magnetic properties - Page 332

Web Site Performance and Assembly Versioning – Part 2 Versioning Combined Files Using Subversion

- by capgpilk

Ok so it took a while to post this second part. Many apologies, we had a big roll out of a new platform at work and many things had to get sidelined. So this is the second part in a short series of website performance and using versioning to help improve it. Minification and Concatination of JavaScript and CSS Files Versioning Combined Files Using Subversion – this post Versioning Combined Files Using Mercurial – published shortly In the previous post we used AjaxMin to shrink js and css files then concatenated them into one file each which had the file name of site-script.combined.min.js and site-style.combined.min.css. These file names are fine, but you can configure IIS 7 to cache these static files and so lower the amount of data transferred between server and client. This is done by editing the response headers in IIS. 1. In IIS7 Manager, choose the directory where these files are located and select HTTP Response Headers. 2. Check the Expire Web Content and set a time period well into the future. 3. When refreshing the web page, the server will respond with HTTP 304 forcing the browser to retrieve the file from its cache. 4. As can be seen in FireBug, the Cache-Control header has a max age of 31536000 seconds which equates to 365 days. The server will always send this HTTP 304 message unless the file changes forcing it to send new content. To help force this we can change the file name based on the latest build using the SVN revision number in the filename. So we have lowered data transfer on content that hasn’t changed, but forced it to be sent when you have made a change to the css or js files. Now to get the SVN revision number in to the file name. 1. Import the MSBuildCommunityTasks targets which can be dowloaded from here. 1: <Import Project="$(MSBuildExtensionsPath) 2: \MSBuildCommunityTasks 3: \MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets" /> 2. Edit the BeforeBuild target to call out to svn and get the latest revision 1: <SvnVersion LocalPath="$(MSBuildProjectDirectory)" 2: ToolPath="$(ProgramFiles)\VisualSVN Server\bin"> 3: <Output TaskParameter="Revision" PropertyName="Revision" /> 4: </SvnVersion> 3. Set it to update the project AssemblyInfo.cs file for the svn revision. 1: <FileUpdate Files="Properties\AssemblyInfo.cs" 2: Regex="(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)\.(\d+)" 3: ReplacementText="$1.$2.$3.$(Revision)" /> 4. Now edit the AfterBuild target to get the full dll version. You could combine these two steps and just get the version from svn, I am working on one project that updates the AssemblyInfo file and another project that allows manual editing of the file, but needs that version within the file name; so I just combined the two for this post. 1: <MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Framework.Assembly 2: TaskAction="GetInfo" 3: NetAssembly="$(OutputPath)\mydll.dll"> 4: <Output TaskParameter="OutputItems" ItemName="Info" /> 5: </MSBuild.ExtensionPack.Framework.Assembly> 6: <Message Text="Version: %(Info.AssemblyVersion)" 7: Importance="High" /> 5. Use this Info.AssemblyVersion to write out the combined css and js files as described in the last post. 1: <WriteLinestoFile File="Scripts\site-%(Info.AssemblyVersion).combined.min.js" 2: Lines="@(JSLinesSite)" Overwrite="true" /> In the next post I will cover doing the same, but for a Mercurial repository.

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Create a Social Community of Trust Along With Your Federal Digital Services Governance

