is a further optimization that avoids executing the seek on the temporary index if the value being joined (the ‘outer reference’) hasn’t changed from the last row received on the outer input.  It takes advantage of the fact that rows are still sorted on ProductMainID, so if duplicates exist, they will arrive at the join operator one after the other. The optimizer is quite conservative about introducing index spools into a plan, because creating and dropping a temporary index is a relatively expensive operation.  It’s presence in a plan is often an indication that a useful index is missing. I want to stress that I rewrote the query in this way primarily as an educational exercise – I can’t imagine having to do something so horrible to a production system. Improving the Hash Join I promised I would return to the solution that uses hash joins.  You might be puzzled that SQL Server can create three new indexes (and perform all those nested loops iterations) faster than it can perform three hash joins.  The answer, again, is down to the poor information available to the optimizer.  Let’s look at the hash join plan again: Two of the hash joins have single-row estimates on their build inputs.  SQL Server fixes the amount of memory available for the hash table based on this cardinality estimate, so at run time the hash join very quickly runs out of memory. This results in the join spilling hash buckets to disk, and any rows from the probe input that hash to the spilled buckets also get written to disk.  The join process then continues, and may again run out of memory.  This is a recursive process, which may eventually result in SQL Server resorting to a bailout join algorithm, which is guaranteed to complete eventually, but may be very slow.  The data sizes in the example tables are not large enough to force a hash bailout, but it does result in multiple levels of hash recursion.  You can see this for yourself by tracing the Hash Warning event using the Profiler tool. The final sort in the plan also suffers from a similar problem: it receives very little memory and has to perform multiple sort passes, saving intermediate runs to disk (the Sort Warnings Profiler event can be used to confirm this).  Notice also that because hash joins don’t preserve sort order, the sort cannot be pushed down the plan toward the #OrdDetail table, as in the nested loops plan. Ok, so now we understand the problems, what can we do to fix it?  We can address the hash spilling by forcing a different order for the joins: SELECT P.ProductMainID AS PID, P.Name, D.OrderQty, H.SalesOrderNumber, H.OrderDate, C.TerritoryID FROM #Prods P JOIN #Custs C JOIN #OrdHeader H ON H.CustomerID = C.CustomerID JOIN #OrdDetail D ON D.SalesOrderID = H.SalesOrderID ON P.ProductMainID = D.ProductMainID AND P.ProductSubID = D.ProductSubID AND P.ProductSubSubID = D.ProductSubSubID ORDER BY D.ProductMainID OPTION (MAXDOP 1, HASH JOIN, FORCE ORDER); With this plan, each of the inputs to the hash joins has a good estimate, and no hash recursion occurs.  The final sort still suffers from the one-row estimate problem, and we get a single-pass sort warning as it writes rows to disk.  Even so, the query runs to completion in three or four seconds.  That’s around half the time of the previous hashing solution, but still not as fast as the nested loops trickery. Final Thoughts SQL Server’s optimizer makes cost-based decisions, so it is vital to provide it with accurate information.  We can’t really blame the performance problems highlighted here on anything other than the decision to use completely unindexed tables, and not to allow the creation of additional statistics. I should probably stress that the nested loops solution shown above is not one I would normally contemplate in the real world.  It’s there primarily for its educational and entertainment value.  I might perhaps use it to demonstrate to the sceptical that SQL Server itself is crying out for an index. Be sure to read Brad’s original post for more details.  My grateful thanks to him for granting permission to reuse some of his material. Paul White Email: [email protected] Twitter: @PaulWhiteNZ

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 29, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, August 29, 2012Popular ReleasesDiscuzViet: DzX2.5TV Stable Version: Discuz-X2.5-TV-StableMath.NET Numerics: Math.NET Numerics v2.2.1: Major linear algebra rework since v2.1, now available on Codeplex as well (previous versions were only available via NuGet). Since v2.2.0: Student-T density more robust for very large degrees of freedom Sparse Kronecker product much more efficient (now leverages sparsity) Direct access to raw matrix storage implementations for advanced extensibility Now also separate package for signed core library with a strong name (we dropped strong names in v2.2.0) Also available as NuGet packages...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks Databases – 2012, 2008R2 and 2008: About this release This release consolidates AdventureWorks databases for SQL Server 2012, 2008R2 and 2008 versions to one page. Each zip file contains an mdf database file and ldf log file. This should make it easier to find and download AdventureWorks databases since all OLTP versions are on one page. There are no database schema changes. For each release of the product, there is a light-weight and full version of the AdventureWorks sample database. The light-weight version is denoted by ...Smart Thread Pool: SmartThreadPool 2.2.3: Release Changes Added MaxStackSize option to threadsImageServer: v1.1: This is the first version releasedChristoc's DotNetNuke Module Development Template: DotNetNuke Project Templates V1.1 for VS2012: This release is specifically for Visual Studio 2012 Support, distributed through the Visual Studio Extensions gallery at http://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/ After you build in Release mode the installable packages (source/install) can be found in the INSTALL folder now, within your module's folder, not the packages folder anymore Check out the blog post for all of the details about this release. http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Resources/Blogs/EntryId/3471/New-Visual-Studio-2012-Projec...Home Access Plus+: v8.0: v8.0828.1800 RELEASE CHANGED TO BETA Any issues, please log them on http://www.edugeek.net/forums/home-access-plus/ This is full release, NO upgrade ZIP will be provided as most files require replacing. To upgrade from a previous version, delete everything but your AppData folder, extract all but the AppData folder and run your HAP+ install Documentation is supplied in the Web Zip The Quota Services require executing a script to register the service, this can be found in there install di...Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0.0.3391 (September 2012): New features: Extended ReflectionClass libxml error handling, constants TreatWarningsAsErrors MSBuild option OnlyPrecompiledCode configuration option; allows to use only compiled code Fixes: ArgsAware exception fix accessing .NET properties bug fix ASP.NET session handler fix for OutOfProc mode Phalanger Tools for Visual Studio: Visual Studio 2010 & 2012 New debugger engine, PHP-like debugging Lot of fixes of project files, formatting, smart indent, colorization etc. Improved ...MabiCommerce: MabiCommerce 1.0.1: What's NewSetup now creates shortcuts Fix spelling errors Minor enhancement to the Map window.ScintillaNET: ScintillaNET 2.5.2: This release has been built from the 2.5 branch. Version 2.5.2 is functionally identical to the 2.5.1 release but also includes the XML documentation comments file generated by Visual Studio. It is not 100% comprehensive but it will give you Visual Studio IntelliSense for a large part of the API. Just make sure the ScintillaNET.xml file is in the same folder as the ScintillaNET.dll reference you're using in your projects. (The XML file does not need to be distributed with your application)....WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.0: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.7.1: 2012.08.25 Ver5.7.1 (1)?????·?????LING?????????????? (2)SMTP???（????）????、?????\?????????????????????Visual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - Visual Studio 2012: Welcome to the Branching and Merging Guide Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording team All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issues / Bugs Spelling, grammar and content revisions are in progress. Hotfix will be published.MakersEngine: MakersEngine BETA 0.1: First BETA build of MakersEngine Adding TrinityCore compiling support (this should run well on any system) SqlMgr will try to connect to your Database but it wont import anything.Win8GameKit: Windows 8 RTM Release: - Updated for Windows 8 RTM - Fixed Accelerometer Device Check. Gravity Pulse will not be available if no Accelerometer device is present. It will instead ignore any Power ups.SQL Server Keep Alive Service: SQL Server Keep Alive Service 1.0: This is the first official release. Please see the documentation for help https://sqlserverkeepalive.codeplex.com/documentation.ARSoft.Tools.Net - C#/.Net DNS client/server, SPF and SenderID Library: 1.7.0: New Features:Strong name for binary release LLMNR client One-shot Multicast DNS client Some new IPAddress extensions Response validation as described in draft-vixie-dnsext-dns0x20-00 Added support for Owner EDNS option (draft-cheshire-edns0-owner-option) Added support for LLQ EDNS option (draft-sekar-dns-llq) Added support for Update Lease EDNS option (draft-sekar-dns-ul) Changes:Updated to latest IANA parameters Adapted RFC6563 - Moving A6 to Historic Status Use IPv6 addre...7zbackup - PowerShell Script to Backup Files with 7zip: 7zBackup v. 1.8.1 Stable: Do you like this piece of software ? It took some time and effort to develop. Please consider a helping me with a donation Or please visit my blog Code : New work switch maxrecursionlevel to limit recursion depth while searching files to backup Code : rotate argument switch can now be set in selection file too Code : prefix argument switch can now be set in selection file too Code : prefix argument switch is checked against invalid file name chars Code : vars script file has now...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.62: Fix for issue #18525 - escaped characters in CSS identifiers get double-escaped if the character immediately after the backslash is not normally allowed in an identifier. fixed symbol problem with nuget package. 4.62 should have nuget symbols available again. Also want to highlight again the breaking change introduced in 4.61 regarding the renaming of the DLL from AjaxMin.dll to AjaxMinLibrary.dll to fix strong-name collisions between the DLL and the EXE. Please be aware of this change and...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.65: As some of you may know we were planning to release version 2.70 much later (the end of September). But today we have to release this intermediate version (2.65). It fixes a critical issue caused by a third-party assembly when running nopCommerce on a server with .NET 4.5 installed. No major features have been introduced with this release as our development efforts were focused on further enhancements and fixing bugs. To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes p...New ProjectsAssociativy: Associativy aims to give a platform for building knowledge bases organized through associative connections. See: http://associativy.comAssociativy Administration: Administration module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Core: Core module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Frontend Engines: Frontend Engines module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Notions Demo Instance: Notions Demo Instance module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Tags Adapter: Tags Adapter module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Tests: Tests module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.Associativy Web Services: Web Services module for the Associativy (http://associativy.com) Orchard graph platform.DotNMap: A type library that can be used to work with NMap scan results in .net.EFCompoundkeyWhere: ??????????, ??????????? ????????? ??????? Where ?? ?????????? ????? ? Entity FrameworkEntertainment Tools: These are tools for entertainment professionals.EntLib.com????????: ◆ 100% ??(Open Source - ?????)； ◆ ??.Net Framework 4.0； ◆ ?? ASP.NET、C# ?? ? SQL Server ???； ◆ ????????????????????； ◆ ?????????，?????????????；ExpressProfiler: ExpressProfiler is a simple but good enough replacement for SQL Server Profiler Fancy Thumb: Fancy Thumb helps you decorating your thumb drives, giving them fancy icons and names longer than what FAT(32) allows.GEBestBetAdder: GEBestBetAdder is a SharePoint utility which helps with the exporting and importing of keywords and best bets.Ginger Graphics Library: 3D GraphicsImageServer: This is a high performance, high extensible web server writen in ASP.NET C# for image automative processing.jPaint: This is a copy of mspaint, written on pure js + html + css.ListOfTales: This is simple application for store infromation about book))Metro air hockey: metro air hockeyMetro graphcalc: metro graphcalcMetro speedtest: metro speedtestMetro ToDos: metro todosMVC4 Starter Kit: The MVC4 Starter Kit is designed as a bare bone application that covers many of the concerns to be addressed during the first stage of development.MyProject1: MyProject1npantarhei contribute: use the npantarhei flowruntime configured by mef and design your flows within visualstudio 2012 using an integrated designer...PBRX: Powerbuilder to Ruby toolkit.PE file reader: readpe, a tool which parses a PE formatted file and displays the requested information. People: PeoplePocket Calculator: This is POC project that implements a simple WinForms Pocket Calculator that uses a Microsoft .NET 4.0.1 State Machine Workflow in the back-end.ProjectZ: Project Z handles the difficulties with Mologs.PSMNTVIS: this is a blabla test for some blabla code practice.Santry DotNetNuke Lightbox Ad Module: Module allows for you to place a modal ad lightbox module on your DotNetNuke page. It integrates with the HTML provider, and cookie management for display.Sevens' Stories: An album for Class Seven of Pingtan No.1 High School.SIS-TRANSPORTES: Projeto em desenvolvimento...SmartSpace: SmartSpaceSO Chat Star Leaderboard: Scrapes stars from chat.stackoverflow.com and calculates statistics and a leaderboard.testdd08282012git01: dtestdd08282012hg01: uiotestddtfs08282012: kltesttom08282012git01: fdsfdstesttom08282012hg01: ftesttom08282012tfs01: bvcvTransportadoraToledo: Projeto Integrado de SistemasVisual Studio Watchers: Custom Visual Studio visualizers.XNC: XNC is an (in-progress) XNA Framework like library for the C programming language.???: ?

