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  • Inserting and Deleting Sub Rows in GridView

    - by Vincent Maverick Durano
    A user in the forums (http://forums.asp.net) is asking how to insert  sub rows in GridView and also add delete functionality for the inserted sub rows. In this post I'm going to demonstrate how to this in ASP.NET WebForms.  The basic idea to achieve this is we just need to insert row data in the DataSource that is being used in GridView since the GridView rows will be generated based on the DataSource data. To make it more clear then let's build up a sample application. To start fire up Visual Studio and create a WebSite or Web Application project and then add a new WebForm. In the WebForm ASPX page add this GridView markup below:   1: <asp:gridview ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false" onrowdatabound="GridView1_RowDataBound"> 2: <Columns> 3: <asp:BoundField DataField="RowNumber" HeaderText="Row Number" /> 4: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Header 1"> 5: <ItemTemplate> 6: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox1" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> 7: </ItemTemplate> 8: </asp:TemplateField> 9: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Header 2"> 10: <ItemTemplate> 11: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox2" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> 12: </ItemTemplate> 13: </asp:TemplateField> 14: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Header 3"> 15: <ItemTemplate> 16: <asp:TextBox ID="TextBox3" runat="server"></asp:TextBox> 17: </ItemTemplate> 18: </asp:TemplateField> 19: <asp:TemplateField HeaderText="Action"> 20: <ItemTemplate> 21: <asp:LinkButton ID="LinkButton1" runat="server" onclick="LinkButton1_Click" Text="Insert"></asp:LinkButton> 22: </ItemTemplate> 23: </asp:TemplateField> 24: </Columns> 25: </asp:gridview>   Then at the code behind source of ASPX page you can add this codes below:   1: private DataTable FillData() { 2:   3: DataTable dt = new DataTable(); 4: DataRow dr = null; 5:   6: //Create DataTable columns 7: dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("RowNumber", typeof(string))); 8:   9: //Create Row for each columns 10: dr = dt.NewRow(); 11: dr["RowNumber"] = 1; 12: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 13:   14: dr = dt.NewRow(); 15: dr["RowNumber"] = 2; 16: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 17:   18: dr = dt.NewRow(); 19: dr["RowNumber"] = 3; 20: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 21:   22: dr = dt.NewRow(); 23: dr["RowNumber"] = 4; 24: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 25:   26: dr = dt.NewRow(); 27: dr["RowNumber"] = 5; 28: dt.Rows.Add(dr); 29:   30: //Store the DataTable in ViewState for future reference 31: ViewState["CurrentTable"] = dt; 32:   33: return dt; 34:   35: } 36:   37: private void BindGridView(DataTable dtSource) { 38: GridView1.DataSource = dtSource; 39: GridView1.DataBind(); 40: } 41:   42: private DataRow InsertRow(DataTable dtSource, string value) { 43: DataRow dr = dtSource.NewRow(); 44: dr["RowNumber"] = value; 45: return dr; 46: } 47: //private DataRow DeleteRow(DataTable dtSource, 48:   49: protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { 50: if (!IsPostBack) { 51: BindGridView(FillData()); 52: } 53: } 54:   55: protected void LinkButton1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { 56: LinkButton lb = (LinkButton)sender; 57: GridViewRow row = (GridViewRow)lb.NamingContainer; 58: DataTable dtCurrentData = (DataTable)ViewState["CurrentTable"]; 59: if (lb.Text == "Insert") { 60: //Insert new row below the selected row 61: dtCurrentData.Rows.InsertAt(InsertRow(dtCurrentData, row.Cells[0].Text + "-sub"), row.RowIndex + 1); 62:   63: } 64: else { 65: //Delete selected sub row 66: dtCurrentData.Rows.RemoveAt(row.RowIndex); 67: } 68:   69: BindGridView(dtCurrentData); 70: ViewState["CurrentTable"] = dtCurrentData; 71: } 72:   73: protected void GridView1_RowDataBound(object sender, GridViewRowEventArgs e) { 74: if (e.Row.RowType == DataControlRowType.DataRow) { 75: if (e.Row.Cells[0].Text.Contains("-sub")) { 76: ((LinkButton)e.Row.FindControl("LinkButton1")).Text = "Delete"; 77: } 78: } 79: }   As you can see the code above is pretty straight forward and self explainatory but just to give you a short explaination the code above is composed of three (3) private methods which are the FillData(), BindGridView and InsertRow(). The FillData() method is a method that returns a DataTable and basically creates a dummy data in the DataTable to be used as the GridView DataSource. You can replace the code in that method if you want to use actual data from database but for the purpose of this example I just fill the DataTable with a dummy data on it. The BindGridVew is a method that handles the actual binding of GridVew. The InsertRow() is a method that returns a DataRow. This method handles the insertion of the sub row. Now in the LinkButton OnClick event, we casted the sender to a LinkButton to determine the specific object that fires up the event and get the row values. We then reference the Data from ViewState to get the current data that is being used in the GridView. If the LinkButton text is "Insert" then we will insert new row to the DataSource ( in this case the DataTable) based on the rowIndex if not then Delete the sub row that was added. Here are some screen shots of the output below: On initial load:   After inserting a sub row:   That's it! I hope someone find this post useful!   Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,C#,GridView

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  • Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    Now that I have the Build failing because of a genuine bug and not just because of a test framework failure, lets see if we can trace through to finding why the first test in our new application failed. Lets look at the build and see if we can see why there is a red cross on it. First, lets open that build list. On Team Explorer Expand your Team Project Collection | Team Project and then Builds. Double click the offending build. Figure: Opening the Build list is a key way to see what the current state of your software is.   Figure: A test is failing, but we can now view the Test Results to find the problem      Figure: You can quite clearly see that the test has failed with “The device is not ready”. To me the “The Device is not ready” smacks of a System.IO exception, but it passed on my local computer, so why not on the build server? Its a FaultException so it is most likely coming from the Service and not the client, so lets take a look at the client method that the test is calling: bool IProfileService.SaveDefaultProjectFile(string strComputerName) { ProjectFile file = new ProjectFile() { ProjectFileName = strComputerName + "_" + System.DateTime.Now.ToString("yyyyMMddhhmmsss") + ".xml", ConnectionString = "persist security info=False; pooling=False; data source=(local); application name=SSW.SQLDeploy.vshost.exe; integrated security=SSPI; initial catalog=SSWSQLDeployNorthwindSample", DateCreated = System.DateTime.Now, DateUpdated = System.DateTime.Now, FolderPath = @"C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData\", IsComplete=false, Version = "1.3", NewDatabase = true, TimeOut = 5, TurnOnMSDE = false, Mode="AutomaticMode" }; string strFolderPath = "D:\\"; //LocalSettings.ProjectFileBasePath; string strFileName = strFolderPath + file.ProjectFileName; try { using (FileStream fs = new FileStream(strFileName, FileMode.Create)) { DataContractSerializer serializer = new DataContractSerializer(typeof(ProjectFile)); using (XmlDictionaryWriter writer = XmlDictionaryWriter.CreateTextWriter(fs)) { serializer.WriteObject(writer, file); } } } catch (Exception ex) { //TODO: Log the exception throw ex; return false; } return true; } Figure: You can see on lines 9 and 18 that there are calls being made to specific folders and disks. What is wrong with this code? What assumptions mistakes could the developer have made to make this look OK: That every install would be to “C:\Program Files\SSW SQL Deploy” That every computer would have a “D:\\” That checking in code at 6pm because the had to go home was a good idea. lets solve each of these problems: We are in a web service… lets store data within the web root. So we can call “Server.MapPath(“~/App_Data/SSW SQL Deploy\SampleData”) instead. Never reference an explicit path. If you need some storage for your application use IsolatedStorage. Shelve your code instead. What else could have been done? Code review before check-in – The developer should have shelved their code and asked another dev to look at it. Use Defensive programming – Make sure that any code that has the possibility of failing has checks. Any more options? Let me know and I will add them. What do we do? The correct things to do is to add a Bug to the backlog, but as this is probably going to be fixed in sprint, I will add it directly to the sprint backlog. Right click on the failing test Select “Create Work Item | Bug” Figure: Create an associated bug to add to the backlog. Set the values for the Bug making sure that it goes into the right sprint and Area. Make your steps to reproduce as explicit as possible, but “See test” is valid under these circumstances.   Figure: Add it to the correct Area and set the Iteration to the Area name or the Sprint if you think it will be fixed in Sprint and make sure you bring it up at the next Scrum Meeting. Note: make sure you leave the “Assigned To” field blank as in Scrum team members sign up for work, you do not give it to them. The developer who broke the test will most likely either sign up for the bug, or say that they are stuck and need help. Note: Visual Studio has taken care of associating the failing test with the Bug. Save… Technorati Tags: WCF,MSTest,MSBuild,Team Build 2010,Team Test 2010,Team Build,Team Test

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  • Web Platform Installer bundles for Visual Studio 2010 SP1 - and how you can build your own WebPI bundles

    - by Jon Galloway
    Visual Studio SP1 is  now available via the Web Platform Installer, which means you've got three options: Download the 1.5 GB ISO image Run the 750KB Web Installer (which figures out what you need to download) Install via Web PI Note: I covered some tips for installing VS2010 SP1 last week - including some that apply to all of these, such as removing options you don't use prior to installing the service pack to decrease the installation time and download size. Two Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Web PI packages There are actually two WebPI packages for VS2010 SP1. There's the standard Visual Studio 2010 SP1 package [Web PI link], which includes (quoting ScottGu's post): VS2010 2010 SP1 ASP.NET MVC 3 (runtime + tools support) IIS 7.5 Express SQL Server Compact Edition 4.0 (runtime + tools support) Web Deployment 2.0 The notes on that package sum it up pretty well: Looking for the latest everything? Look no further. This will get you Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 and the RTM releases of ASP.NET MVC 3, IIS 7.5 Express, SQL Server Compact 4.0 with tooling, and Web Deploy 2.0. It's the value meal of Microsoft products. Tell your friends! Note: This bundle includes the Visual Studio 2010 SP1 web installer, which will dynamically determine the appropriate service pack components to download and install. This is typically in the range of 200-500 MB and will take 30-60 minutes to install, depending on your machine configuration. There is also a Visual Studio 2010 SP1 Core package [Web PI link], which only includes only the SP without any of the other goodies (MVC3, IIS Express, etc.). If you're doing any web development, I'd highly recommend the main pack since it the other installs are small, simple installs, but if you're working in another space, you might want the core package. Installing via the Web Platform Installer I generally like to go with the Web PI when possible since it simplifies most software installations due to things like: Smart dependency management - installing apps or tools which have software dependencies will automatically figure out which dependencies you don't have and add them to the list (which you can review before install) Simultaneous download and install - if your install includes more than one package, it will automatically pull the dependencies first and begin installing them while downloading the others Lists the latest downloads - no need to search around, as they're all listed based on a live feed Includes open source applications - a lot of popular open source applications are included as well as Microsoft software and tools No worries about reinstallation - WebPI installations detect what you've got installed, so for instance if you've got MVC 3 installed you don't need to worry about the VS2010 SP1 package install messing anything up In addition to the links I included above, you can install the WebPI from http://www.microsoft.com/web/downloads/platform.aspx, and if you have Web PI installed you can just tap the Windows key and type "Web Platform" to bring it up in the Start search list. You'll see Visual Studio SP1 listed in the spotlight list as shown below. That's the standard package, which includes MVC 3 / IIS 7.5 Express / SQL Compact / Web Deploy. If you just want the core install, you can use the search box in the upper right corner, typing in "Visual Studio SP1" as shown. Core Install: Use Web PI or the Visual Studio Web Installer? I think the big advantage of using Web PI to install VS 2010 SP1 is that it includes the other new bits. If you're going to install the SP1 core, I don't think there's as much advantage to using Web PI, as the Web PI Core install just downloads the Visual Studio Web Installer anyways. I think Web PI makes it a little easier to find the download, but not a lot. The Visual Studio Web Installer checks dependencies, so there's no big advantage there. If you do happen to hit any problems installing Visual Studio SP1 via Web PI, I'd recommend running the Visual Studio Web Installer, then running the Web PI VS 2010 SP1 package to get all the other goodies. I talked to one person who hit some random snag, recommended that, and it worked out. Custom Web Platform Installer bundles You can create links that will launch the Web Platform Installer with a custom list of tools. You can see an example of this by clicking through on the install button at http://asp.net/downloads (cancelling the installation dialog). You'll see this in the address bar: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appsxml=&appid=MVC3;ASPNET;NETFramework4;SQLExpress;VWD Notice that the appid querystring parameter includes a semicolon delimited list, and you can make your own custom Web PI links with your own desired app list. I can think of a lot of cases where that would be handy: linking to a recommended software configuration from a software project or product, setting up a recommended / documented / supported install list for a software development team or IT shop, etc. For instance, here's a link that installs just VS2010 SP1 Core and the SQL CE tools: http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appsxml=&appid=VS2010SP1Core;SQLCETools Note: If you've already got all or some of the products installed, the display will reflect that. On my dev box which has the full SP1 package, here's what the above link gives me: Here's another example - on a fresh box I created a link to install MVC 3 and the Web Farm Framework (http://www.microsoft.com/web/gallery/install.aspx?appsxml=&appid=MVC3;WebFarmFramework) and got the following items added to the cart: But where do I get the App ID's? Aha, that's the trick. You can link to a list of cool packages, but you need to know the App ID's to link to them. To figure that out, I turned on tracing in Web Platform Installer  (also handy if you're ever having trouble with a WebPI install) and from the trace logs saw that the list of packages is pulled from an XML file: DownloadManager Information: 0 : Loading product xml from: https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9763242 DownloadManager Verbose: 0 : Connecting to https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9763242 with (partial) headers: Referer: wpi://2.1.0.0/Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1 If-Modified-Since: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 14:15:27 GMT User-Agent:Platform-Installer/3.0.3.0(Microsoft Windows NT 6.1.7601 Service Pack 1) DownloadManager Information: 0 : https://go.microsoft.com/?linkid=9763242 responded with 302 DownloadManager Information: 0 : Response headers: HTTP/1.1 302 Found Cache-Control: private Content-Length: 175 Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 Expires: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:52:28 GMT Location: https://www.microsoft.com/web/webpi/3.0/webproductlist.xml Server: Microsoft-IIS/7.5 X-AspNet-Version: 2.0.50727 X-Powered-By: ASP.NET Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2011 22:53:27 GMT Browsing to https://www.microsoft.com/web/webpi/3.0/webproductlist.xml shows the full list. You can search through that in your browser / text editor if you'd like, open it in Excel as an XML table, etc. Here's a list of the App ID's as of today: SMO SMO32 PHP52ForIISExpress PHP53ForIISExpress StaticContent DefaultDocument DirectoryBrowse HTTPErrors HTTPRedirection ASPNET NETExtensibility ASP CGI ISAPIExtensions ISAPIFilters ServerSideIncludes HTTPLogging LoggingTools RequestMonitor Tracing CustomLogging ODBCLogging BasicAuthentication WindowsAuthentication DigestAuthentication ClientCertificateMappingAuthentication IISClientCertificateMappingAuthentication URLAuthorization RequestFiltering IPSecurity StaticContentCompression DynamicContentCompression IISManagementConsole IISManagementScriptsAndTools ManagementService MetabaseAndIIS6Compatibility WASProcessModel WASNetFxEnvironment WASConfigurationAPI IIS6WPICompatibility IIS6ScriptingTools IIS6ManagementConsole LegacyFTPServer FTPServer WebDAV LegacyFTPManagementConsole FTPExtensibility AdminPack AdvancedLogging WebFarmFrameworkNonLoc ExternalCacheNonLoc WebFarmFramework WebFarmFrameworkv2 WebFarmFrameworkv2_beta ExternalCache ECacheUpdate ARRv1 ARRv2Beta1 ARRv2Beta2 ARRv2RC ARRv2NonLoc ARRv2 ARRv2Update MVC MVCBeta MVCRC1 MVCRC2 DBManager DbManagerUpdate DynamicIPRestrictions DynamicIPRestrictionsUpdate DynamicIPRestrictionsLegacy DynamicIPRestrictionsBeta2 FTPOOB IISPowershellSnapin RemoteManager SEOToolkit VS2008RTM MySQL SQLDriverPHP52IIS SQLDriverPHP53IIS SQLDriverPHP52IISExpress SQLDriverPHP53IISExpress SQLExpress SQLManagementStudio SQLExpressAdv SQLExpressTools UrlRewrite UrlRewrite2 UrlRewrite2NonLoc UrlRewrite2RC UrlRewrite2Beta UrlRewrite10 UrlScan MVC3Installer MVC3 MVC3LocInstaller MVC3Loc MVC2 VWD VWD2010SP1Pack NETFramework4 WebMatrix WebMatrix_v1Refresh IISExpress IISExpress_v1 IIS7 AspWebPagesVS AspWebPagesVS_1_0 Plan9 Plan9Loc WebMatrix_WHP SQLCE SQLCETools SQLCEVSTools SQLCEVSTools_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstaller_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerNew_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_EN_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_JA_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_FR_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_DE_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_ES_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_IT_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_RU_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_KO_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_ZH_CN_4_0 SQLCEVSToolsInstallerRepair_ZH_TW_4_0 VWD2008 WebDAVOOB WDeploy WDeploy_v2 WDeployNoSMO WDeploy11 WinCache52 WinCache53 NETFramework35 WindowsImagingComponent VC9Redist NETFramework20SP2 WindowsInstaller31 PowerShell PowerShellMsu PowerShell2 WindowsInstaller45 FastCGIUpdate FastCGIBackport FastCGIIIS6 IIS51 IIS60 SQLNativeClient SQLNativeClient2008 SQLNativeClient2005 SQLCLRTypes SQLCLRTypes32 SMO_10_1 MySQLConnector PHP52 PHP53 PHPManager VSVWD2010Feature VWD2010WebFeature_0 VWD2010WebFeature_1 VWD2010WebFeature_2 VS2010SP1Prerequisite RIAServicesToolkitMay2010 Silverlight4Toolkit Silverlight4Tools VSLS SSMAMySQL WebsitePanel VS2010SP1Core VS2010SP1Installer VS2010SP1Pack MissingVWDOrVSVWD2010Feature VB2010Beta2Express VCS2010Beta2Express VC2010Beta2Express RIAServicesToolkitApr2010 VS2010Beta1 VS2010RC VS2010Beta2 VS2010Beta2Express VS2k8RTM VSCPP2k8RTM VSVB2k8RTM VSCS2k8RTM VSVWDFeature LegacyWinCache SQLExpress2005 SSMS2005