- by TedMcLaughlan

The Digital Services Governance Recommendations were recently released, supporting the US Federal Government's Digital Government Strategy Milestone Action #4.2 to establish agency-wide governance structures for developing and delivering digital services. Figure 1 - From: "Digital Services Governance Recommendations" While extremely important from a policy and procedure perspective within an Agency's information management and communications enterprise, these recommendations only very lightly reference perhaps the most important success enabler - the "Trusted Community" required for ultimate usefulness of the services delivered. By "ultimate usefulness", I mean the collection of public, transparent properties around government information and digital services that include social trust and validation, social reach, expert respect, and comparative, standard measures of relative value. In other words, do the digital services meet expectations of the public, social media ecosystem (people AND machines)? A rigid governance framework, controlling by rules, policies and roles the creation and dissemination of digital services may meet the expectations of direct end-users and most stakeholders - including the agency information stewards and security officers. All others who may share comments about the services, write about them, swap or review extracts, repackage, visualize or otherwise repurpose the output for use in entirely unanticipated, social ways - these "stakeholders" will not be governed, but may observe guidance generated by a "Trusted Community". As recognized members of the trusted community, these stakeholders may ultimately define the right scope and detail of governance that all other users might observe, promoting and refining the usefulness of the government product as the social ecosystem expects. So, as part of an agency-centric governance framework, it's advised that a flexible governance model be created for stewarding a "Community of Trust" around the digital services. The first steps follow the approach outlined in the Recommendations: Step 1: Gather a Core Team In addition to the roles and responsibilities described, perhaps a set of characteristics and responsibilities can be developed for the "Trusted Community Steward/Advocate" - i.e. a person or team who (a) are entirely cognizant of and respected within the external social media communities, and (b) are trusted both within the agency and outside as practical, responsible, non-partisan communicators of useful information. The may seem like a standard Agency PR/Outreach team role - but often an agency or stakeholder subject matter expert with a public, active social persona works even better. Step 2: Assess What You Have In addition to existing, agency or stakeholder decision-making bodies and assets, it's important to take a PR/Marketing view of the social ecosystem. How visible are the services across the social channels utilized by current or desired constituents of your agency? What's the online reputation of your agency and perhaps the service(s)? Is Search Engine Optimization (SEO) a facet of external communications/publishing lifecycles? Who are the public champions, instigators, value-adders for the digital services, or perhaps just influential "communicators" (i.e. with no stake in the game)? You're essentially assessing your market and social presence, and identifying the actors (including your own agency employees) in the existing community of trust. Step 3: Determine What You Want The evolving Community of Trust will most readily absorb, support and provide feedback regarding "Core Principles" (Element B of the "six essential elements of a digital services governance structure") shared by your Agency, and obviously play a large, though probably very unstructured part in Element D "Stakeholder Input and Participation". Plan for this, and seek input from the social media community with respect to performance metrics - these should be geared around the outcome and growth of the trusted communities actions. How big and active is this community? What's the influential reach of this community with respect to particular messaging or campaigns generated by the Agency? What's the referral rate TO your digital services, FROM channels owned or operated by members of this community? (this requires governance with respect to content generation inclusive of "markers" or "tags"). At this point, while your Agency proceeds with steps 4 ("Build/Validate the Governance Structure") and 5 ("Share, Review, Upgrade"), the Community of Trust might as well just get going, and start adding value and usefulness to the existing conversations, existing data services - loosely though directionally-stewarded by your trusted advocate(s). Why is this an "Enterprise Architecture" topic? Because it's increasingly apparent that a Public Service "Enterprise" is not wholly contained within Agency facilities, firewalls and job titles - it's also manifested in actual, perceived or representative forms outside the walls, on the social Internet. An Agency's EA model and resulting investments both facilitate and are impacted by the "Social Enterprise". At Oracle, we're very active both within our Enterprise and outside, helping foster social architectures that enable truly useful public services, digital or otherwise.

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International Radio Operators Alphabet in F# & Silverlight – Part 2

