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• Silverlight Cream for February 10, 2011 -- #1045

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Mark Monster, Jaime Rodriguez, Mark Hopkins, WindowsPhoneGeek, David Anson, Jesse Liberty, Jeremy Likness, Martin Krüger(-2-), Beth Massi, Joost van Schaik, Laurent Bugnion, and Arik Poznanski. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Parsing the Visual Tree with LINQ" Jeremy Likness WP7: "Silverlight-ready PNG encoder implementation shows one way to use .NET IEnumerables effectively" David Anson Lightswitch: "How to Send Automated Appointments from a LightSwitch Application" Beth Massi Shoutouts: Be sure to visit SilverlightShow... check out their top hits last week: SilverlightShow for Jan 31- Feb 06, 2011 Jaime Rodriguez has a post up that all the WP7 folks will be interested in: FAQ about copy paste functionality in upcoming release From SilverlightCream.com: Make use of WCF FaultContracts in Silverlight clients Mark Monster takes a shot at answering “The remote server returned an error: NotFound” while connecting to a WCF Service problem we all see. Communication between HTML in WebBrowser and Silverlight app Jaime Rodriguez responds to questions he received about communication between HTML and SIlverlight with this post about the bi-directional communication between the control and HTML. WP7 - Real Apps, Real Code Mark Hopkins has a post up about some WP7 starter kits that you can get all the source for and actually download the app from the Marketplace first to see if it interests you! WP7 AboutPrompt in depth WindowsPhoneGeek has this cool post up about the AboutPrompt from the Coding4Fun toolkit in detail... great diagrams showing where all the elements are and code examples with images. Silverlight-ready PNG encoder implementation shows one way to use .NET IEnumerables effectively David Anson describes why he took it upon himself to write his own png encoder for Silverlight... and we all thank him for doing so and providing us with the code! Navigation 101–Cancelling Navigation Jesse Liberty's latest WP7 From Scratch episode is up (number 32), and he's talking about Navigation and how to cancel it if you need to. Parsing the Visual Tree with LINQ Jeremy Likness demonstrates using LINQ to rat out information in the visual tree of your XAML. To Quote Jeremy: "you can easily check for intersections between elements and find any type of element no matter how deep within the tree it is". SpriteAnimationBehavior Martin Krüger has a couple more fun things in the Expression Gallery that I haven't discussed. First up is a behavior that animates up to 999 images and lets you control the FramesPerSecond... great demo on the ExpressionGallery to play with. Second alternative: Storyboard should not start before the Silverlight application is loaded Martin Krüger's latest is a way to programmatically wait for the Loaded event so that you know you can let your animations fly. How to Send Automated Appointments from a LightSwitch Application Beth Massi's latest Lightswitch post follows up her Outlook automation one with sending appointments using the standard iCalendar format... all the code included of course. The case for the Bindable Application Bar for Windows Phone 7 Joost van Schaik posts about a bindable Application Bar for your WP7 apps... grab the code and don't leave home without it :) MVVM Light V4 preview (BL0014) release notes Laurent Bugnion posted an update to MVVMLight to Codeplex a couple days ago. This is an early preview of what he plans on having in version 4, so check out the post for what's new and fun. Search Digg on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski followed up his RSS post from last week with this one on searching Digg on WP7... and he's discussing and providing a utility class for doing it. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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

  - by Jeff

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

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• Functional programming constructs in non-functional programming languages

  - by Giorgio

  This question has been going through my mind quite a lot lately and since I haven't found a convincing answer to it I would like to know if other users of this site have thought about it as well. In the recent years, even though OOP is still the most popular programming paradigm, functional programming is getting a lot of attention. I have only used OOP languages for my work (C++ and Java) but I am trying to learn some FP in my free time because I find it very interesting. So, I started learning Haskell three years ago and Scala last summer. I plan to learn some SML and Caml as well, and to brush up my (little) knowledge of Scheme. Well, a lot of plans (too ambitious?) but I hope I will find the time to learn at least the basics of FP during the next few years. What is important for me is how functional programming works and how / whether I can use it for some real projects. I have already developed small tools in Haskell. In spite of my strong interest for FP, I find it difficult to understand why functional programming constructs are being added to languages like C#, Java, C++, and so on. As a developer interested in FP, I find it more natural to use, say, Scala or Haskell, instead of waiting for the next FP feature to be added to my favourite non-FP language. In other words, why would I want to have only some FP in my originally non-FP language instead of looking for a language that has a better support for FP? For example, why should I be interested to have lambdas in Java if I can switch to Scala where I have much more FP concepts and access all the Java libraries anyway? Similarly: why do some FP in C# instead of using F# (to my knowledge, C# and F# can work together)? Java was designed to be OO. Fine. I can do OOP in Java (and I would like to keep using Java in that way). Scala was designed to support OOP + FP. Fine: I can use a mix of OOP and FP in Scala. Haskell was designed for FP: I can do FP in Haskell. If I need to tune the performance of a particular module, I can interface Haskell with some external routines in C. But why would I want to do OOP with just some basic FP in Java? So, my main point is: why are non-functional programming languages being extended with some functional concept? Shouldn't it be more comfortable (interesting, exciting, productive) to program in a language that has been designed from the very beginning to be functional or multi-paradigm? Don't different programming paradigms integrate better in a language that was designed for it than in a language in which one paradigm was only added later? The first explanation I could think of is that, since FP is a new concept (it isn't new at all, but it is new for many developers), it needs to be introduced gradually. However, I remember my switch from imperative to OOP: when I started to program in C++ (coming from Pascal and C) I really had to rethink the way in which I was coding, and to do it pretty fast. It was not gradual. So, this does not seem to be a good explanation to me. Also, I asked myself if my impression is just plainly wrong due to lack of knowledge. E.g., do C# and C++11 support FP as extensively as, say, Scala or Caml do? In this case, my question would be simply non-existent. Or can it be that many non-FP programmers are not really interested in using functional programming, but they find it practically convenient to adopt certain FP-idioms in their non-FP language? IMPORTANT NOTE Just in case (because I have seen several language wars on this site): I mentioned the languages I know better, this question is in no way meant to start comparisons between different programming languages to decide which is better / worse. Also, I am not interested in a comparison of OOP versus FP (pros and cons). The point I am interested in is to understand why FP is being introduced one bit at a time into existing languages that were not designed for it even though there exist languages that were / are specifically designed to support FP.

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• Don&rsquo;t Kill the Password

  - by Anthony Trudeau

  A week ago Mr. Honan from Wired.com penned an article on security he titled “Kill the Password: Why a String of Characters Can’t Protect Us Anymore.” He asserts that the password is not effective and a new solution is needed. Unfortunately, Mr. Honan was a victim of hacking. As a result he has a victim’s vendetta. His conclusion is ill conceived even though there are smatterings of truth and good advice. The password is a security barrier much like a lock on your door. In of itself it’s not guaranteeing protection. You can have a good password akin to a steel reinforced door with the best lock money can buy, or you can have a poor password like “password” which is like a sliding lock like on a bathroom stall. But, just like in the real world a lock isn’t always enough. You can have a lock, security system, video cameras, guard dogs, and even armed security guards; but none of that guarantees your protection. Even top secret government agencies can be breached by someone who is just that good (as dramatized in movies like Mission Impossible). And that’s the crux of it. There are real hackers out there that are that good. Killer coding ninja monkeys do exist! We still have locks on our doors, because they still serve their role. Passwords are no different. Security doesn’t end with the password. Most people would agree that stuffing your mattress with your life savings isn’t a good idea even if you have the best locks and security system. Most people agree its safest to have the money in a bank. Essentially this is compartmentalization. Compartmentalization extends to the online world as well. You’re at risk if your online banking accounts are linked to the same account as your social networks. This is especially true if you’re lackadaisical about linking those social networks to outside sources including apps. The object here is to minimize the damage that can be done. An attacker should not be able to get into your bank account, because they breached your Twitter account. It’s time to prioritize once you’ve compartmentalized. This simply means deciding how much security you want for the different compartments which I’ll call security zones. Social networking applications like Facebook provide a lot of security features. However, security features are almost always a compromise with privacy and convenience. It’s similar to an engineering adage, but in this case it’s security, convenience, and privacy – pick two. For example, you might use a safe instead of bank to store your money, because the convenience of having your money closer or the privacy of not having the bank records is more important than the added security. The following are lists of security do’s and don’ts (these aren’t meant to be exhaustive and each could be an article in of themselves): Security Do’s: Use strong passwords based on a phrase Use encryption whenever you can (e.g. HTTPS in Facebook) Use a firewall (and learn to use it properly) Configure security on your router (including port blocking) Keep your operating system patched Make routine backups of important files Realize that if you’re not paying for it, you’re the product Security Don’ts Link accounts if at all possible Reuse passwords across your security zones Use real answers for security questions (e.g. mother’s maiden name) Trust anything you download Ignore message boxes shown by your system or browser Forget to test your backups Share your primary email indiscriminately Only you can decide your comfort level between convenience, privacy, and security. Attackers are going to find exploits in software. Software is complex and depends on other software. The exploits are the responsibility of the software company. But your security is always your responsibility. Complete security is an illusion. But, there is plenty you can do to minimize the risk online just like you do in the physical world. Be safe and enjoy what the Internet has to offer. I expect passwords to be necessary just as long as locks.