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  • Searching for the last logon of users in Active Directory

    - by Robert May
    I needed to clean out a bunch of old accounts at Veracity Solutions, and wanted to delete those that hadn’t used their account in more than a year. I found that AD has a property on objects called the lastLogonTimestamp.  However, this value isn’t exposed to you in any useful fashion.  Sure, you can pull up ADSI Edit and and eventually get to it there, but it’s painful. I spent some time searching, and discovered that there’s not much out there to help, so I thought a blog post showing exactly how to get at this information would be in order. Basically, what you end up doing is using System.DirectoryServices to search for accounts and then filtering those for users, doing some conversion and such to make it happen.  Basically, the end result of this is that you get a list of users with their logon information and you can then do with that what you will.  I turned my list into an observable collection and bound it into a XAML form. One important note, you need to add a reference to ActiveDs Type Library in the COM section of the world in references to get to LargeInteger. Here’s the class: namespace Veracity.Utilities { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; using System.DirectoryServices; using ActiveDs; using log4net; /// <summary> /// Finds users inside of the active directory system. /// </summary> public class UserFinder { /// <summary> /// Creates the default logger /// </summary> private static readonly ILog log = LogManager.GetLogger(typeof(UserFinder)); /// <summary> /// Finds last logon information /// </summary> /// <param name="domain">The domain to search.</param> /// <param name="userName">The username for the query.</param> /// <param name="password">The password for the query.</param> /// <returns>A list of users with their last logon information.</returns> public IList<UserLoginInformation> GetLastLogonInformation(string domain, string userName, string password) { IList<UserLoginInformation> result = new List<UserLoginInformation>(); DirectoryEntry entry = new DirectoryEntry(domain, userName, password, AuthenticationTypes.Secure); DirectorySearcher directorySearcher = new DirectorySearcher(entry); directorySearcher.PropertyNamesOnly = true; directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("name"); directorySearcher.PropertiesToLoad.Add("lastLogonTimeStamp"); SearchResultCollection searchResults; try { searchResults = directorySearcher.FindAll(); } catch (System.Exception ex) { log.Error("Failed to do a find all.", ex); throw; } try { foreach (SearchResult searchResult in searchResults) { DirectoryEntry resultEntry = searchResult.GetDirectoryEntry(); if (resultEntry.SchemaClassName == "user") { UserLoginInformation logon = new UserLoginInformation(); logon.Name = resultEntry.Name; PropertyValueCollection timeStampObject = resultEntry.Properties["lastLogonTimeStamp"]; if (timeStampObject.Count > 0) { IADsLargeInteger logonTimeStamp = (IADsLargeInteger)timeStampObject[0]; long lastLogon = (long)((uint)logonTimeStamp.LowPart + (((long)logonTimeStamp.HighPart) << 32)); logon.LastLogonTime = DateTime.FromFileTime(lastLogon); } result.Add(logon); } } } catch (System.Exception ex) { log.Error("Failed to iterate search results.", ex); throw; } return result; } } } Some important things to note: Username and Password can be set to null and if your computer us part of the domain, this may still work. Domain should be set to something like LDAP://servername/CN=Users,CN=Domain,CN=com You’re actually getting a com object back, so that’s why the LongInteger conversions are happening.  The class for UserLoginInformation looks like this:   namespace Veracity.Utilities { using System; /// <summary> /// Represents user login information. /// </summary> public class UserLoginInformation { /// <summary> /// Gets or sets Name /// </summary> public string Name { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets or sets LastLogonTime /// </summary> public DateTime LastLogonTime { get; set; } /// <summary> /// Gets the age of the account. /// </summary> public TimeSpan AccountAge { get { TimeSpan result = TimeSpan.Zero; if (this.LastLogonTime != DateTime.MinValue) { result = DateTime.Now.Subtract(this.LastLogonTime); } return result; } } } } I hope this is useful and instructive. Technorati Tags: Active Directory

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, September 07, 2012Popular ReleasesUmbraco CMS: Umbraco 4.9.0: Whats newThe media section has been overhauled to support HTML5 uploads, just drag and drop files in, even multiple files are supported on any HTML5 capable browser. The folder content overview is also much improved allowing you to filter it and perform common actions on your media items. The Rich Text Editor’s “Media” button now uses an embedder based on the open oEmbed standard (if you’re upgrading, enable the media button in the Rich Text Editor datatype settings and set TidyEditorConten...menu4web: menu4web 0.4.1 - javascript menu for web sites: This release is for those who believe that global variables are evil. menu4web has been wrapped into m4w singleton object. Added "Vertical Tabs" example which illustrates object notation.WinRT XAML Toolkit: WinRT XAML Toolkit - 1.2.1: WinRT XAML Toolkit based on the Windows 8 RTM SDK. Download the latest source from the SOURCE CODE page. For compiled version use NuGet. You can add it to your project in Visual Studio by going to View/Other Windows/Package Manager Console and entering: PM> Install-Package winrtxamltoolkit Features AsyncUI extensions Controls and control extensions Converters Debugging helpers Imaging IO helpers VisualTree helpers Samples Recent changes NOTE: Namespace changes DebugConsol...iPDC - Free Phasor Data Concentrator: iPDC-v1.3.1: iPDC suite version-1.3.1, Modifications and Bug Fixed (from v 1.3.0) New User Manual for iPDC-v1.3.1 available on websites. Bug resolved : PMU Simulator TCP connection error and hang connection for client (PDC). Now PMU Simulator (server) can communicate more than one PDCs (clients) over TCP and UDP parallely. PMU Simulator is now sending the exact data frames as mentioned in data rate by user. PMU Simulator data rate has been verified by iPDC database entries and PMU Connection Tes...Microsoft SQL Server Product Samples: Database: AdventureWorks OData Feed: The AdventureWorks OData service exposes resources based on specific SQL views. The SQL views are a limited subset of the AdventureWorks database that results in several consuming scenarios: CompanySales Documents ManufacturingInstructions ProductCatalog TerritorySalesDrilldown WorkOrderRouting How to install the sample You can consume the AdventureWorks OData feed from http://services.odata.org/AdventureWorksV3/AdventureWorks.svc. You can also consume the AdventureWorks OData fe...Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.6: Sorting feeds alphabetical is now optional (see preferences window)DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.03: Major Highlights Fixed issue where mailto: links were not working when sending bulk email Fixed issue where uses did not see friendship relationships Problem is in 6.2, which does not show in the Versions Affected list above. Fixed the issue with cascade deletes in comments in CoreMessaging_Notification Fixed UI issue when using a date fields as a required profile property during user registration Fixed error when running the product in debug mode Fixed visibility issue when...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.65: Fixed null-reference error in the build task constructor.B INI Sharp Library: B INI Sharp Library v1.0.0.0 Final Realsed: The frist realsedActive Social Migrator: ActiveSocialMigrator 1.0.0 Beta: Beta release for the Active Social Migration tool.EntLib.com????????: ??????demo??-For SQL 2005-2008: EntLibShopping ???v3.0 - ??????demo??,?????SQL SERVER 2005/2008/2008 R2/2012 ??????。 ??(??)??????。 THANKS.Sistem LPK Pemkot Semarang: Panduan Penggunaan Sistem LPK: Panduan cara menggunakan Aplikasi Sistem LPK Bagian Pembangunan Kota SemarangActive Forums for DotNetNuke CMS: Active Forums 5.0.0 RC: RC release of Active Forums 5.0.Droid Explorer: Droid Explorer 0.8.8.7 Beta: Bug in the display icon for apk's, will fix with next release Added fallback icon if unable to get the image/icon from the Cloud Service Removed some stale plugins that were either out dated or incomplete. Added handler for *.ab files for restoring backups Added plugin to create device backups Backups stored in %USERPROFILE%\Android Backups\%DEVICE_ID%\ Added custom folder icon for the android backups directory better error handling for installing an apk bug fixes for the Runn...The Visual Guide for Building Team Foundation Server 2012 Environments: Version 1: --Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.5: Version 8.5 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine. New features include: Built-in search engine using Lucene.NET Flood control improvements Notifications improvements: sync option and mail body View Roadmap for more details webdeploy package sha1 checksum: 961aff884a9187b6e8a86d68913cdd31f8deaf83WiX Toolset: WiX Toolset v3.6: WiX Toolset v3.6 introduces the Burn bootstrapper/chaining engine and support for Visual Studio 2012 and .NET Framework 4.5. Other minor functionality includes: WixDependencyExtension supports dependency checking among MSI packages. WixFirewallExtension supports more features of Windows Firewall. WixTagExtension supports Software Id Tagging. WixUtilExtension now supports recursive directory deletion. Melt simplifies pure-WiX patching by extracting .msi package content and updating .w...Iveely Search Engine: Iveely Search Engine (0.2.0): ????ISE?0.1.0??,?????,ISE?0.2.0?????????,???????,????????20???follow?ISE,????,??ISE??????????,??????????,?????????,?????????0.2.0??????,??????????。 Iveely Search Engine ?0.2.0?????????“??????????”,??????,?????????,???????,???????????????????,????、????????????。???0.1.0????????????: 1. ??“????” ??。??????????,?????????,???????????????????。??:????????,????????????,??????????????????。??????。 2. ??“????”??。?0.1.0??????,???????,???????????????,?????????????,????????,?0.2.0?,???????...GmailDefaultMaker: GmailDefaultMaker 3.0.0.2: Add QQ Mail BugfixSmart Data Access layer: Smart Data access Layer Ver 3: In this version support executing inline query is added. Check Documentation section for detail.New ProjectsAdding 2013 Jewish Holidays for Outlook2003: Instruction: Copy the outlook.hol file to your compuer where Outlook2003 is installed. Double click the file, choose "Israel" and continue. That's it Agilcont System: Sistema de contabilidad para empresas privadas de preferencia para cajas que trabajan con efectivo en soles, dolares y con el material oroARB (A Request Broker): The idea is something like a Request Broker, but with some additional functionality.BATTLE.NET - SDK: This SDK provides the ability to use the Battle.net (Blizzard) Services for all supported Games such Diablo 3, World of Warcraft. Container Terminal System: SummaryDeclarative UX Streaming Data Language for the Cloud: Bringing a better communication paradigm for media and data..Get User Profile Information from SharePoint UserProfile Service: Used SharePoint object model to get the user profile information from the User Profile Service.Guess The City & State Windows 8 Source Code: Source code for Guess The City & State in Malaysia Windows 8 AppJquery Tree: This project is to demonstrate tree basic functionality.MCEBuddy 2.x: Convert and Remove Commercials for your Windows Media CenterMvcDesign: MvcDesign engine implementation projectMy Task Manager: This is a task manager module for DotNetNuke. I am using it to get started developing modules.MyAppwithbranches: MyAppwithbranchesProjecte prova: rpyGEO: pyGEO is a python package capable of parsing microarray data files. It also has a primitive plotting function.Scarlet Road: Scarlet Road is a top-down shooter. It's you against an unending horde of monsters.simplecounter: A simple counter, cick and counter.SiteEmpires: ????????Soundcloud Loader: Simple Tool for downloading Tracks from Soundcloud.Windows Phone Samples: Windows Phone code samples.

