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• Installing all the bits to demo Entity Framework 4 on the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate

  - by Eric Nelson

  Next week (17th March 2010) I am presenting on EF4 at www.devweek.com in London (and Azure on the 18th). Today I wanted to get all the latest bits on my demo machine and also check if there are any cool new resources I can point people at. Whilst most of the new improvements in Entity Framework come with the Visual Studio 2010 RC (and the RTM), there are a couple of separate items you need to install if you want to explore all the features. To demo EF4 you need: Visual Studio 2010 RC Download and install the Visual Studio 2010 Release Candidate. In my case I went from the Ultimate Edition but it will work fine on Premium and Professional. POCO Templates See the team blog post for a detailed explanation. Use the Extension Manager inside Visual Studio 2010: And install the updated POCO templates for either C# or VB (or both if you are so inclined!): Code First Next you will also need to install Code First (formally called Code Only). This is part of the Entity Framework Feature CTP 3. See the team blog post for a detailed explanation. Download the CTP from Microsoft downloads and run the setup. This will give you a new dll for Code First Optionally (but I recommend it) install LINQPad for the RC Download LINQPad Beta for .NET 4.0 Related Links 101 EF4 Resources

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• Allow JMX connection on JVM 1.6.x

  - by Martin Müller

  While trying to monitor a JVM on a remote system using visualvm the activation of JMX gave me some challenges. Dr Google and my employers documentation quickly revealed some -D opts needed for JMX, but strangely it only worked for a Solaris 10 system (my setup: MacOS laptop monitoring SPARC Solaris based JVMs) On S11 with the same opts I saw that "my" JVM listening on port 3000 (which I chose for JMX), but visualvm was not able to get a connection. Finally I found out that at least my S11 installation needed an explicit setting of the RMI host name. This what finally worked:         -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote=true \        -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.ssl=false \        -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.authenticate=false \        -Dcom.sun.management.jmxremote.port=3000 \        -Djava.rmi.server.hostname=s11name.us.oracle.com \ Maybe this post saves someone else the time I spent on research 

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• How Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server enable Compliance