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• Earn $10 for each friend you refer to FREE Amazon Mom Account

  - by Gopinath

  If you are looking for options to earn some handful of referral bonuses then here is a great deal from Amazon. You can earn $10 for every friend/family member you refer to join free Amazon Mom trail account. What is Amazon Mom by the way? Amazon Mom is a free membership program created especially for parents and caretakers of small children. It gives free 2 days shipping of products purchased on Amazon.com, 20% discount on diapers, wipes and other baby stuff.  Though the name says Mom, it’s open to any one who has children. It does not matter whether you are father, grand parent, aunty or uncle. You can join the program and avail all the benefits of the program. It costs nothing to join FREE 3 months trail Amazon Mom costs $79/year, but anyone can join FREE 3 months trail and explore it with no cost. At the end of your 3 months trail you may either continue the program by paying the required amount or just opt out of it without any charges. You can learn more details about the Amazon Mom program benefits over here. To earn bonus you need to refer friends to join the free 3 months trail and as soon as they join Amazon will automatically credit $10 bonus to your Amazon.com account. Did you ever make money? Couple of weeks ago I saw this promotion and referred my friends. They loved the program as it gives a lot of discounts on baby diapers, wipes and they immediately joined. Within a 10 days they joined the program, Amazon sent emails to me confirming referral bonus. Here is a screen grab of one such referral email and my Amazon bonus are adding up every day as referrals pulling more people in to this program     How to refer friends and earn bonus? So you are ready to refer your friends and here are the steps to be followed Sign in to your Amazon.com account Go to Amazon Mom Referral page and copy the referral link displayed on screen Start sharing the link with your friends and request them to join the free trail If you own a blog or website, write about the program and let your readers know about it. You can also have a image banner on your website with referral link. Facebook and Twitter are the other two places where you can share the referral links and bring your friends on board. Know the rules and don’t gamble Amazon Mom referral program has few conditions that must be satisfied. Make sure that you read and understand all of them. Final and most important one is not to gamble Amazon! Yes, don’t play tricks like referring yourself or creating fake Amazon Mom accounts  in order to earn money. By gambling you may be able to cheat Amazon for a while, but as soon as Amazon detects the fraud  you will be booted out of their system.  Being on the good side always takes you in right direction and helps you earn money.

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• I spy a Live Framework portal

  - by jamiet

  Those that have followed my blogs for a while may know that I have a slightly banal interest in Windows Live and, more specifically, the Live Services developer platform'; if that doesn’t sound interesting to you then stop reading now. My interest mainly stems from the Live Mesh technology that was announced a couple of years ago and the data synchronisation platform API that underpins it; that platform is called the Live Framework or LiveFX for short. At the Professional Developer’s Conference (PDC) 2008 Microsoft made LiveFX available to the public as a Tech Preview and I spent some time learning to use it and also built a few test apps on it too. In August 2009 an announcement came that that tech preview was getting shut down: "At the Professional Developer Conference 2008, we gave the developer community access to the technical preview of the Live Framework. The Live Framework is core to our vision of providing you with a consistent programming interface. Now we are working to integrate existing services, controls and the Live Framework into the next release of Windows Live. Your feedback continues to help us build the best possible offerings for Windows Live users, for you and for your customers. " Since then news on LiveFX has disappeared save for a throwaway session at PDC09 and I was hoping that news was going to appear at this week’s MIX conference but nothing was forthcoming. Instead though today I stumbled upon an unannounced portal for future LiveFX applications on Microsoft’s Azure portal at http://live.azure.com. Check it out: I consider this to be very good news. This Azure portal was built after the LiveFX tech preview was decommissioned so seeing Live Services existing so prominently alongside Microsoft’s other cloud efforts like Windows Azure and SQL Azure vindicates my early investment in the platform and gives me hope that we’re going to see something get released very very soon. I believe that the potential uses for this platform are extremely compelling and I’m looking forward to trying some out in the near future. I am also expecting LiveFX to have a heavy dependency on the OData protocol that I talked about yesterday in my post OData.org updated - gives clues about future sql azure enhancements so you can tell where my interest in that stems from. In case you’re wondering the projects that you see listed above (Basic List Sample, JT-proj etc…) are projects that I built on the old Tech Preview platform so clearly that stuff has not gone for good which is also good news; not just because it means I’ll have access to the code I wrote before but I also assume it means that LiveFX won’t have changed much since its tech preview incarnation. I know there are other LiveFX buffs out there and hopefully this news reaches some of them. If you are one of them the please put a comment below and let me know your thoughts! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• Cross platform application revolution

  - by anirudha

  Every developer know that if they make a windows application that they work only on windows. that’s a small pity thing we all know. this is a lose point for windows application who make developer thing small means only for windows and other only for mac. this is a big point behind success of web because who purchase a operating system if they want to use a application on other platform. why they purchase when they can’t try them. that’s a thing better in Web means IE 6 no problem IE 6 to IE 8 chrome to chrome 8 Firefox to Firefox 3.6.13 even that’s beta no problem the good website is shown as same as other browser. some minor difference may be can see. the cross platform application development thinking is much big then making a application who is only for some audience. the difference between audience make by OS what they use Windows or mac. if they use mac they can’t use this they use windows they can’t use this. Web for Everyone starting from a children to grandfather. male and female Everyone can use internet.no worrying what you have even you have Windows or mac , any browser even as silly IE 6. the cross platform have a good thing that “People”. everyone can use them without a problem that. just like some time problem come in windows that “some component is missing click here to get them” , you can’t use this [apps] software because you have windows sp1 , sp2  sp3. you need to install this first before this. this stupidity mainly comes in Microsoft software. in last year i found a issue on WPI that they force user to install another software when they get them from WPI. ex:- you need to install Visual studio 2008 before installing Visual studio 2010 express. are anyone tell me why user get old version 2008 when they get latest and express version. i never try again their to check the issue is solved or not. a another thing is you can’t get IE 9 on windows XP version. in that’case don’t thing and worrying about them because Firefox and Chrome is much better. the stupidity from Microsoft is too much. they never told you about Firebug even sometime they discuss about damage tool in IE they called them developer tool because they are Microsoft and they only thing how they can market their products. you need to install many thing without any reason such as many SQL server component even you use other RDBMS. you can’t say no to them because you need a tool and tool require a useless component called SQL server. i never found any software force me to install this for this and this for this before install me. that’s another good thing in WEB that no thing require i means you not need to install dotnet framework 4 before enjoy facebook or twitter. may be you found out that Microsoft's fail project Window planet force you to get silverlight before going their. i never hear about them. some month ago my friend talked to me about them i found nothing better their. Wha’t user do when facebook force user to install silverlight or adobe flash or may be Microsoft dotnet framework 4. if you not install them facebook tell  you bye bye tata ! never come here before installing Microsoft dotnet framework 4. the door is open for you after installing them not before. the story is same as “ tell me sorry before coming in home” as mother says to their child when they do something wrong. the web never force you to do something for them. sometime they allow you to use other website account their that’s very fast login for you. because they know the importance of your time.