- by MarkPearl

So the brunt of my my very complex F# code has been done. Now it’s just putting the Silverlight stuff in. The first thing I did was add a new project to my solution. I gave it a name and VS2010 did the rest of the magic in creating the .Web project etc. In this instance because I want to take the MVVM approach and make use of commanding I have decided to make the frontend a Silverlight4 project. I now need move my F# code into a proper Silverlight Library. Warning – when you create the Silverlight Library VS2010 will ask you whether you want it to be based on Silverlight3 or Silverlight4. I originally went for Silverlight4 only to discover when I tried to compile my solution that I was given an error… Error 12 F# runtime for Silverlight version v4.0 is not installed. Please go to http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=177463 to download and install matching.. After asking around I discovered that the Silverlight4 F# runtime is not available yet. No problem, the suggestion was to change the F# Silverlight Library to a Silverlight3 project however when going to the properties of the project file – even though I changed it to Silverlight3, VS2010 did not like it and kept reverting it to a Silverlight4 project. After a few minutes of scratching my head I simply deleted Silverlight4 F# Library project and created a new F# Silverlight Library project in Silverlight3 and VS2010 was happy. Now that the project structure is set up, rest is fairly simple. You need to add the Silverlight Library as a reference to the C# Silverlight Front End. Then setup your views, since I was following the MVVM pattern I made a Views & ViewModel folder and set up the relevant View and ViewModels. The MainPageViewModel file looks as follows using System; using System.Net; using System.Windows; using System.Windows.Controls; using System.Windows.Documents; using System.Windows.Ink; using System.Windows.Input; using System.Windows.Media; using System.Windows.Media.Animation; using System.Windows.Shapes; using System.Collections.ObjectModel; namespace IROAFrontEnd.ViewModels { public class MainPageViewModel : ViewModelBase { private string _iroaString; private string _inputCharacters; public string InputCharacters { get { return _inputCharacters; } set { if (_inputCharacters != value) { _inputCharacters = value; OnPropertyChanged("InputCharacters"); } } } public string IROAString { get { return _iroaString; } set { if (_iroaString != value) { _iroaString = value; OnPropertyChanged("IROAString"); } } } public ICommand MySpecialCommand { get { return new MyCommand(this); } } public class MyCommand : ICommand { readonly MainPageViewModel _myViewModel; public MyCommand(MainPageViewModel myViewModel) { _myViewModel = myViewModel; } public event EventHandler CanExecuteChanged; public bool CanExecute(object parameter) { return true; } public void Execute(object parameter) { var result = ModuleMain.ConvertCharsToStrings(_myViewModel.InputCharacters); var newString = ""; foreach (var Item in result) { newString += Item + " "; } _myViewModel.IROAString = newString.Trim(); } } } } One of the features I like in Silverlight4 is the new commanding. You will notice in my I have put the code under the command execute to reference to my F# module. At the moment this could be cleaned up even more, but will suffice for now.. public void Execute(object parameter) { var result = ModuleMain.ConvertCharsToStrings(_myViewModel.InputCharacters); var newString = ""; foreach (var Item in result) { newString += Item + " "; } _myViewModel.IROAString = newString.Trim(); } I then needed to set the view up. If we have a look at the MainPageView.xaml the xaml code will look like the following…. Nothing to fancy, but battleship grey for now… take careful note of the binding of the command in the button to MySpecialCommand which was created in the ViewModel. <UserControl x:Class="IROAFrontEnd.Views.MainPageView" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:d="http://schemas.microsoft.com/expression/blend/2008" xmlns:mc="http://schemas.openxmlformats.org/markup-compatibility/2006" mc:Ignorable="d" d:DesignHeight="300" d:DesignWidth="400"> <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Background="White"> <Grid.RowDefinitions> <RowDefinition/> <RowDefinition/> <RowDefinition/> </Grid.RowDefinitions> <TextBox Grid.Row="0" Text="{Binding InputCharacters, Mode=TwoWay}"/> <Button Grid.Row="1" Command="{Binding MySpecialCommand}"> <TextBlock Text="Generate"/> </Button> <TextBlock Grid.Row="2" Text="{Binding IROAString}"/> </Grid> </UserControl> Finally in the App.xaml.cs file we need to set the View and link it to the ViewModel. private void Application_Startup(object sender, StartupEventArgs e) { var myView = new MainPageView(); var myViewModel = new MainPageViewModel(); myView.DataContext = myViewModel; this.RootVisual = myView; } Once this is done – hey presto – it worked. I typed in some “Test Input” and clicked the generate button and the correct Radio Operators Alphabet was generated. And that’s the end of my first very basic F# Silverlight application.

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Playing with aspx page cycle using JustMock

- by mehfuzh

In this post , I will cover a test code that will mock the various elements needed to complete a HTTP page request and assert the expected page cycle steps. To begin, i have a simple enumeration that has my predefined page steps: public enum PageStep { PreInit, Load, PreRender, UnLoad } Once doing so, i first created the page object [not mocking]. Page page = new Page(); Here, our target is to fire up the page process through ProcessRequest call, now if we take a look inside the method with reflector.net, the call trace will go like : ProcessRequest –> ProcessRequestWithNoAssert –> SetInstrinsics –> Finallly ProcessRequest. Inside SetInstrinsics , it requires calls from HttpRequest, HttpResponse and HttpBrowserCababilities. Using this clue at hand, we can easily know the classes / calls we need to mock in order to get through the expected call. Accordingly, for HttpBrowserCapabilities our required mock code will look like: var browser = Mock.Create<HttpBrowserCapabilities>(); // Arrange Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredRenderingMime).Returns("text/html"); Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredResponseEncoding).Returns("UTF-8"); Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredRequestEncoding).Returns("UTF-8"); Now, HttpBrowserCapabilities is get though [Instance]HttpRequest.Browser. Therefore, we create the HttpRequest mock: var request = Mock.Create<HttpRequest>(); Then , add the required get call : Mock.Arrange(() => request.Browser).Returns(browser); As, [instance]Browser.PerferrredResponseEncoding and [instance]Browser.PreferredResponseEncoding are also set to the request object and to make that they are set properly, we can add the following lines as well [not required though]. bool requestContentEncodingSet = false; Mock.ArrangeSet(() => request.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")).DoInstead(() => requestContentEncodingSet = true); Similarly, for response we can write: var response = Mock.Create<HttpResponse>(); bool responseContentEncodingSet = false; Mock.ArrangeSet(() => response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")).DoInstead(() => responseContentEncodingSet = true); Finally , I created a mock of HttpContext and set the Request and Response properties that will returns the mocked version. var context = Mock.Create<HttpContext>(); Mock.Arrange(() => context.Request).Returns(request); Mock.Arrange(() => context.Response).Returns(response); As, Page internally calls RenderControl method , we just need to replace that with our one and optionally we can check if invoked properly: bool rendered = false; Mock.Arrange(() => page.RenderControl(Arg.Any<HtmlTextWriter>())).DoInstead(() => rendered = true); That’s it, the rest of the code is simple, where i asserted the page cycle with the PageSteps that i defined earlier: var pageSteps = new Queue<PageStep>(); page.PreInit +=delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.PreInit); }; page.Load += delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.Load); }; page.PreRender += delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.PreRender);}; page.Unload +=delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.UnLoad);}; page.ProcessRequest(context); Assert.True(requestContentEncodingSet); Assert.True(responseContentEncodingSet); Assert.True(rendered); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.PreInit); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.Load); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.PreRender); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.UnLoad); Mock.Assert(request); Mock.Assert(response); You can get the test class shown in this post here to give a try by yourself with of course JustMock :-). Enjoy!!