  Read the article

• Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%

  - by Michael Snow

  Jagran Prakashan Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New IT Projects up to 4x Faster, Enables Mobile Service, and Improves Business Agility Oracle Customer: JPL Location:  Uttar Pradesh, India Industry: Media and Entertainment Employees:  10,000 Annual Revenue:  $100 to $500 Million Jagran Prakashan Ltd. (JPL) is one of India's premier media and communications groups with interests spanning print, advertising, event management, and mobile services for weather, cricket scores, and educational activities. It is a major media enterprise, with 300 locations across 15 states. Its impressive stable of print publications includes Dainik Jagran, the world’s most widely read daily newspaper––with a readership of over 55 million––the country’s leading afternoon dailies, and a range of popular local, bilingual, and English language newspapers. JPL was using multiple systems to manage its business processes. Users were resistant to using multiple passwords for various applications, preferring to continue their less efficient, legacy work practices. In addition, there was no single repository for sharing documents across the organization, such as company announcements or project documents. The company relied on e-mail to disseminate up-to-date company information, often missing employees. It was also time-consuming and difficult for managers to track the status of ongoing assignments or projects because collaboration and document sharing was inefficient and ineffective.With diverse businesses and many geographic locations, JPL needed to implement a centralized and user-friendly enterprise portal to improve document sharing and collaboration and increase business agility. The company implemented Oracle WebCenter Portal to create a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve the user experience and increase operating efficiency. It improved staff productivity by 40%, accelerated new IT projects by up to 4x, boosted staff morale, and increased business agility.   Increases Staff Productivity by 40%, Launches New Products up to 2x Faster A word from JPL "With Oracle WebCenter Portal, we gained a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal that provided an exceptional user experience and enabled us to engage employees in a collaborative environment. It increased IT staff productivity by 40%, delivered new projects up to 4x faster, and enabled mobile service to improve our business agility.” Sarbani Bhatia, Vice President IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd Before implementing Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL stored project-critical information, such as page planning of daily newspaper editions and the launch of new editions or supplements on individual laptops or in the e-mail system. Collaboration between colleagues was limited to physical meetings, telephone discussions, and e-mail. It was difficult to trace and recover important project documents when a staff member resigned, which represented a significant risk to business continuity. Employees were also averse to multiple passwords and resisted using the systems, affecting staff productivity. With Oracle WebCenter Portal, JPL created a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal with business activity streams. The portal allowed users to navigate, discover, and access information, such as advertising rates, requisition approvals, ad-hoc queries, and employee surveys from a single entry point with a single password. Managers can also upload important documents, such as new pricing for advertisers or newspaper distributors, and share them through the information and instruction section in the portal. In addition, managers can now easily track and review timelines for projects online rather than gathering information from meetings and e-mails. The company gained the ability to centrally manage information, ensured business continuity, and improved staff productivity by 40%.“In the media industry, news has a very short shelf life, so speed is crucial. Information delayed is like information lost,” said Sarbani Bhatia, vice president IT, Jagran Prakashahn Ltd. “Thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s contextual collaboration tools, we can provide and share feedback for new project launches, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster through discussion forums or knowledge groups. Tasks that previously required four months, we now complete in one month.”In addition, the company can broadcast announcements, flash employee birthdays, and promote important events through the message section on the webpage, instead of using the e-mail system. The company can also conduct opinion polls to gauge employee response to organizational issues and improve management decision-making.“With over 10,000 employees across 300 locations, it is critical for management to hear the voice of employees and develop a cohesive organizational culture. Oracle WebCenter Portal enables employees to engage with business processes and systems in a collaborative environment, providing users with an exceptional experience,” Bhatia said. Enables Mobility Access and Increases Business Agility Newspaper advertisements generate the majority of JPL’s revenue. With most sales staff on the move, the company needed to ensure timely approval of print advertisement discounts for specific clients and meet tight publication deadlines.  By integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal seamlessly with its enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and other applications, such as the organizational mass mailing system, business intelligence, and management information system, JPL embedded its approval workflow processes into the enterprise portal and provided users with an integrated and intuitive interface. About 30% of JPL’s sales staff members now have tablets and receive advertising discount approval from managers while in the field and no longer need to return to the office, which has significantly improved efficiency and increased business agility.“Application mobility was critical for sales representatives in the field to meet stringent auditing requirements for online accountability, particularly for our newspaper advertising business. Staff member satisfaction has improved significantly now that the sales team can use tablets to access the portal––a capability we will extend to smart phones in the second stage of the implementation,” Bhatia said. Accelerates Application Development by up to 4x and Cuts Costs by up to 60% With Oracle WebCenter Portal, users can easily create, modify, and upload information to their personalized webpages without IT assistance. By seamlessly integrating Oracle WebCenter Portal with the payroll database, managers can decide which members of their team can access the page and with whom they will share information, a decision based on role or geographical location. A sales representative selling advertising space for a local language daily newspaper, for example, can upload an updated advertising rate relevant only to that particular publication. Users can also easily adapt to the new platform, thanks to its intuitive design and look, reducing the need for training and lowering resistance to using the system.Using Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box reusable components, such as portal pages and templates, provided JPL’s developers with a comprehensive and flexible user experience platform and increased the speed of application development. In less than five months, JPL developed more than 55 workflows. The IT team accelerated deployment of new applications by up to 4x, as they do not need to install them on individual machines now that they have a web-based environment.   “Previously, we would have spent a whole day deploying a new application for each department or location. With a browser-based environment, we have cut costs by up to 60% by reducing deployment time to zero, because our IT team can roll out a new application from a single point, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal,” Bhatia said. Challenges Provide a dynamic, secure, and intuitive self-service enterprise portal to improve staff productivity and ensure business continuity Enable seamless integration with multiple enterprise applications to improve workflow efficiency—including approval of print advertisement discounts—and increase business agility Improve engagement with employees and enable collaboration to enhance management decision-making Accelerate time-to-market for new services, such as new advertising programs Solutions Oracle Product and ServicesOracle WebCenter Portal 11g Increased staff productivity by 40% and enhanced user satisfaction by enabling employees to easily navigate, discover, and access information from a single, self-service enterprise portal without IT assistance Launched new products, such as career or education supplements, up to 2x faster by enabling peer collaboration and incorporating feedback generated through discussion forums, thanks to Oracle WebCenter Portal’s out-of-the-box collaboration tools Accelerated application development up to 4x by enabling developers to optimize reusable components for managing and deploying new applications in a browser-based environment rather than spending one day to install applications for each department, cutting costs by up to 60% Ensured business continuity by enabling managers to easily track and review project timelines online rather than storing important documents on individual laptops or relying on the e-mail system Increased business agility and operational efficiency by seamlessly integrating with the in-house, ERP system and embedding business processes into a single portal Boosted company revenue by enabling sales team members to submit print-advertising discount requests through mobile devices instead of waiting to return to office, ensuring timely approval from managers to meet tight publication deadlines Improved management decision-making by enabling employees to easily share and access feedback through opinion polls or forums, boosting staff morale Introduced the single sign-on capability and enhanced security by enabling managers to decide access level for staff members based on role or geographical location Reduced the need for staff training and minimized user resistance to systems by providing a dynamic and intuitive user experience Why Oracle JPL did not consider other products because the company was already using Oracle Database, Enterprise Edition with Real Application Clusters and had a positive experience with Oracle. JPL chose Oracle WebCenter Portal to ensure no compatibility issues for integration with its existing Oracle products and to take advantage of the experience and support of a reputable vendor to ensure business continuity. “We chose Oracle because we knew we could rely on its support and experience. In addition, Oracle WebCenter Portal’s speed, agility, and mobile access features were a perfect fit for our business requirements,” Bhatia said. Implementation Process JPL launched the enterprise portal to 500 users in the first phase of the project, and plans to extend this to 2,000 users when the portal is fully launched. Oracle partner PricewaterhouseCoopers used Oracle Application Development Framework for the intial set-up, user training and to develop and design sample workflows. JPL’s internal IT staff then took charge of the implementation, bringing it to completion on budget. Partner Oracle PartnerPricewaterhouseCoopers (India)

  Read the article

• eBooks on iPad vs. Kindle: More Debate than Smackdown

  - by andrewbrust

  When the iPad was presented at its San Francisco launch event on January 28th, Steve Jobs spent a significant amount of time explaining how well the device would serve as an eBook reader. He showed the iBooks reader application and iBookstore and laid down the gauntlet before Amazon and its beloved Kindle device. Almost immediately afterwards, criticism came rushing forth that the iPad could never beat the Kindle for book reading. The curious part of that criticism is that virtually no one offering it had actually used the iPad yet. A few weeks later, on April 3rd, the iPad was released for sale in the United States. I bought one on that day and in the few additional weeks that have elapsed, I’ve given quite a workout to most of its capabilities, including its eBook features. I’ve also spent some time with the Kindle, albeit a first-generation model, to see how it actually compares to the iPad. I had some expectations going in, but I came away with conclusions about each device that were more scenario-based than absolute. I present my findings to you here.   Vital Statistics Let’s start with an inventory of each device’s underlying technology. The iPad has a color, backlit LCD screen and an on-screen keyboard. It has a battery which, on a full charge, lasts anywhere from 6-10 hours. The Kindle offers a monochrome, reflective E Ink display, a physical keyboard and a battery that on my first gen loaner unit can go up to a week between charges (Amazon claims the battery on the Kindle 2 can last up to 2 weeks on a single charge). The Kindle connects to Amazon’s Kindle Store using a 3G modem (the technology and network vary depending on the model) that incurs no airtime service charges whatsoever. The iPad units that are on-sale today work over WiFi only. 3G-equipped models will be on sale shortly and will command a $130 premium over their WiFi-only counterparts. 3G service on the iPad, in the U.S. from AT&T, will be fee-based, with a 250MB plan at $14.99 per month and an unlimited plan at $29.99. No contract is required for 3G service. All these tech specs aside, I think a more useful observation is that the iPad is a multi-purpose Internet-connected entertainment device, while the Kindle is a dedicated reading device. The question is whether those differences in design and intended use create a clear-cut winner for reading electronic publications. Let’s take a look at each device, in isolation, now.   Kindle To me, what’s most innovative about the Kindle is its E Ink display. E Ink really looks like ink on a sheet of paper. It requires no backlight, it’s fully visible in direct sunlight and it causes almost none of the eyestrain that LCD-based computer display technology (like that used on the iPad) does. It’s really versatile in an all-around way. Forgive me if this sounds precious, but reading on it is really a joy. In fact, it’s a genuinely relaxing experience. Through the Kindle Store, Amazon allows users to download books (including audio books), magazines, newspapers and blog feeds. Books and magazines can be purchased either on a single-issue basis or as an annual subscription. Books, of course, are purchased singly. Oddly, blogs are not free, but instead carry a monthly subscription fee, typically $1.99. To me this is ludicrous, but I suppose the free 3G service is partially to blame. Books and magazine issues download quickly. Magazine and blog subscriptions cause new issues or posts to be pushed to your device on an automated basis. Available blogs include 9000-odd feeds that Amazon offers on the Kindle Store; unless I missed something, arbitrary RSS feeds are not supported (though there are third party workarounds to this limitation). The shopping experience is integrated well, has an huge selection, and offers certain graphical perks. For example, magazine and newspaper logos are displayed in menus, and book cover thumbnails appear as well. A simple search mechanism is provided and text entry through the physical keyboard is relatively painless. It’s very easy and straightforward to enter the store, find something you like and start reading it quickly. If you know what you’re looking for, it’s even faster. Given Kindle’s high portability, very reliable battery, instant-on capability and highly integrated content acquisition, it makes reading on whim, and in random spurts of downtime, very attractive. The Kindle’s home screen lists all of your publications, and easily lets you select one, then start reading it. Once opened, publications display in crisp, attractive text that is adjustable in size. “Turning” pages is achieved through buttons dedicated to the task. Notes can be recorded, bookmarks can be saved and pages can be saved as clippings. I am not an avid book reader, and yet I found the Kindle made it really fun, convenient and soothing to read. There’s something about the easy access to the material and the simplicity of the display that makes the Kindle seduce you into chilling out and reading page after page. On the other hand, the Kindle has an awkward navigation interface. While menus are displayed clearly on the screen, the method of selecting menu items is tricky: alongside the right-hand edge of the main display is a thin column that acts as a second display. It has a white background, and a scrollable silver cursor that is moved up or down through the use of the device’s scrollwheel. Picking a menu item on the main display involves scrolling the silver cursor to a position parallel to that menu item and pushing the scrollwheel in. This navigation technique creates a disconnect, literally. You don’t really click on a selection so much as you gesture toward it. I got used to this technique quickly, but I didn’t love it. It definitely created a kind of anxiety in me, making me feel the need to speed through menus and get to my destination document quickly. Once there, I could calm down and relax. Books are great on the Kindle. Magazines and newspapers much less so. I found the rendering of photographs, and even illustrations, to be unacceptably crude. For this reason, I expect that reading textbooks on the Kindle may leave students wanting. I found that the original flow and layout of any publication was sacrificed on the Kindle. In effect, browsing a magazine or newspaper was almost impossible. Reading the text of individual articles was enjoyable, but having to read this way made the whole experience much more “a la carte” than cohesive and thematic between articles. I imagine that for academic journals this is ideal, but for consumer publications it imposes a stripped-down, low-fidelity experience that evokes a sense of deprivation. In general, the Kindle is great for reading text. For just about anything else, especially activity that involves exploratory browsing, meandering and short-attention-span reading, it presents a real barrier to entry and adoption. Avid book readers will enjoy the Kindle (if they’re not already). It’s a great device for losing oneself in a book over long sittings. Multitaskers who are more interested in periodicals, be they online or off, will like it much less, as they will find compromise, and even sacrifice, to be palpable.   iPad The iPad is a very different device from the Kindle. While the Kindle is oriented to pages of text, the iPad orbits around applications and their interfaces. Be it the pinch and zoom experience in the browser, the rich media features that augment content on news and weather sites, or the ability to interact with social networking services like Twitter, the iPad is versatile. While it shares a slate-like form factor with the Kindle, it’s effectively an elegant personal computer. One of its many features is the iBook application and integration of the iBookstore. But it’s a multi-purpose device. That turns out to be good and bad, depending on what you’re reading. The iBookstore is great for browsing. It’s color, rich animation-laden user interface make it possible to shop for books, rather than merely search and acquire them. Unfortunately, its selection is rather sparse at the moment. If you’re looking for a New York Times bestseller, or other popular titles, you should be OK. If you want to read something more specialized, it’s much harder. Unlike the awkward navigation interface of the Kindle, the iPad offers a nearly flawless touch-screen interface that seduces the user into tinkering and kibitzing every bit as much as the Kindle lulls you into a deep, concentrated read. It’s a dynamic and interactive device, whereas the Kindle is static and passive. The iBook reader is slick and fun. Use the iPad in landscape mode and you can read the book in 2-up (left/right 2-page) display; use it in portrait mode and you can read one page at a time. Rather than clicking a hardware button to turn pages, you simply drag and wipe from right-to-left to flip the single or right-hand page. The page actually travels through an animated path as it would in a physical book. The intuitiveness of the interface is uncanny. The reader also accommodates saving of bookmarks, searching of the text, and the ability to highlight a word and look it up in a dictionary. Pages display brightly and clearly. They’re easy to read. But the backlight and the glare made me less comfortable than I was with the Kindle. The knowledge that completely different applications (including the Web and email and Twitter) were just a few taps away made me antsy and very tempted to task-switch. The knowledge that battery life is an issue created subtle discomfort. If the Kindle makes you feel like you’re in a library reading room, then the iPad makes you feel, at best, like you’re under fluorescent lights at a Barnes and Noble or Borders store. If you’re lucky, you’d be on a couch or at a reading table in the store, but you might also be standing up, in the aisles. Clearly, I didn’t find this conducive to focused and sustained reading. But that may have more to do with my own tendency to read periodicals far more than books, and my neurotic . And, truth be known, the book reading experience, when not explicitly compared to Kindle’s, was still pleasant. It is also important to point out that Kindle Store-sourced books can be read on the iPad through a Kindle reader application, from Amazon, specific to the device. This offered a less rich experience than the iBooks reader, but it was completely adequate. Despite the Kindle brand of the reader, however, it offered little in terms of simulating the reading experience on its namesake device. When it comes to periodicals, the iPad wins hands down. Magazines, even if merely scanned images of their print editions, read on the iPad in a way that felt similar to reading hard copy. The full color display, touch navigation and even the ability to render advertisements in their full glory makes the iPad a great way to read through any piece of work that is measured in pages, rather than chapters. There are many ways to get magazines and newspapers onto the iPad, including the Zinio reader, and publication-specific applications like the Wall Street Journal’s and Popular Science’s. The New York Times’ free Editors’ Choice application offers a Times Reader-like interface to a subset of the Gray Lady’s daily content. The completely Web-based but iPad-optimized Times Skimmer site (at www.nytimes.com/timesskimmer) works well too. Even conventional Web sites themselves can be read much like magazines, given the iPad’s ability to zoom in on the text and crop out advertisements on the margins. While the Kindle does have an experimental Web browser, it reminded me a lot of early mobile phone browsers, only in a larger size. For text-heavy sites with simple layout, it works fine. For just about anything else, it becomes more trouble than it’s worth. And given the way magazine articles make me think of things I want to look up online, I think that’s a real liability for the Kindle.   Summing Up What I came to realize is that the Kindle isn’t so much a computer or even an Internet device as it is a printer. While it doesn’t use physical paper, it still renders its content a page at a time, just like a laser printer does, and its output appears strikingly similar. You can read the rendered text, but you can’t interact with it in any way. That’s why the navigation requires a separate cursor display area. And because of the page-oriented rendering behavior, turning pages causes a flash on the display and requires a sometimes long pause before the next page is rendered. The good side of this is that once the page is generated, no battery power is required to display it. That makes for great battery life, optimal viewing under most lighting conditions (as long as there is some light) and low-eyestrain text-centric display of content. The Kindle is highly portable, has an excellent selection in its store and is refreshingly distraction-free. All of this is ideal for reading books. And iPad doesn’t offer any of it. What iPad does offer is versatility, variety, richness and luxury. It’s flush with accoutrements even if it’s low on focused, sustained text display. That makes it inferior to the Kindle for book reading. But that also makes it better than the Kindle for almost everything else. As such, and given that its book reading experience is still decent (even if not superior), I think the iPad will give Kindle a run for its money. True book lovers, and people on a budget, will want the Kindle. People with a robust amount of discretionary income may want both devices. Everyone else who is interested in a slate form factor e-reading device, especially if they also wish to have leisure-friendly Internet access, will likely choose the iPad exclusively. One thing is for sure: iPad has reduced Kindle’s market, and may have shifted its mass market potential to a mere niche play. If Amazon is smart, it will improve its iPad-based Kindle reader app significantly. It can then leverage the iPad channel as a significant market for the Kindle Store. After all, selling the eBooks themselves is what Amazon should care most about.