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• Gamify your Web

  - by Isabel F. Peñuelas

  Yesterday Valencia welcomed the Gamification World Congress that I follow virtually through #GWC2012. BBVA, Iberia, Ligeresa, Axe, Wayra, ESADE, GlaxoSmithKline, Macmillan, Gamisfaction, Nomaders, Blaffin were among the companies presenting success stories on gaming. It has been proved that people remember things easily when an emotion is created. The marketing expectations around Gamification techniques have a lot to do with Neuromarketing theories. There are a lot of expectations on internal enterprise Gamification. In the public Web some sectors are taking the lead on following the trend. The Gartner Analyst Brian Burke opened another Gamification recent event in Madrid remembering that “Gamification is mostly about Engagement”, and this can be applied both to customers or employees. Gamification and Banking The experience of the Spanish Financial Group BBVA that just launched BBVA Game was also presented a week ago at the BBVA Innovation Centre during the event “Gamification & Banking: a fad or a serious business?” . One of the objectives of the BBVA Game was to double the name of registered users. “People like the efficiency of the online channel want to keep a one-to-one contact with the brand”-explained Bernardo Crespo. Another interested data coming out the BBVA presentation was that “only 20% of Spanish users –out of the total holders of Bank Accounts in the country- is familiar with the use of a Web Site to consult their bank accounts”, the project aims also to reverse this situation helping people to learn making a heavy use of the Video in the gaming context. In general Banking presenters seem to agree that Gamification techniques are helping to increase the time spent on the Web. Gamification and Health Using Gamification techniques for chronic illness rehabilitation was another topic of the World Congress. Here you can find some ideas and experiences What can games do for the health (In Spanish) I have personally started my own mental-health gaming project at http://www.lumosity.com/ Gamification in the Enterprise I really recommend Reading this excellent post of Ultan ÓBroin my Introduction to Gamification and Applications. Employee´s motivation and learning are experiencing a 360º turn and it looks than some of us will become soon the Dragon of the year instead of the Employee of the Year. Using Web 2.0 Tools for Gamification Projects  What type of tools do we need for a quick-win Gamification project? To certain extend Gamification can be considered an evolution of the participative Web. Badging, avatars, points and awards, leader boards, progress charts, virtual currencies, gifting and giving challenges and quests are common components and elements. The Web is offering new development frameworks to that purpose as this Avatar Framework from Paypal or Badgeville to include in web applications. Besides, tools to create communities around a game are required to comment, share and vote players as well as for an efficient multimedia management. Due to its entirely open architecture, its community features, and its multimedia and imaging solutions is were I see WebCenter as a tool helping brands to success. Link to Sources & Recommended Readings YouTube Video of BBVAGame presentation Where To Apply Gamification In Your Incentive Jim Calhoun Cancer Challenge Ride and Walkh For my Spanish Readers El aburrimiento es el enemigo número uno del éxito

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• #MIX Day 2 Keynote: Put the Phone Down and Listen

  - by andrewbrust

  MIX day 1’s keynote was all about Windows Phone 7 (WP7).  MIX day 2’s was a reminder that Microsoft has much more going on than a new mobile platform.  Steven Sinofsky, Scott Guthrie, Doug Purdy and others showed us lots of other good things coming from Microsoft, mostly in the developer stack, that we certainly shouldn’t overlook.  These included the forthcoming IE9, its new JavaScript compiling engine and support for HTML 5 that takes full advantage of the local PC resources, including the Graphics Processing Unit.  The announcements also included important additions to ASP.NET (and one subtraction, in the form of lighter-weight ViewState technology) including almost-obsessive jQuery support.  That support is so good that John Resig, creator of the jQuery project, came on stage to tell us so.  Then Scott Guthrie told us that Microsoft would be contributing code to Open Source jQuery project. This is not your father’s Microsoft, it would seem. But to me, the crown jewel in today’s keynote were the numerous announcements around the Open Data Protocol (OData).  OData is nothing more than the protocol side of “Astoria” (now known as WCF Data Services, and until recently called ADO.NET Data Services) separated out and opened up as a platform-neutral standard.  The 2009 Professional Developers Conference (PDC) was Microsoft’s vehicle for first announcing OData, as well as project “Dallas,” an Azure-based cloud platform for publishing commercial OData feeds.  And we had already known about “bridges” for Astoria (and thus OData) for PHP and Java.  We also knew that PowerPivot, Microsoft’s forthcoming self-service BI plug-in for Excel 2010, will consume OData feeds and then facilitate drill-down analysis of their data.  And we recently found out that SQL Reporting Services reports (in the forthcoming SQL Server 2008 R2) and SharePoint 2010 lists will be consumable in OData format as well. So what was left to announce?  How about OData clients for Palm webOS and Apple iPhone/Objective C?  How about the release to Open Source of .NET’s OData client?  Or the ability to publish any SQL Azure database as an OData service by simply checking a checkbox at deployment?  Maybe even a Silverlight tool (code-named “Houston”) to create SQL Azure databases (and then publish them as OData) right in the browser?  And what if you you could get at NetFlix’s entire catalog in OData format?  You can – just go to http://odata.netflix.com/Catalog/ and see for yourself.  Douglas Purdy, who made these announcements said “we want OData to work on as many devices and platforms as possible.”  After all the cross-platform OData announcements made in about a half year’s time, it’s hard to dispute this. When Microsoft plays the data card, and plays it well, watch out, because data programmability is the company’s heritage.  I’ll be discussing OData at length in my April Redmond Review column.  I wrote that column two weeks ago, and was convinced then that OData was a big deal. Today upped the ante even more.  And following the Windows Phone 7 euphoria of yesterday was, I think, smart timing.  The phone, if it’s successful, will be because it’s a good developer platform play.  And developer platforms (as well as their creators) are most successful when they have a good data strategy.  OData is very Silverlight-friendly, and that means it’s WP7-friendly too.  Phone plus service-oriented data is a one-two punch.  A phone platform without data would have been a phone with no signal.

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• TiVo Follow-up&hellip;Training Opportunities

  - by MightyZot

  A few posts ago I talked about my experience with TiVo Customer Service. While I didn’t receive bad service per se, I felt like the reps could have communicated better. I made the argument that it should be just as easy to leave a company as it is to engage with a company, even though my intention is to remain a TiVo fan. I worked for DataStorm Technologies in the early 90s. I pointed out to another developer that we were leaving files behind in our installations. My opinion was that, if the customer is uninstalling our application, there should be no trace of it left after uninstall except for the customer’s data. He replied with, “screw ‘em. They’re leaving us. Why do we care if we left anything behind?” Wow. Surely there is a lot of arrogance in that statement. Think about this…how often do you change your services, devices, or whatever?  Personally, I change things up about once every two or three years. If I don’t change things up, I at least think about it. So, every two or three years there is an opportunity for you (as a vendor or business) to sell me something. (That opportunity actually exists all the time, because there are many of these two or three year periods overlapping.) Likewise, you have the opportunity to win back my business every two or three years as well. Customer service on exit is just as important as customer service during engagement because, every so often, you have another chance to gain back my loyalty. If you screw that up on exit, your chances are close to zero. In addition, you need to consider all of the potential or existing customers that are part of or affected by my social organizations. “Melissa” at TiVo gave me a call last week and set up some time to talk about my experience. We talked yesterday and she gave me a few moments to pontificate about my thoughts on the importance of a complete customer experience. She had listened to my customer support calls and agreed that I had made it clear that I intended to remain a TiVo customer even though suddenLink is handling my subscription. She said that suddenLink is a very important partner for them and, of course, they want to do everything they can to support TiVo / suddenLink customers.  “Melissa” also said that they had turned this experience into a training opportunity for the reps involved. I hope that is true, because that “programmer arrogance” that I mentioned above (which was somewhat pervasive back then) may be part of the reason why that company is no longer around. Good job “Melissa”!  And, like I said, I am still a TiVo fan. In fact, we love our new TiVo and many of the great new features. In addition, if you’re one of the two people that read these posts, please remember that these are just opinions. Your experiences may be, and likely will be, completely unique to you.