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  One of the things that makes Team Foundation Server (TFS) the most powerful Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) platform is the traceability it provides to those that use it. This traceability is crucial to enable many companies to adhere to many of the Compliance regulations to which they are bound (e.g. CFR 21 Part 11 or Sarbanes–Oxley.)   From something as simple as relating Tasks to Check-in’s or being able to see the top 10 files in your codebase that are causing the most Bugs, to identifying which Bugs and Requirements are in which Release. All that information is available and more in TFS. Although all of this tradability is available within TFS you do need to understand that it is not for free. Well… I say that, but if you are using TFS properly you will have this information with no additional work except for firing up the reporting. Using Visual Studio ALM and Team Foundation Server you can relate every line of code changes all the way up to requirements and back down through Test Cases to the Test Results. Figure: The only thing missing is Build In order to build the relationship model below we need to examine how each of the relationships get there. Each member of your team from programmer to tester and Business Analyst to Business have their roll to play to knit this together. Figure: The relationships required to make this work can get a little confusing If Build is added to this to relate Work Items to Builds and with knowledge of which builds are in which environments you can easily identify what is contained within a Release. Figure: How are things progressing Along with the ability to produce the progress and trend reports the tractability that is built into TFS can be used to fulfil most audit requirements out of the box, and augmented to fulfil the rest. In order to understand the relationships, lets look at each of the important Artifacts and how they are associated with each other… Requirements – The root of all knowledge Requirements are the thing that the business cares about delivering. These could be derived as User Stories or Business Requirements Documents (BRD’s) but they should be what the Business asks for. Requirements can be related to many of the Artifacts in TFS, so lets look at the model: Figure: If the centre of the world was a requirement We can track which releases Requirements were scheduled in, but this can change over time as more details come to light. Figure: Who edited the Requirement and when There is also the ability to query Work Items based on the History of changed that were made to it. This is particularly important with Requirements. It might not be enough to say what Requirements were completed in a given but also to know which Requirements were ever assigned to a particular release. Figure: Some magic required, but result still achieved As an augmentation to this it is also possible to run a query that shows results from the past, just as if we had a time machine. You can take any Query in the system and add a “Asof” clause at the end to query historical data in the operational store for TFS. select <fields> from WorkItems [where <condition>] [order by <fields>] [asof <date>] Figure: Work Item Query Language (WIQL) format In order to achieve this you do need to save the query as a *.wiql file to your local computer and edit it in notepad, but one imported into TFS you run it any time you want. Figure: Saving Queries locally can be useful All of these Audit features are available throughout the Work Item Tracking (WIT) system within TFS. Tasks – Where the real work gets done Tasks are the work horse of the development team, but they only as useful as Excel if you do not relate them properly to other Artifacts. Figure: The Task Work Item Type has its own relationships Requirements should be broken down into Tasks that the development team work from to build what is required by the business. This may be done by a small dedicated group or by everyone that will be working on the software team but however it happens all of the Tasks create should be a Child of a Requirement Work Item Type. Figure: Tasks are related to the Requirement Tasks should be used to track the day-to-day activities of the team working to complete the software and as such they should be kept simple and short lest developers think they are more trouble than they are worth. Figure: Task Work Item Type has a narrower purpose Although the Task Work Item Type describes the work that will be done the actual development work involves making changes to files that are under Source Control. These changes are bundled together in a single atomic unit called a Changeset which is committed to TFS in a single operation. During this operation developers can associate Work Item with the Changeset. Figure: Tasks are associated with Changesets   Changesets – Who wrote this crap Changesets themselves are just an inventory of the changes that were made to a number of files to complete a Task. Figure: Changesets are linked by Tasks and Builds   Figure: Changesets tell us what happened to the files in Version Control Although comments can be changed after the fact, the inventory and Work Item associations are permanent which allows us to Audit all the way down to the individual change level. Figure: On Check-in you can resolve a Task which automatically associates it Because of this we can view the history on any file within the system and see how many changes have been made and what Changesets they belong to. Figure: Changes are tracked at the File level What would be even more powerful would be if we could view these changes super imposed over the top of the lines of code. Some people call this a blame tool because it is commonly used to find out which of the developers introduced a bug, but it can also be used as another method of Auditing changes to the system. Figure: Annotate shows the lines the Annotate functionality allows us to visualise the relationship between the individual lines of code and the Changesets. In addition to this you can create a Label and apply it to a version of your version control. The problem with Label’s is that they can be changed after they have been created with no tractability. This makes them practically useless for any sort of compliance audit. So what do you use? Branches – And why we need them Branches are a really powerful tool for development and release management, but they are most important for audits. Figure: One way to Audit releases The R1.0 branch can be created from the Label that the Build creates on the R1 line when a Release build was created. It can be created as soon as the Build has been signed of for release. However it is still possible that someone changed the Label between this time and its creation. Another better method can be to explicitly link the Build output to the Build. Builds – Lets tie some more of this together Builds are the glue that helps us enable the next level of tractability by tying everything together. Figure: The dashed pieces are not out of the box but can be enabled When the Build is called and starts it looks at what it has been asked to build and determines what code it is going to get and build. Figure: The folder identifies what changes are included in the build The Build sets a Label on the Source with the same name as the Build, but the Build itself also includes the latest Changeset ID that it will be building. At the end of the Build the Build Agent identifies the new Changesets it is building by looking at the Check-ins that have occurred since the last Build. Figure: What changes have been made since the last successful Build It will then use that information to identify the Work Items that are associated with all of the Changesets Changesets are associated with Build and change the “Integrated In” field of those Work Items . Figure: Find all of the Work Items to associate with The “Integrated In” field of all of the Work Items identified by the Build Agent as being integrated into the completed Build are updated to reflect the Build number that successfully integrated that change. Figure: Now we know which Work Items were completed in a build Now that we can link a single line of code changed all the way back through the Task that initiated the action to the Requirement that started the whole thing and back down to the Build that contains the finished Requirement. But how do we know wither that Requirement has been fully tested or even meets the original Requirements? Test Cases – How we know we are done The only way we can know wither a Requirement has been completed to the required specification is to Test that Requirement. In TFS there is a Work Item type called a Test Case Test Cases enable two scenarios. The first scenario is the ability to track and validate Acceptance Criteria in the form of a Test Case. If you agree with the Business a set of goals that must be met for a Requirement to be accepted by them it makes it both difficult for them to reject a Requirement when it passes all of the tests, but also provides a level of tractability and validation for audit that a feature has been built and tested to order. Figure: You can have many Acceptance Criteria for a single Requirement It is crucial for this to work that someone from the Business has to sign-off on the Test Case moving from the  “Design” to “Ready” states. The Second is the ability to associate an MS Test test with the Test Case thereby tracking the automated test. This is useful in the circumstance when you want to Track a test and the test results of a Unit Test designed to test the existence of and then re-existence of a a Bug. Figure: Associating a Test Case with an automated Test Although it is possible it may not make sense to track the execution of every Unit Test in your system, there are many Integration and Regression tests that may be automated that it would make sense to track in this way. Bug – Lets not have regressions In order to know wither a Bug in the application has been fixed and to make sure that it does not reoccur it needs to be tracked. Figure: Bugs are the centre of their own world If the fix to a Bug is big enough to require that it is broken down into Tasks then it is probably a Requirement. You can associate a check-in with a Bug and have it tracked against a Build. You would also have one or more Test Cases to prove the fix for the Bug. Figure: Bugs have many associations This allows you to track Bugs / Defects in your system effectively and report on them. Change Request – I am not a feature In the CMMI Process template Change Requests can also be easily tracked through the system. In some cases it can be very important to track Change Requests separately as an Auditor may want to know what was changed and who authorised it. Again and similar to Bugs, if the Change Request is big enough that it would require to be broken down into Tasks it is in reality a new feature and should be tracked as a Requirement. Figure: Make sure your Change Requests only Affect Requirements and not rewrite them Conclusion Visual Studio 2010 and Team Foundation Server together provide an exceptional Application Lifecycle Management platform that can help your team comply with even the harshest of Compliance requirements while still enabling them to be Agile. Most Audits are heavy on required documentation but most of that information is captured for you as long a you do it right. You don’t even need every team member to understand it all as each of the Artifacts are relevant to a different type of team member. Business Analysts manage Requirements and Change Requests Programmers manage Tasks and check-in against Change Requests and Bugs Testers manage Bugs and Test Cases Build Masters manage Builds Although there is some crossover there are still rolls or “hats” that are worn. Do you thing this is all achievable? Have I missed anything that you think should be there?