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MySQL Connect Only 10 Days Away - Focus on InnoDB Sessions

- by Bertrand Matthelié

Time flies and MySQL Connect is only 10 days away! You can check out the full program here as well as in the September edition of the MySQL newsletter. Mat recently blogged about the MySQL Cluster sessions you’ll have the opportunity to attend, and below are those focused on InnoDB. Remember you can plan your schedule with Schedule Builder. Saturday, 1.00 pm, Room Golden Gate 3: 10 Things You Should Know About InnoDB—Calvin Sun, Oracle InnoDB is the default storage engine for Oracle’s MySQL as of MySQL Release 5.5. It provides the standard ACID-compliant transactions, row-level locking, multiversion concurrency control, and referential integrity. InnoDB also implements several innovative technologies to improve its performance and reliability. This presentation gives a brief history of InnoDB; its main features; and some recent enhancements for better performance, scalability, and availability. Saturday, 5.30 pm, Room Golden Gate 4: Demystified MySQL/InnoDB Performance Tuning—Dimitri Kravtchuk, Oracle This session covers performance tuning with MySQL and the InnoDB storage engine for MySQL and explains the main improvements made in MySQL Release 5.5 and Release 5.6. Which setting for which workload? Which value will be better for my system? How can I avoid potential bottlenecks from the beginning? Do I need a purge thread? Is it true that InnoDB doesn't need thread concurrency anymore? These and many other questions are asked by DBAs and developers. Things are changing quickly and constantly, and there is no “silver bullet.” But understanding the configuration setting’s impact is already a huge step in performance improvement. Bring your ideas and problems to share them with others—the discussion is open, just moderated by a speaker. Sunday, 10.15 am, Room Golden Gate 4: Better Availability with InnoDB Online Operations—Calvin Sun, Oracle Many top Web properties rely on Oracle’s MySQL as a critical piece of infrastructure for serving millions of users. Database availability has become increasingly important. One way to enhance availability is to give users full access to the database during data definition language (DDL) operations. The online DDL operations in recent MySQL releases offer users the flexibility to perform schema changes while having full access to the database—that is, with minimal delay of operations on a table and without rebuilding the entire table. These enhancements provide better responsiveness and availability in busy production environments. This session covers these improvements in the InnoDB storage engine for MySQL for online DDL operations such as add index, drop foreign key, and rename column. Sunday, 11.45 am, Room Golden Gate 7: Developing High-Throughput Services with NoSQL APIs to InnoDB and MySQL Cluster—Andrew Morgan and John Duncan, Oracle Ever-increasing performance demands of Web-based services have generated significant interest in providing NoSQL access methods to MySQL (MySQL Cluster and the InnoDB storage engine of MySQL), enabling users to maintain all the advantages of their existing relational databases while providing blazing-fast performance for simple queries. Get the best of both worlds: persistence; consistency; rich SQL queries; high availability; scalability; and simple, flexible APIs and schemas for agile development. This session describes the memcached connectors and examines some use cases for how MySQL and memcached fit together in application architectures. It does the same for the newest MySQL Cluster native connector, an easy-to-use, fully asynchronous connector for Node.js. Sunday, 1.15 pm, Room Golden Gate 4: InnoDB Performance Tuning—Inaam Rana, Oracle The InnoDB storage engine has always been highly efficient and includes many unique architectural elements to ensure high performance and scalability. In MySQL 5.5 and MySQL 5.6, InnoDB includes many new features that take better advantage of recent advances in operating systems and hardware platforms than previous releases did. This session describes unique InnoDB architectural elements for performance, new features, and how to tune InnoDB to achieve better performance. Sunday, 4.15 pm, Room Golden Gate 3: InnoDB Compression for OLTP—Nizameddin Ordulu, Facebook and Inaam Rana, Oracle Data compression is an important capability of the InnoDB storage engine for Oracle’s MySQL. Compressed tables reduce the size of the database on disk, resulting in fewer reads and writes and better throughput by reducing the I/O workload. Facebook pushes the limit of InnoDB compression and has made several enhancements to InnoDB, making this technology ready for online transaction processing (OLTP). In this session, you will learn the fundamentals of InnoDB compression. You will also learn the enhancements the Facebook team has made to improve InnoDB compression, such as reducing compression failures, not logging compressed page images, and allowing changes of compression level. Not registered yet? You can still save US$ 300 over the on-site fee – Register Now!