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• Personal Technology – Excel Tip: Comparing Excel Files

  - by Pinal Dave

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

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• SQL SERVER – master Database Log File Grew Too Big

  - by pinaldave

  Couple of the days ago, I received following email and I find this email very interesting and I feel like sharing with all of you. Note: Please read the whole email before providing your suggestions. “Hi Pinal, If you can share these details on your blog, it will help many. We understand the value of the master database and we take its regular back up (everyday midnight). Yesterday we noticed that our master database log file has grown very large. This is very first time that we have encountered such an issue. The master database is in simple recovery mode; so we assumed that it will never grow big; however, we now have a big log file. We ran the following command USE [master] GO DBCC SHRINKFILE (N'mastlog' , 0, TRUNCATEONLY) GO We know this command will break the chains of LSN but as per our understanding; it should not matter as we are in simple recovery model.     After running this, the log file becomes very small. Just to be cautious, we took full backup of the master database right away. We totally understand that this is not the normal practice; so if you are going to tell us the same, we are aware of it. However, here is the question for you? What operation in master database would have caused our log file to grow too large? Thanks, [name and company name removed as per request]“ Here was my response to them: “Hi [name removed], It is great that you are aware of all the right steps and method. Taking full backup when you are not sure is always a good practice. Regarding your question what could have caused your master database log to grow larger, let me try to guess what could have happened. Do you have any user table in the master database? If yes, this is not recommended and also NOT a good practice. If have user tables in master database and you are doing any long operation (may be lots of insert, update, delete or rebuilding them), then it can cause this situation. You have made me curious about your scenario; do revert back. Kind Regards, Pinal” Within few minutes I received reply: “That was it Pinal. We had one of the maintenance task log tables created in the master table, which had many long transactions during the night. We moved it to newly created database named ‘maintenance’, and we will keep you updated.” I was very glad to receive the email. I do not suggest that any user table should be created in the master database. It should be left alone from user objects. Now here is the question for you – can you think of any other reason for master log file growth? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Installation problem Ubuntu 12.04 Crashing hardware error

  - by user93640

  I am running on Ubuntu 8.04 for quite some time without many problems. About almost a year ago or so I have been trying to upgrade to 10.04 LTS, but without any success. Each time when trying to upgrade or even newly install the installation process crashed after about an hour or so (I forgot exactly how long). Now I wanted to try Ubuntu 12.04 (not even installing, but I only selected "Try Ubuntu without installing") and I got similar errors. I did not try to install it, because of earlier experience with 10.04 when after I also lost 8.04 and had to install from scratch again (after which it worked). I get the following screen (as I am not allowed to upload photos here the text): 26.767262] [Hardware Error]: CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 0 Bank 5: b200001804000e0f 26.767279] [Hardware Error]: TSC 0 26.767287] [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:6f6 TIME 1349017924 SOCKET 0 APIC 0 microcode 44 26.767297] [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' 26.767307] [Hardware Error]: CPU 1: Machine Check Exception: 0 Bank 1: b200000000000175 26.767316] [Hardware Error]: TSC 0 26.767323] [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:6f6 TIME 1349017924 SOCKET 0 APIC 1 microcode 44 26.767331] [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' 26.767339] [Hardware Error]: CPU 1: Machine Check Exception: 0 Bank 5: b200003000000e0f 26.767348] [Hardware Error]: TSC 0 26.767354] [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:6f6 TIME 1349017924 SOCKET 0 APIC 1 microcode 44 26.767363] [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' 26.767371] [Hardware Error]: CPU 1: Machine Check Exception: 4 Bank 1: b200000000000175 26.767379] [Hardware Error]: TSC 1bf231e65f 26.767386] [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:6f6 TIME 1349017951 SOCKET 0 APIC 1 microcode 44 26.767395] [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' 26.767403] [Hardware Error]: CPU 1: Machine Check Exception: 4 Bank 5: b200003008000e0f 26.767413] [Hardware Error]: TSC 1bf231e65f 26.767421] [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:6f6 TIME 1349017951 SOCKET 0 APIC 1 microcode 44 26.767429] [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' 26.767437] [Hardware Error]: CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 5 Bank 5: b200001806000e0f 26.767447] [Hardware Error]: RIP |INEXACT| 60:<00000000c1018b5c> {mwait_idle+0x7c/0x1d0} 26.767464] [Hardware Error]: TSC 1bf231e674 26.767471] [Hardware Error]: PROCESSOR 0:6f6 TIME 1349017951 SOCKET 0 APIC 0 microcode 44 26.767480] [Hardware Error]: Run the above through 'mcelog --ascii' 26.767487] [Hardware Error]: Machine check: Processor context corrupt 26.767495] Kernel panic - not syncing: Fatal Machine check 26.767505] Pid: 579, comm: debconf-communi Tainted: G M 3.2.0.29-generic-pae #46-Ubuntu 26.767515] Call Trace: 26.767525] [<c158f812>] ? printk+0x2d/0x2f 26.767534] [<c158f6e0>] panic+0x5c/0x161 26.767542] [<c10247ef>] mce_panic.part.14+0x13f/0x170 26.767551] [<c1024872>] mce_panic+0x52/0x90 26.767558] [<c1024a18>] mce_reign+0x168/0x170 26.767565] [<c1024bb5>] mce_end+0x105/0x110 26.767572] [<c10252db>] do_machine_check+0x32b/0x4f0 26.767581] [<c1024fb0>] ? mce_log+0x120/0x120 26.767590] [<c15a5e47>] error_code+0x67/0x6c 26.767602] panic occurred, switching back to text console 26.768498] Rebooting in 30 seconds.. For information, I have also tried earlier Arch Linux. I can install it, but when I try to install a window manager (LXDE) again I got similar errors. Fedora also crashes when installing and also Mandriva did not work for me. Therefore I think something deep in the machine might be wrong. But as stated above I can (clean) install 8.04 and also 9.10 can be installed without problems. Also updates for 8.04 can be installed. My machine is dual boot with XP next to it on a different partition. My HW: Memory : 2.0 GiB; Processor 0: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6320 @ 1.86GHz; Processor 1: Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU 6320 @ 1.86GHz; How can I install Ubuntu 12.04? Last option would be to completely format my machine and install everything from scratch, but even I am not sure if that would solve it in the end. Can anybody help me out?

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• Lazy Evaluation &ndash; Why being lazy in F# blows my mind!

  - by MarkPearl

  First of all – shout out to Peter Adams – from the feedback I have gotten from him on the last few posts of F# that I have done – my mind has just been expanded. I did a blog post a few days ago about infinite sequences – I didn’t really understand what was going on with it, and I still don’t really get it – but I am getting closer. In Peter’s last comment he made mention of Lazy Evaluation. I am ashamed to say that up till then I had never heard about lazy evaluation – how can evaluation be lazy? I mean, I know about lazy loading and that makes sense… but surely something is either evaluated or not! Well… a bit of reading today and I have been enlightened to a point – if you do know of any good articles explaining lazy evaluation please send them to me. So what is lazy evaluation and why is it useful? Lazy evaluation is a process whereby the system only computes the values needed and “ignores” the computations not needed. I’m going out on a limb here, but with this explanation in hand, imagine the following C# code… public int CalculatedVal() { int Val1 = 0; int Val2 = 0; for (int Count = 0; Count < 1000000; Count++) { Val1++; } return Val2; }   Normally, even though Val1 is never needed, the system would loop 1000000 times and add 1 to the current value of Val1. Imagine if the system realized this and so just skipped this segment of code and instead did the following…. public int CalculatedVal() { int Val1 = 0; return Val2; }   A massive saving in computation and wasted effort. Now I am pretty sure it isn’t as simple as this but I think this is the basic idea. For a more detailed explanation of lazy evaluation in c#, Pedram Rezei has a wonderful post on lazy evaluation and makes some C# comparisons. I am not going to take any thunder from him by repeating everything he said since I think he did such a good job of explaining it himself. What I am interested in though is how in F# do you tell something to have lazy evalution, and how do you know if something will be eager or lazy by looking at it. I found this post was useful. From reading around F# by default uses eager evaluation unless explicitly told to use lazy evaluation. One exception to this is sequences, which are lazy by default. Now reading about lazy evaluation has helped me understand more about F# coding… From my understanding of F# because of its declarative nature, most of the actual code you are declaring properties and rules – very little code is actually saying do this right now - but when it comes to a “do this” code section, it then evaluates and optimizes code and applies the rules. So props to lazy evaluation and its optimizations…