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• Caveat utilitor - Can I run two versions of Microsoft Project side-by-side?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  A number of out customers have asked if there are any problems in installing and running multiple versions of Microsoft Project on a single client. Although this is a case of Caveat utilitor (Let the user beware), as long as the user understands and accepts the issues that can occur then they can do this. Although Microsoft provide the ability to leave old versions of Office products (except Outlook) on your client when you are installing a new version of the product they certainly do not endorse doing so. Figure: For Project you can choose to keep the old stuff   That being the case I would have preferred that they put a “(NOT RECOMMENDED)” after the options to impart that knowledge to the rest of us, but they did not. The default and recommended behaviour is for the newer version installer to remove the older versions. Of course this does not apply in the revers. There are no forward compatibility packs for Office. There are a number of negative behaviours (or bugs) that can occur in this configuration: There is only one MS Project In Windows a file extension can only be associated with a single program.  In this case, MPP files can be associated with only one version of winproj.exe.  The executables are in different folders so if a user double-clicks a Project file on the desktop, file explorer, or Outlook email, Windows will launch the winproj.exe associated with MPP and then load the MPP file.  There are problems associated with this situation and in some cases workarounds. The user double-clicks on a Project 2010 file, Project 2007 launches but is unable to open the file because it is a newer version.  The workaround is for the user to launch Project 2010 from the Start menu then open the file.  If the file is attached to an email they will need to first drag the file to the desktop. All your linked MS Project files need to be of the same version There are a number of problems that occur when people use on Microsoft’s Object Linking and Embedding (OLE) technology.  The three common uses of OLE are: for inserted projects where a Master project contains sub-projects and each sub-project resides in its own MPP file shared resource pools where multiple MPP files share a common resource pool kept in a single MPP file cross-project links where a task or milestone in one MPP file has a  predecessor/successor relationship with a task or milestone in a different MPP file What I’ve seen happen before is that if you are running in a version of Project that is not associated with the MPP extension and then try and activate an OLE link then Project tries to launch the other version of Project.  Things start getting very confused since different MPP files are being controlled by different versions of Project running at the same time.  I haven’t tried this in awhile so I can’t give you exact symptoms but I suspect that if Project 2010 is involved the symptoms will be different then in a Project 2003/2007 scenario.  I’ve noticed that Project 2010 gives different error messages for the exact same problem when it occurs in Project 2003 or 2007.  -Anonymous The recommendation would be either not to use this feature if you have to have multiple versions of Project installed or to use only a single version of Project. You may get unexpected negative behaviours if you are using shared resource pools or resource pools even when you are not running multiple versions as I have found that they can get broken very easily. If you need these thing then it is probably best to use Project Server as it was created to solve many of these specific issues. Note: I would not even allow multiple people to access a network copy of a Project file because of the way Windows locks files in write mode. This can cause write-locks that get so bad a server restart is required I’ve seen user’s files get write-locked to the point where the only resolution is to reboot the server. Changing the default version to run for an extension So what if you want to change the default association from Project 2007 to Project 2010?   Figure: “Control Panel | Folder Options | Change the file associated with a file extension” Windows normally only lists the last version installed for a particular extension. You can select a specific version by selecting the program you want to change and clicking “Change program… | Browse…” and then selecting the .exe you want to use on the file system. Figure: You will need to select the exact version of “winproj.exe” that you want to run Conclusion Although it is possible to run multiple versions of Project on one system in the main it does not really make sense.

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• Configuring UCM content cache invalidation for a custom portal application

  - by Martin Deh

  Recently, I had blogged about enabling the UCM content cache invalidator for Spaces (found here).  This can also be enabled for a WebCenter Custom Portal application as well.  The much overlooked setting is done through the Content Repository connection definition in the JDeveloper Application Resources section.   Enabling the cache invalidator "sweeper" can be invaluable, where UCM content is being updated from within UCM (console) and not within the portal.

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• RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean?

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  They’re there, lurking in your image files. But have you ever wondered what are image channels are? And what do they have to do with RGB and CMYK? Here’s the answer. The channels panel in Photoshop is one of the most disused and misunderstood parts of the program. But images have color channels with or without Photoshop. Read on to find out what color channels are, what RGB and CMYK are, and learn a little bit more about how image files work Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin The How-To Geek Video Guide to Using Windows 7 Speech Recognition How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop What is the Internet? From the Today Show January 1994 [Historical Video] Take Screenshots and Edit Them in Chrome and Iron Using Aviary Screen Capture Run Android 3.0 on a Hacked Nook Google Art Project Takes You Inside World Famous Museums Emerald Waves and Moody Skies Wallpaper Change Your MAC Address to Avoid Free Internet Restrictions

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• The best Windows 7 virtual desktop tool by far&hellip; Dexpot