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 14, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, April 14, 2012Popular ReleasesJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 3: Change - DefaultContractResolver.IgnoreSerializableAttribute is now true by default Fix - Fixed MaxDepth on JsonReader recursively throwing an error Fix - Fixed SerializationBinder.BindToName not being called with full assembly namesVisual Studio Team Foundation Server Branching and Merging Guide: v2 - For Visual Studio 11: Welcome to the BETA of the Branching and Merging Guide preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has not been through an independent technical review Documentation has been reviewed by the quality and recording te...Media Companion: MC 3.435b Release: This release should be the last beta for 3.4xx. A handful of problems have been sorted out since last weeks release. If there are no major problems this time, it will upgraded to 3.500 Stable at the end of the week! General The .NET Framework has been modified to use the Client profile, as provided by normal Windows updates; no longer is there a requirement to download and install the Full profile! mc_com.exe has been worked on to mimic proper Media Companion output (a big thanks to vbat99...THE NVL Maker: The NVL Maker Ver 3.12: SIM??????，TRA??????，ZIP????。 ????????????????，??????~（??????????????????） ??????? simpatch1440x900 trapatch1440x900 ?????1400x900??1440x900，?????????????Data.xp3。 ???? ?????3.12?EXE????????????????， ??????????????，??Tool/krkrconf.exe，??Editor.exe， ???????????????「??????」。 ?????Editor.exe??????。 ???? ???? http://etale.us/gameupload/THE_NVL_Maker_ver3.12_sim.zip ???? http://www.mediafire.com/?je51683g22bz8vo ??Infinite Creation?? http://bbs.etale.us/forum.php ?????? ???? 3.12 ??? ???、????...SnmpMessenger: 0.1.1.1: Project Description SnmpMessenger, a messenger. Using the SNMP protocol to exchange messages. It's developed in C#. SnmpMessenger For .Net 4.0, Mono 2.8. Support SNMP V1, V2, V3. Features Send get, set and other requests and get the response. Send and receive traps. Handle requests and return the response. Note This library is compliant with the Common Language Specification(CLS). The latest version is 0.1.1.1. It is only a messenger, does not involve VACM. Any problems, Please mailto: wa...Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.1.1: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.1.1. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports CPython and IronPython • Python editor with advanced member and signature intellisense • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging • Profiling with multiple view...Supporting Guidance and Whitepapers: v1 - Team Foundation Service Whitepapers: Welcome to the BETA release of the Team Foundation Service Whitepapers preview As this is a BETA release and the quality bar for the final Release has not been achieved, we value your candid feedback and recommend that you do not use or deploy these BETA artifacts in a production environment. Quality-Bar Details Documentation has been reviewed by Visual Studio ALM Rangers Documentation has been through an independent technical review All critical bugs have been resolved Known Issue...Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer: .NET Gadgeteer Core 2.42.550 (BETA): Microsoft .NET Gadgeteer Core RELEASE NOTES Version 2.42.550 11 April 2012 BETA VERSION WARNING: This is a beta version! Please note: - API changes may be made before the next version (2.42.600) - The designer will not show modules/mainboards for NETMF 4.2 until you get upgraded libraries from the module/mainboard vendors - Install NETMF 4.2 (see link below) to use the new features of this release That warning aside, this version should continue to sup...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.24: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, and Client Profile. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet.Kendo UI ASP.NET Sample Applications: Sample Applications (2012-04-11): Sample application(s) demonstrating the use of Kendo UI in ASP.NET applications.SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.12 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Improved WMI date conversion to be aware of timezone differences and DST. Fixed new version check. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA on Windows XP. Cmdkey.exe is natively availab...Dual Browsing: Dual Browser: Please note the following: I setup the address bar temporarily to only accepts http:// .com addresses. Just type in the name of the website excluding: http://, www., and .com; (Ex: for www.youtube.com just type: youtube then click OK). The page splitter can be grabbed by holding down your left mouse button and move left or right. By right clicking on the page background, you can choose to refresh, go back a page and so on. Demo video: http://youtu.be/L7NTFVM3JUYCslaGenFork: Rules sample v.1.1.0: On projects for CSLA v.4.2.2, added 5 new Business Rules: - DependencyFrom - RequiredWhenCanWrite - RequiredWhenIsNotNew - RequiredWhenNew - StopIfNotFieldExists Added new projects for CSLA v.4.3.10 with 6 new Business Rules: - DependencyFrom - FieldExists - RequiredWhenCanWrite - RequiredWhenIsNotNew - RequiredWhenNew - StopIfNotFieldExists Following CSLA convention, SL stands for Silverligth 5 and SL4 stands for Silverlight 4. NOTE - Although the projects for CSLA v.4.1.0 still exist, thi...Multiwfn: Multiwfn 2.3.3: Multiwfn 2.3.3Liberty: v3.2.0.1 Release 9th April 2012: Change Log-Fixed -Reach Fixed a bug where the object editor did not work on non-English operating systemsCommonData - Common Functions for ASP.NET projects: CommonData 0.3L: Common Data has been updated to the latest NUnit (2.6.0) The demo project has been updated with an example on how to correctly compare a floating point value.ASP.Net MVC Dynamic JS/CSS Script Compression Framework: Initial Stable: Initial Stable Version Contains Source for Compression Library and example for usage in web application.Path Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.3: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-08 v3.1.3 -??Language="zh_TW"?JS???BUG（??）。 +?D...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.5: New Controls ChatBubble ChatBubbleTextBox OpacityToggleButton New Stuff TimeSpan languages added: RU, SK, CS Expose the physics math from TimeSpanPicker Image Stretch now on buttons Bug Fixes Layout fix so RoundToggleButton and RoundButton are exactly the same Fix for ColorPicker when set via code behind ToastPrompt bug fix with OnNavigatedTo Toast now adjusts its layout if the SIP is up Fixed some issues with Expression Blend supportNew ProjectsArkadia Operating System: This operating system is based on Cosmos Project and C# Programming Langage.Copy Microsoft Online User Attributes from one domain user to another: CopyMSOLAttributes copies MSOL-specific user attributes from source user to target user (legacyExchangeDN, mail, msExchMailboxGuid, proxyAddresses, targetAddress). This assists in migrating to Office 365 in a multi-domain, multi-forest environment.DevChat: DevChat is a small secure chat for dev groups or teams inside of an organisation that wish to control their information.Dynamic UI Framework: Dynamic UI FrameworkEjemploAndroid: Prueba Trabajar con eclipse y codeplexElfos vs Orcos: videojuego xna elfos vs orcosFacebook Suite Rules Orchard module: Part of the Facebook Suite Orchard module that provides various rules for the Rules engine to interact with Facebook.FakeMail: FakeMail makes testing of email enabled applications easier for DEVs and QAs. You no longer need to have multiple "real" email addresses to test and validate registration and notification features. Written in C# this ASP.Net MVC application uses RavenDB Embedded as a document store and hosts a custom SMTP server. Configure FakeMail and update your existing email-enabled application's SMTP server settings are you are ready to go. FakeMail mail server will accept email sent to ANY addre...FIM Object Visualizer: The FIM Object Visualizer is a tool to display and document configurable FIM objects such as Synchronization Rules, Workflows and Management Policy Rules. FXIB: ThisGoogle Places Autocomplete API for WP7: The Google Places Autocomplete API for WP7 is a project for WP7 developers to use when implementing an autocomplete box in their application. This project provides an easy non-blocking way to get fast results from the Google Places Autocomplete API. hook send/recv function with CreateRemoteThread: this sample is hooking send/recv function with CreateRemoteThread api.Infinity Music: Entertainment center, music player, youtube player, Internet radio, Facebook, Twitter ... All in one application ...! Centro de entretenimiento, reproductor de música, reproductor videos you tube, radio por internet, Facebook, Twitter... Todo en una misma aplicación...! Centre de divertissement, lecteur de musique, lecteur YouTube, la radio sur Internet, Facebook, Twitter ... Tout dans une seule application ...!Library Guard: Library Guard helps you maintain your media library(primarily audio) by correcting tags, maintaining location of your files, etc.MVVM Source Control Monitor: An exercise in MVVM with Wpf to create a useful and unobtrusive source control notification tool that lives in the system tray, and can also be viewed in a window. This is meant to provide a 'real world' application to provide examples of MVVM implementation without understanding any other frameworks that can blur the lines about what MVVM really is (it's a pattern, folks). The application will use as little 3rd party code as possible (Wpf Toolkit, some other goodies) that are all unrel...Orchard Calendar: Module provides calendar capabilities in Orchard. This is accomplished by a new calendar content part and content type along with new calendar layout for Projector module. PaidRanks: PaidRanks makes it easier for minecraft admins to mangae user rights and rewards donators. You'll no longer have to manually change nick names again. It's developed in Java 7.Perritos Project: Practice of the subject projectPython Pygame Sprites Example: This project example uses Python and Pygame to create a game environment. This code requires major refactoring and there is no warranty. Reversi.NET: Reversi is a board game involving abstract strategy and played by two players on a board with 8 rows and 8 columns and a set of distinct pieces for each side.SharePoint Social Tag Counters: The SharePoint Social Tag Counter project takes the social features from SharePoint 2010 to another level. It allows you to immediately show your SharePoint visitors how popular the content is with the help of Social "I like it" and "Tag" counters.Shop systems1: dddddddddddSource Block - Data Access Components: Source Block - Data Access Components Contains two components. 1. DBHandler 2. DBSchemaHandler DBHandler : Pure ADO.Net based Data access layer DBSchemaHandler : Pure ADO.Net based Database schema handlerSource Block - Domain Driven Development Framework: A framework which promotes domain pattern based development. This promotes patterns such as : Repository, Unit of work, Dependency injection and Inversion of control. Built on MS E.F 4.2 using code first approach. Includes features such as code generationSuperSocket Proxy Server: A .NET proxy server based on SuperSocketTestC-Q: This project is on working with KDB database and fetching data from open market data providers. This will do rigorous analysis. Don't try to find any code till Oct 2012.tofinish: tofinishUse National Geographic Photo of the Day as Wallpaper: I used to watch National Geographic Photo of the day everyday. http://photography.nationalgeographic.com/photography/photo-of-the-day So I thought it might be helpful for people like me if a software synchronise the wallpaper with national geographic photo of the day. It also archives photo of the day along with publication date and photo title.VAMP: Projet industriel MBDS 2012?????: ???????Model???????: ????：??Model??????? ???：??? ??：?????????python?SDK: ??python??????SDK。????