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• The Oscar of Java Programming

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Why bother nominating a peer, yourself or your company for a Duke's Choice Award? I asked Duke's Choice Award winner Fabiane Nardon, whose team won in 2005 for the Healthcare Information System they created for the Brazilian government, what it was like winning the award and if it had any impact on her career. Here's what she told me: 1) What was it like to win a Duke's Choice Award? For me it was like winning an Oscar or a Grammy :-) I think that for a Java developer, a Duke's Choice Award is probably the highest award you can get, so it was really an honor. We had an amazing team working on that project and the team really deserved it. We were all very happy when we got that email with the announcement. That moment was one of the most important moments of my career. 2) What benefits have you gotten from being a "Duke's Choice Award Winner?" I think the most important benefit you get from winning a Duke is the fact that you become known by your peers. This opens many doors, since you are approached by more people, get invitations to speak in more conferences, you meet people with the same technical interests you have and so on. I certainly benefited a lot from it. We were lucky that in 2005, when we got our award, the winners were featured in the JavaOne keynote, with short documentaries produced about each one. So, we could be on the stage and talk a little about the project. We got lots of press at the time. We see  today's winners benefiting a lot from the press coverage. 3) How is the the Brazilian Healthcare Information System project doing today? Still running and getting new features every year. I'm not involved on the project anymore, but there are good people taking care of it. We opened the code since the beginning, so different cities could use and add features to it. There are many new developers working on that code base right now and I hope they can take the whole system to a new level. 4) What are you up to these days? I worked in the healthcare field for many years and a few years ago I decided that it was time to move on and take the experience I got designing large scale and mission critical systems to other fields. Since then I have been working with high access internet applications. I also co-founded ToolsCloud, a company that provides a development environment with open source tools in the cloud. We just launched ToolsCloud in USA, so other companies can get the same bundle of tools, hassle free, that several companies are successfully using in Brazil. Besides that, right now I'm personally working on the coolest project I ever worked on. It combines several technical challenges with a good dose of social impact. We should launch it in the second semester and I should keep it as a secret for now. Hopefully it will be useful to many people and disruptive enough to maybe get us a new Duke's Choice Award. Who knows? Read more about Fabiane in the "Heroes of Java" series by Markus Eisele. Her Twitter handle is @FabianeNardon. The Duke's Choice Awards celebrate extreme innovation in the world of Java technology. Nominate an individual, a group or company who show the best in Java innovation. Nominate via the easy online form at www.Java.net/dukeschoice. Nominations are open until June 15, 2012.

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• SQL SERVER – Guest Post – Glenn Berry – Wait Type – Day 26 of 28

  - by pinaldave

  Glenn Berry works as a Database Architect at NewsGator Technologies in Denver, CO. He is a SQL Server MVP, and has a whole collection of Microsoft certifications, including MCITP, MCDBA, MCSE, MCSD, MCAD, and MCTS. He is also an Adjunct Faculty member at University College – University of Denver, where he has been teaching since 2000. He is one wonderful blogger and often blogs at here. I am big fan of the Dynamic Management Views (DMV) scripts of Glenn. His script are extremely popular and the reality is that he has inspired me to start this series with his famous DMV which I have mentioned in very first  wait stats blog post (I had forgot to request his permission to re-use the script but when asked later on his whole hearty approved it). Here is is his excellent blog post on this subject of wait stats: Analyzing cumulative wait stats in SQL Server 2005 and above has become a popular and effective technique for diagnosing performance issues and further focusing your troubleshooting and diagnostic  efforts.  Rather than just guessing about what resource(s) that SQL Server is waiting on, you can actually find out by running a relatively simple DMV query. Once you know what resources that SQL Server is spending the most time waiting on, you can run more specific queries that focus on that resource to get a better idea what is causing the problem. I do want to throw out a few caveats about using wait stats as a diagnostic tool. First, they are most useful when your SQL Server instance is experiencing performance problems. If your instance is running well, with no indication of any resource pressure from other sources, then you should not worry that much about what the top wait types are. SQL Server will always be waiting on some resource, but many wait types are quite benign, and can be safely ignored. In spite of this, I quite often see experienced DBAs obsessing over the top wait type, even when their SQL Server instance is running extremely well. Second, I often see DBAs jump to the wrong conclusion based on seeing a particular well-known wait type. A good example is CXPACKET waits. People typically jump to the conclusion that high CXPACKET waits means that they should immediately change their instance-level MADOP setting to 1. This is not always the best solution. You need to consider your workload type, and look carefully for any important “missing” indexes that might be causing the query optimizer to use a parallel plan to compensate for the missing index. In this case, correcting the index problem is usually a better solution than changing MAXDOP, since you are curing the disease rather than just treating the symptom. Finally, you should get in the habit of clearing out your cumulative wait stats with the  DBCC SQLPERF(‘sys.dm_os_wait_stats’, CLEAR); command. This is especially important if you have made an configuration or index changes, or if your workload has changed recently. Otherwise, your cumulative wait stats will be polluted with the old stats from weeks or months ago (since the last time SQL Server was started or the stats were cleared).  If you make a change to your SQL Server instance, or add an index, you should clear out your wait stats, and then wait a while to see what your new top wait stats are. At any rate, enjoy Pinal Dave’s series on Wait Stats. This blog post has been written by Glenn Berry (Twitter | Blog) Read all the post in the Wait Types and Queue series. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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• Algorithm for querying linearly through a non-linear list of questions

  - by JoshLeaves

  For a multiplayers trivia game, I need to supply my users with a new quizz in a desired subject (Science, Maths, Litt. and such) at the start of every game. I've generated about 5K quizzes for each subject and filled my database with them. So my 'Quizzes' database looks like this: |ID |Subject |Question +-----+------------+---------------------------------- | 23 |Science | What's water? | 42 |Maths | What's 2+2? | 99 |Litt. | Who wrote "Pride and Prejudice"? | 123 |Litt. | Who wrote "On The Road"? | 146 |Maths | What's 2*2? | 599 |Science | You know what's cool? |1042 |Maths | What's the Fibonacci Sequence? |1056 |Maths | What's 42? And so on... (Much more detailed/complex but I'll keep the exemple simple) As you can see, due to technical constraints (MongoDB), my IDs are not linear but I can use them as an increasing suite. So far, my algorithm to ensure two users get a new quizz when they play together is the following: // Take the last played quizzes by P1 and P2 var q_one = player_one.getLastPlayedQuizz('Maths'); var q_two = player_two.getLastPlayedQuizz('Maths'); // If both of them never played in the subject, return first quizz in the list if ((q_one == NULL) && (q_two == NULL)) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths'}); // If one of them never played, play the next quizz for the other player // This quizz is found by asking for the first quizz in the desired subject where // the ID is greater than the last played quizz's ID (if the last played quizz ID // is 42, this will return 146 following the above example database) if (q_one == NULL) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_two}); if (q_two == NULL) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_one}); // And if both of them have a lastPlayedQuizz, we return the next quizz for the // player whose lastPlayedQuizz got the higher ID if (q_one > q_two) return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_one}); else return QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths', ID > q_two}); Now here comes the real problem: Once I get to the end of my database (let's say, P1's last played quizz in 'Maths' is 1056, P2's is 146 and P3 is 1042), following my algorithm, P1's ID is the highest so I ask for the next question in 'Maths' where ID is superior to 1056. There is nothing, so I roll back to the beginning of my quizz list (with a random skipper to avoid having the first question always show up). P1 and P2's last played will then be 42 and they will start fresh from the beginning of the list. However, if P1 (42) plays against P3 (1042), the resulting ID will be 1056...which P1 already played two games ago. Basically, players who just "rolled back" to the beginning of the list will be brought back to the end of the list by players who still haven't rolled back. The rollback WILL happen in the end, but it'll take time and there'll be a "bottleneck" at the beginning and at the end. Thus my question: What would be the best algorith to avoid this bottleneck and ensure players don't get stuck endlessly on the same quizzes? Also bear in mind that I've got some technical constraints: I can't get a random question in a subject (ie: no "QuizzDB.findOne({subject: 'Maths'}).skip(random());"). It's cool to skip on one to twenty records, but the MongoDB documentation warns against skipping too many documents. I would like to avoid building an array of every quizz played by each player and find the next non-played in the database with a $nin. Thanks for your help

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• Unreal Tournament 3 vs UDK: What Should I Choose?