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  • Top Tweets SOA Partner Community – November 2011

    - by JuergenKress
    Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity soacommunity SOA Community Dutch ACEs SOA Partner Community award celebration wp.me/p10C8u-i9 OracleBPM Gauging Maturity of your BPM Strategy – part 1/2, bit.ly/vJE9UZ MagicChatzi Dutch ACE’s and ACE Directors had a small party: achatzia.blogspot.com/2011/11/celebr… leonsmiers #Capgemini #Oracle #BPM Blog index bit.ly/tUYtvD #yam lucasjellema Blog post by my colleague Emiel on the AMIS blog: Timeouts in Oracle SOA Suite 11g – tinyurl.com/73amo3r biemond Solving __OAUX_GENXSD_.TOP.XSD with BPEL: When you use an external web service in combination with a BPEL servic… t.co/Gzzatzrr OracleBlogs Jumpstart Fusion Middleware projects with Oracle User Productivity Kit ow.ly/1fJMev cpurdy on Oracle Coherence data grid, its new RESTful APIs, and Oracle Service Bus (OSB): blogs.oracle.com/slc/entry/orac… Accenture Learn how Service-Oriented Architecture can help public service agencies solve legacy system issues. bit.ly/sTteM4 #SOA eelzinga Thanks for organising it Andreas! #soacommunity eelzinga Had a nice drink with the fellow Dutch Oracle ACE members for a little celebration of the SOA Community Partner Award. #soacommunity EmielP Wrote a blogpost about timeouts in the #Oracle #SOA Suite: bit.ly/uhUcrX OracleBlogs Processing Binary Data in SOA Suite 11g t.co/Tzd1xBsY OracleBlogs Finding the Value in SOA by Stephen Bennett t.co/9MMLJoLz OTNArchBeat SOA All the Time; Architects in AZ; Clearing Info Integration hurdles t.co/5viNj8ib OracleBlogs Demo: Business Transaction Management with SOA Management Pack ow.ly/1fFBv3 OTNArchBeat SOA All the Time; Architects in AZ; Clearing Info Integration hurdles t.co/Dnfzo0PN oracletechnet Wikis.oracle.com lives leonsmiers A new #capgemini #oracle #blog, Measuring the Human Task activity in Oracle BPM bit.ly/uPan08 #yam @CapgeminiOracle OTNArchBeat 3 SOA business cases, explained in a 2-minute elevator speech | @JoeMcKendrick t.co/aYGNkZup OTNArchBeat Gartner, Inc. places Oracle SOA Governance in Magic Quadrant for SOA Governance Technologies t.co/bSG5cuTr Jphjulstad Red carpet to Oracle BPM – evita.no evita.no/ikbViewer/soa-… Oracle #Oracle Named a Leader in #SOA Governance Magic Quadrant by Leading Analyst Firm t.co/prnyGu2U soacommunity What presentations & topics do you like to see at the next SOA & BPM & Webcenter Community Forum early 2012? #soacommunity soacommunity Oracle BPM Suite 11g Handbook Released wp.me/p10C8u-hU OTNArchBeat SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (On Demand) | @soacommunity bit.ly/sqhQmX OracleBlogs SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (On Demand) t.co/MDrdnx0h 9 Nov Favorite Undo Retweet Reply OracleBlogs Specialized Partners Only! New Service to Promote Your Events t.co/qTgyEpY4 biemond @stevendavelaar this is for you t.co/hInKCcfY it explains your sso problem soacommunity SOA Development Virtual Developer Day (on demand) t.co/flXPWk4R soacommunity IPT Swiss SOA Experts – thanks for the nice ink wp.me/p10C8u-i3 soacommunity Enjoy #wjax specially the presentations from our #ACE @t_winterberg @myfear @AdamBien pic.twitter.com/m8VcBSG3 OTNArchBeat Discounts on books, more, for Oracle Technology Network members bit.ly/vRxMfB OracleSOA Justify the ROI of SOA in 10 seconds…a pic is worth 1000 words bit.ly/roi_of_soa_img #oraclesoa #soa #oow11 orclateamsoa A-Team SOA Blog: Case Management in BPM 11g -  Mark Foster Oracle BPM 11g & Case Management I’ve seen… t.co/l5zb6pFr t_winterberg Die nächste SIG #SOA steht an: 7.12. in Hamburg. Neues Tooling und Erfahrungen rund um Oracle FMW, SOA, BPM… (cont) deck.ly/~YC57v OracleBlogs Continuous Integration for SOA/BPM ow.ly/1fsekI OracleBlogs BPM Suite 11g Handbook Released ow.ly/1frlzv lucasjellema Iterating over collection (array) in BPM (and dispatching jobs for entries in array): t.co/1SEhSvWv – subprocesses are the key. lucasjellema Lucas Jellema Useful tip from Mark Nelson: BPM API documentation (as well as Human Workflow Service) available: redstack.wordpress.com/2011/09/28/api… OTNArchBeat SOA, cloud: it’s the architecture that matters | Joe McKendrick zd.net/tNCiTF orclateamsoa: Building a job dispatcher in BPM -or- Iterating over collections in BPM ow.ly/1frbrz orclateamsoa Using the Database as a Policy Store for SOA 11g ow.ly/1frbrA OracleBPM Oracle launches Process Accelerators for BPM: t.co/XPEE61QL Jphjulstad Human-Centric BPM Selection Checklist t.co/3TZXZHLH OracleBlogs Fusion Middleware General Session at OOW 2011: Missed It? Read On… t.co/aU5JvM6K gschmutz Great! The product page of the OSB 11g Development Cookbook is now online: t.co/5Jfbe6Ng Looking forward to get it, u too? brhubart Oracle IT Architecture Essentials; Lightweight Composite Service Development with SCA and Spring; Cloud Migration ow.ly/7esNg eelzinga New blogpost : Oracle Service Bus, Generic fault handling, bit.ly/sGr4UL #osb #oracleservicebus For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: soacommunity,twitter,Oracle,SOA Community,Jürgen Kress,OPN

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  • jQuery Datatable in MVC &hellip; extended.

    - by Steve Clements
    There are a million plugins for jQuery and when a web forms developer like myself works in MVC making use of them is par-for-the-course!  MVC is the way now, web forms are but a memory!! Grids / tables are my focus at the moment.  I don’t want to get in to righting reems of css and html, but it’s not acceptable to simply dump a table on the screen, functionality like sorting, paging, fixed header and perhaps filtering are expected behaviour.  What isn’t always required though is the massive functionality like editing etc you get with many grid plugins out there. You potentially spend a long time getting everything hooked together when you just don’t need it. That is where the jQuery DataTable plugin comes in.  It doesn’t have editing “out of the box” (you can add other plugins as you require to achieve such functionality). What it does though is very nicely format a table (and integrate with jQuery UI) without needing to hook up and Async actions etc.  Take a look here… http://www.datatables.net I did in the first instance start looking at the Telerik MVC grid control – I’m a fan of Telerik controls and if you are developing an in-house of open source app you get the MVC stuff for free…nice!  Their grid however is far more than I require.  Note: Using Telerik MVC controls with your own jQuery and jQuery UI does come with some hurdles, mainly to do with the order in which all your jQuery is executing – I won’t cover that here though – mainly because I don’t have a clear answer on the best way to solve it! One nice thing about the dataTable above is how easy it is to extend http://www.datatables.net/examples/plug-ins/plugin_api.html and there are some nifty examples on the site already… I however have a requirement that wasn’t on the site … I need a grid at the bottom of the page that will size automatically to the bottom of the page and be scrollable if required within its own space i.e. everything above the grid didn’t scroll as well.  Now a CSS master may have a great solution to this … I’m not that master and so didn’t! The content above the grid can vary so any kind of fixed positioning is out. So I wrote a little extension for the DataTable, hooked that up to the document.ready event and window.resize event. Initialising my dataTable ( s )… $(document).ready(function () {   var dTable = $(".tdata").dataTable({ "bPaginate": false, "bLengthChange": false, "bFilter": true, "bSort": true, "bInfo": false, "bAutoWidth": true, "sScrollY": "400px" });   My extension to the API to give me the resizing….   // ********************************************************************** // jQuery dataTable API extension to resize grid and adjust column sizes // $.fn.dataTableExt.oApi.fnSetHeightToBottom = function (oSettings) { var id = oSettings.nTable.id; var dt = $("#" + id); var top = dt.position().top; var winHeight = $(document).height(); var remain = (winHeight - top) - 83; dt.parent().attr("style", "overflow-x: auto; overflow-y: auto; height: " + remain + "px;"); this.fnAdjustColumnSizing(); } This is very much is debug mode, so pretty verbose at the moment – I’ll tidy that up later! You can see the last call is a call to an existing method, as the columns are fixed and that normally involves so CSS voodoo, a call to adjust those sizes is required. Just above is the style that the dataTable gives the grid wrapper div, I got that from some firebug action and stick in my new height. The –83 is to give me the space at the bottom i require for fixed footer!   Finally I hook that up to the load and window resize.  I’m actually using jQuery UI tabs as well, so I’ve got that in the open event of the tabs.   $(document).ready(function () { var oTable; $("#tabs").tabs({ "show": function (event, ui) { oTable = $('div.dataTables_scrollBody>table.tdata', ui.panel).dataTable(); if (oTable.length > 0) { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); } } }); $(window).bind("resize", function () { oTable.fnSetHeightToBottom(); }); }); And that all there is too it.  Testament to the wonders of jQuery and the immense community surrounding it – to which I am extremely grateful. I’ve also hooked up some custom column filtering on the grid – pretty normal stuff though – you can get what you need for that from their website.  I do hide the out of the box filter input as I wanted column specific, you need filtering turned on when initialising to get it to work and that input come with it!  Tip: fnFilter is the method you want.  With column index as a param – I used data tags to simply that one.

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  • How to Convert a PFX Certificate into a JKS Certificate to configure it on WebLogic

    - by adejuanc
    To convert a pfx cert file to a jks file, please follow these instructions: 1. Set up the environment for the domain, by executing the setDomainEnv.sh script, typically located at $DOMAIN_HOME/bin. $ . ./setDomainEnv.sh 2. Use OpenSSL to check the pfx certificate's content. $ openssl pkcs12 -in <certificate.pfx> -out KEYSTORE.pem -nodesAt this point, a password for the pfx file will be requested. Expected output: $ openssl pkcs12 -in <certificate.pfx> -out KEYSTORE.pem -nodesEnter Import Password:MAC verified OK3. Open KEYSTORE.pem file, from step 2. This should look similar to this:You will find three certificates on it and the private key: Bag Attributes Microsoft Local Key set: <No Values> localKeyID: 01 00 00 00 friendlyName: le-36c42c6e-ec49-413c-891e-591f7e3dd306 Microsoft CSP Name: Microsoft RSA SChannel Cryptographic ProviderKey Attributes X509v3 Key Usage: 10-----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----MIIEpQIBAAKCAQEAtPwoO3eOwSyOapzZgcDnQOH27cOaaejHtNh921Pd+U4N+dlm...EDITING...R5rsB00Yk1/2W9UqD9Nn7cDuMdilS8g9CUqnnSlDkSG0AX67auKUAcI=-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----Bag Attributes localKeyID: 01 00 00 00 friendlyName: *.something.comsubject=/serialNumber=sj6QjpTjKcpQGZ9QqWO-pFvsakS1t8MV/C=US/ST=Missouri/L=CHESTERFIELD/O=Oracle_Corp, Inc./OU=Oracle/CN=*.something.comissuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CA-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----MIIErzCCA5egAwIBAgIDAIH6MA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMEAxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT...EDITING...wA5JxaU55teoWkuiAaYRQpuLepJfzw+qMk5i5FpMRbVMMfkcBusGtdW5OrAoYDL94rgR-----END CERTIFICATE-----Bag Attributes friendlyName: GeoTrust Global CAsubject=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CAissuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----MIIDVDCCAjygAwIBAgIDAjRWMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMEIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT...EDITING...5fEWCRE11azbJHFwLJhWC9kXtNHjUStedejV0NxPNO3CBWaAocvmMw==-----END CERTIFICATE-----Bag Attributes: <Empty Attributes>subject=/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CAissuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA-----BEGIN CERTIFICATE-----MIID2TCCAsGgAwIBAgIDAjbQMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBBQUAMEIxCzAJBgNVBAYTAlVT...EDITING...TpnKXKBuervdo5AaRTPvvz7SBMS24CqFZUE+ENQ=-----END CERTIFICATE-----4. Identify and store contents from KEYSTORE.pem certificate, to proceed and create jks files:At this point, you will find three certificates on KEYSTORE.pem and the private key. 4.1 Private Key.To identify the private key, look for the following headings: -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY----------END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----Both above mentioned tags will be surrounded the private key. Go ahead and save the content of it into a file called: my_key_pk.pem. This has to include the headings. Expected file: -----BEGIN RSA PRIVATE KEY-----MIIEpQIBAAKCAQEAtPwoO3eOwSyOapzZgcDnQOH27cOaaejHtNh921Pd+U4N+dlm...EDIT...Y4ZrW12PRa9/EOBGTG5teKAEada/K4yKReTyQQAGq6j5RjErmuuKkKgPGMSCjvMSR5rsB00Yk1/2W9UqD9Nn7cDuMdilS8g9CUqnnSlDkSG0AX67auKUAcI=-----END RSA PRIVATE KEY-----4.2 Root Certificate.To identify the Root Certificate, look for the following headings: subject=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA issuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA Subject and issuer must be the same. Go ahead and save the content of it into a file called: my_key_root.pem. Include all the content from BEGIN CERTIFICATE TO END CERTIFICATE, both included.4.3 Intermediate Certificate.To identify an Intermediate Certificate, look for the following heading: subject=/C=US/O=GeoTrust, Inc./CN=GeoTrust SSL CAissuer=/C=US/O=GeoTrust Inc./CN=GeoTrust Global CA Subject and issuer are different only on the CN. Go ahead and save the content of it into a file called: my_key_intermediate.pem. Include all the content from BEGIN CERTIFICATE TO END CERTIFICATE, both included. NOTE: This certificate is optional and there are some cases where it'll not be present. If this is the case, go ahead and skip this step. In any other case, this needs to be added to the identity keystore jks file. 4.4 Server Certificate. To identify a Server Certificate, look for the following heading: friendlyName: some.thing.comsubject=/serialNumber=sj6QjpTjKcpQGZ9QqWO-pFvsakS1t8MV/C=US/ST=Missouri/L=CHESTERFIELD/O=Oracle_Corp, Inc./OU=Oracle/CN=some.thing.com        A server certificate includes a heading called Friendly Name. Go ahead and save the content of it into a file called: my_key_crt.pem. Include all the content from BEGIN CERTIFICATE TO END CERTIFICATE, both included.5. Create a Trust Keystore and import the Root certificate into it. $ keytool -import -trustcacerts -file my_key_root.pem -alias my_key_root -keystore my_key_trust.jks -storepass <store_pass> -keypass <key_pass>Expected Output: Certificate already exists in system-wide CA keystore under alias <geotrustglobalca> Do you still want to add it to your own keystore? [no]: yes Certificate was added to keystore6. Generate an Identity Keystore and import Server into it. $java utils.ImportPrivateKey -keystore my_key_identity.jks -storepass <store_pass> -storetype JKS -keypass <key_pass> -alias server_identity -certfile my_key_crt.pem -keyfile my_key_pk.pem -keyfilepass <pfx_password> With these instructions, two jks files will be produced: my_key_identity.jks my_key_trust.jks With both files, the next step is to configure Custom Identity and Custom Trust on WebLogic Server.