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 20, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 20, 2011Popular ReleasesFree SharePoint 2010 Sites Templates: SharePoint Server 2010 Sites Templates: here is the list of sites templates to be downloadednopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.30: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Back in stock notifications. • Product special price support. • Catalog mode (based on customer role) To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).Cetacean Monitoring: Cetacean Monitoring Project Release V 0.1: This is a zip with a working executable for evaluation purposes.WPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...Delta Engine: Delta Engine Beta Preview v0.9.1: v0.9.1 beta release with lots of refactoring, fixes, new samples and support for iOS, Android and WP7 (you need a Marketplace account however). If you want a binary release for the games (like v0.9.0), just say so in the Forum or here and we will quickly prepare one. It is just not much different from v0.9.0, so I left it out this time. See http://DeltaEngine.net/Wiki.Roadmap for details.ASP.net Awesome Samples (Web-Forms): 1.0 samples: Full Demo VS2008 Very Simple Demo VS2010 (demos for the ASP.net Awesome jQuery Ajax Controls)SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblySQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 5: 1. added basic schema support 2. added server instance name and process id 3. fixed problem with object search index out of range 4. improved version comparison with previous/next difference navigation 5. remeber main window spliter and object explorer spliter positionAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.7: Reworked API to be more consistent. See Supported formats table. Added some more helper methods - e.g. OpenEntryStream (RarArchive/RarReader does not support this) Fixed up testsSilverlight Toolkit: Windows Phone Toolkit - Nov 2011 (7.1 SDK): This release is coming soon! What's new ListPicker once again works in a ScrollViewer LongListSelector bug fixes around OutOfRange exceptions, wrong ordering of items, grouping issues, and scrolling events. ItemTuple is now refactored to be the public type LongListSelectorItem to provide users better access to the values in selection changed handlers. PerformanceProgressBar binding fix for IsIndeterminate (item 9767 and others) There is no longer a GestureListener dependency with the C...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 06.01.01: Major Highlights Fixed problem with the core skin object rendering CSS above the other framework inserted files, which caused problems when using core style skin objects Fixed issue with iFrames getting removed when content is saved Fixed issue with the HTML module removing styling and scripts from the content Fixed issue with inserting the link to jquery after the header of the page Security Fixesnone Updated Modules/Providers ModulesHTML version 6.1.0 ProvidersnoneDotNetNuke Performance Settings: 01.00.00: First release of DotNetNuke SQL update queries to set the DNN installation for optimimal performance. Please review and rate this release... (stars are welcome)SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8: SCCM Client Actions Tool v0.8 is currently the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Added "Wake On LAN" action. WOL.EXE is now included. Added new action "Get all active advertisements" to list all machine based advertisements on remote computers. Added new action "Get all active user advertisements" to list all user based advertisements for logged on users on remote computers. Added config.ini setting "enablePingTest" to control whether ping test is ru...C.B.R. : Comic Book Reader: CBR 0.3: New featuresAdd magnifier size and scale New file info view in the backstage Add dynamic properties on book and settings Sorting and grouping in the explorer with new design Rework on conversion : Images, PDF, Cbr/rar, Cbz/zip, Xps to the destination formats Images, Cbz and XPS ImprovmentsSuppress MainViewModel and ExplorerViewModel dependencies Add view notifications and Messages from MVVM Light for ViewModel=>View notifications Make thread better on open catalog, no more ihm freeze, less t...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.2: This release remove the like and the broadcast buttons as Google Reader stopped supporting them (no, we don't like this decission...) Additionally and to have at least a small plus: the login window now automaitcally logs you in if you stored username and passwort (no more extra click needed) Finally added WebKit .NET to the about window and removed Awesomium MD5-Hash: 5fccf25a2fb4fecc1dc77ebabc8d3897 SHA-Hash: d44ff788b123bd33596ad1a75f3b9fa74a862fdbRDRemote: Remote Desktop remote configurator V 1.0.0: Remote Desktop remote configurator V 1.0.0New ProjectsAutonomous Robot Combat: The project is about a Robotic game arena where 6-8 robots will engage in a team combat using infrared guns. The infrared guns will also have red light LEDs to simulate muzzle flash. Once the project finishes, it will be displayed in University of Plymouth.B2BPro: B2BPro best solution for businessBattlestar Galactica Fighters: Battlestar Galactica Fighters is a 3D vertical scrolling shoot 'em up. It's developed in C# and F# for the XNA Programming exam at Master in Computer Game Developement 2011/2012 in Verona, Italy.Content Compiler 3 - Compile your XNA media outside Visual Studio!: The Content Compiler helps you to compile your media files for use with XNA without using Visual Studio. After almost three years of Development, the third version of the CCompiler is nearly finished and we decided to put it up on Codeplex to "keep it alive".CreaMotion NHibernate Class Builder: NHibernate Class Builder C# , WPF Supports all type relations Supports MsSql, MySql -- Specially developed for NHibernate Learnersecs_tqdt_kd: Electric Custom System Thông quan di?n t? Kinh DoanhIMDb Helper: IMDb Helper is a C# library that provides access to information in the IMDb website. IMDb Helper uses web requests to access the IMDb website, and regular expressions to parse the responses (it doesn't use any external library, only pure .NET). Lion Solution: This is an open source Accounting project for small business usage. Developed by: Sleiman Jneidi Hussein Zawawi Management of Master Lists in SharePoint with Choice Filter Lookup column: Management of Master Lists in SharePoint with Choice Filter Lookup column you can view the detail of the project on http://sharepointarrow.blogspot.com/2011/11/management-of-master-lists-in.htmlMRDS FezMini Robot Brick: This is an attemp to write services for MRDS to control a FezMini Robot with a wireless connection attached to COM2 on the FezMini Board.MVC Route Unit Tester: Provides convenient, easy to use methods that let you unit test the route table in your ASP.NET MVC application. Unlike many libraries, this lets you test routes both ways -- both incoming and going. You can specify an incoming request and assert that it matches a given route (or that there are no matches). You can also specify route data and assert that a given URL will be generated by your application.MyWalk: MyWalk (codename: MyLife) is a novel health application that makes tracking walking a part of daily life. NGeo: NGeo makes it easier for users of geographic data to invoke GeoNames and Yahoo! GeoPlanet / PlaceFinder services. You'll no longer have to write your own GeoNames, GeoPlanet, or PlaceFinder clients. It's developed in ASP.NET 4.0, and uses WCF ServiceModel libraries to deserialize JSON data into Plain Old C# Objects.Octopus Tools: Octopus is an automated deployment server for .NET applications, powered by NuGet. OctopusTools is a set of useful command line and MSBuild tasks designed for automating Octopus.PDV Moveis: Loja MoveisReddit#: Reddit# is a Reddit library for C# or other .Net languages.Rubik: Rubik is, simply, a stab at creating a decent implementation of a Rubik's cube in WPF, and in the process aplying MVVM to the 3D game milieu.Sample Service-Oriented Architecture: Sample of service-oriented architecture using WCF.SFinger: SFinger adds two finger scrolling to synaptics touchpad on Windows. SigemFinal: Versión final del proyecto de diseñoSlResource: silverlight resource managementSonce - Simple ON-line Circuit Editor: Circuit Editor in Silverlight, unfinished student project written in C#Tricofil: Site da Tricofil com Administrador de ConteudoTwincat Ads .Net Client: This is the client implementation of the Ads/Ams protocol created by Beckhoff. (I'm not affiliated with Beckhoff) This implementation will be in C# and will not depend on other libraries. This means it can be used in silverlight and windows phone projects. This project is not finished yet!!WomanMagazine: This is a woman Online Magazine with lot of info and entertainment resources for women

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 16, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 16, 2011Popular ReleasesTibiaPingFixer: TibiaPingFixer v.1.0: TibiaPingFixer v.1.0TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v3.1 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: This version adds tool tips. Almost every picture box you mouse over will tell you what item is in that box. I have also cleaned up the GUI a little more to make things easier on my end. There are various bug fixes including ones associated with opening different characters in the same instance of the program. As always, please bring any bugs you find to my attention.CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET - 0.9.7 Beta: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 3.5 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.7Documentation 6738 6503 New 6535 Enhancements 6583 6737DropBox Linker: DropBox Linker 1.2: Public sub-folders are now monitored for changes as well (thanks to mcm69) Automatic public sync folder detection (thanks to mcm69) Non-Latin and special characters encoded correctly in URLs Pop-ups are now slot-based (use first free slot and will never be overlapped — test it while previewing timeout) Public sync folder setting is hidden when auto-detected Timeout interval is displayed in popup previews A lot of major and minor code refactoring performed .NET Framework 4.0 Client...Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.3: Update June 15th Removed "Draw Markers" checkbox from main window because of redundancy/confusing. (Select all or no items from the Settings tab for the same effect.) Fixed Marker preferences not being saved. It is now possible to render more than one map without having to restart the application. World file will not be locked while the world is being rendered. Note: The World Viewer might render an inaccurate map or even crash if Terraria decides to modify the World file during the pro...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.1.5 RC: Added Extended Dropdown allows a prompt item to be inserted as first element. RequiredAttribute, if present, trggers if no element is chosen Client side javascript function to set/get the values of DateTimeInput, TypedTextBox, TypedEditDisplay, and to bind/unbind a "change" handler The selected page in the pager is applied the attribute selected-page="selected" that can be used in the definition of CSS rules to style the selected page items controls now interpret a null value as an empr...Umbraco CMS: Umbraco CMS 5.0 CTP 1: Umbraco 5 Community Technology Preview Umbraco 5 will be the next version of everyone's favourite, friendly ASP.NET CMS that already powers over 100,000 websites worldwide. Try out our first CTP of version 5 today! If you're new to Umbraco and would like to get a quick low-down on our popular and easy-to-learn approach to content management, check out our intro video here. What's in the v5 CTP box? This is a preview version of version 5 and includes support for the following familiar Umbr...Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Browser (1.0.514.30): Initial releaseCoding4Fun Kinect Toolkit: Coding4Fun.Kinect Toolkit: Version 1.0Kinect Mouse Cursor: Kinect Mouse Cursor v1.0: The initial release of the Kinect Mouse Cursor project!patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 11 - June 14, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Updated "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "jQuery UI Widget" chapter. Updated "Widget QuickStart" appendix and code. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separat...Orchard Project: Orchard 1.2: Build: 1.2.41 Published: 6/14/2010 How to Install Orchard To install Orchard using Web PI, follow these instructions: http://www.orchardproject.net/docs/Installing-Orchard.ashx. Web PI will detect your hardware environment and install the application. Alternatively, to install the release manually, download the Orchard.Web.1.2.41.zip file. http://orchardproject.net/docs/Manually-installing-Orchard-zip-file.ashx The zip contents are pre-built and ready-to-run. Simply extract the contents o...PowerGUI Visual Studio Extension: PowerGUI VSX 1.3.4: Changes - Got rid of suppressed exceptions on assemblies loading at project startup - Fixed Issue #28535 "No Print Support" - Enabled IntelliSence commands wich are supported by ActiPro Syntax Editor control: ToggleBookmark, NextBookmark, PreviousBookmark, ShowMemberList - Added missing Import directives in PS Script project template - Fixed exception occurring on debug start - Fixed an issue: after creating a new PS project, a debugging session hung being run for the second timeSnippet Designer: Snippet Designer 1.4.0: Snippet Designer 1.4.0 for Visual Studio 2010 Change logSnippet Explorer ChangesReworked language filter UI to work better in the side bar. Added result count drop down which lets you choose how many results to see. Language filter and result count choices are persisted after Visual Studio is closed. Added file name to search criteria. Search is now case insensitive. Snippet Editor Changes Snippet Editor ChangesAdded menu option for the $end$ symbol which indicates where the c...Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 1.0.4.1: Stable Release 51 Degrees.mobi Foundation is the best way to detect and redirect mobile devices and their capabilities on ASP.NET and is being used on thousands of websites worldwide. We’re highly confident in our software and we recommend all users update to this version. Changes to Version 1.0.4.1Changed the BlackberryHandler and BlackberryVersion6Handler to have equal CONFIDENCE values to ensure they both get a chance at detecting BlackBerry version 4&5 and version 6 devices. Prior to thi...Rawr: Rawr 4.1.06: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta6: ??AcDown?????????????，?????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta6 ?????(imanhua.com)????? ???? ?? ??"????","?????","?????","????"?????? "????"?????"????????"?? ??????????? ?????????????? ?????????????/???? ?? ????Windows 7???????????? ????????? ?? ????????????? ???????/??????????? ???????????? ?? ?? ?????(imanh...Pulse: Pulse Beta 2: - Added new wallpapers provider http://wallbase.cc. Supports english search, multiple keywords* - Improved font rendering in Options window - Added "Set wallpaper as logon background" option* - Fixed crashes if there is no internet connection - Fixed: Rewalls downloads empty images sometimes - Added filters* Note 1: wallbase provider supports only english search. Rewalls provider supports only russian search but Pulse automatically translates your english keyword into russian using Google Tr...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.7: Version: 2.0.0.7 (Milestone 7): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...Windows Azure VM Assistant: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5: AzureVMAssist V1.0.0.5 (Debug) - Test Release VersionNew ProjectsASP.NET REST Services Framework: This framework provides capability to work with backend server-side .NET code via REST services from client-side javascript or other types of client code. REST-service component is a server-side framework that allows easy creation and working with REST services within any ASP.NET application. Ones a REST-service is defined it can be consumed via regular URL, or using client-side javascript call that resembles the standard C# style function call that is expected to be used within server-sid...ASP.NET, MVC, Learning: This project is for MojtabaSahraei's blog ResourceAuto Downloads Service: ADSrv (Auto Downloads Service) is a windows services (based on BITS) to add, remove and track downloads from several text files.BizTalk BDD Sample: This project is to go alongside the videos I have recently done about BDD and acceptance testing in BizTalk development.Bluvee Boxer: Video conveter for the WD TV Live Hub.Clomibep: PL: Zaawansowany system zarzadzania trescia Clomibep. EN: Advenced content managment system ClomibepCVPAT: CVPAT is a Process Automation ToolDigital Life Assistant Framework: DLAEF SharePoint 2010 web parts: SharePoint 2010 visual web parts ( SharePoint 2010 only ) Please change "Deploy.cmd" with the correct SharePoint site url, then run it from the SharePoint 2010 server.Entity Framework Query Visualizer: This is a visual studio debug visualizer for retrieving the SQL query generated by the Entity Framework at run time. In order to install this visualizer, you need to copy the downloaded DLL file ( EntityFrameworkLinqQueryVisualizer.dll ) to "C:\Users\<User Name>\Documents\Visual Studio 2010\Visualizers" folderHighYouth: HighYouthHMM-CMS: CMS pour le site HMMICompas: Sample startup siteKontrolDJNET: KontrolDJ.NET is: * A midi translator for KontrolDJ KDJ500 controller: This software is designed to work with Traktor Pro 2.0.1, Traktor Pro 1.0.1 or Traktor 3.4. (4 Decks support, Led feedback, Soft Takeover, ...) * An HID to Midi translator for all your gamepads, joysticks, ... This software is designed to work with Windows XP SP3, Vista and Seven. OS: Windows XP SP3, Vista and Seven (32 or 64bits). LevelZap: LevelZap is a Windows Explorer add-on that adds an item to the contextual menu on all folders allowing the user to "zap" the folder by moving all files/folders within it up one level, then deleting the folder itself. Works on Windows XP or later, both 32-bit and 64-bit versions.Locadora de Veiculos: Locadora de Veiculos - Projeto teste da pós graduaçãoMediator Framework: LINQ DataSource Integration FrameworkMetin2 Patcher: This project is a patcher. First Release Under ConstructionMVC Obsidian: Obsidian aims at creating a solid Quickstart solution for MVC3 projects.Orchard Delete Content Type: This Orchard modules provides a feature to delete dynamic content types.Osbourne Shell (Forth-like scripting language for .NET): I wrote it under the influence of LSD. There are a lot of architectural & codding mistakes and I do not want to even try to correct them. So, enjoy, lol.PowerShell EventLogWatcher Module: A PowerShell module that provides some additional functions to enhance PowerShell Eventing in relation to Windows Event Log events. Subscriptions can be made and actions taken when new events are written to a log. In a sense, this can be used as "poor mans" auditing system.Present it now!: PresentItNow allows to present the desktop to others on the LAN. Since SharedView does not work with IE9 and Netmeeting is not working on Vista/Windows 7 there is a need for a tool to be able to share the desktop with others on the LAN. This is a simple tool written in C#.Quadruple 128-bit Floating Point Library: 128-bit floating point library with 64 effective bits of precision (vs. 53 for the built-in Double type) and a 64 bit exponent (vs. 11 for Doubles). Greater range avoids under/overflows and makes log arithmetic unnecessary.Ribbon Browser for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: This tool helps developer to browse ribbons in Microsoft Dynamics CRM. It makes easier to identify ribbon controls properties.Rsp.Windows.Forms: This project includes several custom Button types, Windows Form types, a numeric textbox and a custom MessageBox class. * RoundedButton - A button with rounded corners. * ShadedButton - A button with customizable shine. * ColorizedButton - A button with customizable Tint color for specified background image. * NumericTextBox - Textbox allowing only numeric input. * MsgBoxUI - Alternative to Windows MessageBox with a nicer look. * ShadowedForm - Windows form with a shadow. ...SocialTFS: SocialTFS is an extension of the Team Foundation Server which provides members of a global software team with information collected from Enterprise 2.0 applications, such as professional social networks and corporate microblogging. SocialTFS makes it easier for members of large distributed software teams to get in touch with each other, using corporate microblogging services (first StatusNet, then Yammer) and professional SNS profiles (Ohloh and LinkedIn). SocialTFS is part of a researc...SQLite Code Generator: Contains a stand alone GUI application and a Visual Studio Custom Tool for automatically generating a .NET data access layer code for objects in a SQLite database.Taste : state machines made easy: Taste is a lightweight state machine implementation for .NET. Its main purpose is to simplify the implementation of complex ViewModels in WPF and Silverlight applications, where the code to execute, the commands to enable and their effects depend on the current state of the View.Tau: TauTelerik MVC Music Store: This project has Telerik OpenAccess ORM as its database access logic and is entirely based of http://mvcmusicstore.codeplex.com/ . TextFileToGrid: This is the library made specifically to render the text file data stored in tabular form into data grid view.TFS Scrumboard: TFS Scrumboard is an extension to TFS 2010 Web Access, providing easy planning and managing of workitem progress.Umbraco Advertising Management: This is the home page for the Umbraco Advertising Management Project. Umbraco CMS is an .NET opensource CMS. This project has just started, you can download the source code of the initial version. The objective of this project is to create a package that would provide a new toVAI: The goal of this project is to create a home entertainment solution focused on various forms of user interaction such as audio, video, and traditional.XBee DSS service for Robotics Studio: This is a Microsoft Robotics Studio DSS service used to communicate with XBee devices. It is able to send messages to remote end devices and receive data samples from them. It is built on top of the Grommet library.????: ??:???