  - by Matt Christian

  Many people in the mod community were very excited to see the release of the Unreal Developer Kit (UDK) a few months ago.  Along with generating excitement into a very dedicated community, it also introduced many new modders into a flourishing area of indie-development.  However, since UDK is free, most beginners jump right into UDK, which is OK though you might just benefit more from purchasing a shelf-copy of Unreal Tournament 3. UDK UDK is a free full version of UnrealEd (the editor environment used to create games like Gears of War 1/2, Bioshock 1/2, and of course Unreal Tournament 3).  The editor gives you all the features of the editor from the shelf-copy of the game plus some refinements in many of the tools.  (One of the first things you'll find about UnrealEd is that it's a collection of tools grouped into the same editor so it really isn't a single 'tool') Interestingly enough, Epic is allowing you to sell any game made in UDK with a few catches.  First off, you must purchase a liscense for your game (which, I THINK is aproximately $99 starting).  Secondly, you must pay 25% of all profits for the first $5,000 of your game revenue to them (about $1250).  Finally, you cannot use any of the 'media' provided in UDK for your game.  UDK provides sample meshes, textures, materials, sounds, and other sample pieces of media pulled (mostly) from Unreal Tournament 3. The final point here will really determine whether you should use UDK.  There is a very small amount of media provided in UDK for someone to go in and begin creating levels without first developing your own meshes, textures, and other media.  Sure, you can slap together a few unique levels, though you will end up finding yourself restriced to the same items over and over and over.  This is absolutely how professional game development is; you are 'given' (typically liscensed or built in-house) an engine/editor and you begin creating all the content for the game and placing it.  UDK is aimed toward those who really want to build their game content from scratch with a currently existing engine.  It is not suited for someone who would like to simply build levels and quick mods without learning external 3D programs and image editing software. Unreal Tournament 3 Unless you have a serious grudge against FPS's, Epic, or your computer sucks, there really is no reason not to own this game for PC.  You can pick it up on Steam or Amazon for around $20 brand new.  Not only are you provided with a full single-player and multiplayer game, but you are given the entire UnrealEd 3.0 including all of the content used to build UT3.  If you want to start building levels and mods quickly for UT3, you should absolutely pick up a shelf-copy. However, as off-the-shelf UT3 is a few years old now, the tools have not been updated for quite a while.  Compared to UDK, the menus are more difficult to navigate through and take more time getting used to.  Since UDK is updated almost every month, there are new inclusions to the editor that may not be in UT3 (including the future addition of 3D!).  I haven't worked enough with shelf UT3 to see if there are more features in UDK or if they both feature the same stuff in different forms, however you should remember that the Unreal Engine 3.0 has undergone numerous upgrades between it's launch and Gears of War 2 (in fact, Epic had a conference to show off what changed just between the Gears of Wars games). Since UT3 has much more core content, someone who wants to focus on level editing or modding the core UT3 game may find their needs better suited with an off-the-shelf copy of UT3.  If that level designer has a team that is generating custom assets, they may be better off with UDK. The choice is now yours...

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• Reflections on Life

  - by MOSSLover

  I haven’t written a blog post in a while.  I understand there is blog neglect going on, but there is a lot going on in my life.  I am trying really hard to embrace the change and roll with everything thrown my way.  I had a really hard year it was not my best and it was not my worst.  I cannot say it was entirely hard, because January 1st I received the MVP Award.  If you know me you know the three things that happened starting in August, but if you really know me it was miserable for a substantial period of time prior to August.  There was some personal life issues I neglected to deal with that came into a headway.  Anyway I’d like to think that as of today I am doing much better.  I finally went to Paris and London.  I found out I love Paris and Nottingham.  I think that London is something I need to visit a few more times.  I would love to go back to the UK and France.  I think I’d love to live overseas someday, but not anytime soon. The past few weeks were like a whirlwind experience.  I felt like I had been sitting around for months just waiting for this trip and the big move.  Maybe it was something I was waiting to do for several years.  I needed a big change.  I needed to get unstuck.  I feel like August, however horrible it was, helped me get to the point where I am somewhere happy.  For at least two years I have been miserable outside of my work (community and otherwise).  I was just downright unhappy.  One of my coworkers said that my tweets were just horrible this past year.  Depressing might I add.  I agree they were incredibly depressing for the past several years.  But things are on an upturn.  I decided a month or so ago that I was going to do all the things I have wanted to do without looking back.  So I dove into this trip and into this move to NYC head first.  I was scared for a bit and I didn’t think it would come through.  Everyone friend-wise and coworker-wise has helped me accomplish this great feat.  I am now a New Yorker and as of January 1st 100% living in the city. Thank you for those who have checked up on me.  Thank you for those who listened to all my problems and continue to do so.  Thank you to everyone who has helped me through this really terrible time.  You guys mean the world to me.  You are my friends.  Some of you I have not met and some of you I barely know.  I have been to a lot of events where people just walked up to me and asked me if I was doing ok.  I will continue to keep moving forward one foot in front of the other.  If I ever get so down again please remind me about this year.  I hope to see you all in the upcoming year as I attend more events.  Have a good night or a good morning or a good afternoon.  I will catch you all later. Technorati Tags: Life,2011,Disaster Year,Happinness

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• Prepping the Raspberry Pi for Java Excellence (part 1)

  - by HecklerMark

  I've only recently been able to begin working seriously with my first Raspberry Pi, received months ago but hastily shelved in preparation for JavaOne. The Raspberry Pi and other diminutive computing platforms offer a glimpse of the potential of what is often referred to as the embedded space, the "Internet of Things" (IoT), or Machine to Machine (M2M) computing. I have a few different configurations I want to use for multiple Raspberry Pis, but for each of them, I'll need to perform the following common steps to prepare them for their various tasks: Load an OS onto an SD card Get the Pi connected to the network Load a JDK I've been very happy to see good friend and JFXtras teammate Gerrit Grunwald document how to do these things on his blog (link to article here - check it out!), but I ran into some issues configuring wi-fi that caused me some needless grief. Not knowing if any of the pitfalls were caused by my slightly-older version of the Pi and not being able to find anything specific online to help me get past it, I kept chipping away at it until I broke through. The purpose of this post is to (hopefully) help someone else recognize the same issues if/when they encounter them and work past them quickly. There is a great resource page here that covers several ways to get the OS on an SD card, but here is what I did (on a Mac): Plug SD card into reader on/in Mac Format it (FAT32) Unmount it (diskutil unmountDisk diskn, where n is the disk number representing the SD card) Transfer the disk image for Debian to the SD card (dd if=2012-08-08-wheezy-armel.img of=/dev/diskn bs=1m) Eject the card from the Mac (diskutil eject diskn) There are other ways, but this is fairly quick and painless, especially after you do it several times. Yes, I had to do that dance repeatedly (minus formatting) due to the wi-fi issues, as it kept killing the ability of the Pi to boot. You should be able to dramatically reduce the number of OS loads you do, though, if you do a few things with regard to your wi-fi. Firstly, I strongly recommend you purchase the Edimax EW-7811Un wi-fi adapter. This adapter/chipset has been proven with the Raspberry Pi, it's tiny, and it's cheap. Avoid unnecessary aggravation and buy this one! Secondly, visit this page for a script and instructions regarding how to configure your new wi-fi adapter with your Pi. Here is the rub, though: there is a missing step. At least for my combination of Pi version, OS version, and uncanny gift of timing and luck there was. :-) Here is the sequence of steps I used to make the magic happen: Plug your newly-minted SD card (with OS) into your Pi and connect a network cable (for internet connectivity) Boot your Pi. On the first boot, do the following things: Opt to have it use all space on the SD card (will require a reboot eventually) Disable overscan Set your timezone Enable the ssh server Update raspi-config Reboot your Pi. This will reconfigure the SD to use all space (see above). After you log in (UID: pi, password: raspberry), upgrade your OS. This was the missing step for me that put a merciful end to the repeated SD card re-imaging and made the wi-fi configuration trivial. To do so, just type sudo apt-get upgrade and give it several minutes to complete. Pour yourself a cup of coffee and congratulate yourself on the time you've just saved.  ;-) With the OS upgrade finished, now you can follow Mr. Engman's directions (to the letter, please see link above), download his script, and let it work its magic. One aside: I plugged the little power-sipping Edimax directly into the Pi and it worked perfectly. No powered hub needed, at least in my configuration. To recap, that OS upgrade (at least at this point, with this combination of OS/drivers/Pi version) is absolutely essential for a smooth experience. Miss that step, and you're in for hours of "fun". Save yourself! I'll pick up next time with more of the Java side of the RasPi configuration, but as they say, you have to cross the moat to get into the castle. Hopefully, this will help you do just that. Until next time! All the best, Mark 