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  • Silverlight Cream for February 26, 2011 -- #1052

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Mark Monster, Gill Cleeren, Pencho Popadiyn, Kevin Dockx, Joost van Schaik, Jesse Liberty, John Papa, Jeremy Likness, Arik Poznanski(-2-), Page Brooks, Deborah Kurata, Mike Snow, Alfred Astort, Samuel Jack, XAMLNinja, and Shawn Wildermuth. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx" Jesse Liberty WP7: "Phoney Windows Phone 7 Project Now Available!" Shawn Wildermuth MVVM: "Validating our ViewModel" Mark Monster Shoutouts: Shawn Wildermuth has a video up of his FadingMessage class to show it off: Introducing Phoney's FadingMessage Class From SilverlightCream.com: Validating our ViewModel Mark Monster discusses Validation in his latest post... using INotifyDataErrorInfo and his own implementation of a ViewModel base that supports it and INPC. Getting ready for Microsoft Silverlight Exam 70-506 (Part 7) Gill Cleeren hits part 7 of his series at SilverlightShow on a great walk through Silverlight and getting ready for the exam. This is the final part and concentrates on deploying apps. Windows Phone 7–Creating Custom Keyboard Pencho Popadiyn has a post at SilverlightShow discussing problems with WP7 keyboards in his native Bulgaria, and his solution to the problem... create his own. 360 Degrees Feedback by Kevin Dockx Kevin Dockx produced a white paper for his company about an employee review solution they did in Silverlight. The white paper is available, and SilverlightShow interviewd Kevin to answer questions about the app. Extended Windows Phone 7 page for handling rotation, focused element updates and back key press Looks like Joost van Schaik has a few posts I've missed... and I'm not going to get to them all today! ... this one is about the base class he uses for WP7 apps... a bunch of utilities he uses... definitely worth a look (and a take). Asynchronous Callbacks with Rx Jesse Liberty has his 8th post in the Rx series up and this one's on Asynchronous Callbacks... if you haven't seen this before, you should definitely look into it... cool stuff, Jesse! Silverlight TV 63: Exploring National Instruments' App Using Data and Business Features John Papa has Silverlight TV number 63 up and is talking to Steve Lasker about National Instruments and their Lab View product. Great demo and discussion. Jounce Part 11: Debugging MEF Jeremy Likness's latest (number 11) in his series on his MVVM framework Jounce is out, and he's discussing how to debug MEF, which Jounce handles nicely through the logging he provides... and you can use it externally to Jounce. Get Twitter Trends on Windows Phone 7 Arik Poznanski has a couple Twitter for WP7 posts up... first is one for pulling Twitter trends from whatthetrend.com... plus the code to do it. Searching Twitter on Windows Phone 7 In his next post, Arik Poznanski shows how to search twitter from your WP7 ... again with code. Tiled Background Control in Silverlight Page Brooks shows how to get a tiled background control in Silverlight ... did you know there was one in the JetPack them? Silverlight Charting: Displaying Data Above the Column Deborah Kurata continues her charting posts with this one displaying the column value above the column. I like this... it has a clean look and all the data is available at a glance. Silverlight: Tasks on the Win7 Mobile Phone Mike Snow has a list of the WP7 tasks available and an example of using them... looks like a pretty good reference! 10 of 10 - Aesthetics and alignment matter Alfred Astort discusses aesthetics and WP7 dev... looks like it's the same as any app development, but if you're not doing it, you should be. Simon Squared – We have Multi-player: Days 4, 5 and (ahem!) 6 Samuel Jack details the completion of his multi-player game for WP7 utilizing Azure, in the hour-by-hour detail he's done the rest... plus a video of the final product! Who ate all the pies!! XAMLNinja has a very good discussion/link set of Charting posts all leading up to a portrait-only version of charting for WP7 with labels that looks looks great Phoney Windows Phone 7 Project Now Available! Shawn Wildermuth has a collection of classes he always uses with WP7 dev, and he's sharing them with all of us a "Phoney" Tools project on Codeplex... and now has a NuGet project also. 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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  • top Tweets SOA Partner Community – May 2012

    - by JuergenKress
    Send your tweets @soacommunity #soacommunity and follow us at http://twitter.com/soacommunity SOA Community BPMN2.0 Oracle notations poster from eaiesb http://wp.me/p10C8u-pu Torsten WinterbergLook out for new Oracle #BPM edition coming up soon: The Oracle BPM Standard edtion! Great news for easy entry, small licence fees. Yes! Danilo Schmiedel Had a great chat with customer yesterday about #OracleBPM. Next step will be a 5day event combining modeling and implementation @soacommunity Frank Nimphius Still reading "Oracle Business Process Management Suite 11g Handbook". Excellent resource for a non-SOA but ADF guy like me ;-) Oracle New webcast: Maximize #Oracle #WebLogic Server ROI with Oracle #Enterprise #Manager 12c on May 2 at 10 am PT. Register http://bit.ly/JFUrR9 OTNArchBeat@OTNArchBeat BPM in Financial Services Industry | Sanjeev Sharma http://bit.ly/HCCxui JDeveloper & ADF BPEL 11.1.1.6 Certified for Prebuilt E-Business Suite 12.1.3 SOA Integrations http://dlvr.it/1V9SxR Oracle UPK & Tutor Collaborate Attendees: Visit the UPK demo pod, SIGS, and sessions: If you are attending Collaborate 2012 - Sun. http://bit.ly/J39z65 Heidi Buelow see #fmw track RT @demed: Are you going to #KSCOPE12 in San Antonio, June 24-28? http://kscope12.com/component/ seminar/seminarslist?topicsid=6 Use promo code Fusion for discount! Sabine Leitner #SIG #Middleware 15.05. Frankfurt #Oracle #DOAG Planung & Aufbau WebLogic Server #WLS http://bit.ly/HKsCWV @OracleWebLogic @soacommunity SOA Community MDS explorer by Red Samurai http://wp.me/p10C8u-pp Biemond &reg; Retrieve or set a HTTP header from Oracle BPEL: With Oracle SOA Suite 11g patch 12928372 you can finally retrie http://bit.ly/JejTHC Lucas Jellema Call for papers for UKOUG 2012 has opened: http://techandebs.ukoug.org /default.asp?p=9306 (deadline 1st of June) OTNArchBeat BPM API usage: List all BPM Processes for a user | Kavitha Srinivasan http://bit.ly/IJKVfj demed SOA, Cloud + Service Tech symposium (London, Sep 24-25) call for paper is open http://www.servicetechsymposium. com /call2012.php @techsymp #oraclesoa OracleBlogs Lessons learned configuring OER 11g Workflows http://ow.ly/1iMsKh OTNArchBeat Scripting WebLogic Admin Server Startup | Antony Reynolds http://bit.ly/IH5ciU orclateamsoa A-Team Blog #ateam: BPM API usage: List all BPM Processes for a user http://ow.ly/1iJADp Lucas Jellema Just blogged about our Live FMW Application Development show during OBUG 2012, next Tuesday 24th April in Maastricht: OracleBlogs OEG integration with OSB/OWSM - 11g http://ow.ly/1iKx7G SOA Community SOA Community Newsletter April 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-pl Frank DorstRT @whitehorsesnl: Whiteblog: BPM Process Spaces in Oracle Webcenter (Patch Set 5(http://bit.ly/Hxzh29) #soacommunity #bpm #oracle) David Shaffer The Advanced SOA suite training class next week in Redwood City is full! Learned a lot about accepting credit card payments. OTNArchBeat Running Built-In Test Simulator with SOA Suite Healthcare 11g in PS4 and PS5 | Shub Lahiri http://bit.ly/IgI8GN SOA Community Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Awards 2012, Call for Nominations #ofmaward #soa #bpm #soacommunity OTNArchBeat Updated SOA Documents now available in ITSO Reference Library http://bit.ly/I3Y6Sg Oracle Middleware Data Integrator & SOA - why 2 products better than one for integration? Webcast: Apr 24 10 AM PT http://bit.ly/IzmtKR Andrejus Baranovskis Red Samurai MDS Cleaner V2.0 http://fb.me/FxLVz82w SOA Community “@rluttikhuizen: Chapter 4 of SOA Made Simple book "Classification of Services" ready for collegial review” can #soacommunity get a preview? Xavier Verhaeghe #Gartner figures are out: #Oracle top in App Server market share (43.1%) and Relational #Database, too (48.8%) in 2011 Sabine Leitner WLS12c, Exa*, IDM, EM12c, DB @ Private, Public, Hybrid #Cloud Event 26.04. FFM #Oracle http://bit.ly/zcRuxi @OracleCloudZone @soacommunity Michel Schildmeijer@wlscommunity @MiddlewareMagic @OTNArchBeat @Oracle_Fusion Oracle WebLogic / SOA Suite 11g HACMP Cluster take-over http://lnkd.in/G78qMd Oracle Middleware Hear how ODI and SOA's unified approach are key to untangling your business. April 24 10AM PT http://bit.ly/IdcsUz #Oracle OTNArchBeat Using SAP Adapter with OSB 11g (PS3) | Shub Lahiri http://bit.ly/IswR9K SOA Community Integrating with Oracle Fusion Applications: Discovering Integration Artifacts https://blogs.oracle.com/governance /entry/integrating_with_oracle_fusion_ applications #soacommunity #oer #governance OracleBlogs Tuning B2B Server Engine Threads in SOA Suite 11g http://ow.ly/1iH5bx OracleBlogs Top Tweets SOA Partner Community April 2012 http://ow.ly/1iVHfA SOA Community Oracle SOA Suite 11g Database Growth Management http://wp.me/p10C8u-pi Sabine Leitner WLS12c,Exa*,IDM,EM12c, DB @ Private, Public, Hybrid #Cloud Event 24.04. München #Oracle http://bit.ly/zcRuxi @OracleCloudZone @soacommunity SOA Community Testing Business Rules by Mark Nelson http://redstack.wordpress.com/2012/ 04/18/testing-business-rules/ #soacommunity #soa #rules #oracle SOA CommunityTop Tweets SOA Partner Community - April 2012 http://wp.me/p10C8u-pn OTNArchBeat Webcast: Untangle Your Business with Oracle Unified SOA and Data Integration - April 24 http://bit.ly/IQexqT OTNArchBeat"Do more with SOA Integration: Best of Packt" contributors include @gschmutz, @llaszews, many others http://amzn.to/HVWwYt ServiceTechSymposium Symposium agenda page coming together - page launched today with keynotes, sessions to be added shortly. http://www.servicetechsymposium.com /agenda2012.php SOA Community Shipping Specialization plaques - congratulation #Fujitsu - request yours https://soacommunity.wordpress. com/2011/02/23/who-are-the-soa-experts-specialization-recognized-by-customers/ #soacommunity #OPN http://pic.twitter.com/YMRm2ion ServiceTechSymposium call for Presentations Submission Deadline Moved Up to May 21, 2012. Send your presentations submissions ASAP! ServiceTechSymposium Symposium Keynote by Vicente Navarro, European Space Agency, added to agenda: "SOA & Service-Orientation at the European Space Agency" SOA Community Running a large #soa project? Make sure you read - Oracle SOA Suite 11g Database Growth Management #soacommunity #opn SOA Community List all BPM Processes for a user by Yogesh l #bpm #oracle #soacommunity  For regular information on Oracle SOA Suite become a member in the SOA Partner Community for registration please visit  www.oracle.com/goto/emea/soa (OPN account required) Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Technorati Tags: soacommunity, twitter,Oracle,SOA Community,Jürgen Kress,OPN,SOA,BPM

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  • Prioritizing Product Features

    - by Robert May
    A very common task in Agile Environments is prioritization.  Teams that are functioning well will prioritize new features, old features, the backlog, and any other source of stories for the team, and they’ll do it regularly. Not all teams are good at prioritizing according to the real return on investment that building stories will yield to the company.  This is unfortunate.  Too often, teams end up building features that are less valuable, and everyone seems to know it except perhaps the product owner!  Most features built into software are never even used.  Clearly, not much return for features that go unused. So how does a company avoid building features that add little value to the company?  This is a tough question to answer, but usually, this prioritization starts at the top with the executives of the company.  After all, they’re responsible for the overall vision of the company. Here’s what I recommend: Know your market. Know your customers and users. Know where you’re going and what you want to achieve. Implement the Vision Know Your Market We often see companies that don’t know their market.  Personally, I’m surprised by this.  These companies don’t know who their competitors are, don’t know what features make their product desirable in the market, and in many cases, get by with saying, “I’ve been doing this for XX years.  I know what the market wants!”  In many cases, they equate “marketing” with “advertising” and don’t understand the difference. This is almost never true.  Good companies will spend significant amounts of time and money finding out who they’re competing against and what makes their competitors successful in the marketplace.  Good companies understand that marketing involves more than just advertising.  Often, marketing is mostly research and analysis, not sales.  Until you understand your market, you cannot know what features will give you the best return on your investment dollar. Good companies have a marketing department and can answer the next important step which is to know your customers and your users. Know your Customers and Users First, note that I included both customers and users.  They’re often not the same thing.  Users use the product that you build.  Customers buy the product that you build.  It’s a subtle difference, but too often, I’ve seen companies that focus exclusively on one or the other and are not successful simply because they ignore an important part of the group. If your company is doing appropriate marketing, you know that these are two different aspects of your product and that both deserve attention to have a product that is successful in your target market.  Your marketing department should be spending a lot of time understanding these personas and then conveying that information to the company. I’m always surprised when development teams think that they can build a product that people want to use without understanding the users of that product.  Developers think differently than most people in the world.  They know what the computer is doing.  The computer isn’t magic to them.  So when they assume that they know how to build something, they bring with them quite a bit of baggage.  Never assume that you know your customer unless you’re regularly having interaction with them.  Also, don’t just leave this to Marketing or Product Management.  Take them time to get your developers out with the customers as well.  Developers are very smart people, and often, seeing how someone uses their software inspires them to make a much better product. Very often, because the users and customers aren’t know, teams will spend a significant amount of time building apps that are super flexible and configurable so that any possible combination of feature can be used.  This demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the customer.  Most configuration questions can quickly be answered by talking to the customer.  In most cases, if your software requires significant setup and configuration before its usable, you probably don’t know your customers and users very well. Until you know your customers, you cannot know what features will be most valuable to your customers and you cannot build those features in a way that your customers can use. Know Where You’re Going and What You Want to Achieve Many companies suffer from not having a plan.  Executives will tell the team to make them a plan.  The team, not knowing their market and customers and users, will come up with a plan that doesn’t reflect reality and doesn’t consider ROI.  Management then wonders why the product is doing poorly in the market place. Instead of leaving this up to the teams, as executives, work with Marketing to understand what broad categories of features will sell the most product in the marketplace.  Then, once you’ve determined that, give this vision to the team and let them run with it.  Revise the vision as needed, but avoid changing streams frequently.  Sure, sometimes you need to, but often, executives will change priorities many times a month, leading to nothing more than confusion.  If the team has a vision, they’ll be able to execute that vision far better than they could otherwise. By knowing what products are most important, you can set budgetary goals and guidelines that will help you achieve the vision that was created. Implement the Vision Creating the vision is often where the general executives stop participating in the plan.  The team is responsible for implementing that vision.  Executives should attend showcases and and should remain aware of the progress that the team is making towards meeting the vision, however. Once a broad vision has been created, the team should break that vision down into minimal market features (MMF).  These MMFs should be sized using story points so that, using the team’s velocity, an estimated cost can be determined for each feature.  The product management team should then try to quantify the relative value of the MMFs based on customer feedback and interviews.  Once the value and cost of creating the feature is understood, a return on investment can be calculated.  The features should then be prioritized with the MMF’s that have the highest value and lowest cost rising to the top of features to implement.  Don’t let politics get in the way! Once the MMF’s have been prioritized, they should go through release planning to schedule them for implementation. Conclusion By having a good grasp on the strategy of the company, your Agile teams can be much more effective.  Each and every story the team is implementing will roll up into features that matter to the company and provide ROI to them.  The steps outlined in this post should be repeated on a regular basis.  I recommend reviewing them at least once per quarter to make sure that the vision hasn’t shifted and that the teams are still working on what matters most to the company. Technorati Tags: Agile,Product Owner,ROI