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Oracle Delivers Latest Release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c

- by Scott McNeil

Richer Service Catalog for Database and Middleware as a Service; Enhanced Database and Middleware Management Help Drive Enterprise-Scale Private Cloud Adoption News Summary IT organizations are adopting private clouds as a stepping-stone to business-driven, self-service IT. Successful implementations hinge on the ability to efficiently deploy and manage cloud services at enterprise scale. Having a complete cloud management solution integrated with an enterprise-class technology stack is a fundamental requirement for IT. Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4 meets that requirement by helping businesses become more agile and responsive, while reducing cost, complexity, and risk. News Facts Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4, available today, lets organizations rapidly adopt Oracle-based, enterprise-scale private clouds. New capabilities provide advanced technology stack management, secure database administration, and enterprise service governance, enabling Oracle customers and partners to maximize database and application performance and drive innovation using self-service IT platforms. The enhancements have been driven by customers and the growing Oracle Enterprise Manager Ecosystem, comprised of more than 750 Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Specialized partners. Oracle and its partners and customers have built over 140 plug-ins and connectors for Oracle Enterprise Manager. Watch the video highlights. Automation for Broader Cloud Services Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Release 4 allows for a rapid enterprise-wide adoption of database, middleware and infrastructure services in the private cloud, driven by an enhanced API-enabled service catalog. The release features “push button” style provisioning of complete environments such as SOA and Oracle Active Data Guard, and fast data cloning that enables rapid deployment and testing of enterprise applications. Out-of-the-box capabilities to detect data and configuration vulnerabilities provide enhanced cloud service governance along with greater operational control through a flexible and extensible showback mechanism. Enhanced Database Management A new performance warehouse enables predictive database diagnostics and trend analysis and helps identify database problems before they occur. New enterprise data-governance capabilities enhance security by helping systematically discover and protect sensitive data. Step-by-step orchestration of upgrades with the ability to rollback changes enables faster adoption of Oracle Database 12c. Expanded Fusion Middleware Management A new consolidated view of Oracle Fusion Middleware 12c deployments with a guided management capability lets administrators apply best management practices to diverse middleware environments and identify performance issues quickly. A Java VM Diagnostics as a Service feature allows governed access to diagnostics data for IT workers across multiple disciplines for accelerated DevOps resolutions of defects and performance optimization. New automated provisioning for SOA lets middleware administrators perform mass SOA provisioning with ease. Superior Enterprise-Grade Management Private roles and preferred credentials have been added to Oracle Enterprise Manager to provide additional fine-grained security for organizations with complex access control requirements. A new security console provides a single point of control for managing the security of Oracle Enterprise Manager environments. Support for the latest industry standard SNMP v3 protocol, including encryption, enables more secure heterogeneous management. “Smart monitoring” adapts to observed environmental changes and adds self-management capabilities to help Oracle Enterprise Manager run at peak performance, while demanding less IT supervision. Supporting Quotes “Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has a strong tradition of technology breakthroughs and leadership. As a member of Oracle’s Customer Advisory Board for Oracle Enterprise Manager, we have consistently provided feedback and guidance in the areas of enterprise-scale cloud, self-diagnosability, and secure administration for the product,” said Tim Frazier, CIO, NIF and Photon Sciences, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. “We intend to take advantage of the Release 4 features that support enterprise-scale availability and fine-grained security capabilities for private cloud deployments.” “IDC's most recent CloudTrack survey shows that most enterprises plan to adopt hybrid cloud architectures over the next three years,” said Mary Johnston Turner, Research Vice President, Enterprise System Management Software, IDC. “These organizations plan to deploy a wide range of workloads into cloud environments including mission critical database and middleware services that require high levels of fault tolerance and disaster recovery. Such capabilities were traditionally custom configured for each application but cloud offers the possibility to incorporate such properties within the service definition, enabling organizations to adopt cloud without compromise. With the latest release of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c, Oracle is providing customers with an out-of-the-box experience for delivering highly-resilient cloud services for databases and applications.” “Since its inception, Oracle has been leading the way in innovative, scalable and high performance solutions for the enterprise. With this release of Oracle Enterprise Manager, we are extending this leadership by providing enterprise-scale capabilities for planning, delivering, and managing private clouds. We call this ‘zero-to-cloud – accelerated.’ These enhancements help our customers to expedite their adoption of cloud computing and prepares them for the next generation of self-service IT,” said Prakash Ramamurthy, senior vice president of Systems and Cloud Management at Oracle. Supporting Resources Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Video: Cerner Delivers High Performance Private Cloud Video: BIAS Achieves Outstanding Results with Private Cloud Press Release Stay Connected: Twitter | Facebook | YouTube | Linkedin | Newsletter Download the Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Mobile app