  - by Eric Nelson

  [Oh – and Windows XP, Vista etc] Every so often I yearn for the virtual desktop functionality that is implemented so well under Linux. Unfortunately every time I start looking for a great tool for Windows I ultimately end up disappointed. But … I think this time around I have actually found one that will outlast the first day or two and become a must have. Check out http://www.dexpot.de/ So far this is 100% stable, 100% sensible and offers awesome functionality, yet still is very simple to use. There is a detailed look at the many features on the site but a couple that do it for me: Desktop Manager and next/previous tray icons make it easy to navigate around: Announcement of Desktop as a desktop takes focus: And best of all, Windows 7 preview integration And… it is FREE for private use and you get 30 days to try it out for professional use (e.g. me)

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• What tools exist for assessing an organisation's development capability?

  - by Eric Smith

  I have a bit of a challenge at work at the moment. Presently (and in fact, for some time now), we have been experiencing the following problems with some in-house maintained applications: Defects (sometimes quite serious) being released into production; The Customer (that is, the relevant business unit) perpetually changing their minds (or appearing to do so) about what issue to work on next; A situation where everyone seems to be in a "fire-fighting" mode a lot of the time; Development staff responding to operational requests from business users; ("operational" here means something that needs to be done in order to continue with business, or perhaps just to make a business user's life a little less painful, as opposed to fixing a bug in the application, or enhancing the application); Now I'm sure this doesn't sound particularly new or surprising to most of the participants on this Q&A site and no prizes for identifying the "usual suspects" when it comes to root causes. My challenge is that I have to persuade the higher-ups to do uncomfortable things in order to address all of this. The folk I need to persuade come from a mixture of the following two cultures: Accounting; IT Infrastructure. I have therefore opted for a strategy that draws from things with-which folk from such a culture would be most comfortable (at least, in my estimation), namely: numbers and tangibles. Of course modern development practitioners know all too well that this sort of thing isn't easily solved using an analytical mindset (some would argue that that mindset is, in fact, entirely inappropriate). Never-the-less, this is the dichotomy with-which I am faced, so that's the stake that I've put in the ground. I would like to be able to do research and use the outputs to present findings in the form of metrics and measures. I am finding it quite difficult, though, to find an agreed-upon methodology and set of templates for assessing an organisations development capability--the only thing that seems applicable is the Software Engineering Institute's Capability Maturity Model. The latter, however, seems dated and even then rather vague. So, the question is: Do any tools or methodologies (free or commercial) exist that would assist me in completing this assessment?

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• How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  Ever wanted to add color to your old, vintage, or historical photographs? Load up some old pictures and see how color can be added quickly to any black and white photograph in this simple Photoshop how to. While many purists simply don’t like the look of colorized black and white photographs, the ability to add color to black and white images is as indispensible as it is simple. Read on to see just how easy it can be Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Create Your Own Custom ASCII Art from Any Image How To Process Camera Raw Without Paying for Adobe Photoshop How Do You Block Annoying Text Message (SMS) Spam? How to Use and Master the Notoriously Difficult Pen Tool in Photoshop HTG Explains: What Are the Differences Between All Those Audio Formats? How To Use Layer Masks and Vector Masks to Remove Complex Backgrounds in Photoshop Hack a Wireless Doorbell into a Snail Mail Indicator Enjoy Clutter-Free YouTube Video Viewing in Opera with CleanTube Bring Summer Back to Your Desktop with the LandscapeTheme for Chrome and Iron The Prospector – Home Dash Extension Creates a Whole New Browsing Experience in Firefox KinEmote Links Kinect to Windows Why Nobody Reads Web Site Privacy Policies [Infographic]

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• Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne are right around the corner!

  - by Eric Jensen

  It's that time of year again! Oracle OpenWorld and JavaOne are now upon us. Below is a list of events and demos at OpenWorld and JavaOne where you can check out the cool stuff people are doing with our products, Berkeley DB and Database Mobile Server. We've got some exciting things lined up, hope to see you there! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Keynote Wed 3 Oct, 2012 8:00 AM - 9:30 AM Java Embedded: Market Strategy Hotel Nikko - Nikko Ballrooms II & III Conference Session Mon 1 Oct, 2012 8:30 AM - 9:30 AM CON7100 - Developing with Berkeley DB and Oracle Database Mobile Server for Java Embedded Hotel Nikko - Nikko Ballroom II & III HOL (Hands-on Lab) Mon 1 Oct, 2012 7:30 PM – 9:30 PM HOL7889 - Java SE Embedded Development Made Easy Hilton San Francisco - Franciscan A/B/C/D Demos JavaOne Exhibition: Unifying M2M and Mobile in Healthcare Hilton Hotel Grand Ballroom Exhibition Hall Booth 5605 mFrontiers mFinity demo Moscone South Left - 136

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• Save the dates &ndash; Tech.Days 2011 23rd to 25th of May in London

  - by Eric Nelson

  In May Microsoft UK (and specifically my group) will be delivering Tech.Days – a week of day long technical events plus evening activities. We will be covering Windows Phone 7, Silverlight, IE 9, Windows Azure Platform and more. I’m working right now on the details of what we will be covering around the Windows Azure Platform – and it is shaping up very nicely. There is a little more detail over on TechNet – but for the moment, keep the dates clear if you can. P.S. I think the above is called a “teaser” in marketing speak.