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  • Brighton Rocks: UA Europe 2011

    - by ultan o'broin
    User Assistance Europe 2011 was held in Brighton, UK. Having seen Quadrophenia a dozen times, I just had to go along (OK, I wanted to talk about messages in enterprise applications). Sadly, it rained a lot, though that was still eminently more tolerable than being stuck home in Dublin during Bloomsday. So, here are my somewhat selective highlights and observations from the conference, massively skewed towards my own interests, as usual. Enjoyed Leah Guren's (Cow TC) great start ‘keynote’ on the Cultural Dimensions of Software Help Usage. Starting out by revisiting Hofstede's and Hall's work on culture (how many times I have done this for Multilingual magazine?) and then Neilsen’s findings on age as an indicator of performance, Leah showed how it is the expertise of the user that user assistance (UA) needs to be designed for (especially for high-end users), with some considerations made for age, while the gender and culture of users are not major factors. Help also needs to be contextual and concise, embedded close to the action. That users are saying things like “If I want help on Office, I go to Google ” isn't all that profound at this stage, but it is always worth reiterating how search can be optimized to return better results for users. Interestingly, regardless of user education level, the issue of information quality--hinging on the lynchpin of terminology reflecting that of the user--is critical. Major takeaway for me there. Matthew Ellison’s sessions on embedded help and demos were also impressive. Embedded help that is concise and contextual is definitely a powerful UX enabler, and I’m pleased to say that in Oracle Fusion Applications we have embraced the concept fully. Matthew also mentioned in his session about successful software demos that the principle of modality with demos is a must. Look no further than Oracle User Productivity Kit demos See It!, Try It!, Know It, and Do It! modes, for example. I also found some key takeaways in the presentation by Marie-Louise Flacke on notes and warnings. Here, legal considerations seemed to take precedence over providing any real information to users. I was delighted when Marie-Louise called out the Oracle JDeveloper documentation as an exemplar of how to use notes and instructions instead of trying to scare the bejaysus out of people and not providing them with any real information they’d find useful instead. My own session on designing messages for enterprise applications was well attended. Knowing your user profiles (remember user expertise is the king maker for UA so write for each audience involved), how users really work, the required application business and UI rules, what your application technology supports, and how messages integrate with the enterprise help desk and support policies and you will go much further than relying solely on the guideline of "writing messages in plain language". And, remember the value in warnings and confirmation messages too, and how you can use them smartly. I hope y’all got something from my presentation and from my answers to questions afterwards. Ellis Pratt stole the show with his presentation on applying game theory to software UA, using plenty of colorful, relevant examples (check out the Atlassian and DropBox approaches, for example), and striking just the right balance between theory and practice. Completely agree that the approach to take here is not to make UA itself a game, but to invoke UA as part of a bigger game dynamic (time-to-task completion, personal and communal goals, personal achievement and status, and so on). Sure there are gotchas and limitations to gamification, and we need to do more research. However, we'll hear a lot more about this subject in coming years, particularly in the enterprise space. I hope. I also heard good things about the different sessions about DITA usage (including one by Sonja Fuga that clearly opens the door for major innovation in the community content space using WordPress), the progressive disclosure of information (Cerys Willoughby), an overview of controlled language (or "information quality", as I like to position it) solutions and rationale by Dave Gash, and others. I also spent time chatting with Mike Hamilton of MadCap Software, who showed me a cool demo of their Flare product, and the Lingo translation solution. I liked the idea of their licensing model for workers-on-the-go; that’s smart UX-awareness in itself. Also chatted with Julian Murfitt of Mekon about uptake of DITA in the enterprise space. In all, it's worth attending UA Europe. I was surprised, however, not to see conference topics about mobile UA, community conversation and content, and search in its own right. These are unstoppable forces now, and the latter is pretty central to providing assistance now to all but the most irredentist of hard-copy fetishists or advanced technical or functional users working away on the back end of applications and systems. Only saw one iPad too (says the guy who carries three laptops). Tweeting during the conference was pretty much nonexistent during the event, so no community energy there. Perhaps all this can be addressed next year. I would love to see the next UA Europe event come to Dublin (despite Bloomsday, it's not a bad place place, really) now that hotels are so cheap and all. So, what is my overall impression of the state of user assistance in Europe? Clearly, there are still many people in the industry who feel there is something broken with the traditional forms of user assistance (particularly printed doc) and something needs to be done about it. I would suggest they move on and try and embrace change, instead. Many others see new possibilities, offered by UX and technology, as well as the reality of online user behavior in an increasingly connected world and that is encouraging. Such thought leaders need to be listened to. As Ellis Pratt says in his great book, Trends in Technical Communication - Rethinking Help: “To stay relevant means taking a new perspective on the role (of technical writer), and delivering “products” over and above the traditional manual and online Help file... there are a number of new trends in this field - some complementary, some conflicting. Whatever trends emerge as the norm, it’s likely the status quo will change.” It already has, IMO. I hear similar debates in the professional translation world about the onset of translation crowd sourcing (the Facebook model) and machine translation (trust me, that battle is over). Neither of these initiatives has put anyone out of a job and probably won't, though the nature of the work might change. If anything, such innovations have increased the overall need for professional translators as user expectations rise, new audiences emerge, and organizations need to collate and curate user-generated content, combining it with their own. Perhaps user assistance professionals can learn from other professions and grow accordingly.

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  • How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

    - by David Atkinson
    Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you'll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you've read my previous blog posts, you'll be aware that I've been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a "production"-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it's not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn't I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn't an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley's "Continuous Delivery" teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you've been allotted. 2. It's not just about the storage requirements, it's also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I'm just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what's the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I'm sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server's point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no 'duplicate' storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly "release test" process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_virtual FROM DISK=N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE mydatabase WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the 'virtual' restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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  • How to restore your production database without needing additional storage

    - by David Atkinson
    Production databases can get very large. This in itself is to be expected, but when a copy of the database is needed the database must be restored, requiring additional and costly storage.  For example, if you want to give each developer a full copy of your production server, you’ll need n times the storage cost for your n-developer team. The same is true for any test databases that are created during the course of your project lifecycle. If you’ve read my previous blog posts, you’ll be aware that I’ve been focusing on the database continuous integration theme. In my CI setup I create a “production”-equivalent database directly from its source control representation, and use this to test my upgrade scripts. Despite this being a perfectly valid and practical thing to do as part of a CI setup, it’s not the exact equivalent to running the upgrade script on a copy of the actual production database. So why shouldn’t I instead simply restore the most recent production backup as part of my CI process? There are two reasons why this would be impractical. 1. My CI environment isn’t an exact copy of my production environment. Indeed, this would be the case in a perfect world, and it is strongly recommended as a good practice if you follow Jez Humble and David Farley’s “Continuous Delivery” teachings, but in practical terms this might not always be possible, especially where storage is concerned. It may just not be possible to restore a huge production database on the environment you’ve been allotted. 2. It’s not just about the storage requirements, it’s also the time it takes to do the restore. The whole point of continuous integration is that you are alerted as early as possible whether the build (yes, the database upgrade script counts!) is broken. If I have to run an hour-long restore each time I commit a change to source control I’m just not going to get the feedback quickly enough to react. So what’s the solution? Red Gate has a technology, SQL Virtual Restore, that is able to restore a database without using up additional storage. Although this sounds too good to be true, the explanation is quite simple (although I’m sure the technical implementation details under the hood are quite complex!) Instead of restoring the backup in the conventional sense, SQL Virtual Restore will effectively mount the backup using its HyperBac technology. It creates a data and log file, .vmdf, and .vldf, that becomes the delta between the .bak file and the virtual database. This means that both read and write operations are permitted on a virtual database as from SQL Server’s point of view it is no different from a conventional database. Instead of doubling the storage requirements upon a restore, there is no ‘duplicate’ storage requirements, other than the trivially small virtual log and data files (see illustration below). The benefit is magnified the more databases you mount to the same backup file. This technique could be used to provide a large development team a full development instance of a large production database. It is also incredibly easy to set up. Once SQL Virtual Restore is installed, you simply run a conventional RESTORE command to create the virtual database. This is what I have running as part of a nightly “release test” process triggered by my CI tool. RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual FROM DISK=N'D:\VirtualDatabase\WidgetProduction.bak' WITH MOVE N'WidgetProduction' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vmdf', MOVE N'WidgetProduction_log' TO N'C:\WidgetWF\ProdBackup\WidgetProduction_log_WidgetProduction_Virtual.vldf', NORECOVERY, STATS=1, REPLACE GO RESTORE DATABASE WidgetProduction_Virtual WITH RECOVERY   Note the only change from what you would do normally is the naming of the .vmdf and .vldf files. SQL Virtual Restore intercepts this by monitoring the extension and applies its magic, ensuring the ‘virtual’ restore happens rather than the conventional storage-heavy restore. My automated release test then applies the upgrade scripts to the virtual production database and runs some validation tests, giving me confidence that were I to run this on production for real, all would go smoothly. For illustration, here is my 8Gb production database: And its corresponding backup file: Here are the .vldf and .vmdf files, which represent the only additional used storage for the new database following the virtual restore.   The beauty of this product is its simplicity. Once it is installed, the interaction with the backup and virtual database is exactly the same as before, as the clever stuff is being done at a lower level. SQL Virtual Restore can be downloaded as a fully functional 14-day trial. Technorati Tags: SQL Server

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  • C++ Little Wonders: The C++11 auto keyword redux

    - by James Michael Hare
    I’ve decided to create a sub-series of my Little Wonders posts to focus on C++.  Just like their C# counterparts, these posts will focus on those features of the C++ language that can help improve code by making it easier to write and maintain.  The index of the C# Little Wonders can be found here. This has been a busy week with a rollout of some new website features here at my work, so I don’t have a big post for this week.  But I wanted to write something up, and since lately I’ve been renewing my C++ skills in a separate project, it seemed like a good opportunity to start a C++ Little Wonders series.  Most of my development work still tends to focus on C#, but it was great to get back into the saddle and renew my C++ knowledge.  Today I’m going to focus on a new feature in C++11 (formerly known as C++0x, which is a major move forward in the C++ language standard).  While this small keyword can seem so trivial, I feel it is a big step forward in improving readability in C++ programs. The auto keyword If you’ve worked on C++ for a long time, you probably have some passing familiarity with the old auto keyword as one of those rarely used C++ keywords that was almost never used because it was the default. That is, in the code below (before C++11): 1: int foo() 2: { 3: // automatic variables (allocated and deallocated on stack) 4: int x; 5: auto int y; 6:  7: // static variables (retain their value across calls) 8: static int z; 9:  10: return 0; 11: } The variable x is assumed to be auto because that is the default, thus it is unnecessary to specify it explicitly as in the declaration of y below that.  Basically, an auto variable is one that is allocated and de-allocated on the stack automatically.  Contrast this to static variables, that are allocated statically and exist across the lifetime of the program. Because auto was so rarely (if ever) used since it is the norm, they decided to remove it for this purpose and give it new meaning in C++11.  The new meaning of auto: implicit typing Now, if your compiler supports C++ 11 (or at least a good subset of C++11 or 0x) you can take advantage of type inference in C++.  For those of you from the C# world, this means that the auto keyword in C++ now behaves a lot like the var keyword in C#! For example, many of us have had to declare those massive type declarations for an iterator before.  Let’s say we have a std::map of std::string to int which will map names to ages: 1: std::map<std::string, int> myMap; And then let’s say we want to find the age of a given person: 1: // Egad that's a long type... 2: std::map<std::string, int>::const_iterator pos = myMap.find(targetName); Notice that big ugly type definition to declare variable pos?  Sure, we could shorten this by creating a typedef of our specific map type if we wanted, but now with the auto keyword there’s no need: 1: // much shorter! 2: auto pos = myMap.find(targetName); The auto now tells the compiler to determine what type pos should be based on what it’s being assigned to.  This is not dynamic typing, it still determines the type as if it were explicitly declared and once declared that type cannot be changed.  That is, this is invalid: 1: // x is type int 2: auto x = 42; 3:  4: // can't assign string to int 5: x = "Hello"; Once the compiler determines x is type int it is exactly as if we typed int x = 42; instead, so don’t' confuse it with dynamic typing, it’s still very type-safe. An interesting feature of the auto keyword is that you can modify the inferred type: 1: // declare method that returns int* 2: int* GetPointer(); 3:  4: // p1 is int*, auto inferred type is int 5: auto *p1 = GetPointer(); 6:  7: // ps is int*, auto inferred type is int* 8: auto p2 = GetPointer(); Notice in both of these cases, p1 and p2 are determined to be int* but in each case the inferred type was different.  because we declared p1 as auto *p1 and GetPointer() returns int*, it inferred the type int was needed to complete the declaration.  In the second case, however, we declared p2 as auto p2 which means the inferred type was int*.  Ultimately, this make p1 and p2 the same type, but which type is inferred makes a difference, if you are chaining multiple inferred declarations together.  In these cases, the inferred type of each must match the first: 1: // Type inferred is int 2: // p1 is int* 3: // p2 is int 4: // p3 is int& 5: auto *p1 = GetPointer(), p2 = 42, &p3 = p2; Note that this works because the inferred type was int, if the inferred type was int* instead: 1: // syntax error, p1 was inferred to be int* so p2 and p3 don't make sense 2: auto p1 = GetPointer(), p2 = 42, &p3 = p2; You could also use const or static to modify the inferred type: 1: // inferred type is an int, theAnswer is a const int 2: const auto theAnswer = 42; 3:  4: // inferred type is double, Pi is a static double 5: static auto Pi = 3.1415927; Thus in the examples above it inferred the types int and double respectively, which were then modified to const and static. Summary The auto keyword has gotten new life in C++11 to allow you to infer the type of a variable from it’s initialization.  This simple little keyword can be used to cut down large declarations for complex types into a much more readable form, where appropriate.   Technorati Tags: C++, C++11, Little Wonders, auto

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  • Product Development Investment: A Measure of Vendor Performance