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concurrency::accelerator

- by Daniel Moth

Overview An accelerator represents a "target" on which C++ AMP code can execute and where data can reside. Typically (but not necessarily) an accelerator is a GPU device. Accelerators are represented in C++ AMP as objects of the accelerator class. For many scenarios, you do not need to obtain an accelerator object, since the runtime has a notion of a default accelerator, which is what it thinks is the best one in the system. Examples where you need to deal with accelerator objects are if you need to pick your own accelerator (based on your specific criteria), or if you need to use more than one accelerators from your app. Construction and operator usage You can query and obtain a std::vector of all the accelerators on your system, which the runtime discovers on startup. Beyond enumerating accelerators, you can also create one directly by passing to the constructor a system-wide unique path to a device if you know it (i.e. the “Device Instance Path” property for the device in Device Manager), e.g. accelerator acc(L"PCI\\VEN_1002&DEV_6898&SUBSYS_0B001002etc"); There are some predefined strings (for predefined accelerators) that you can pass to the accelerator constructor (and there are corresponding constants for those on the accelerator class itself, so you don’t have to hardcode them every time). Examples are the following: accelerator::default_accelerator represents the default accelerator that the C++ AMP runtime picks for you if you don’t pick one (the heuristics of how it picks one will be covered in a future post). Example: accelerator acc; accelerator::direct3d_ref represents the reference rasterizer emulator that simulates a direct3d device on the CPU (in a very slow manner). This emulator is available on systems with Visual Studio installed and is useful for debugging. More on debugging in general in future posts. Example: accelerator acc(accelerator::direct3d_ref); accelerator::direct3d_warp represents a target that I will cover in future blog posts. Example: accelerator acc(accelerator::direct3d_warp); accelerator::cpu_accelerator represents the CPU. In this first release the only use of this accelerator is for using the staging arrays technique that I'll cover separately. Example: accelerator acc(accelerator::cpu_accelerator); You can also create an accelerator by shallow copying another accelerator instance (via the corresponding constructor) or simply assigning it to another accelerator instance (via the operator overloading of =). Speaking of operator overloading, you can also compare (for equality and inequality) two accelerator objects between them to determine if they refer to the same underlying device. Querying accelerator characteristics Given an accelerator object, you can access its description, version, device path, size of dedicated memory in KB, whether it is some kind of emulator, whether it has a display attached, whether it supports double precision, and whether it was created with the debugging layer enabled for extensive error reporting. Below is example code that accesses some of the properties; in your real code you'd probably be checking one or more of them in order to pick an accelerator (or check that the default one is good enough for your specific workload): void inspect_accelerator(concurrency::accelerator acc) { std::wcout << "New accelerator: " << acc.description << std::endl; std::wcout << "is_debug = " << acc.is_debug << std::endl; std::wcout << "is_emulated = " << acc.is_emulated << std::endl; std::wcout << "dedicated_memory = " << acc.dedicated_memory << std::endl; std::wcout << "device_path = " << acc.device_path << std::endl; std::wcout << "has_display = " << acc.has_display << std::endl; std::wcout << "version = " << (acc.version >> 16) << '.' << (acc.version & 0xFFFF) << std::endl; } accelerator_view In my next blog post I'll cover a related class: accelerator_view. Suffice to say here that each accelerator may have from 1..n related accelerator_view objects. You can get the accelerator_view from an accelerator via the default_view property, or create new ones by invoking the create_view method that creates an accelerator_view object for you (by also accepting a queuing_mode enum value of deferred or immediate that we'll also explore in the next blog post). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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TFS 2010 SDK: Integrating Twitter with TFS Programmatically