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• IRM Item Codes &ndash; what are they for?

  - by martin.abrahams

  A number of colleagues have been asking about IRM item codes recently – what are they for, when are they useful, how can you control them to meet some customer requirements? This is quite a big topic, but this article provides a few answers. An item code is part of the metadata of every sealed document – unless you define a custom metadata model. The item code is defined when a file is sealed, and usually defaults to a timestamp/filename combination. This time/name combo tends to make item codes unique for each new document, but actually item codes are not necessarily unique, as will become clear shortly. In most scenarios, item codes are not relevant to the evaluation of a user’s rights - the context name is the critical piece of metadata, as a user typically has a role that grants access to an entire classification of information regardless of item code. This is key to the simplicity and manageability of the Oracle IRM solution. Item codes are occasionally exposed to users in the UI, but most users probably never notice and never care. Nevertheless, here is one example of where you can see an item code – when you hover the mouse pointer over a sealed file. As you see, the item code for this freshly created file combines a timestamp with the file name. But what are item codes for? The first benefit of item codes is that they enable you to manage exceptions to the policy defined for a context. Thus, I might have access to all oracle – internal files - except for 2011_03_11 13:33:29 Board Minutes.sdocx. This simple mechanism enables Oracle IRM to provide file-by-file control where appropriate, whilst offering the scalability and manageability of classification-based control for the majority of users and content. You really don’t want to be managing each file individually, but never say never. Item codes can also be used for the opposite effect – to include a file in a user’s rights when their role would ordinarily deny access. So, you can assign a role that allows access only to specified item codes. For example, my role might say that I have access to precisely one file – the one shown above. So how are item codes set? In the vast majority of scenarios, item codes are set automatically as part of the sealing process. The sealing API uses the timestamp and filename as shown, and the user need not even realise that this has happened. This automatically creates item codes that are for all practical purposes unique - and that are also intelligible to users who might want to refer to them when viewing or assigning rights in the management UI. It is also possible for suitably authorised users and applications to set the item code manually or programmatically if required. Setting the item code manually using the IRM Desktop The manual process is a simple extension of the sealing task. An authorised user can select the Advanced… sealing option, and will see a dialog that offers the option to specify the item code. To see this option, the user’s role needs the Set Item Code right – you don’t want most users to give any thought at all to item codes, so by default the option is hidden. Setting the item code programmatically A more common scenario is that an application controls the item code programmatically. For example, a document management system that seals documents as part of a workflow might set the item code to match the document’s unique identifier in its repository. This offers the option to tie IRM rights evaluation directly to the security model defined in the document management system. Again, the sealing application needs to be authorised to Set Item Code. The Payslip Scenario To give a concrete example of how item codes might be used in a real world scenario, consider a Human Resources workflow such as a payslips. The goal might be to allow the HR team to have access to all payslips, but each employee to have access only to their own payslips. To enable this, you might have an IRM classification called Payslips. The HR team have a role in the normal way that allows access to all payslips. However, each employee would have an Item Reader role that only allows them to access files that have a particular item code – and that item code might match the employee’s payroll number. So, employee number 123123123 would have access to items with that code. This shows why item codes are not necessarily unique – you can deliberately set the same code on many files for ease of administration. The employees might have the right to unseal or print their payslip, so the solution acts as a secure delivery mechanism that allows payslips to be distributed via corporate email without any fear that they might be accessed by IT administrators, or forwarded accidentally to anyone other than the intended recipient. All that remains is to ensure that as each user’s payslip is sealed, it is assigned the correct item code – something that is easily managed by a simple IRM sealing application. Each month, an employee’s payslip is sealed with the same item code, so you do not need to keep amending the list of items that the user has access to – they have access to all documents that carry their employee code.

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• How To Make a Youtube Video Into an Animated GIF

  - by Eric Z Goodnight

  You’ve likely seen webpages and picdumps everywhere, with goofy, ridiculous, and funny animated GIFs. Here’s how you can have some fun by making your own in a matter of minutes, using your favorite Youtube videos and Photoshop. While animated GIFs may be pretty useless, they can be funny and fun to make. See what you can do with your favorite Youtube videos and Photoshop, and a surprisingly little time.How To Make a Youtube Video Into an Animated GIFHTG Explains: What Are Character Encodings and How Do They Differ?How To Make Disposable Sleeves for Your In-Ear Monitors

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• Recover files from NTFS drive with bad sectors

  - by Martin

  A few nights ago I have created a backup of my data on an external 500 GB NTFS USB hard drive. I have then formatted my computer, reinstalled Ubuntu and started transferring back the data from the external HDD. Unfortunately some files have became corrupted and Ubuntu is unable to copy them over. The same issue happens if I login using Windows 7. Disk Utility detects with SMART that there are "a few bad sectors". Some of files are perfectly intact, but other files cannot be accessed (nor read, copied...) although they are displayed within nautilus and show the correct file size. Is there anything I can do to recover this data? I have thought of using TestDisk but this utility seems more useful for repairing lost partitions or deleted files. I have also thought of using ddrescue so I could at least have a low level copy of the disk but I am not sure what use to make of it in order to recover the data!!!