    - by Jim Mcglothlin
    The relationship between a large, complex organization and its key suppliers of information technology is normally more than just "strategic". Expectations about the duration of the relationship typically exceed 20 years. Enterprise applications and technology infrastructure are not expected to be changed out like petunias. So how would you rate the due diligence processes as performed in Higher Education when selecting critical, transformational information technology? My observation: I see a lot of effort put into elaborate demonstration of basic software functionality. I see a lot of attention paid to the cost element of technology acquisition, including the contracted cost of implementation consulting services. But the factor that receives only cursory analysis and due diligence is long-term performance--the ability of a vendor to grow, expand, and develop, and bring its customers along with it. So what should you look for in a long-term IT supplier? Oracle has a public track record for product development. The annual investment has been on a run rate of almost $3 Billion organic product development. Oracle's well-publicized acquisitions and mergers have been supplemental to its R&D. This is important for Higher Education. Another meaningful way to evaluate a company is to look at the tangible track record of enhancement. Consider the Oracle-PeopleSoft enterprise business platform since acquired by Oracle 6 years ago: Product or Technology Enhancement Customer or User Impact Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) 300+ new web services delivered in versions 9.0 & 9.1 provide flexibility, so that customers can integrate PeopleSoft with other applications. Campus Solutions has added Admissions and Constituent Web Services. Constituent Relationship Management PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 for Higher Education introduced new process flows for student recruiting and retention to support "Student Success" initiatives. A 360 view of the constituent is now delivered, and the concept of a single-stop Student Services Center is now in CRM 9.1 with tight integration to PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Human Capital Management Contract Pay for Education, with flexibility for configuration and calculation, has been extended in HCM 9.1. New chartfield integration among Project Costing - Time & Labor - Payroll to serve the labor distribution requirements for Grants / Sponsored Research. Talent Management PeopleSoft 9.0 and 9.1 feature an integrated talent management approach centered on definitions in "Profile Manager", with all new usability improvements. Internal and external candidate pools, and the entire recruitment process, are driven by delivered configurable selection and on-boarding processes. Interview scheduling, and online job offers are newly delivered processes. Performance Management PeopleSoft HCM ePerformance 9.1 will include significant new functionality designed to help organizations more effectively align business objectives with employee goals. Using an Organization Chart view, your business goals can flow down to become tangible objectives per employee. Succession Planning / Workforce Development New in HCM 9.0, enhanced in 9.1, is a planning capability for regular or unusual (major organizational change) succession of internal or external candidates. PeopleSoft supports employee-based career planning, which ultimately increases the integrity of the succession planning process (identify their career needs, plans, preferences, and interests). Dashboards / Oracle Business Intelligence Application Suite Oracle Human Resources Analytics provides the workforce information foundation that integrates data from HR functional areas and Finance. Oracle Human Resources Analytics delivers 9 dashboards and over 200 reports. Provide your HR professionals and front-line managers the tools to analyze workforce staffing, retention, productivity, to better source high-quality applicants, and to reduce absence costs. Multi-year Planning and Commitment Control External funding sources, especially Grants, require a multi-year encumbrance business process. PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 adds multi-year funding and commitment control, including budget checking. The newly designed Real Time Budget Checking will provide the customer with an updated snapshot of their budget and encumbrances at any given time. Position Budgeting with Hyperion Hyperion Planning world-class products now include delivered integration to PeopleSoft HCM. Position Budgeting is available in the new Public Sector Planning module of Hyperion. Web 2.0 features for the latest in usability PeopleSoft 9.1 features a contemporary internet user experience: Partial-page refreshing Drag and drop pagelets New menu structure Navigation pagelets Modal popup message windows Favorites & recently used links Type-ahead Drag and drop grid columns, pop-out grids Portal Workspaces Enterprise 2.0 for your collaborative web communities, using new content management, along with Wikis, blogs, and discussion forums in PeopleSoft Portal 9.1. PeopleTools enhanced by Oracle Fusion Middleware Standards-based tools have been added to the PeopleTools application infrastructure: BI (XML) Publisher, Java tools. Certified for use with PeopleSoft: Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE), Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Weblogic Server, Oracle SOA Suite. Hosting for PeopleSoft applications A solid new deployment option: Oracle On Demand remote hosting center for high scalability, security, and continuity of operations. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for HCM / Payroll functions Partnership with AT&T provides hosting of HR/Payroll application along with payroll business process operations, and subscription-based service fees (SaaS). AT&T BPO full service includes pay sheet processing, bank and 3rd party file transfer, payroll tax handling, etc. Continuous Delivery Model Feature Packs provide faster time-to-benefit; new features become available in PeopleSoft 9.1 (or Campus Solutions 9.0) without need to perform upgrade. Golden person data model across all campus applications Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub provides synchronization and data governance of person data across any application, e.g. HR/ Payroll, Student Information System, Housing, Emergency Contact, LMS, CRM. Oracle's aggressive enhancement plans within the "Applications Unlimited" program continue, as new functionality is under development for a new version of a PeopleSoft release planned for 2012. Meanwhile, new capabilities are planned on an annual basis in Feature Packs. PeopleSoft just delivered the HCM 2010 Feature Pack and another is planned for 2011. In February we plan to have over 100 customers from our Customer Advisory Boards at our PeopleSoft Development Center in California to review designs for all of these releases. For those of you near New York City The investment and progressive development story described above is the subject of an Oracle road show event on February 9, 2011. Charting Your Course with Oracle Applications is a global event series designed to help business and IT executives assess the impact of new inflection points on their business and applications roadmap: changing workforces, shifting customer and constituent bases, and increased volatility. Learn how innovations ranging from new deployment models like cloud computing to the introduction of social applications and smart devices are delivering results across all areas of business and industry. THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT.

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  • How big can my SharePoint 2010 installation be?

    - by Sahil Malik
    Ad:: SharePoint 2007 Training in .NET 3.5 technologies (more information). 3 years ago, I had published “How big can my SharePoint 2007 installation be?” Well, SharePoint 2010 has significant under the covers improvements. So, how big can your SharePoint 2010 installation be? There are three kinds of limits you should know about Hard limits that cannot be exceeded by design. Configurable that are, well configurable – but the default values are set for a pretty good reason, so if you need to tweak, plan and understand before you tweak. Soft limits, you can exceed them, but it is not recommended that you do. Before you read any of the limits, read these two important disclaimers - 1. The limit depends on what you’re doing. So, don’t take the below as gospel, the reality depends on your situation. 2. There are many additional considerations in planning your SharePoint solution scalability and performance, besides just the below. So with those in mind, here goes.   Hard Limits - Zones per web app 5 RBS NAS performance Time to first byte of any response from NAS must be less than 20 milliseconds List row size 8000 bytes driven by how SP stores list items internally Max file size 2GB (default is 50MB, configurable). RBS does not increase this limit. Search metadata properties 10,000 per item crawled (pretty damn high, you’ll never need to worry about it). Max # of concurrent in-memory enterprise content types 5000 per web server, per tenant Max # of external system connections 500 per web server PerformancePoint services using Excel services as a datasource No single query can fetch more than 1 million excel cells Office Web Apps Renders One doc per second, per CPU core, per Application server, limited to a maximum of 8 cores.   Configurable Limits - Row Size Limit 6, configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxListItemRowStorage property List view lookup 8 join operations per query Max number of list items that a single operation can process at one time in normal hours 5000 Configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperation   Also you get a warning at 3000, which is configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationWarningLevel   In addition, throttle overrides can be requested, throttle overrides can be disabled, and time windows can be set when throttle is disabled. Max number of list items for administrators that a single operation can process at one time in normal hours 20000 Configurable via SPWebApplication.MaxItemsPerThrottledOperationOverride Enumerating subsites 2000 Word and Powerpoint co-authoring simultaneous editors 10 (Hard limit is 99). # of webparts on a page 25 Search Crawl DBs per search service app 10 Items per crawl db 25 million Search Keywords 200 per site collection. There is a max limit of 5000, which can then be modified by editing the web.config/client.config. Concurrent # of workflows on a content db 15. Workflows running in the timer service are not counted in this limit. Further workflows are queued. Can be configured via the Set-SPFarmConfig powershell commandlet. Number of events picked by the workflow timer job and delivered to workflows 100. You can increase this limit by running additional instances of the workflow timer service. Visio services file size 50MB Visio web drawing recalculation timeout 120 seconds Configurable via – Powershell commandlet Set-SPVisioPerformance Visio services minimum and maximum cache age for data connected diagrams 0 to 24 hours. Default is 60 minutes. Configurable via – Powershell commandlet Set-SPVisioPerformance   Soft Limits - Content Databases 300 per web app Application Pools 10 per web server Managed Paths 20 per web app Content Database Size 200GB per Content DB Size of 1 site collection 100GB # of sites in a site collection 250,000 Documents in a library 30 Million, with nesting. Depends heavily on type and usage and size of documents. Items 30 million. Depends heavily on usage of items. SPGroups one SPUser can be in 5000 Users in a site collection 2 million, depends on UI, nesting, containers and underlying user store AD Principals in a SPGroup 5000 SPGroups in a site collection 10000 Search Service Instances 20 Indexed Items in Search 100 million Crawl Log entries 100 million Search Alerts 1 million per search application Search Crawled Properties 1/2 million URL removals in search 100 removals per operation User Profiles 2 million per service application Social Tags 500 million per social database Comment on the article ....

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  • Creating a Reverse Proxy with URL Rewrite for IIS

    - by OWScott
    There are times when you need to reverse proxy through a server. The most common example is when you have an internal web server that isn’t exposed to the internet, and you have a public web server accessible to the internet. If you want to serve up traffic from the internal web server, you can do this through the public web server by creating a tunnel (aka reverse proxy). Essentially, you can front the internal web server with a friendly URL, even hiding custom ports. For example, consider an internal web server with a URL of http://10.10.0.50:8111. You can make that available through a public URL like http://tools.mysite.com/ as seen in the following image. The URL can be made public or it can be used for your internal staff and have it password protected and/or locked down by IP address. This is easy to do with URL Rewrite and IIS. You will also need Application Request Routing (ARR) installed even though for a simple reverse proxy you won’t use most of ARR’s functionality. If you don’t already have URL Rewrite and ARR installed you can do so easily with the Web Platform Installer. A lot can be said about reverse proxies and many different situations and ways to route the traffic and handle different URL patterns. However, my goal here is to get you up and going in the easiest way possible. Then you can dig in deeper after you get the base configuration in place. URL Rewrite makes a reverse proxy very easy to set up. Note that the URL Rewrite Add Rules template doesn’t include Reverse Proxy at the server level. That’s not to say that you can’t create a server-level reverse proxy, but the URL Rewrite rules template doesn’t help you with that. Getting Started First you must create a website on your public web server that has the public bindings that you need. Alternately, you can use an existing site and route using conditions for certain traffic. After you’ve created your site then open up URL Rewrite at the site level. Using the “Add Rule(s)…” template that is opened from the right-hand actions pane, create a new Reverse Proxy rule. If you receive a prompt (the first time) that the proxy functionality needs to be enabled, select OK. This is telling you that a proxy can route traffic outside of your web server, which happens to be our goal in this case. Be aware that reverse proxy rules can be dangerous if you open sites from inside you network to the world, so just be aware of what you’re doing and why. The next and final step of the template asks a few questions. The first textbox asks the name of the internal web server. In our example, it’s 10.10.0.50:8111. This can be any URL, including a subfolder like internal.mysite.com/blog. Don’t include the http or https here. The template assumes that it’s not entered. You can choose whether to perform SSL Offloading or not. If you leave this checked then all requests to the internal server will be over HTTP regardless of the original web request. This can help with performance and SSL bindings if all requests are within a trusted network. If the network path between the two web servers is not completely trusted and safe then uncheck this. Next, the template enables you to create an outbound rule. This is used to rewrite links in the page to look like your public domain name rather than the internal domain name. Outbound rules have a lot of CPU overhead because the entire web content needs to be parsed and updated. However, if you need it, then it’s well worth the extra CPU hit on the web server. If you check the “Rewrite the domain names of the links in HTTP responses” checkbox then the From textbox will be filled in with what you entered for the inbound rule. You can enter your friendly public URL for the outbound rule. This will essentially replace any reference to 10.10.0.50:8111 (or whatever you enter) with tools.mysite.com in all <a>, <form>, and <img> tags on your site. That’s it! Well, there is a lot more that you can do, this but will give you the base configuration. You can now visit www.mysite.com on your public web server and it will serve up the site from your internal web server. You should see two rules show up; one inbound and one outbound. You can edit these, add conditions, and tweak them further as needed. One common issue that can occur without outbound rules has to do with compression. If you run into errors with the new proxied site, try turning off compression to confirm if that’s the issue. Here’s a link with details on how to deal with compression and outbound rules. I hope this was helpful to get started and to see how easy it is to create a simple reverse proxy using URL Rewrite for IIS.

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  • My Thoughts On the Xbox 180

    - by Chris Gardner
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/freestylecoding/archive/2013/06/21/my-thoughts-on-the-xbox-180.aspx Everyone seems to be putting their 0.00237 cents into the wishing well over Microsoft's recent decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. However, there have been a few issues that nobody has touched. As such, I have decided to dig 0.00237 cents out of my pocket. First, let me be clear about this point. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. I wanted that point to be expressed first and unambiguously. I will say it again. I do not support the decision to reverse the DRM policy on the Xbox One. Now that I have that out of the way, let me go into my rationale. This decision removes most of the cool features that enticed me to pre-order the console. No, I didn't cancel my pre-order. There is still five months before the release of the console, and there is still a plethora of information that we, as consumers, do not have. With that, it should be noted that much of the talk in this post is speculation and rhetoric. I do not have any insider information that you do not possess. The persistent connection would have allowed the console to do many of the functions for which we have been begging. That demo where someone was playing Ryse, seamlessly accepted a multiplayer challenge in Killer Instinct, played the match (and a rematch,) and then jumped back into Ryse. That's gone, if you bought the game on disc. The new, DRM free system will require the disc in the system to play a game. That bullet point where one Xbox Live account could have up to 10 slave accounts so families could play together, no matter where they were located. That's gone as well. The promise of huge, expansive, dynamically changing worlds that was brought to us with the power of cloud computing. Well, "the people" didn't want there to be a forced, persistent connection. As such, developers can't rely on a connection and, as such, that feature is gone. This is akin to the removal of the hard drive on the Xbox 360. The list continues, but the enthusiast press has enumerated the list far better than I wish. All of this is because the Xbox team saw the HUGE success of Steam and decided to borrow a few ideas. Yes, Steam. The service that everyone hated for the first six months (for the same reasons the Xbox One is getting flack.) There was an initial growing pain. However, it is now lauded as the way games distribution should be handled. Unless you are Microsoft. I do find it curious that many of the features were originally announced for the PS4 during its unveiling. However, much of that was left strangely absent for Sony's E3 press conference. Instead, we received a single, static slide that basically said the exact opposite of Microsoft's plans. It is not farfetched to believe that slide came into existence during the approximately seven hours between the two media briefings. The thing that majorly annoys me over this whole kerfuffle is that the single thing that caused the call to arms is, really, not an issue. Microsoft never said they were going to block used sales. They said it was up to the publisher to make that decision. This would have allowed publishers to reclaim some of the costs of development in subsequent sales of the product. If you sell your game to GameStop for 7 USD, GameStop is going to sell it for 55 USD. That is 48 USD pure profit for them. Some publishers asked GameStop for a small cut. Was this a huge, money grubbing scheme? Well, yes, but the idea was that they have to handle server infrastructure for dormant accounts, etc. Of course, GameStop flatly refused, and the Online Pass was born. Fortunately, this trend didn’t last, and most publishers have stopped the practice. The ability to sell "licenses" has already begun to be challenged. Are you living in the EU? If so, companies must allow you to sell digital property. With this precedent in place, it's only a matter of time before other areas follow suit. If GameStop were smart, they should have immediately contacted every publisher out there to get the rights to become a clearing house for these licenses. Then, they keep their business model and could reduce their brick and mortar footprint. The digital landscape is changing. We need to not block this process. As Seth MacFarlane best said "Some issues are so important that you should drag people kicking and screaming." I believe this was said on an episode of Real Time with Bill Maher about the issue of Gay Marriages. Much like the original source, this is an issue that we need to drag people to the correct, progressive position. Microsoft, as a company, actually has the resources to weather the transition period. They have a great pool of first and second party developers that can leverage this new framework to prove the validity. Over time, the third party developers will get excited to use these tools. As an old C++ guy, I resisted C# for years. Now, I think it's one of the best languages I've ever used. I have a server room and a Co-Lo full of servers, so I originally didn't see the value in Azure. Now, I wish I could move every one of my projects into the cloud. I still LOVE getting physical packaging, which my music and games collection will proudly attest. However, I have started to see the value in pure digital, and have found ways to integrate this into the ways I consume those products. I can, honestly, understand how some parts of the population would be very apprehensive about this new landscape. There were valid arguments about people with no internet access. There are ways to combat these problems. These methods do not require us to throw the baby out with the bathwater. However, the number of people in the computer industry that I have seen cry foul is truly appalling. We are the forward looking people that help show how technology can improve people's lives. If we can't see the value of the brief pain involved with an exciting new ecosystem, than who will?