- by Tarun Arora

Technorati Tags: Team Foundation Server 2010,TFS API,Integrate Twitter TFS,TFS Programming,ALM,TwitterSharp Friends at ‘Twitter Sharp’ have created a wonderful .net API for twitter. With this blog post i will try to show you a basic TFS – Twitter integration scenario where i will retrieve the Team Project details programmatically and then publish these details on my twitter page. In future blogs i will be demonstrating how to create a windows service to capture the events raised by TFS and then publishing them in your social eco-system. Download Working Demo: Integrate Twitter - Tfs Programmatically 1. Setting up Twitter API Download Tweet Sharp from => https://github.com/danielcrenna/tweetsharp Before you can start playing around with this, you will need to register an application on twitter. This is because Twitter uses the OAuth authentication protocol and will not issue an Access token unless your application is registered with them. Go to https://dev.twitter.com/ and register your application Once you have registered your application, you will need ‘Customer Key’, ‘Customer Secret’, ‘Access Token’, ‘Access Token Secret’ 2. Connecting to Twitter using the Tweet Sharp API Create a new C# windows forms project and add reference to ‘Hammock.ClientProfile’, ‘Newtonsoft.Json’, ‘TweetSharp’ Add the following keys to the App.config (Note – The values for the keys below are in correct and if you try and connect using them then you will get an authorization failure error). Add a new class ‘TwitterProxy’ and use the following code to connect to the TwitterService (Read more about OAuthentication - http://dev.twitter.com/pages/auth) using System;using System.Collections.Generic;using System.Linq;using System.Text;using System.Configuration;using TweetSharp; namespace WindowsFormsApplication2{ public class TwitterProxy { private static string _hero; private static string _consumerKey; private static string _consumerSecret; private static string _accessToken; private static string _accessTokenSecret; public static TwitterService ConnectToTwitter() { _consumerKey = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerKey"]; _consumerSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["ConsumerSecret"]; _accessToken = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessToken"]; _accessTokenSecret = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["AccessTokenSecret"]; return new TwitterService(_consumerKey, _consumerSecret, _accessToken, _accessTokenSecret); } }} Time to Tweet! _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); SendTweet will return the TweetStatus, If you do not get a 200 OK status that means you have failed authentication, please revisit the Access tokens. --RESPONSE: https://api.twitter.com/1/statuses/update.json HTTP/1.1 200 OK X-Transaction: 1308476106-69292-41752 X-Frame-Options: SAMEORIGIN X-Runtime: 0.03040 X-Transaction-Mask: a6183ffa5f44ef11425211f25 Pragma: no-cache X-Access-Level: read-write X-Revision: DEV X-MID: bd8aa0abeccb6efba38bc0a391a73fab98e983ea Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, must-revalidate, pre-check=0, post-check=0 Content-Type: application/json; charset=utf-8 Date: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Expires: Tue, 31 Mar 1981 05:00:00 GMT Last-Modified: Sun, 19 Jun 2011 09:35:06 GMT Server: hi Vary: Accept-Encoding Content-Encoding: Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=100 Connection: Keep-Alive Transfer-Encoding: chunked 3. Integrate with TFS In my blog post Connect to TFS Programmatically i have in depth demonstrated how to connect to TFS using the TFS API. 1: // Update the AppConfig with the URI of the Team Foundation Server you want to connect to, Make sure you have View Team Project Collection Details permissions on the server 2: private static string _myUri = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["TfsUri"]; 3: private static TwitterService _twitterService = null; 4: 5: private void button1_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) 6: { 7: lblNotes.Text = string.Empty; 8: 9: try 10: { 11: StringBuilder notes = new StringBuilder(); 12: 13: _twitterService = Proxy.TwitterProxy.ConnectToTwitter(); 14: 15: _twitterService.SendTweet("Hello World"); 16: 17: TfsConfigurationServer configurationServer = 18: TfsConfigurationServerFactory.GetConfigurationServer(new Uri(_myUri)); 19: 20: CatalogNode catalogNode = configurationServer.CatalogNode; 21: 22: ReadOnlyCollection<CatalogNode> tpcNodes = catalogNode.QueryChildren( 23: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.ProjectCollection }, 24: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 25: 26: // tpc = Team Project Collection 27: foreach (CatalogNode tpcNode in tpcNodes) 28: { 29: Guid tpcId = new Guid(tpcNode.Resource.Properties["InstanceId"]); 30: TfsTeamProjectCollection tpc = configurationServer.GetTeamProjectCollection(tpcId); 31: 32: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project Collection : {1}{0}", Environment.NewLine, tpc.Name); 33: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format("http://Lunartech.codeplex.com - Connecting to Team Project Collection : {0} ", tpc.Name)); 34: 35: // Get catalog of tp = 'Team Projects' for the tpc = 'Team Project Collection' 36: var tpNodes = tpcNode.QueryChildren( 37: new Guid[] { CatalogResourceTypes.TeamProject }, 38: false, CatalogQueryOptions.None); 39: 40: foreach (var p in tpNodes) 41: { 42: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Team Project : {1} - {2}{0}", Environment.NewLine, p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex"); 43: _twitterService.SendTweet(String.Format(" Connected to Team Project: '{0}' – '{1}' ", p.Resource.DisplayName, "This is an open source project hosted on codeplex")); 44: } 45: } 46: notes.AppendFormat("{0} Updates posted on Twitter : {1} {0}", Environment.NewLine, @"http://twitter.com/lunartech1"); 47: lblNotes.Text = notes.ToString(); 48: } 49: catch (Exception ex) 50: { 51: lblError.Text = " Message : " + ex.Message + (ex.InnerException != null ? " Inner Exception : " + ex.InnerException : string.Empty); 52: } 53: } The extensions you can build integrating TFS and Twitter are incredible! Share this post :