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• Do you know when to send a done email in Scrum?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  At SSW we have always sent done emails to the owner/requestor to let them know that it is done. Others who are dependent on that tasks are CC’ed so they know they can proceed. But how does that fit into Scrum?   Update 14th April 2010 Rule added to Rules to better Scrum with TFS If you are working on a task: When you complete a Task that is part of a User Story you need to send a done email to the Owner of that Story. You only need to add the Task #, Summary and link to the item in WIWA. Remember that all your tasks should be under 4 hours, do spending lots of time on a Done Email for a Task would be counter productive. Add more information if required, for example you may have completed the task a different way than previously discussed.  Make sure that every User Story has an Owner as per the rules. If you are the owner of a story: When you complete a story you should send a comprehensive done email as per the rules when the story had been completed. Make sure you add a list of all of the Tasks that were completed as part of the story and the Done criteria that you completed. If your done criteria says: Built Successfully 30% Code Coverage All tests passed Then add an illustration to show this. Figure: Show that you have met your Done criteria where possible.   This is all designed to help you Scrum Team members (Product Owner, ScrumMaster and Team) validate the quality of the work that has been completed. Remember that you are not DONE until your team says you are done.   Technorati Tags: SSW,Scrum,SSW Rules

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• When clientTransferProhibited is off to transfer a domain name, couldn't the name be stolen?

  - by Cedric Martin

  I'd like to transfer a domain from one registrar (Key-systems) to another registrar (OVH). I don't really understand the procedure and I'm a bit confused... I read everywhere that clientTransferProhibited prevents people from stealing your domain name. Now apparently during the course of transferring my domain from Key-systems to OVH, I'll to change clientTransferProhibited so that the transfer is allowed. Wouldn't my domain then become "stealable" during some amount of time? (a few hours / days / week)

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• Will bing bot index pages with invalid SSL certificates?

  - by Martin

  Bingbot and Yahoo slurp do not support SNI(Server Name Indication when using SSL). Ignoring other workarounds (multi domain certificates, non-SSL content etc.), will Bingbot index pages that have an invalid SSL certificate, eg. issued for example.net, but used on example.com? If possible please provide an example from Yahoo or Bing. I have found websites in bing, that use self signed certificates and are indexed correctly, but what about invalid certificates?

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• Partial recalculation of visibility on a 2D uniform grid

  - by Martin Källman

  Problem Imagine that we have a 2D uniform grid of dimensions N x N. For this grid we have also pre-computed a visibility look-up table, e.g. with DDA, which answers the boolean query is cell X visible from cell Y? The look-up table is a complete graph KN of the cells V in the grid, with each edge E being a binary value denoting the visibility between its vertices. Question If any given cell has its visibility modified, is it possible to extract the subset Edelta of edges which must have their visibility recomputed due to the change, so as to avoid a full-on recomputation for the entire grid? (Which is N(N-1) / 2 or N2 depending on the implementation) Update If is not possible to solve thi in closed form, then maintaining a separate mapping of each cell and every cell pair who's line intersects said cell might also be an option. This obviously consumes more memory, but the data is static. The increased memory requirement could be reduced by introducing a hierarchy, subdividing the grid into smaller parts, and by doing so the above mapping can be reused for each sub-grid. This would come at a cost in terms of increased computation relative to the number of subdivisions; also requiring a resumable ray-casting algorithm.

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• Dealing with the customer / developer culture mismatch on an agile project

  - by Eric Smith

  One of the tenets of agile is ... Customer collaboration over contract negotiation ... another one is ... Individuals and interactions over processes and tools But the way I see it, at least when it comes to interaction with the customer, there is a fundamental problem: How the customer thinks is fundamentally different to how a software engineer thinks That may be a bit of a generalisation, yes. Arguably, there are business domains where this is not necessarily true---these are few and far between though. In many domains though, the typical customer is: Interested in daily operational concerns--short-range tactics ... not strategy; Only concerned with the immediate solution; Generally one-dimensional, non-abstract thinkers; Primarily interested in "getting the job done" as opposed to coming up with a lasting, quality solution. On the other hand, software engineers who practice agile are: Professionals who value quality; Individuals who understand the notion of "more haste less speed" i.e., spending a little more time to do things properly will save lots of time down the road; Generally, very experienced analytical thinkers. So very clearly, there is a natural culture discrepancy that tends to inhibit "customer collaboration". What's the best way to address this?