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 09, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, June 09, 2011Popular ReleasesNetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9: Changes: - fix examples (include issue 16026) - add new examples - 32Bit/64Bit Walkthrough is now available in technical Documentation. Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...Reusable Library: V1.1.3: A collection of reusable abstractions for enterprise application developerDevpad: 0.4: Whats new for Devpad 0.4: New JavaScript support New Options dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.54.0: New on this release: 1) Mayor performance improvements. 2) AdjustToContents now take into account the text rotation. 3) Fixed issues 6782, 6784, 6788HTML-IDEx: HTML-IDEx .15 ALPHA: This release fixes line counting a little bit and adds the masshighlight() sub, which highlights pasted and inserted code.AutoLoL: AutoLoL v2.0.3: - Improved summoner spells are now displayed - Fixed some of the startup errors people got - Double clicking an item selects it - Some usability changes that make using AutoLoL just a little easier - Bug fixes AutoLoL v2 is not an update, but an entirely new version! Please install to a different directory than AutoLoL v1VidCoder: 0.9.2: Updated to HandBrake 4024svn. This fixes problems with mpeg2 sources: corrupted previews, incorrect progress indicators and encodes that incorrectly report as failed. Fixed a problem that prevented target sizes above 2048 MB.SharePoint Search XSL Samples: SharePoint 2010 Samples: I have updated some of the samples from the 2007 release. These all work in SharePoint 2010. I removed the Pivot on File Extension because SharePoint 2010 search has refiners that perform the same function.Fingertip detection via OpenNI: Fingertip Detection 1.0.0.0: This release will allow you to recognize fingertips. To do that shake you hand, after pressing button. Known Issues : 1. When your hand is near to some objects, recognition is not working very well 2. When you hand is far away from sensor, recognition is not working very wellAcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta5: ??AcDown?????????????，??????????????，????、????。?????Acfun????? ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??v3.0 Beta5 ?????????? ???? ?? ???????? ???"????????"?? ????????????? ????????/???? ?? ???"????"??? ?? ??????????? ?? ?? ??????????? ?? ?????????????????? ??????????????????? ???????????????? ????????????Discussions???????? ????AcDown??????????????VFPX: GoFish 4 Beta 1: Current beta is Build 144 (released 2011-06-07 ) See the GoFish4 info page for details and video link: http://vfpx.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=GoFishSharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.0.3: Fixed User Management screen when "RequiresQuestionAndAnswer" set to true Reply to Email Address can now be customized User Management page now only displays users that reside in the membership database Web parts have been changed to inherit from System.Web.UI.WebControls.WebParts.WebPart, so that they will display on anonymous application pages For installation and configuration steps see here.SizeOnDisk: 1.0.8.2: With installerTerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v2.5: Added new items associated with Terraria v1.0.3 to the character editor. Fixed multiple bugs with Piggy Bank EditorySterling NoSQL OODB for .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4 and 5, and Windows Phone 7: Sterling OODB v1.5: Welcome to the Sterling 1.5 RTM. This version is backwards compatible without modification to the 1.4 beta. For the 1.0, you will need to upgrade your database. Please see this discussion for details. You must modify your 1.0 code for persistence. The 1.5 version defaults to an in-memory driver. To save to isolated storage or use one of the new mechanisms, see the available drivers and pass an instance of the appropriate one to your database (different databases may use different drivers). ...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.6 BETA: 2.4.6 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.1 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in the proper...Grammar and Spell Checking Plugin for Windows Live Writer: Grammar Checker Plugin v1.0: First version of the grammar checker plugin for Windows Live Writer. You can show your appreciation for this plugin and support further development by donating via PayPal. Any amount will be appreciated. Thank you. Donatepatterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 10 - June 3, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Many code changes: please see the readme.mht for details. New "Application Notifications" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To install and run the reference implementation, you must perform the fol...Claims Based Identity & Access Control Guide: Release Candidate: Highlights of this release This is the release candidate drop of the new "Claims Identity Guide" edition. In this release you will find: All code samples, including all ACS v2: ACS as a Federation Provider - Showing authentication with LiveID, Google, etc. ACS as a FP with Multiple Business Partners. ACS and REST endpoints. Using a WP7 client with REST endpoints. All ACS specific chapters. Two new chapters on SharePoint (SSO and Federation) All revised v1 chapters We are now ...Terraria Map Generator: TerrariaMapTool 1.0.0.4 Beta: 1) Fixed the generated map.html file so that the file:/// is included in the base path. 2) Added the ability to use parallelization during generation. This will cause the program to use as many threads as there are physical cores. 3) Fixed some background overdraw.New ProjectsAlumni Association Website Centre: We named our project 'MCIS - Ma Chung Information System Association Centre'. This project is only simulation for us to try building a complex website that have functional features.ASP.NET without ClientID's: Render ASP.NET Controls without ClientID - reduce HTML output responseBLPImage: .BLP files are texture files used in games made by Blizzard Entertainment, also used in other games like Neverwinter Nights.Breaker Dev IRC Client: Breaker Dev IRC is just another IRC client that's Open source.Cloud Upload: CloudUpload shows how to use Shared Access Signatures to upload, download, delete and list blobs in a Azure Storage container. Using shared acces signatures permits to partition a storage account and NOT to use the storage shared key in the application. The project uses REST API.Clounter, count how many lines you have coded: A tiny, small, lightweight, ultra simple app to count how many lines of code you have programmed so far. Or hoe many lines of anything there's on a folder. You can filter by directory and by file extension.Color picker control for Silverlight: Color picker is a custom Silverlight control that makes it easy to add color picking functionality to the Silverlight projects.CommonSample: a code sampleCompactMapper: A simple object/relational mapper for the Compact Framework. Based on attributes and supporting SQLite Tracker https://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/303523dbkk101 hello codeplex: Trying out ClickOnce deployment/updatesDesktop Browser: Web based file explorer, runs locally on your browser, designed for media desktops.EFMagic: EFMagic is a library based on Entity Framework 4.1 that manage the schema of your database, automatically generates sql script to update your database and generate with Code First your schema.EWF_Install: Installs EWF (Enhanced Write Filter) in Windows XP without hassle. Changes system settings, accordingly to EWF characteristics. Extreme Download: Projeto desenvolvido no tempo livre para auxiliar a gerenciar download de vários arquivos.Flac2Wav: Converts FLAC file into WAV. Example of using libFLAC.dll in C#.Flac2Wma: Converts FLAC files into lossless WMA files. Uses libFLAC.dll, taglib-sharp.dll, MediaInfo32.dll. Converts directory tree, with only one click. Retains information from Tags.GeoMedia PostGIS data server: GeoMedia PostGIS data server is a GDO (Geographic Database Object) component that enables read and write to a Postgre/PostGIS database from Intergraph GeoMedia product family.Google Page Speed for .Net: This little piece of software sends a request to the Google page speed API, then parses the JSON response and presents them in a nice class. I use this class on this webpage to show the page speed score at the bottom right corner of my site: http://schaffhauser.meHubLog: Tool for application administrator: collects and joins logs from multiple instances of an application, and displays them. Example of usage in C#: the telnet protocol, dynamically compiled functions as elements of configuration.hydrodesktop2: HydroDesktop is a free and open source desktop application developed in C# .NET that serves as a client for CUAHSI HIS WaterOneFlow web services data and includes data discovery, download, visualization, editing, and integration with other analysis and modeling tools. ImageResizing.Net: Makes resizing and cropping images easy and fast - just change the URL. Mature and popular HttpModule for ASP.NET and IIS. Works great with jQuery, jCrop, Galleria, and and can be easily integrated into any CMS.License Header Manager for Visual Studio: Automatically insert license headers into your source code files in Visual Studio.Ma Chung Voice website: Ma Chung University website project. created by Yogi Rinaldi & Irfan using ASP.NET Ma Chung University, Indonesia.MCFC Futsal Machung Malang Indonesia: Websites We discuss the sport of futsal. Here we make in such a way that can be accessed easily by the user. please try.Mp3Cleaner: Mp3Cleaner is used to "clean up" and organize the music files external and internal (tags) information. Despite the name, supports most types of music files (flac, wma, wav .... ogg, …), it uses the tagLib library.MSBuild CI Tasks: Provides MSBuild utility tasks for continuous integration. NetMemory: let us remember ancestor better!nhibernate of mvcmusicstore: convert by http://mvcmusicstore.codeplex.com/ ·Shows data access via nhibernate & fluent tool: ·http://nmg.codeplex.com/ demo:http://www.pcme.info Parallelminds Asp.net Web Parts Demo Code: This is Asp.net web part demo code by www.parallelminds.biz to help new developers, community understand what are Asp.net web parts and how to use it for various purposes.This will continue exploring more asp.net related web parts functionality.PivotalTrackerAgent: Pivotal Tracker Agent provides ways to update your projects on PivotalTracker.com. Your developers will no longer have to update it through its web-based GUI if you incorporate it with your event handler of source control and/or bug tracking system.Programa voluntario: Sistema de gerenciamento de instituições e voluntáriosRaytracer for fun: Simple raytracingengine written for fun.SCOPE PHOTOGRAPHY MA CHUNG INDONESIA: This website contains a collection of people who hobby photography. We can shared photo and shared more info about photography. And we can give a comment in other member photo galery. Look and Join us. sqlscriptmover: Exports stored procedures, function, views, tables and triggers to individual files or imports same and attempts to create in designated database.UKM MA CHUNG FUTSAL: This Website Created to all of Ma Chung Student for develop his talent of futsal especially with user friendly interfaceVideoStreamer Iphone/Ipad: Video streamer that support single Range. it will handle video streaming especially MP4, for iphone and ipadVolleyExtracurriculer: We named our project 'UMC Information System Volley Extracurricular’. It doesn't mean this project is really used to be official website for volley extracurricular in our campus, but it only simulation for us to tried to built one complex website.Web Gozar Manager: HI