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  • WebLogic 12.1.2 launch webcast on-demand & WebLogic Community feedback

    - by JuergenKress
    You missed the WebLogic & Coherence & JDeveloper 12.1.2 launch Webcast? Watch it on-demand: View On-Demand Version Read the Q&A from this Webcast Special thanks for Frank Munz and Simon Haslams our WebLogic Community experts on the phone!Thanks for the community for the great twitter feedback send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity WebLogic Community Join the #WebLogic Partner Community for the latest WebLogic 12.1.2 details and upcoming trainings http://www.WeblogicCommunity.com #OracleCAF Oracle WebLogic ?Unified update, patch, install process is a key component in reducing Ops cost in #WebLogic 12c #OracleCAF WebLogic Community Demo time #WebLogic cluster creation in seconds #OracleCAF by @mike_lehmann & Will Lyons #WebLogicCommunity pic.twitter.com/gyb8YqnKco Oracle WebLogic ?Dynamic server clusters to scale apps - coming up in #WebLogic 12c launch. #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/lBmE Oracle WebLogic ?Key feature of #WebLogic 12.1.2 release: @Oracle Database 12c integration. #OracleCAF #OracleDB OTNArchBeat ?Many tech posts on #weblogic available on #oracleace Rene van Wijk's blog. #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/O9Cn Frank Munz ?Correct me if I am wrong, but this could be the first WebLogic 12.1.2 training ever: http://www.ausoug.org.au/insync13/insync13-frank-munz.html … Cloud Foundation ?.#WebLogic 12.1.2 deep dive starts NOW during #OracleCAF launch. #Coherence up next in a few minutes. http://pub.vitrue.com/HPHM Maciej Gruszka ?Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiCoO_QGBsU&feature=c4-overview&list=UUrEIV9YO17leE9aJWamKEPw … at #WebLogic channel with @dave_cabelus about Elastic JMS Oracle WebLogic ?Pick up the new book by @frankmunz on WLS 12c http://amzn.to/1ceppgZ #WebLogic #OracleCAF OTNArchBeat ?@OTNArchBeat 31 Jul @frankmunz 's #WebLogic YouTube channel >> watch and learn #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/B4IM WebLogic Community ?@frankmunz WebLogic expert build elastic clouds with #WebLogic http://www.munzandmore.com/blog #OracleCAF #WebLogicCommunity pic.twitter.com/UK5UKjXUVl OTNArchBeat @frankmunz 's blog, covering #weblog #cloud and more #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/N8ST OTNArchBeat ?oracladmin: @simon_haslam 's Oracle Fusion Middleware blog #OracleCAF #oracleace http://pub.vitrue.com/cwGx Yuri Grinshteyn ?Coherence uses WLS tooling, including deployment, and can be part of the WLS cluster. Well done there. #OracleCAF Maciej Gruszka ?#Coherence 12.1.2 auto updates data grid on changes inside DB thru #GoldenGate HotCache - another cool feature of #OracleCAF Oracle WebLogic ?From #OracleCAF launch: Tight integration tween WLS, #Coherence and #OracleDB. Dynamic clusters, OSS support & more http://pub.vitrue.com/3NL9 OTNArchBeat ?25 recent no-fluff technical articles on Oracle WebLogic #OracleCAF http://pub.vitrue.com/FEG5 Maciej Gruszka ?@dave_cabelus Elastic JMS is my favourite capability of #WebLogic 12.1.2 WebLogic Community ?Dynamic WebLogic Clustering COOL - what is Wour favorite 12.1.2 feature? #OracleCAF #WebLogicCommunity pic.twitter.com/T8lvDMJ1U0 WebLogic Community ?What is the coolest #WebLogic 12.1.2 feature? Let us know @wlscommunity http://weblogiccommunity.com/2013/07/30/launch-webcast-weblogic-coherence-jdeveloper-adf-12-1-2-00-july-31st-2013/ … #WebLogicCommunity Simon Haslam ?I'm speaking(!) on the panel session with @frankmunz & Matt Rosen on the CAF/WebLogic 12.1.2 launch: 6pm UK today https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=651242&partnerref=CAF_Launch_OCOM_07312013&sourcepage=register … Markus Eisele ?#WebLogic 12.1.2 - an Important New Release for Middleware Admins http://bit.ly/1cmtqhX by @simon_haslam OracleEnterpriseMgr ?The JVM diagnostics features of #EM12c are now shown in a demo by @hawkinsg1 at the #OracleCAF launch http://bit.ly/caflaunch Shaun Smith ?Curious about the new #Coherence 12.1.2 GoldenGate HotCache feature? I explain all on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0TIG3hgbg0&feature=share&list=PLxqhEJ4CA3JtQwuPS8Qmd88lGX-gsIbHV … #OracleCAF Maciej Gruszka ?Try for Yourself -- Download the products Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/fusion-middleware/downloads/index.html … Oracle Coherence 12c: http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/middleware/coherence/downloads/index.htm … WebLogic Community ?What is Your favorite feature in #WebLogic 12.1.2 ? cool stuff! #OracleCAF #WebLogicCommunity http://WeblogicCommunity.com pic.twitter.com/xjR05tiaQj We encourage you to learn more about all the products by reviewing the following resources: Try for Yourself -- Download the products Oracle WebLogic 12.1.2 Oracle Coherence 12c Enterprise Manager Developer Tools WebLogic Community blog Learn more Read the Oracle WebLogic Business Whitepaper Read the Oracle Coherence Business Whitepaper Read the Oracle WebLogic and Oracle Database Integration Whitepaper Get Training from Oracle University Check out the Oracle WebLogic YouTube Channel Check out the Oracle Coherence YouTube Channel WebLogic Partner Community Registration The Webcast is available on-demand Watch Webcast Now WebLogic Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: Weblogic 12.1.2,WebLogic Community,Oracle,OPN,Jürgen Kress

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  • top tweets WebLogic Partner Community – March 2012

    - by JuergenKress
    Send us your tweets @wlscommunity #WebLogicCommunity and follow us on twitter http://twitter.com/wlscommunity PeterPaul ? RT @JDeveloper: EJB 3 Deployment guide for WebLogic Server Version: 10.3.4.0 dlvr.it/1J5VcV Andrejus Baranovskis ?Open ADF PopUp on Page Load fb.me/1Rx9LP3oW Sten Vesterli ? RT @OracleBlogs: Using the Oracle E-Business Suite SDK for Java on ADF Applications ow.ly/1hVKbB <- Neat! No more WS calls Java Buddy ?JavaFX 2.0: Example of MediaPlay java-buddy.blogspot.com/2012/03/javafx… Georges Saab Build improvements coming to #openJDK for #jdk8 mail.openjdk.java.net/pipermail/buil… NetBeans Team Share your #Java experience! JavaOne 2012 India call for papers: ow.ly/9xYg0 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 Screencasts & Videos – bit.ly/zmQjn2 chriscmuir ?G+: New blog post: ADF Runtimes vs WLS versions as of JDeveloper 11.1.1.6.0 – bit.ly/y8tkgJ Michael Heinrichs New article: Creating a Sprite Animation with JavaFX blog.netopyr.com/2012/03/09/cre… Oracle WebLogic ? #WebLogic Devcast Webinar Series for March: Enterprise Java Scale Out, JPA, Distributed Grid Data Cache bit.ly/zeUXEV #Coherence Andrejus Baranovskis ?Extending Application Module for ADF BC Proxy User DB Connection fb.me/Bj1hLUqm OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7 | Mark Nelson bit.ly/w7IroZ OTNArchBeat ? Java Champion Jonas Bonér Explains the Akka Platform bit.ly/x2GbXm Adam Bien ? (Java) FX Experience Tools–Feels Like Native Mac App: FX Experience Tools application comes with a native Mac O… bit.ly/waHF3H GlassFish ? GlassFish new recruit and Eclipse integration progress – bit.ly/y5eEkk JDeveloper & ADF Prototyping ADF Libraries dlvr.it/1Hhnw0 Eric Elzinga ?Oracle Fusion Middleware on JDK 7, bit.ly/xkphFQ ADF EMG ? Working with ADF in Arabic, Hebrew or other right-to-left-written language? Oracle UX asks for your help. groups.google.com/forum/?fromgro… Java ? A simple #JavaFX Login Form with a TRON like effect ow.ly/9n9AG JDeveloper & ADF ? Logging in Oracle ADF Applications dlvr.it/1HZhcX OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Cloud Conference: dates and locations worldwide bit.ly/ywXydR UK Oracle User Group ? Simon Haslam, ACE Director present on #WebLogic for DBAs at #oug_ire2012 j.mp/zG6vz3 @oraclewebcenter @oracleace #dublin Steven Davelaar ? Working with ADF and not a member of ADF EMG? You miss lots of valuable info, join now! sites.google.com/site/oracleemg… Simon Haslam @MaciejGruszka: Oracle plans to provide Forms & Reports plug-in for OVAB next year to help deployment. #ukoug MW SIG GlassFish ? Introducing JSR 357: Social Media API – bit.ly/yC8vez JAX London ? Are you coming to Java EE workshops by @AdamBien at JAX Days? Save £100 by registering today. #jaxdays #javaee jaxdays.com WebLogic Community ?Welcome to our Munich WebLogic 12c Bootcamp in Munich! If you also want to attend a training register for the Community oracle.com/partners/goto/… chriscmuir ? My first webcast for Oracle! (be kind) Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object bit.ly/ArKija OTNArchBeat ? Oracle Weblogic Server 12c is available on Oracle Solaris 11 (SPARC and x86) bit.ly/xE3TLg JDeveloper & ADF ? Basing ADF Business Component View Objects on More that one Entity Object – YouTube dlvr.it/1H93Qr OTNArchBeat ? Application-Driven Virtualization with Oracle Virtual Assembly Builder | Ronen Kofman bit.ly/wF1C1N Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server Singleton Services ow.ly/1hOu4U Barbara Ann May ?@oracledevtools: New update: #NetBeans IDE 7.1.1, with support for #GlassFish 3.1.2 bit.ly/mOLcQd #java #developer OTNArchBeat ? Using Coherence with JDeveloper: bit.ly/AkoEQb WebLogic Community ? WebLogic Partner Community Newsletter February 2012 wp.me/p1LMIb-f3 GlassFish ? GlassFish 3.1.2 – new Podcast episode : bit.ly/wc6oBE Frank Nimphius ?Cool! Open JDeveloper 11.1.1.5, go help–>check for updates. First thing shown is that 11.1.1.6 is available. Never miss a new release Adam Bien ?5 Minutes (Video) With Java EE …Or With NetBeans + GlassFish: This screencast covers a 5-minute development of a… bit.ly/xkOJMf WebLogic Community ? Free Oracle WebLogic Certification Application Grid Implementation Specialist wp.me/p1LMIb-eT OTNArchBeat ?Oracle Coherence: First Steps Using Clusters and Basic API Usage | Ricardo Ferreira bit.ly/yYQ3Wz GlassFish ? JMS 2.0 Early Draft is here – bit.ly/ygT1VN OTNArchBeat ? Exalogic Networking Part 2 | The Old Toxophilist bit.ly/xuYMIi OTNArchBeat ?New Release: GlassFish Server 3.1.2. Read All About It! | Paul Davies bit.ly/AtlGxo Oracle WebLogic ?OTN Virtual Developer Day: #WebLogic 12c & #Coherence ost-conference on-demand page live with bonus #Virtualbox lab – bit.ly/xUy6BJ Oracle WebLogic ? Steve Button’s blog: WebLogic Server 11g (10.3.6) Documentation ow.ly/1hJgUB Lucas Jellema ? Just published an article on the AMIS blog: technology.amis.nl/2012/03/adf-11… ADF 11g – programmatically sorting rich table columns. Java Certification ? New Course! Learn how to create mobile applications using Java ME: bit.ly/xZj1Jh Simon Haslam ? @MaciejGruszka WebLogic 12c can run against 11g domain config without changes …and can rollback to 11. #ukoug MW SIG Justin Kestelyn ? Learn Advanced ADF, free and online bit.ly/wEKSRc WebLogic Partner Community For regular information become a member in the WebLogic Partner Community please visit: http://www.oracle.com/partners/goto/wls-emea ( OPN account required). If you need support with your account please contact the Oracle Partner Business Center. Blog Twitter LinkedIn Mix Forum Wiki Technorati Tags: twitter,WebLogic,WebLogic Community,OPN,Oracle,Jürgen Kress,WebLogic 12c

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  • How to configure VPN in Windows XP

    - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA
    VPN Overview A VPN is a private network created over a public one. It’s done with encryption, this way, your data is encapsulated and secure in transit – this creates the ‘virtual’ tunnel. A VPN is a method of connecting to a private network by a public network like the Internet. An internet connection in a company is common. An Internet connection in a Home is common too. With both of these, you could create an encrypted tunnel between them and pass traffic, safely - securely. If you want to create a VPN connection you will have to use encryption to make sure that others cannot intercept the data in transit while traversing the Internet. Windows XP provides a certain level of security by using Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol (PPTP) or Layer Two Tunneling Protocol (L2TP). They are both considered tunneling protocols – simply because they create that virtual tunnel just discussed, by applying encryption. Configure a VPN with XP If you want to configure a VPN connection from a Windows XP client computer you only need what comes with the Operating System itself, it's all built right in. To set up a connection to a VPN, do the following: 1. On the computer that is running Windows XP, confirm that the connection to the Internet is correctly configured. • You can try to browse the internet • Ping a known host on the Internet, like yahoo.com, something that isn’t blocking ICMP 2. Click Start, and then click Control Panel. 3. In Control Panel, double click Network Connections 4. Click Create a new connection in the Network Tasks task pad 5. In the Network Connection Wizard, click Next. 6. Click Connect to the network at my workplace, and then click Next. 7. Click Virtual Private Network connection, and then click Next. 8. If you are prompted, you need to select whether you will use a dialup connection or if you have a dedicated connection to the Internet either via Cable, DSL, T1, Satellite, etc. Click Next. 9. Type a host name, IP or any other description you would like to appear in the Network Connections area. You can change this later if you want. Click Next. 10. Type the host name or the Internet Protocol (IP) address of the computer that you want to connect to, and then click Next. 11. You may be asked if you want to use a Smart Card or not. 12. You are just about done, the rest of the screens just verify your connection, click Next. 13. Click to select the Add a shortcut to this connection to my desktop check box if you want one, if not, then leave it unchecked and click finish. 14. You are now done making your connection, but by default, it may try to connect. You can either try the connection now if you know its valid, if not, then just close it down for now. 15. In the Network Connections window, right-click the new connection and select properties. Let’s take a look at how you can customize this connection before it’s used. 16. The first tab you will see if the General Tab. This only covers the name of the connection, which you can also rename from the Network Connection dialog box by right clicking the connection and selecting to rename it. You can also configure a First connect, which means that Windows can connect the public network (like the Internet) before starting to attempt the ‘VPN’ connection. This is a perfect example as to when you would have configured the dialup connection; this would have been the first thing that you would have to do. It's simple, you have to be connected to the Internet first before you can encrypt and send data over it. This setting makes sure that this is a reality for you. 17. The next tab is the Options Tab. It is The Options tab has a lot you can configure in it. For one, you have the option to connect to a Windows Domain, if you select this check box (unchecked by default), then your VPN client will request Windows logon domain information while starting to work up the VPN connection. Also, you have options here for redialing. Redial attempts are configured here if you are using a dial up connection to get to the Internet. It is very handy to redial if the line is dropped as dropped lines are very common. 18. The next tab is the Security Tab. This is where you would configure basic security for the VPN client. This is where you would set any advanced IPSec configurations other security protocols as well as requiring encryption and credentials. 19. The next tab is the Networking Tab. This is where you can select what networking items are used by this VPN connection. 20. The Last tab is the Advanced Tab. This is where you can configure options for configuring a firewall, and/or sharing. Connecting to Corporate Now that you have your XP VPN client all set up and ready, the next step is to attempt a connection to the Remote Access or VPN server set up at the corporate office. To use the connection follow these simple steps. To open the client again, go back to the Network Connections dialog box. 1. One you are in the Network Connection dialog box, double-click, or right click and select ‘Connect’ from the menu – this will initiate the connection to the corporate office. 2. Type your user name and password, and then click Connect. Properties bring you back to what we just discussed in this article, all the global settings for the VPN client you are using. 3. To disconnect from a VPN connection, right-click the icon for the connection, and then click “Disconnect” Summary In this article we covered the basics of building a VPN connection using Windows XP. This is very handy when you have a VPN device but don’t have the ‘client’ that may come with it. If the VPN Server doesn’t use highly proprietary protocols, then you can use the XP client to connect with. In a future article I will get into the nuts and bolts of both IPSec and more detail on how to configure the advanced options in the Security tab of this client. 678: The remote computer did not respond. 930: The authentication server did not respond to authentication requests in a timely fashion. 800: Unable to establish the VPN connection. 623: The system could not find the phone book entry for this connection. 720: A connection to the remote computer could not be established. More on : http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Configure-VPN-Connection-Windows-XP.html

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  • Liskov Substitution Principle and the Oft Forgot Third Wheel

    - by Stacy Vicknair
    Liskov Substitution Principle (LSP) is a principle of object oriented programming that many might be familiar with from the SOLID principles mnemonic from Uncle Bob Martin. The principle highlights the relationship between a type and its subtypes, and, according to Wikipedia, is defined by Barbara Liskov and Jeanette Wing as the following principle:   Let be a property provable about objects of type . Then should be provable for objects of type where is a subtype of .   Rectangles gonna rectangulate The iconic example of this principle is illustrated with the relationship between a rectangle and a square. Let’s say we have a class named Rectangle that had a property to set width and a property to set its height. 1: Public Class Rectangle 2: Overridable Property Width As Integer 3: Overridable Property Height As Integer 4: End Class   We all at some point here that inheritance mocks an “IS A” relationship, and by gosh we all know square IS A rectangle. So let’s make a square class that inherits from rectangle. However, squares do maintain the same length on every side, so let’s override and add that behavior. 1: Public Class Square 2: Inherits Rectangle 3:  4: Private _sideLength As Integer 5:  6: Public Overrides Property Width As Integer 7: Get 8: Return _sideLength 9: End Get 10: Set(value As Integer) 11: _sideLength = value 12: End Set 13: End Property 14:  15: Public Overrides Property Height As Integer 16: Get 17: Return _sideLength 18: End Get 19: Set(value As Integer) 20: _sideLength = value 21: End Set 22: End Property 23: End Class   Now, say we had the following test: 1: Public Sub SetHeight_DoesNotAffectWidth(rectangle As Rectangle) 2: 'arrange 3: Dim expectedWidth = 4 4: rectangle.Width = 4 5:  6: 'act 7: rectangle.Height = 7 8:  9: 'assert 10: Assert.AreEqual(expectedWidth, rectangle.Width) 11: End Sub   If we pass in a rectangle, this test passes just fine. What if we pass in a square?   This is where we see the violation of Liskov’s Principle! A square might "IS A” to a rectangle, but we have differing expectations on how a rectangle should function than how a square should! Great expectations Here’s where we pat ourselves on the back and take a victory lap around the office and tell everyone about how we understand LSP like a boss. And all is good… until we start trying to apply it to our work. If I can’t even change functionality on a simple setter without breaking the expectations on a parent class, what can I do with subtyping? Did Liskov just tell me to never touch subtyping again? The short answer: NO, SHE DIDN’T. When I first learned LSP, and from those I’ve talked with as well, I overlooked a very important but not appropriately stressed quality of the principle: our expectations. Our inclination is to want a logical catch-all, where we can easily apply this principle and wipe our hands, drop the mic and exit stage left. That’s not the case because in every different programming scenario, our expectations of the parent class or type will be different. We have to set reasonable expectations on the behaviors that we expect out of the parent, then make sure that those expectations are met by the child. Any expectations not explicitly expected of the parent aren’t expected of the child either, and don’t register as a violation of LSP that prevents implementation. You can see the flexibility mentioned in the Wikipedia article itself: A typical example that violates LSP is a Square class that derives from a Rectangle class, assuming getter and setter methods exist for both width and height. The Square class always assumes that the width is equal with the height. If a Square object is used in a context where a Rectangle is expected, unexpected behavior may occur because the dimensions of a Square cannot (or rather should not) be modified independently. This problem cannot be easily fixed: if we can modify the setter methods in the Square class so that they preserve the Square invariant (i.e., keep the dimensions equal), then these methods will weaken (violate) the postconditions for the Rectangle setters, which state that dimensions can be modified independently. Violations of LSP, like this one, may or may not be a problem in practice, depending on the postconditions or invariants that are actually expected by the code that uses classes violating LSP. Mutability is a key issue here. If Square and Rectangle had only getter methods (i.e., they were immutable objects), then no violation of LSP could occur. What this means is that the above situation with a rectangle and a square can be acceptable if we do not have the expectation for width to leave height unaffected, or vice-versa, in our application. Conclusion – the oft forgot third wheel Liskov Substitution Principle is meant to act as a guidance and warn us against unexpected behaviors. Objects can be stateful and as a result we can end up with unexpected situations if we don’t code carefully. Specifically when subclassing, make sure that the subclass meets the expectations held to its parent. Don’t let LSP think you cannot deviate from the behaviors of the parent, but understand that LSP is meant to highlight the importance of not only the parent and the child class, but also of the expectations WE set for the parent class and the necessity of meeting those expectations in order to help prevent sticky situations.   Code examples, in both VB and C# Technorati Tags: LSV,Liskov Substitution Principle,Uncle Bob,Robert Martin,Barbara Liskov,Liskov

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  • Happy 3rd Birthday SilverlightCream!

    - by Dave Campbell
    Happy 3rd Birthday!     Yesterday (May 16) was the 'Birthday' of SilverlightCream, which started just after MIX in 2007 with a post "Interesting Silverlight posts today: Silverlight Control & Silverlight Pad". Too many good posts flying around led me to want to archive them, particularly since I was being aggregated at a new site Silverlight.net, and I could give some of that 'reach' to the community. Saturday's post was number 862, and as of that post, there were 5697 blog posts archived in the database all tagged up and searchable at SilverlightCream.com using the search page. The search needs to be better, and that's another discussion, but it does work. The blog didn't begin life as the SilverlightCream blog, as is obvious from the name, but once I realized people were following it closely, I've tried to keep the signal-to-noise ratio very high. I even secured another blog for when I just want to rant about something to keep that stuff out of this one :) If you've been around since MIX07 days you've heard all this, but after talking to some people at MIX10 I realized not everyone knows all the ways the information is presented, so I figured doing a post like this once a year probably isn't a bad idea :) I scrounge through an ever-growing list of blogs (right now sitting at 505) looking for good stuff. I try to spin through the list every day, but with the list growing that large, it's getting tough. I usually use it as a background task while working or watching TV. If I just sit and go through the blogs it takes about an hour. The list is long enough now that from time to time, I'll only get partway through it and have 10 to 13 entries, so I'll just stop there and go on the next day... I don't like to have more than 15 in any single post. It's all pattern recognition as in "seen that", "seen that", "that's new", etc... so if you're a blogger, look at a heading below for some comments about blogging from my perspective. When I see something new, I make sure you're not pulling a 'Mike Taulty' on me and dumping 6 or 8 new posts in one day :), and I tag the ones I want to review. If there's not a lot going on, I may just push the posts as I come across them. Some days there may be 60 posts in that 'to review' list! Some are non-Silverlight, some are essentially duplicates of others, some are demos, ads, new releases of something, session materials, etc. I push lots of material into a database at WynApse.com, and the "Tagged Posts" menu on the left sidebar there takes you to a tag cloud of (at this very moment) "9224 articles tagged 13915 different ways using 459 unique tags". There are links in there on Gibson guitars, Jazz Guitar instructional stuff, Ford F-250 links, and tons of technical and non-technical stuff I've been aggregating for about 5 years now. So when I decide to blog (or shoutout) something, I first push it into the database at WynApse.com. Then I tag it all up and push it into the database at SilverlightCream.com. Then it gets pushed to @SilverlightNews. For a little over a year now, we're tracking unique IP hits on posts launched from either the blog post or from one of the SilverlightCream.com pages, and the posts with top hits from unique IP addresses in the last 7 days are displayed in a 'Skim' page at SilverlightCream... and that page needs work as well. The Skim page and tracking was the brainchild of my buddy Michael Washington. What I blog/shoutout After some time doing posts, I decided there were things that probably have no need to be searchable, but are good information, so I post those as 'Shoutouts'. Eventually I also decided the Shoutouts should get posted to @SilverlightNews, and that's now taking place. Notes to bloggers Remember I said spinning throught the Big List-o-BlogsTM is pattern recognition... that means I don't spend a lot of time on any individual blog deciding if it has new content. If you're familiar with the term 'Above the Fold', then you're probably ok. If I have to scroll the page to see if there's something new, or wade through some maze of menus, I'm probably going to miss new stuff. Likewise if you only show the latest on the front page and make it a puzzle to find the rest of them, or if you make the titles and initial graphics almost identical to the previous article, I'll miss it. Another thing is name/brand-recognition. Far be it for me (WynApse) to comment on someone blogging with a pseudonym, but if you want to get get some recognition, you are going to want your name to be available somewhere. I can think right off the top of my head of a couple good blogs that I have no idea of the individuals' real names. I can pull that off a bit because I've been around so long almost everyone knows who I am, but if you're new to the blog-o-sphere, being able to be name-recognized is as important as getting your brand out there. Kick my tires Finally, stuff happens... I may hit the wrong key and delete your blog, or a post might slip past me and I not realize it's new because of the naming, and never blog it. If you think I missed something, send me an email or use the submit page at SilverlightCream.com. Some bloggers have figured out that if they submit (one way or another) to me, their posts will go out next. I try to honor anyone that takes the time to submit with a quicker 'Cream posting. Thanks! Finally, thanks to everyone that contributes to the community as a whole... the blogs, the videos, and the presentations. A special thanks to everyone that reads SilverlightCream, or follows @WynApse or @SilverlightNews. Keep it all coming, and... Stay in the 'Light

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  • Who broke the build?

    - by Martin Hinshelwood
    I recently sent round a list of broken builds at SSW and asked for them to be fixed or deleted if they are not being used. My colleague Peter came back with a couple of questions which I love as it tells me that at least one person reads my email I think first we need to answer a couple of other questions related to builds in general.   Why do we want the build to pass? Any developer can pick up a project and build it Standards can be enforced Constant quality is maintained Problems in code are identified early What could a failed build signify? Developers have not built and tested their code properly before checking in. Something added depends on a local resource that is not under version control or does not exist on the target computer. Developers are not writing tests to cover common problems. There are not enough tests to cover problems. Now we know why, lets answer Peters questions: Where is this list? (can we see it somehow) You can normally only see the builds listed for each project. But, you have a little application called “Build Notifications” on your computer. It is installed when you install Visual Studio 2010. Figure: Staring the build notification application on Windows 7. Once you have it open (it may disappear into your system tray) you should click “Options” and select all the projects you are involved in. This application only lists projects that have builds, so don’t worry if it is not listed. This just means you are about to setup a build, right? I just selected ALL projects that have builds. Figure: All builds are listed here In addition to seeing the list you will also get toast notification of build failure’s. How can we get more info on what broke the build? (who is interesting too, to point the finger but more important is what) The only thing worse than breaking the build, is continuing to develop on a broken build! Figure: I have highlighted the users who either are bad for braking the build, or very bad for not fixing it. To find out what is wrong with a build you need to open the build definition. You can open a web version by double clicking the build in the image above, or you can open it from “Team Explorer”. Just connect to your project and open out the “Builds” tree. Then Open the build by double clicking on it. Figure: Opening a build is easy, but double click it and then open a build run from the list. Figure: Good example, the build and tests have passed Figure: Bad example, there are 133 errors preventing POK from being built on the build server. For identifying failures see: Solution: Getting Silverlight to build on Team Build 2010 RC Solution: Testing Web Services with MSTest on Team Build Finding the problem on a partially succeeded build So, Peter asked about blame, let’s have a look and see: Figure: The build has been broken for so long I have no idea when it was broken, but everyone on this list is to blame (I am there too) The rest of the history is lost in the sands of time, there is no way to tell when the build was originally broken, or by whom, or even if it ever worked in the first place. Build should be protected by the team that uses them and the only way to do that is to have them own them. It is fine for me to go in and setup a build, but the ownership for a build should always reside with the person who broke it last. Conclusion This is an example of a pointless build. Lets be honest, if you have a system like TFS in place and builds are constantly left broken, or not added to projects then your developers don’t yet understand the value. I have found that adding a Gated Check-in helps instil that understanding of value. If you prevent them from checking in without passing that basic quality gate of “your code builds on another computer” then it makes them look more closely at why they can’t check-in. I have had builds fail because one developer had a “d” drive, but the build server did not. That is what they are there to catch.   If you want to know what builds to create and why I wrote a post on “Do you know the minimum builds to create on any branch?”   Technorati Tags: TFS2010,Gated Check-in,Builds,Build Failure,Broken Build

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