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• Do you want to be an ALM Consultant?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Northwest Cadence is looking for our next great consultant! At Northwest Cadence, we have created a work environment that emphasizes excellence, integrity, and out-of-the-box thinking.  Our customers have high expectations (rightfully so) and we wouldn’t have it any other way!   Northwest Cadence has some of the most exciting customers I have ever worked with and even though I have only been here just over a month I have already: Provided training/consulting for 3 government departments Created and taught courseware for delivering Scrum to teams within a high profile multinational company Started presenting Microsoft's ALM Engagement Program  So if you are interested in helping companies build better software more efficiently, then.. Enquire at [email protected] Application Lifecycle Management (ALM) Consultant An ALM Consultant with a minimum of 8 years of relevant experience with Application Lifecycle Management, Visual Studio (including Visual Studio Team System) and software design is needed. Must provide thought leadership on best practices for enterprise architecture, understand the Microsoft technology solution stack, and have a thorough understanding of enterprise application integration. The ALM Practice Lead will play a central role in designing and implementing the overall ALM Practice strategy, including creating, updating, and delivering ALM courseware and consultancy engagements. This person will also provide project support, deliverables, and quality solutions on Visual Studio Team System that exceed client expectations. Engagements will vary and will involve providing expert training, consulting, mentoring, formulating technical strategies and policies and acting as a “trusted advisor” to customers and internal teams. Sound sense of business and technical strategy required. Strong interpersonal skills as well as solid strategic thinking are key. The ideal candidate will be capable of envisioning the solution based on the early client requirements, communicating the vision to both technical and business stakeholders, leading teams through implementation, as well as training, mentoring, and hands-on software development. The ideal candidate will demonstrate successful use of both agile and formal software development methods, enterprise application patterns, and effective leadership on prior projects. Job Requirements Minimum Education: Bachelor’s Degree (computer science, engineering, or math preferred). Locale / Travel: The Practice Lead position requires estimated 50% travel, most of which will be in the Continental US (a valid national Passport must be maintained).  This is a full time position and will be based in the Kirkland office. Preferred Education: Master’s Degree in Information Technology or Software Engineering; Premium Microsoft Certifications on .NET (MCSD) or MCPD or relevant experience; Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT) or relevant experience. Minimum Experience and Skills: 7+ years experience with business information systems integration or custom business application design and development in a professional technology consulting, corporate MIS or software development environment. Essential Duties & Responsibilities: Provide training, consulting, and mentoring to organizations on topics that include Visual Studio Team System and ALM. Create content, including labs and demonstrations, to be delivered as training classes by Northwest Cadence employees. Lead development teams through the complete ALM and/or Visual Studio Team System solution. Be able to communicate in detail how a solution will integrate into the larger technical problem space for large, complex enterprises. Define technical solution requirements. Provide guidance to the customer and project team with respect to technical feasibility, complexity, and level of effort required to deliver a custom solution. Ensure that the solution is designed, developed and deployed in accordance with the agreed upon development work plan. Create and deliver weekly status reports of training and/or consulting progress. Engagement Responsibilities: · Provide a strong desire to provide thought leadership related to technology and to help grow the business. · Work effectively and professionally with employees at all levels of a customer’s organization. · Have strong verbal and written communication skills. · Have effective presentation, organizational and planning skills. · Have effective interpersonal skills and ability to work in a team environment. Enquire at [email protected]

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• WordPress is now nicely supported on SQL Server (and SQL Azure for that matter)

  - by Eric Nelson

  WordPress is enormously popular for blogs and full websites thanks to an awesome eco system which has built up around it, the simplicity (relatively) of getting it up and running plus the flexibility to “bend it” in all sorts of directions. When I say bend, check out the following which are all WordPress sites My “back up blog” http://iupdateable.wordpress.com/  My groups “odd site” :) http://ubelly.com My favourite “cheap games” site http://www.frugalgaming.co.uk/  WordPress users typically run their sites on Linux and MySQL, although PHP (the language in which WordPress is written) can be happily run on Windows. Both fine technologies in their own right, but for me (and probably a fair few others) I would love to use WordPress but with the technologies I know best (aka Windows, IIS and SQL Server). However, that has proven to be actually rather tricky in practice to get working – until now. Earlier last month OmniTI released a patch for WordPress which provides SQL Server and SQL Azure support.  In parallel with that some fine folks inside Microsoft have also created http://wordpress.visitmix.com which contains information about running WordPress on the Microsoft platform with a particular focus on SQL Server and SQL Azure.  Top stuff! To run WordPress with SQL Server: Download and Install the WordPress on SQL Server Distro/Patch And then you will quite likely need to migrate: Check out how to Migrate to Windows and SQL Server by Zach Owens who is moving his blog to Windows and SQL Server Enjoy Related Links Running PHP on IIS on Windows http://php.iis.net/  If PHP is not your thing, then the following Blog engines are .NET based BlogEngine http://www.dotnetblogengine.net/ DasBlog http://www.dasblog.info/ Subtext http://subtextproject.com/ (which happens to power http://geekswithblogs.net where my main blog is http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable)

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• Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.2 (June 2010)

  - by Eric Nelson

  Yey – we have a public release of the Windows Azure Tools which fully supports Visual Studio 2010 RTM and the .NET 4 Framework. And the biggy I have been waiting for – IntelliTrace support to debug your cloud deployed services (Requires  VS2010 Ultimate) Download today http://bit.ly/azuretoolsjune New for version 1.2: Visual Studio 2010 RTM Support: Full support for Visual Studio 2010 RTM. .NET 4 support: Choose to build services targeting either the .NET 3.5 or .NET 4 framework. Cloud storage explorer: Displays a read-only view of Windows Azure tables and blob containers through Server Explorer. Integrated deployment: Deploy services directly from Visual Studio by selecting ‘Publish’ from Solution Explorer. Service monitoring: Keep track of the state of your services through the ‘compute’ node in Server Explorer. IntelliTrace support for services running in the cloud: Adds support for debugging services in the cloud by using the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliTrace feature. This is enabled by using the deployment feature, and logs are retrieved through Server Explorer. Related Links: http://ukazure.ning.com for UK fans of Windows Azure IntelliTrace explained