  Read the article

• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 02, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, January 02, 2011Popular ReleasesWii Backup Fusion: Wii Backup Fusion 1.0: - Norwegian translation - French translation - German translation - WBFS dump for analysis - Scalable full HQ cover - Support for log file - Load game images improved - Support for image splitting - Diff for images after transfer - Support for scrubbing modes - Search functionality for log - Recurse depth for Files/Load - Show progress while downloading game cover - Supports more databases for cover download - Game cover loading routines improvedAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.5.1: Fix: Fixed a bug where pressing Save As would not select the Mastery Directory by default Unexpected errors are now always reported to the user before closing AutoLoL down.* Extracted champion data to Data directory** Added disclaimer to notify users this application has nothing to do with Riot Games Inc. Updated Codeplex image * An error report will be shown to the user which can help the developers to find out what caused the error, this should improve support ** We are working on ...Random password generator written in F#.: VS 2010 solution + exe: Download a VS 2010 solution (unzip before opening) or a ready to go exe.TortoiseHg: TortoiseHg 1.1.8: TortoiseHg 1.1.8 is a minor bug fix release, with minor improvementsBlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.0: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.0 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...BloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.0.0: - Added tally for number of boss swings and swing avoids - Removed a large number of options that were carried over from Beta and are no longer relevant - Changed stat entry to use Rating format for Dodge, Parry, Haste and Mastery - Rearranged Settings interface - BloodSim will now check for updates on startup and notify the user if a new version is available - Added option to Show/Hide the Simulation Log to increase speed during large simulationsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.8 ALPHA: 2.2.8 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.03a at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 Rebuilt Feral Spir...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.6 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.6 with the following new feature: * TextDecorations property is implemented in Title for Chart. * TitleTextDecorations property is implemented in Axis. * MinPointHeight property is now applicable for Column and Bar Charts. Also this release includes few bug fixes: * ToolTipText property of DataSeries was not getting applied from Style. * Chart threw exception if IndicatorEnabled property was set to true and Too...StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets: Visual Studio Code Snippets - January 2011: StyleCop Compliant Visual Studio Code Snippets Visual Studio 2010 provides C# developers with 38 code snippets, enhancing developer productivty and increasing the consistency of the code. Within this project the original code snippets have been refactored to provide StyleCop compliant versions of the original code snippets while also adding many new code snippets. Within the January 2011 release you'll find 82 code snippets to make you more productive and the code you write more consistent!...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.2: Version: 2.0.0.2 (Milestone 2): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...DocX: DocX v1.0.0.11: Building Examples projectTo build the Examples project, download DocX.dll and add it as a reference to the project. OverviewThis version of DocX contains many bug fixes, it is a serious step towards a stable release. Added1) Unit testing project, 2) Examples project, 3) To many bug fixes to list here, see the source code change list history.Cosmos (C# Open Source Managed Operating System): 71406: This is the second release supporting the full line of Visual Studio 2010 editions. Changes since release 71246 include: Debug info is now stored in a single .cpdb file (which is a Firebird database) Keyboard input works now (using Console.ReadLine) Console colors work (using Console.ForegroundColor and .BackgroundColor)Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 1.6.0: Handling of layer masks has been greatly improved. Improved reliability. Many PSD files that previously loaded in as garbage will now load in correctly. Parallelized loading. PSD files containing layer masks will load in a bit quicker thanks to the removal of the sequential bottleneck. Hidden layers are no longer made visible on save. Many thanks to the users who helped expose the layer masks problem: Rob Horowitz, M_Lyons10. Please keep sending in those bug reports and PSD repro files!Facebook C# SDK: 4.1.1: From 4.1.1 Release: Authentication bug fix caused by facebook change (error with redirects in Safari) Authenticator fix, always returning true From 4.1.0 Release Lots of bug fixes Removed Dynamic Runtime Language dependencies from non-dynamic platforms. Samples included in release for ASP.NET, MVC, Silverlight, Windows Phone 7, WPF, WinForms, and one Visual Basic Sample Changed internal serialization to use Json.net BREAKING CHANGE: Canvas Session is no longer supported. Use Signed...Euro for Windows XP: ChangeRegionalSettings 1..0: *Simple MVVM Toolkit for Silverlight: Simple MVVM Toolkit v1: The download simply consists of a zip file, which contains the following folder structure: Toolkit - Helpers - Snippets - Templates Samples - SimpleMvvm-Main - SimpleMvvm-Other Misc - Images - Template Files NOTE: Before extracting the contents of the zip file, be sure to unblock the file (right-click, properties, unblock). In Toolkit\Helpers you'll find a Project folder with the source code and a Binaries folder with the toolkit assemblies. You can either reference SimpleMvvmToolkit.dll ...C# Sqlite For WP7: Preview 1: Preview 1, needs more testing and verification.SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: Certificate Creator: It is used for creating certificate file for test secure websocket.SuperSocket, an extensible socket application framework: SuperSocket 1.3 beta 3: Below changes have been done in this release: improved logging architecture simplified custom protocol implementation added max command length limitation fixed a bug that closing connection by client will cause server hight CPU usage in sync modeRocket Framework (.Net 4.0): Rocket Framework for Windows V 1.0.0: Architecture is reviewed and adjusted in a way so that I can introduce the Web version and WPF version of this framework next. - Rocket.Core is introduced - Controller button functions revisited and updated - DB is renewed to suite the implemented features - Create New button functionality is changed - Add Question Handling featuresNew ProjectsClearCaseTool: Projeto para administração do ClearCase da RationalCucumber Integration for TFS: Continuous Integration for Cucumber tests within TFS. This project gives you the ability to run cucumber profiles containing specified features and return a result that TFS can interpret as a passing or failing test. DDM Warband Tool: DDM Warband Tool helps you create warbands for the Dungeons and Dragons Miniatures Game. It allows you to filter and sort figures, create legal warbands, view the stat cards, and print out that cards. The code is written in C# 3.EnvTools: EnvTools is project that consists of several command-line and UI tools for environment variables management. Major two scenarios are user/system wide environment changes and on-the-fly processes's environment changes.ezNetBlog: ezNetBlog is a barebone blog system running on .Net Framework 2.0 (or above) developed in Visual Studio 2010. FileDB - A file database to store files: FileDB is a free, fast, lightweight C# (v3.5) DLL project to store, retrive and delete files using a single file container on disk. Ideal for store small, medium or big files without databases and keep organized on a single disk file.Flat File Parser: A flat file parser capable of loading in complete or partial flat text files. It will convert each row in the file into a standard CLR object. Non-String types such as int, float, datetime are supported, even complex types can be parsed.gr1d.org SDK: gr1d.org SDKmd2html - Markdown to HTML conversion tool: This program will convert markdown text files to HTML files, using the Markdown.Sharp implementation. Written in C# 3.0 for .NET 3.5.My Simple Diary: A project I am working on so that we can log our day to day activitys. The idea is that my kids can tell me what they learnt today, and di that was interesting, and then we can log it. I am really hoping that people can maybe look at what I have done, and maybe help me.Neil and Friends Leaning Project: This is a place for us to place source code while we learn. nothin to see here except the very basic stuff... calculating circles, maby a db connection or two. Nothing spectacular.NES EMU 7: NES EMU 7 is a Nintendo Entertainment System emulator for Windows Phone 7.OneDay: OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay OneDay Open Studio: The revival of http://oside.codeplex.com, Open Studio is a free .NET IDE written in C# for the .NET framework 4.0. Positive: ERP in XAFSheHuiShiJianold: ?????????Traveler: A file system explorer: The Traveler application is a like Windows Explorer with some unique features including working mapping playlists to file selections and duplicate file finding.Windows Phone Controls: Long term purpose of this project is to create commonly used control for Windows Phone 7 Silverlight applications. First control I am working on is Calendar control.?????????? ??????????: Cool Stuff

  Read the article

• Parsing error when using getSearchResultsForQuery of MGTwitterEngine

  - by deep8981

  Hi everyone I am doing a search using getSearchResultsForQuery method and i get searchresult too but when i try to print the parsed data i dont get text of all the tweets i am doing this [twitterEngine getSearchResultsForQuery:@"#joke" sinceID:twitterUserId startingAtPage:1 count:5]; and below is the result in console and it shows that i do get data properly but after parsing it does not parse properly.I have not done any change in parsing can anyone say why i am getting this? {"results":[{"profile_image_url":"http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/580724970/pro_normal.jpg","created_at":"Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:06:52 +0000","from_user":"Kousani","metadata":{"result_type":"recent"},"to_user_id":null,"text":"#ipl3 has hit hard all other General Entertainment Channels. If this continues every year, may be I will learn play cricket! :D #joke","id":12592706500,"from_user_id":13391246,"geo":null,"iso_language_code":"en","source":"<a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com" rel="nofollow">TweetDeck</a>"},{"profile_image_url":"http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/815058343/iphone_1_059_normal.JPG","created_at":"Wed, 21 Apr 2010 19:00:59 +0000","from_user":"anamou","metadata":{"result_type":"recent"},"to_user_id":null,"text":"comedyclipsblog: Recent research has shown that six out of seven dwarves aren't happy #joke","id":12592456010,"from_user_id":7635571,"geo":null,"iso_language_code":"en","source":"<a href="http://echofon.com/" rel="nofollow">Echofon</a>"},{"profile_image_url":"http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/636112472/Jane_New_normal.jpg","created_at":"Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:55:49 +0000","from_user":"janeprinsep","metadata":{"result_type":"recent"},"to_user_id":20741695,"text":"@grahamtcousins DON'T DOOOOOOO ITTTTT!!!!! #joke","id":12592234721,"from_user_id":74969091,"to_user":"grahamtcousins","geo":null,"iso_language_code":"en","source":"<a href="http://www.tweetdeck.com" rel="nofollow">TweetDeck</a>"},{"profile_image_url":"http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/779334170/sander_normal.jpg","created_at":"Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:53:55 +0000","from_user":"SndR22","metadata":{"result_type":"recent"},"to_user_id":null,"text":"RT @MocroDeluxe: Willen jullie lachen?- kom met een #joke dan!","id":12592155790,"from_user_id":85863646,"geo":null,"iso_language_code":"nl","source":"<a href="http://ubertwitter.com" rel="nofollow">UberTwitter</a>"},{"profile_image_url":"http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/513318990/1257454275_package_toys_normal.png","created_at":"Wed, 21 Apr 2010 18:53:33 +0000","from_user":"Fun_Jokes_Video","metadata":{"result_type":"recent"},"to_user_id":null,"text":"#joke What's Clintons new nick name?: Q. What's Clintons new nick name?\nA. Drippy Dick http://bit.ly/bZWSlJ","id":12592141067,"from_user_id":76430125,"geo":null,"iso_language_code":"en","source":"<a href="http://twitterfeed.com" rel="nofollow">twitterfeed</a>"}],"max_id":12592706500,"since_id":47543983,"refresh_url":"?since_id=12592706500&q=%23joke","next_page":"?page=2&max_id=12592706500&rpp=5&q=%23joke","results_per_page":5,"page":1,"completed_in":0.039389,"warning":"since_id removed for pagination.","query":"%23joke"} 2010-04-22 00:45:53.319 Twitter-Facebook[2090:20b] Got search results for FF1D610A-499C-41B6-B0BA-5D94989F9CF0: ( { "created_at" = 1271876812; "from_user" = Kousani; "profile_image_url" = "http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/580724970/pro_normal.jpg"; "result_type" = recent; "source_api_request_type" = 35; }, { "created_at" = 1271876459; "from_user" = anamou; "profile_image_url" = "http://a3.twimg.com/profile_images/815058343/iphone_1_059_normal.JPG"; "result_type" = recent; "source_api_request_type" = 35; }, { "created_at" = 1271876149; "from_user" = janeprinsep; "profile_image_url" = "http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/636112472/Jane_New_normal.jpg"; "result_type" = recent; "source_api_request_type" = 35; }, { "created_at" = 1271876035; "from_user" = SndR22; "profile_image_url" = "http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/779334170/sander_normal.jpg"; "result_type" = recent; "source_api_request_type" = 35; }, { "created_at" = 1271876013; "from_user" = "Fun_Jokes_Video"; "profile_image_url" = "http://a1.twimg.com/profile_images/513318990/1257454275_package_toys_normal.png"; "result_type" = recent; "source_api_request_type" = 35; }, { "completed_in" = 0; "from_user_id" = 76430125; geo = ; id = 12592141067; "iso_language_code" = en; "max_id" = 12592706500; "next_page" = "?page=2&max_id=12592706500&rpp=5&q=%23joke"; page = 1; query = "%23joke"; "refresh_url" = "?since_id=12592706500&q=%23joke"; "results_per_page" = 5; "since_id" = 47543983; source = "twitterfeed"; "source_api_request_type" = 35; text = "#joke What's Clintons new nick name?: Q. What's Clintons new nick name?\nA. Drippy Dick http://bit.ly/bZWSlJ"; "to_user" = grahamtcousins; "to_user_id" = ; warning = "since_id removed for pagination."; } ) 2010-04-22 00:45:53.320 Twitter-Facebook[2090:20b] TEXT is #joke What's Clintons new nick name?: Q. What's Clintons new nick name? A. Drippy Dick http://bit.ly/bZWSlJ

  Read the article

• How can I make a table move in JavaScript?