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• Archiving SQLHelp tweets

  - by jamiet

  #SQLHelp is a Twitter hashtag that can be used by any Twitter user to get help from the SQL Server community. I think its fair to say that in its first year of being it has proved to be a very useful resource however Kendra Little (@kendra_little) made a very salient point yesterday when she tweeted: Is there a way to search the archives of #sqlhelp Trying to remember answer to a question I know I saw a couple months ago http://twitter.com/#!/Kendra_Little/status/15538234184441856 This highlights an inherent problem with Twitter’s search capability – it simply does not reach far enough back in time. I have made steps to remedy that situation by putting into place two initiatives to archive Tweets that contain the #sqlhelp hashtag. The Archivist http://archivist.visitmix.com/ is a free service that, quite simply, archives a history of tweets that contain a given search term by periodically polling Twitter’s search service with that search term and subsequently displaying a dashboard providing an aggregate view of those tweets for things like tweet volume over time, top users and top words (Archivist FAQ). I have set up an archive on The Archivist for “sqlhelp” which you can view at http://archivist.visitmix.com/jamiet/7. Here is a screenshot of the SQLHelp dashboard 36 minutes after I set it up: There is lots of good information in there, including the fact that Jonathan Kehayias (@SQLSarg) is the most active SQLHelp tweeter (I suspect as an answerer rather than a questioner ) and that SSIS has proven to be a rather (ahem) popular subject!! Datasift The Archivist has its uses though for our purposes it has a couple of downsides. For starters you cannot search through an archive (which is what Kendra was after) and nor can you export the contents of the archive for offline analysis. For those functions we need something a bit more heavyweight and for that I present to you Datasift. Datasift is a tool (currently an alpha release) that allows you to search for tweets and provide them through an object called a Datasift stream. That sounds very similar to normal Twitter search though it has one distinct advantage that other Twitter search tools do not – Datasift has access to Twitter’s Streaming API (aka the Twitter Firehose). In addition it has access to a lot of other rather nice features: It provides the Datasift API that allows you to consume the output of a Datasift stream in your tool of choice (bring on my favourite ultimate mashup tool J ) It has a query language (called Filtered Stream Definition Language – FSDL for short) A Datasift stream can consume (and filter) other Datasift streams Datasift can (and does) consume services other than Twitter If I refer to Datasift as “ETL for tweets” then you may get some sort of idea what it is all about. Just as I did with The Archivist I have set up a publicly available Datasift stream for “sqlhelp” at http://datasift.net/stream/1581/sqlhelp. Here is the FSDL query that provides the data: twitter.text contains "sqlhelp" Pretty simple eh? At the current time it provides little more than a rudimentary dashboard but as Datasift is currently an alpha release I think this may be worth keeping an eye on. The real value though is the ability to consume the output of a stream via Datasift’s RESTful API, observe: http://api.datasift.net/stream.xml?stream_identifier=c7015255f07e982afdeebdf1ae6e3c0d&username=jamiet&api_key=XXXXXXX (Note that an api_key is required during the alpha period so, given that I’m not supplying my api_key, this URI will not work for you) Just to prove that a Datasift stream can indeed consume data from another stream I have set up a second stream that further filters the first one for tweets containing “SSIS”. That one is at http://datasift.net/stream/1586/ssis-sqlhelp and here is the FSDL query: rule "414c9845685ff8d2548999cf3162e897" and (interaction.content contains "ssis") When Datasift moves beyond alpha I’ll re-assess how useful this is going to be and post a follow-up blog. @Jamiet

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• Tuning Red Gate: #3 of Lots

  - by Grant Fritchey

  I'm drilling down into the metrics about SQL Server itself available to me in the Analysis tab of SQL Monitor to see what's up with our two problematic servers. In the previous post I'd noticed that rg-sql01 had quite a few CPU spikes. So one of the first things I want to check there is how much CPU is getting used by SQL Server itself. It's possible we're looking at some other process using up all the CPU Nope, It's SQL Server. I compared this to the rg-sql02 server: You can see that there is a more, consistently low set of CPU counters there. I clearly need to look at rg-sql01 and capture more specific data around the queries running on it to identify which ones are causing these CPU spikes. I always like to look at the Batch Requests/sec on a server, not because it's an indication of a problem, but because it gives you some idea of the load. Just how much is this server getting hit? Here are rg-sql01 and rg-sql02: Of the two, clearly rg-sql01 has a lot of activity. Remember though, that's all this is a measure of, activity. It doesn't suggest anything other than what it says, the number of requests coming in. But it's the kind of thing you want to know in order to understand how the system is used. Are you seeing a correlation between the number of requests and the CPU usage, or a reverse correlation, the number of requests drops as the CPU spikes? See, it's useful. Some of the details you can look at are Compilations/sec, Compilations/Batch and Recompilations/sec. These give you some idea of how the cache is getting used within the system. None of these showed anything interesting on either server. One metric that I like (even though I know it can be controversial) is the Page Life Expectancy. On the average server I expect see a series of mountains as the PLE climbs then drops due to a data load or something along those lines. That's not the case here: Those spikes back in January suggest that the servers weren't really being used much. The PLE on the rg-sql01 seems to be somewhat consistent growing to 3 hours or so then dropping, but the rg-sql02 PLE looks like it might be all over the map. Instead of continuing to look at this high level gathering data view, I'm going to drill down on rg-sql02 and see what it's done for the last week: And now we begin to see where we might have an issue. Memory on this system is getting flushed every 1/2 hour or so. I'm going to check another metric, scans: Whoa! I'm going back to the system real quick to look at some disk information again for rg-sql02. Here is the average disk queue length on the server: and the transfers Right, I think I have a guess as to what's up here. We're seeing memory get flushed constantly and we're seeing lots of scans. The disks are queuing, especially that F drive, and there are lots of requests that correspond to the scans and the memory flushes. In short, we've got queries that are scanning the data, a lot, so we either have bad queries or bad indexes. I'm going back to the server overview for rg-sql02 and check the Top 10 expensive queries. I'm modifying it to show me the last 3 days and the totals, so I'm not looking at some maintenance routine that ran 10 minutes ago and is skewing the results: OK. I need to look into these queries that are getting executed this much. They're generating a lot of reads, but which queries are generating the most reads: Ow, all still going against the same database. This is where I'm going to temporarily leave SQL Monitor. What I want to do is connect up to the server, validate that the Warehouse database is using the F:\ drive (which I'll put money down it is) and then start seeing what's up with these queries. Part 1 of the Series Part 2 of the Series

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• Cutting Edge versus Just Average? Your SOA, Got BPM? by Mala Ramakrishnan