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• Should GeeksWithBlogs move to the Wordpress Platform?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  Geekswithblogs was my first ever blog and my first post was on 22nd June 2006. Since then very little functionality has been added. This is not a complaint, but rather an observation that it is very hard to keep up with all of the blogging capabilities that people want. My point would be: “Why bother!” Vote now for a migration of the awesome Geekswithblogs content from SubText to Wordpress. Having been a long time user of GWB I have been worried of late by my envy of other blogging platforms. I made a number of requests around 10 months ago for things that almost all blogging platforms provide, but which are not available on GWB. Support other comment frameworks – The current comment system is so antiquated that it does not even have the common filters like Facebook, twitter or Google login to help prevent spam. Tags are not listed in the RSS – This can prevent you from getting the Google juice that you deserve 301 redirects to a single URL– If you use a custom URL then all your posts are split between both the GWB URL and the custom one. This is VERY bas for SEO. I realise that it is difficult to find time to add all of the features that all the uber geeks on this site want, so why bother… lets move to the most popular and moded platform available and allow everyone to add whatever widgets they like. Figure: Vote for Geekswithblogs moving to Wordpress Why would I want this? There are over 13k plugins available Easy augmentation model Full mobile support Regular releases lots more… This could be a turning point in the legendary history of Geeks With Blogs, be part of it… What can I do to make this happen? I need your help to make this happen: Vote for it Discuss it

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• Do you know that every user story should have an owner?

  - by Martin Hinshelwood

  When you are building complicated software and working with customers it is always nice for them to have some idea on who to speak to about a particular story during a sprint. In order to achieve this one of the Team takes responsibility for “looking after” a story. They will collect all of the “Done” emails and make sure that everyone follows the Done criteria identified by the team as well as answering any Product Owner queries. Figure: Bad example, The product owner is not sure who to speak to. Figure: Good example, The product owner can now see who he should speak to an developers know where to send done emails.   Technorati Tags: SSW,Scrum,SSW Rules,Rules to better Scrum with TFS

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• Making the most of next weeks SharePoint 2010 developer training

  - by Eric Nelson

  [you can still register if you are free on the afternoons of 9th to 11th – UK time] We have 50+ registrations with more coming in – which is fantastic. Please read on to make the most of the training. Background We have structured the training to make sure that you can still learn lots during the three days even if you do not have SharePoint 2010 installed. Additionally the course is based around a subset of the channel 9 training to allow you to easily dig deeper or look again at specific areas. Which means if you have zero time between now and next Wednesday then you are still good to go. But if you can do some pre-work you will likely get even more out of the three days. Step 1: Check out the topics and resources available on-demand The course is based around a subset of the channel 9 training to allow you to easily dig deeper or look again at specific areas. Take a lap around the SharePoint 2010 Training Course on Channel 9 Download the SharePoint Developer Training Kit Step 2: Use a pre-configured Virtual Machine which you can download (best start today – it is large!) Consider using the VM we created If you don't have access to SharePoint 2010. You will need a 64bit host OS and bare minimum of 4GB of RAM. 8GB recommended. Virtual PC can not be used with this VM – Virtual PC only supports 32bit guests. The 2010-7a Information Worker VM gives you everything you need to develop for SharePoint 2010. Watch the Video on how to use this VM Download the VM Remember you only need to download the “parts” for the 2010-7a VM. There are 3 subtly different ways of using this VM: Easiest is to follow the advice of the video and get yourself a host OS of Windows Server 2008 R2 with Hyper-V and simply use the VM Alternatively you can take the VHD and create a “Boot to VHD” if you have Windows 7 Ultimate or Enterprise Edition. This works really well – especially if you are already familiar with “Boot to VHD” (This post I did will help you get started) Or you can take the VHD and use an alternative VM tool such as VirtualBox if you have a different host OS. NB: This tends to involve some work to get everything running fine. Check out parts 1 to 3 from Rolly and if you go with Virtual Box use an IDE controller not SATA. SATA will blue screen. Note in the screenshot below I also converted the vhd to a vmdk. I used the FREE Starwind Converter to do this whilst I was fighting blue screens – not sure its necessary as VirtualBox does now work with VHDs. or Step 3 – Install SharePoint 2010 on a 64bit Windows 7 or Vista Host I haven’t tried this but it is now supported. Check out MSDN. Final notes: I am in the process of securing a number of hosted VMs for ISVs directly managed by my team. Your Architect Evangelist will have details once I have them! Else we can sort out on the Wed. Regrettably I am unable to give folks 1:1 support on any issues around Boot to VHD, 3rd party VM products etc. Related Links: Check you are fully plugged into the work of my team – have you done these simple steps including joining our new LinkedIn group?

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