  - by Michal Skrzypek

  My problem is that I was creating a simple website the other day and I needed the content to move according to the button pressed. I managed to do so in CSS3, but the solution did not work for IE whatsoever. Therefore I would like to ask if there is a simple solution for that in js? I don't know js at all but I heard what I need is much easier in js than in css. Details: http://i42.tinypic.com/6yl4ia.png I need the table in the picture to move according to the buttons (which are labels to be exact). The visible area is a div. Here's the relevant code (without animation as I was not satisfied with it): body { background-color: #fff; color: #fff; padding:0px; } #bodywrapperfixed { width: 1248px; margin: 0px auto; position: relative; overflow: hidden; height: 730px; } #bodywrapper { display:block; background-color: #fff; width: 1248px; color: #59595B; padding-top:50px; font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif; position: absolute; top:0px; left:0px; z-index:1; font-size: 60px; height:730px; } #bodywrapper img { width:400px; padding:15px 0px 20px 0px; } #texten { font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif; font-size: 35px; padding:5px; } #textpl { font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif; font-size: 25px; padding:5px; } table#linki { width: 110px; border: none; margin-top:15px; } label { display: block; height: 54px; width: 54px; color:#fff; font-family: 'Roboto', sans-serif; font-weight: 300; font-size: 35px; background-color: #117D10; text-align: center; padding:23px; } label:hover { background-color: #004F00; cursor: pointer; } input#pl { position: absolute; top: -9999px; left: -9999px; } input#en { position: absolute; top: -9999px; left: -9999px; } and the relevant HTML: <div id="bodywrapperfixed"> <div id="bodywrapperfloat"> <table id="ramka"> <tr> <td>random text</td> <td><div id="bodywrapper"> <center> <div id="texten"><div style="font-weight:300; display:inline-block;">Introducing the all-in-one entertainment system.</div><div style="font-weight:500; display:inline-block;">&nbsp;For everyone.</div></div> <div id="textpl"><div style="font-weight:300; display:inline-block;">Przedstawiamy zintegrowany system rozrywki.</div><div style="font-weight:500; display:inline-block;">&nbsp;&nbsp;Dla wszystkich.</div></div> <img src="imgs/xboxone.png"> <div id="texten"><div style="font-weight:300; display:inline-block;">Choose your version of the story:</div></div> <div id="textpl"><div style="font-weight:300; display:inline-block;">Wybierz swoja wersja opowiesci:</div></div> <table id="linki"> <tr> <td><label for="en">en</label><input id="en" type="checkbox"></td> <td><label for="pl">pl</label><input id="pl" type="checkbox"></td> </tr></table> </center> </div></td> <td>random text</td> </tr> </table> </div> </div> Here's what it looks like: http://ingame.lh.pl/thinkone/ Please help me.

  Read the article

• Issue 15: Oracle Exadata Marketing Campaigns

  - by rituchhibber

       PARTNER FOCUS Oracle ExadataMarketing Campaign Steve McNickleVP Europe, cVidya Steve McNickle is VP Europe for cVidya, an innovative provider of revenue intelligence solutions for telecom, media and entertainment service providers including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telecom and Vodafone. The company's product portfolio helps operators and service providers maximise margins, improve customer experience and optimise ecosystem relationships through revenue assurance, fraud and security management, sales performance management, pricing analytics, and inter-carrier services. cVidya has partnered with Oracle for more than a decade. RESOURCES -- Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Oracle Exastack Program Oracle Exastack Optimized Oracle Exastack Labs and Enablement Resources Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Communications cVidya SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES Are you ready for Oracle OpenWorld this October? -- -- Please could you tell us a little about cVidya's partnering history with Oracle, and expand on your Oracle Exastack accreditations? "cVidya was established just over ten years ago and we've had a strong relationship with Oracle almost since the very beginning. Through our Revenue Intelligence work with some of the world's largest service providers we collect tremendous amounts of information, amounting to billions of records per day. We help our clients to collect, store and analyse that data to ensure that their end customers are getting the best levels of service, are billed correctly, and are happy that they are on the correct price plan. We have been an Oracle Gold level partner for seven years, and crucially just two months ago we were also accredited as Oracle Exastack Optimized for MoneyMap, our core Revenue Assurance solution. Very soon we also expect to be Oracle Exastack Optimized DRMap, our Data Retention solution." What unique capabilities and customer benefits does Oracle Exastack add to your applications? "Oracle Exastack enables us to deliver radical benefits to our customers. A typical mobile operator in the UK might handle between 500 million and two billion call data record details daily. Each transaction needs to be validated, billed correctly and fraud checked. Because of the enormous volumes involved, our clients demand scalable infrastructure that allows them to efficiently acquire, store and process all that data within controlled cost, space and environmental constraints. We have proved that the Oracle Exadata system can process data up to seven times faster and load it as much as 20 times faster than other standard best-of-breed server approaches. With the Oracle Exadata Database Machine they can reduce their datacentre equipment from say, the six or seven cabinets that they needed in the past, down to just one. This dramatic simplification delivers incredible value to the customer by cutting down enormously on all of their significant cost, space, energy, cooling and maintenance overheads." "The Oracle Exastack Program has given our clients the ability to switch their focus from reactive to proactive. Traditionally they may have spent 80 percent of their day processing, and just 20 percent enabling end customers to see advanced analytics, and avoiding issues before they occur. With our solutions and Oracle Exadata they can now switch that balance around entirely, resulting not only in reduced revenue leakage, but a far higher focus on proactive leakage prevention. How has the Oracle Exastack Program transformed your customer business? "We can already see the impact. Oracle solutions allow our delivery teams to achieve successful deployments, happy customers and self-satisfaction, and the power of Oracle's Exa solutions is easy to measure in terms of their transformational ability. We gained our first sale into a major European telco by demonstrating the major performance gains that would transform their business. Clients can measure the ease of organisational change, the early prevention of business issues, the reduction in manpower required to provide protection and coverage across all their products and services, plus of course end customer satisfaction. If customers know that that service is provided accurately and that their bills are calculated correctly, then over time this satisfaction can be attributed to revenue intelligence and the underlying systems which provide it. Combine this with the further integration we have with the other layers of the Oracle stack, including the telecommunications offerings such as NCC, OCDM and BRM, and the result is even greater customer value—not to mention the increased speed to market and the reduced project risk." What does the Oracle Exastack community bring to cVidya, both in terms of general benefits, and also tangible new opportunities and partnerships? "A great deal. We have participated in the Oracle Exastack community heavily over the past year, and have had lots of meetings with Oracle and our peers around the globe. It brings us into contact with like-minded, innovative partners, who like us are not happy to just stand still and want to take fresh technology to their customer base in order to gain enhanced value. We identified three new partnerships in each of two recent meetings, and hope these will open up new opportunities, not only in areas that exactly match where we operate today, but also in some new associative areas that will expand our reach into new business sectors. Notably, thanks to the Exastack community we were invited on stage at last year's Oracle OpenWorld conference. Appearing so publically with Oracle senior VP Judson Althoff elevated awareness and visibility of cVidya and has enabled us to participate in a number of other events with Oracle over the past eight months. We've been involved in speaking opportunities, forums and exhibitions, providing us with invaluable opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have got close to." How has Exastack differentiated cVidya as an ISV, and helped you to evolve your business to the next level? "When we are selling to our core customer base of Tier 1 telecommunications providers, we know that they want more than just software. They want an enduring partnership that will last many years, they want innovation, and a forward thinking partner who knows how to guide them on where they need to be to meet market demand three, five or seven years down the line. Membership of respected global bodies, such as the Telemanagement Forum enables us to lead standard adherence in our area of business, giving us a lot of credibility, but Oracle is also involved in this forum with its own telecommunications portfolio, strengthening our position still further. When we approach CEOs, CTOs and CIOs at the very largest Tier 1 operators, not only can we easily show them that our technology is fantastic, we can also talk about our strong partnership with Oracle, and our joint embracing of today's standards and tomorrow's innovation." Where would you like cVidya to be in one year's time? "We want to get all of our relevant products Oracle Exastack Optimized. Our MoneyMap Revenue Assurance solution is already Exastack Optimised, our DRMAP Data Retention Solution should be Exastack Optimised within the next month, and our FraudView Fraud Management solution within the next two to three months. We'd then like to extend our Oracle accreditation out to include other members of the Oracle Engineered Systems family. We are moving into the 'Big Data' space, and so we're obviously very keen to work closely with Oracle to conduct pilots, map new technologies onto Oracle Big Data platforms, and embrace and measure the benefits of other Oracle systems, namely Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster. We would also like to examine how the Oracle Database Appliance might benefit our Tier 2 service provider customers. Finally, we'd also like to continue working with the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit (CGBU), furthering our integration with Oracle billing products so that we are able to quickly deploy fraud solutions into Oracle's Engineered System stack, give operational benefits to our clients that are pre-integrated, more cost-effective, and can be rapidly deployed rapidly and producing benefits in three months, not nine months." Chris Baker ,Senior Vice President, Oracle Worldwide ISV-OEM-Java Sales Chris Baker is the Global Head of ISV/OEM Sales responsible for working with ISV/OEM partners to maximise Oracle's business through those partners, whilst maximising those partners' business to their end users. Chris works with partners, customers, innovators, investors and employees to develop innovative business solutions using Oracle products, services and skills. Firstly, could you please explain Oracle's current strategy for ISV partners, globally and in EMEA? "Oracle customers use independent software vendor (ISV) applications to run their businesses. They use them to generate revenue and to fulfil obligations to their own customers. Our strategy is very straight-forward. We want all of our ISV partners and OEMs to concentrate on the things that they do the best – building applications to meet the unique industry and functional requirements of their customer. We want to ensure that we deliver a best in class application platform so the ISV is free to concentrate their effort on their application functionality and user experience We invest over four billion dollars in research and development every year, and we want our ISVs to benefit from all of that investment in operating systems, virtualisation, databases, middleware, engineered systems, and other hardware. By doing this, we help them to reduce their costs, gain more consistency and agility for quicker implementations, and also rapidly differentiate themselves from other application vendors. It's all about simplification because we believe that around 25 to 30 percent of the development costs incurred by many ISVs are caused by customising infrastructure and have nothing to do with their applications. Our strategy is to enable our ISV partners to standardise their application platform using engineered architecture, so they can write once to the Oracle stack and deploy seamlessly in the cloud, on-premise, or in hybrid deployments. It's really important that architecture is the same in order to keep cost and time overheads at a minimum, so we provide standardisation and an environment that enables our ISVs to concentrate on the core business that makes them the most money and brings them success." How do you believe this strategy is helping the ISVs to work hand-in-hand with Oracle to ensure that end customers get the industry-leading solutions that they need? "We work with our ISVs not just to help them be successful, but also to help them market themselves. We have something called the 'Oracle Exastack Ready Program', which enables ISVs to publicise themselves as 'Ready' to run the core software platforms that run on Oracle's engineered systems including Exadata and Exalogic. So, for example, they can become 'Database Ready' which means that they use the latest version of Oracle Database and therefore can run their application without modification on Exadata or the Oracle Database Appliance. Alternatively, they can become WebLogic Ready, Oracle Linux Ready and Oracle Solaris Ready which means they run on the latest release and therefore can run their application, with no new porting work, on Oracle Exalogic. Those 'Ready' logos are important in helping ISVs advertise to their customers that they are using the latest technologies which have been fully tested. We now also have Exadata Ready and Exalogic Ready programmes which allow ISVs to promote the certification of their applications on these platforms. This highlights these partners to Oracle customers as having solutions that run fluently on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud or one of our other engineered systems. This makes it easy for customers to identify solutions and provides ISVs with an avenue to connect with Oracle customers who are rapidly adopting engineered systems. We have also taken this programme to the next level in the shape of 'Oracle Exastack Optimized' for partners whose applications run best on the Oracle stack and have invested the time to fully optimise application performance. We ensure that Exastack Optimized partner status is promoted and supported by press releases, and we help our ISVs go to market and differentiate themselves through the use our technology and the standardisation it delivers. To date we have had several hundred organisations successfully work through our Exastack Optimized programme." How does Oracle's strategy of offering pre-integrated open platform software and hardware allow ISVs to bring their products to market more quickly? "One of the problems for many ISVs is that they have to think very carefully about the technology on which their solutions will be deployed, particularly in the cloud or hosted environments. They have to think hard about how they secure these environments, whether the concern is, for example, middleware, identity management, or securing personal data. If they don't use the technology that we build-in to our products to help them to fulfil these roles, they then have to build it themselves. This takes time, requires testing, and must be maintained. By taking advantage of our technology, partners will now know that they have a standard platform. They will know that they can confidently talk about implementation being the same every time they do it. Very large ISV applications could once take a year or two to be implemented at an on-premise environment. But it wasn't just the configuration of the application that took the time, it was actually the infrastructure - the different hardware configurations, operating systems and configurations of databases and middleware. Now we strongly believe that it's all about standardisation and repeatability. It's about making sure that our partners can do it once and are then able to roll it out many different times using standard componentry." What actions would you recommend for existing ISV partners that are looking to do more business with Oracle and its customer base, not only to maximise benefits, but also to maximise partner relationships? "My team, around the world and in the EMEA region, is available and ready to talk to any of our ISVs and to explore the possibilities together. We run programmes like 'Excite' and 'Insight' to help us to understand how we can help ISVs with architecture and widen their environments. But we also want to work with, and look at, new opportunities - for example, the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market or 'The Internet of Things'. Over the next few years, many millions, indeed billions of devices will be collecting massive amounts of data and communicating it back to the central systems where ISVs will be running their applications. The only way that our partners will be able to provide a single vendor 'end-to-end' solution is to use Oracle integrated systems at the back end and Java on the 'smart' devices collecting the data – a complete solution from device to data centre. So there are huge opportunities to work closely with our ISVs, using Oracle's complete M2M platform, to provide the infrastructure that enables them to extract maximum value from the data collected. If any partners don't know where to start or who to contact, then they can contact me directly at [email protected] or indeed any of our teams across the EMEA region. We want to work with ISVs to help them to be as successful as they possibly can through simplification and speed to market, and we also want all of the top ISVs in the world based on Oracle." What opportunities are immediately opened to new ISV partners joining the OPN? "As you know OPN is very, very important. New members will discover a huge amount of content that instantly becomes accessible to them. They can access a wealth of no-cost training and enablement materials to build their expertise in Oracle technology. They can download Oracle software and use it for development projects. They can help themselves become more competent by becoming part of a true community and uncovering new opportunities by working with Oracle and their peers in the Oracle Partner Network. As well as publishing massive amounts of information on OPN, we also hold our global Oracle OpenWorld event, at which partners play a huge role. This takes place at the end of September and the beginning of October in San Francisco. Attending ISV partners have an unrivalled opportunity to contribute to elements such as the OpenWorld / OPN Exchange, at which they can talk to other partners and really begin thinking about how they can move their businesses on and play key roles in a very large ecosystem which revolves around technology and standardisation." Finally, are there any other messages that you would like to share with the Oracle ISV community? "The crucial message that I always like to reinforce is architecture, architecture and architecture! The key opportunities that ISVs have today revolve around standardising their architectures so that they can confidently think: “I will I be able to do exactly the same thing whenever a customer is looking to deploy on-premise, hosted or in the cloud”. The right architecture is critical to being competitive and to really start changing the game. We want to help our ISV partners to do just that; to establish standard architecture and to seize the opportunities it opens up for them. New market opportunities like M2M are enormous - just look at how many devices are all around you right now. We can help our partners to interface with these devices more effectively while thinking about their entire ecosystem, rather than just the piece that they have traditionally focused upon. With standardised architecture, we can help people dramatically improve their speed, reach, agility and delivery of enhanced customer satisfaction and value all the way from the Java side to their centralised systems. All Oracle ISV partners must take advantage of these opportunities, which is why Oracle will continue to invest in and support them." -- Gergely Strbik is Oracle Hardware and Software Product Manager for Avnet in Hungary. Avnet Technology Solutions is an OracleValue Added Distributor focused on the development of the existing Oracle channel. This includes the recruitment and enablement of Oracle partners as well as driving deeper adoption of Oracle's technology and application products within the IT channel. "The main business benefits of ODA for our customers and partners are scalability, flexibility, a great price point for the high performance delivered, and the easily configurable embedded Linux operating system. People welcome a lower point of entry and the ability to grow capacity on demand as their business expands." "Marketing and selling the ODA requires another way of thinking because it is an appliance. We have to transform the ways in which our partners and customers think from buying hardware and software independently to buying complete solutions. Successful early adopters and satisfied customer reactions will certainly help us to sell the ODA. We will have more experience with the product after the first deliveries and installations—end users need to see the power and benefits for themselves." "Our typical ODA customers will be those looking for complete solutions from a single reseller partner who is also able to manage the appliance. They will have enjoyed using Oracle Database but now want a new product that is able to unlock new levels of performance. A higher proportion of potential customers will come from our existing Oracle base, with around 30% from new business, but we intend to evangelise the ODA on the market to see how we can change this balance as all our customers adjust to the concept of 'Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together'. -- Back to the welcome page