  - by JuergenKress

  Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) has completely transformed IT from the time it was introduced well over a decade ago. Organizations have been re-plumbing their infrastructure for reusability, efficiency and gain and succeeding with it. Best practices have emerged and people and technology have matured. We have got better at delivering on a stable platform on mission critical applications and services. Yet, there is this one secret that sets some SOA customers apart from the others. These companies grow and revolutionize their business and not just transform their IT infrastructure. The differences seem subtle for an untrained eye examining these organizations externally. And from within the company, it’s a bit like an ant sitting on an elephant, hard to differentiate between the IT trunk and business tail. What is it that some organizations do differently that makes them succeed beyond SOA? These organizations pull in business people more and more to weigh into their IT decisions. They wrench understanding process over services. They don’t settle easily when bridging business metrics and IT performance. They anguish over business requirements not translating seamlessly and quickly into IT. IT is not just an enabler but a pillar that revolutionizes their business. Okay, I’ll give it to you. These organizations layer Business Process Management (BPM) on top of their SOA. Think about lifeblood business processes in your own organizations. If you are Fedex, this would be shipping and handling. If you are Stanford Hospital, this would be patient case-management: from on-boarding through discharge and follow-up care. If you are Wells Fargo, this would be loan origination. Now think about how your SOA ties into your business process. Can you decouple your business processes from your SOA so that the two can transform and change independent of each other? Can you forecast success metrics for your business process, make the changes across the board and then look back over different periods of time to see if you are on track? Are your critical business processes entrenched in the minds of few experts in your organization or does everyone from the receptionist to your enterprise architect to your CEO understand what they can do to revolutionize it? Business Process Management is a superset of SOA. It is the process of getting your business to articulate business value and metrics and have it implemented in IT without any loss in translation. It is the act of extracting the business process from the minds of experts and IT applications in your organization and valuing them as assets for performance and gain. BPM is stepping outside your SOA and moving your organization to the next level of innovation. Oracle is accelerating BPM across industries with the latest launch. Join us to understand how BPM can give your organization a cutting edge over your SOA. SOA & BPM Partner Community For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA & BPM Partner Community for registration please visit www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Wiki Mix Forum Technorati Tags: SOA,BPM,SOA Community,Oracle SOA,Oracle BPM,Community,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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• SQLSaturday 33 Observations

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  Along with a lot of my colleagues, I went to SQLSaturday #33 in Charlotte this last weekend.  Overall a really good event, especially for a first-time organizer.  There is some controversy over certain events where my name got mentioned so I thought I would clear the air. Before I get to the core controversy, let's get the details out of the way.  The Microsoft Offices in Charlotte were an excellent venue for this event.  I really appreciated the Microsoft employees that helped out by letting us in and out of normally secure areas.  This is definitely above and beyond on their part. Thanks to the organizers (especially Greg and Peter) for the great hospitality they showed to the speakers.  Now for the specifics.  Like most events of this type, there was a raffle at the end for some cool swag.  As a speaker I got raffle tickets just like any other attendee.  The raffle was clearly promoted as "must be present to win".  The problem is that for various reasons, the raffle kicked off immediately after the last speaker finished in the largest room.  That room was across the parking lot from all the other rooms for the event.  I happened to have one of the last sessions of the day, and not in the main room.  I also ran long since the audience was very interactive and there were a lot of follow-up questions.  (BTW, thanks to everyone who came and stayed for my session.  Sorry it cost you the chance to win too.).  My name was drawn for an very nice piece of swag (iPod Touch if you insist).  Since I wasn't there, I didn't win. Several folks mentioned I was still speaking and was "here" (as in at the event) just not "here in the room". Yes, I was mad when I found out about it. I think that was handled poorly.  I personally lost out as did my audience (dunno if anyone specific lost anything, but it is the idea that counts).  It was a mistake. Mistakes happen.  Nobody acted maliciously.  Heck, the guys running the event who made the decision are my friends and remain so.  I got over my mad.  We talked about this privately and we are all OK with what happened.  I am not going to let a gadget get in the way of a couple of good friendships. I think the mistake was mostly due to a lack of unity between the venue buildings   Pam Shaw had a similar challenge in Tampa a few weeks ago, including a speaker who ran long on the last session (not me that time).  She had a couple of teenage volunteers to act as gofers/runners.  They counted heads in sessions, pointed people to last-minute room and session changes, and generally helped connect the organizers to what was actually happening.  Note that this was not Pam's first SQLSaturday event.  She knew but the knowledge had not been institutionalized.  We (The SQL community in general and SQLSaturday organizers in particular) now know how essential gofers are to success. I know I spent most of this post focusing on the controversy, but I wanted to clear everything up.  I don't want to let a minor mistake, made in good faith, overshadow what was a tremendously good event for the community. As for the iPod Touch, someone in the SQL community is enjoying it, so it is not a total loss.  And if losing out on it is the price I pay so we can learn this, then that is what a community leader does.  Consider it a gift.  Besides, I really wanted a Zune 120 :)

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• Mirroring git and mercurial repos the lazy way

  - by Greg Malcolm

  I maintain Python Koans on mirrored on both Github using git and Bitbucket using mercurial. I get pull requests from both repos but it turns out keeping the two repos in sync is pretty easy. Here is how it's done... Assuming I’m starting again on a clean laptop, first I clone both repos ~/git $ hg clone https://bitbucket.org/gregmalcolm/python_koans ~/git $ git clone [email protected]:gregmalcolm/python_koans.git python_koans2 The only thing that makes a folder a git or mercurial repository is the .hg folder in the root of python_koans and the .git folder in the root of python_koans2. So I just need to move the .git folder over into the python_koans folder I'm using for mercurial: ~/git $ rm -rf python_koans/.git ~/git $ mv python_koans2/.git python_koans ~/git $ ls -la python_koans total 48 drwxr-xr-x 11 greg staff 374 Mar 17 15:10 . drwxr-xr-x 62 greg staff 2108 Mar 17 14:58 .. drwxr-xr-x 12 greg staff 408 Mar 17 14:58 .git -rw-r--r-- 1 greg staff 34 Mar 17 14:54 .gitignore drwxr-xr-x 13 greg staff 442 Mar 17 14:54 .hg -rw-r--r-- 1 greg staff 48 Mar 17 14:54 .hgignore -rw-r--r-- 1 greg staff 365 Mar 17 14:54 Contributor Notes.txt -rw-r--r-- 1 greg staff 1082 Mar 17 14:54 MIT-LICENSE -rw-r--r-- 1 greg staff 5765 Mar 17 14:54 README.txt drwxr-xr-x 10 greg staff 340 Mar 17 14:54 python 2 drwxr-xr-x 10 greg staff 340 Mar 17 14:54 python 3 That’s about it! Now git and mercurial are tracking files in the same folder. Of course you will still need to set up your .gitignore to ignore mercurial’s dotfiles and .hgignore to ignore git’s dotfiles or there will be squabbling in the backseat. ~/git $ cd python_koans/ ~/git/python_koans $ cat .gitignore *.pyc *.swp .DS_Store answers .hg <-- Ignore mercurial ~/git/python_koans $ cat .hgignore syntax: glob *.pyc *.swp .DS_Store answers .git <-- Ignore git Because both my mirrors are both identical as far as tracked files are concerned I won’t yet see anything if I check statuses at this point: ~/git/python_koans $ git status # On branch master nothing to commit (working directory clean) ~/git/python_koans $ hg status ~/git/python_koans But how about if I accept a pull request from the bitbucket (mercuial) site? ~/git/python_koans $ hg status ~/git/python_koans $ git status # On branch master # Your branch is behind 'origin/master' by 1 commit, and can be fast-forwarded. # # Changed but not updated: # (use "git add <file>..." to update what will be committed) # (use "git checkout -- <file>..." to discard changes in working directory) # # modified: python 2/koans/about_decorating_with_classes.py # modified: python 2/koans/about_iteration.py # modified: python 2/koans/about_with_statements.py # modified: python 3/koans/about_decorating_with_classes.py # modified: python 3/koans/about_iteration.py # modified: python 3/koans/about_with_statements.py Mercurial doesn’t have any changes to track right now, but git has changes. Commit and push them up to github and balance is restored to the force: ~/git/python_koans $ git commit -am "Merge from bitbucket mirror: 'gpiancastelli - Fix for issue #21 and some other tweaks'" [master 79ca184] Merge from bitbucket mirror: 'gpiancastelli - Fix for issue #21 and some other tweaks' 6 files changed, 78 insertions(+), 63 deletions(-) ~/git/python_koans $ git push origin master Or just use hg-git? The github developers have actually published a plugin for automatic mirroring: http://hg-git.github.com I haven’t used it because at the time I tried it a couple of years ago I was having problems getting all the parts to play nice with each other. Probably works fine now though..

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