  Read the article

• Partner Blog Series: PwC Perspectives - The Gotchas, The Do's and Don'ts for IDM Implementations

  - by Tanu Sood

  Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6 {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; border-top:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-top-themecolor:accent6; border-left:none; border-bottom:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; border-right:none; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; font-family:"Verdana","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Georgia; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Georgia; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; color:#968C6D; mso-themecolor:text2; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6 {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:1; mso-tstyle-colband-size:1; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; border-top:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-top-themecolor:accent6; border-left:none; border-bottom:solid #E0301E 1.0pt; mso-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; border-right:none; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family:"Georgia","serif"; color:black; mso-themecolor:text1; mso-ansi-language:EN-GB;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:cell-none; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; font-family:"Arial Narrow","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Georgia; mso-ascii-theme-font:major-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:major-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Georgia; mso-hansi-theme-font:major-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:major-bidi;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; color:#968C6D; mso-themecolor:text2; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6FirstCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:first-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6LastCol {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:last-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-border-top:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-top-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-border-bottom:1.0pt solid #E0301E; mso-tstyle-border-bottom-themecolor:accent6; mso-ansi-font-weight:bold; mso-bidi-font-weight:bold;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddColumn {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-column; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} table.MsoTableMediumList1Accent6OddRow {mso-style-name:"Medium List 1 - Accent 6"; mso-table-condition:odd-row; mso-style-priority:65; mso-style-unhide:no; mso-tstyle-shading:#F7CBC7; mso-tstyle-shading-themecolor:accent6; mso-tstyle-shading-themetint:63;} It is generally accepted among business communities that technology by itself is not a silver bullet to all problems, but when it is combined with leading practices, strategy, careful planning and execution, it can create a recipe for success. This post attempts to highlight some of the best practices along with dos & don’ts that our practice has accumulated over the years in the identity & access management space in general, and also in the context of R2, in particular. Best Practices The following section illustrates the leading practices in “How” to plan, implement and sustain a successful OIM deployment, based on our collective experience. Planning is critical, but often overlooked A common approach to planning an IAM program that we identify with our clients is the three step process involving a current state assessment, a future state roadmap and an executable strategy to get there. It is extremely beneficial for clients to assess their current IAM state, perform gap analysis, document the recommended controls to address the gaps, align future state roadmap to business initiatives and get buy in from all stakeholders involved to improve the chances of success. When designing an enterprise-wide solution, the scalability of the technology must accommodate the future growth of the enterprise and the projected identity transactions over several years. Aligning the implementation schedule of OIM to related information technology projects increases the chances of success. As a baseline, it is recommended to match hardware specifications to the sizing guide for R2 published by Oracle. Adherence to this will help ensure that the hardware used to support OIM will not become a bottleneck as the adoption of new services increases. If your Organization has numerous connected applications that rely on reconciliation to synchronize the access data into OIM, consider hosting dedicated instances to handle reconciliation. Finally, ensure the use of clustered environment for development and have at least three total environments to help facilitate a controlled migration to production. If your Organization is planning to implement role based access control, we recommend performing a role mining exercise and consolidate your enterprise roles to keep them manageable. In addition, many Organizations have multiple approval flows to control access to critical roles, applications and entitlements. If your Organization falls into this category, we highly recommend that you limit the number of approval workflows to a small set. Most Organizations have operations managed across data centers with backend database synchronization, if your Organization falls into this category, ensure that the overall latency between the datacenters when replicating the databases is less than ten milliseconds to ensure that there are no front office performance impacts. Ingredients for a successful implementation During the development phase of your project, there are a number of guidelines that can be followed to help increase the chances for success. Most implementations cannot be completed without the use of customizations. If your implementation requires this, it’s a good practice to perform code reviews to help ensure quality and reduce code bottlenecks related to performance. We have observed at our clients that the development process works best when team members adhere to coding leading practices. Plan for time to correct coding defects and ensure developers are empowered to report their own bugs for maximum transparency. Many organizations struggle with defining a consistent approach to managing logs. This is particularly important due to the amount of information that can be logged by OIM. We recommend Oracle Diagnostics Logging (ODL) as an alternative to be used for logging. ODL allows log files to be formatted in XML for easy parsing and does not require a server restart when the log levels are changed during troubleshooting. Testing is a vital part of any large project, and an OIM R2 implementation is no exception. We suggest that at least one lower environment should use production-like data and connectors. Configurations should match as closely as possible. For example, use secure channels between OIM and target platforms in pre-production environments to test the configurations, the migration processes of certificates, and the additional overhead that encryption could impose. Finally, we ask our clients to perform database backups regularly and before any major change event, such as a patch or migration between environments. In the lowest environments, we recommend to have at least a weekly backup in order to prevent significant loss of time and effort. Similarly, if your organization is using virtual machines for one or more of the environments, it is recommended to take frequent snapshots so that rollbacks can occur in the event of improper configuration. Operate & sustain the solution to derive maximum benefits When migrating OIM R2 to production, it is important to perform certain activities that will help achieve a smoother transition. At our clients, we have seen that splitting the OIM tables into their own tablespaces by categories (physical tables, indexes, etc.) can help manage database growth effectively. If we notice that a client hasn’t enabled the Oracle-recommended indexing in the applicable database, we strongly suggest doing so to improve performance. Additionally, we work with our clients to make sure that the audit level is set to fit the organization’s auditing needs and sometimes even allocate UPA tables and indexes into their own table-space for better maintenance. Finally, many of our clients have set up schedules for reconciliation tables to be archived at regular intervals in order to keep the size of the database(s) reasonable and result in optimal database performance. For our clients that anticipate availability issues with target applications, we strongly encourage the use of the offline provisioning capabilities of OIM R2. This reduces the provisioning process for a given target application dependency on target availability and help avoid broken workflows. To account for this and other abnormalities, we also advocate that OIM’s monitoring controls be configured to alert administrators on any abnormal situations. Within OIM R2, we have begun advising our clients to utilize the ‘profile’ feature to encapsulate multiple commonly requested accounts, roles, and/or entitlements into a single item. By setting up a number of profiles that can be searched for and used, users will spend less time performing the same exact steps for common tasks. We advise our clients to follow the Oracle recommended guides for database and application server tuning which provides a good baseline configuration. It offers guidance on database connection pools, connection timeouts, user interface threads and proper handling of adapters/plug-ins. All of these can be important configurations that will allow faster provisioning and web page response times. Many of our clients have begun to recognize the value of data mining and a remediation process during the initial phases of an implementation (to help ensure high quality data gets loaded) and beyond (to support ongoing maintenance and business-as-usual processes). A successful program always begins with identifying the data elements and assigning a classification level based on criticality, risk, and availability. It should finish by following through with a remediation process. Dos & Don’ts Here are the most common dos and don'ts that we socialize with our clients, derived from our experience implementing the solution. Dos Don’ts Scope the project into phases with realistic goals. Look for quick wins to show success and value to the stake holders. Avoid “boiling the ocean” and trying to integrate all enterprise applications in the first phase. Establish an enterprise ID (universal unique ID across the enterprise) earlier in the program. Avoid major UI customizations that require code changes. Have a plan in place to patch during the project, which helps alleviate any major issues or roadblocks (product and database). Avoid publishing all the target entitlements if you don't anticipate their usage during access request. Assess your current state and prepare a roadmap to address your operations, tactical and strategic goals, align it with your business priorities. Avoid integrating non-production environments with your production target systems. Defer complex integrations to the later phases and take advantage of lessons learned from previous phases Avoid creating multiple accounts for the same user on the same system, if there is an opportunity to do so. Have an identity and access data quality initiative built into your plan to identify and remediate data related issues early on. Avoid creating complex approval workflows that would negative impact productivity and SLAs. Identify the owner of the identity systems with fair IdM knowledge and empower them with authority to make product related decisions. This will help ensure overcome any design hurdles. Avoid creating complex designs that are not sustainable long term and would need major overhaul during upgrades. Shadow your internal or external consulting resources during the implementation to build the necessary product skills needed to operate and sustain the solution. Avoid treating IAM as a point solution and have appropriate level of communication and training plan for the IT and business users alike. Conclusion In our experience, Identity programs will struggle with scope, proper resourcing, and more. We suggest that companies consider the suggestions discussed in this post and leverage them to help enable their identity and access program. This concludes PwC blog series on R2 for the month and we sincerely hope that the information we have shared thus far has been beneficial. For more information or if you have questions, you can reach out to Rex Thexton, Senior Managing Director, PwC and or Dharma Padala, Director, PwC. We look forward to hearing from you. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:12.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:12.0pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Arial","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Arial; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Arial; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Meet the Writers: Dharma Padala is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has been implementing medium to large scale Identity Management solutions across multiple industries including utility, health care, entertainment, retail and financial sectors.   Dharma has 14 years of experience in delivering IT solutions out of which he has been implementing Identity Management solutions for the past 8 years. Praveen Krishna is a Manager in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  Over the last decade Praveen has helped clients plan, architect and implement Oracle identity solutions across diverse industries.  His experience includes delivering security across diverse topics like network, infrastructure, application and data where he brings a holistic point of view to problem solving. Scott MacDonald is a Director in the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has consulted for several clients across multiple industries including financial services, health care, automotive and retail.   Scott has 10 years of experience in delivering Identity Management solutions. John Misczak is a member of the Advisory Security practice within PwC.  He has experience implementing multiple Identity and Access Management solutions, specializing in Oracle Identity Manager and Business Process Engineering Language (BPEL).

  Read the article

< Previous Page | 5 6 7 8 9