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Responsible BI for Excel, Even for Older Versions

- by andrewbrust

On Wednesday, I will have the honor of co-presenting, for both The Data Warehouse Institute (TDWI) and the New York Technology Council. on the subject of Excel and BI. My co-presenter will be none other than Bill Baker, who was a Microsoft Distinguished Engineer and, essentially, the father of BI at that company. Details on the events are here and here. We'll be talking about PowerPivot, of course, but that's not all. Probably even more important than any one product, will be our discussion of whether the usual characterization of Excel as the nemesis of IT, the guilty pleasure of business users and the antithesis of formal BI is really valid and/or hopelessly intractable. Without giving away our punchline, I'll tell you that we are much more optimistic than that. There are huge upsides to Excel and while there are real dangers to using it in the BI space, there are standards and practices you can employ to ensure Excel is used responsibly. And when those practices are followed, Excel becomes quite powerful indeed. One of the keys to this is using Excel as a data consumer rather than data storage mechanism. Caching data in Excel is OK, but only if that data is (a) not modified and (b) configured for automated periodic refresh. PowerPivot meets both criteria -- it stores a read-only copy of your data in the form of a model, and once workbook containing a PowerPivot model is published to SharePoint, it can be configured for scheduled data refresh, on the server, requiring no user intervention whatsoever. Data refresh is a bit like hard drive backup: it will only happen reliably if it's automated, and super-easy to configure. PowerPivot hits a real home run here (as does Windows Home Server for PC backup, but I digress). The thing about PowerPivot is that it's an add-in for Excel 2010. What if you're not planning to go to that new version for quite a while? What if you’ve just deployed Office 2007 in your organization? What if you're still on Office 2003, or an even earlier version? What can you do immediately to share data responsibly and easily? As it turns out, there's a feature in Excel that's been around for quite a while, that can help: Web Queries. The Web Query feature was introduced, ostensibly, to allow Excel to pull data in from Internet Web pages…for example, data in a stock quote history table will come in nicely, as will any data in a Web page that is displayed in an HTML table. To use the feature In Excel 2007 or 2010, click the Data Tab or the ribbon and click the “From Web” button towards the left; in older versions use the corresponding option in the menu or toolbars. Next, paste a URL into the resulting dialog box and tap Enter or click the Go button. A preview of the Web page will come up, and the dialog will allow you to select the specific table within the page whose data you’d like to import. Here’s an example: Now just click the table, click the Import button, and the Import Data dialog appears. You can simply click OK to bring in your data or you can first click the Properties… button and configure the data import to be refreshed at an interval in minutes that you select. Now your data’s in the spreadsheet and ready to worked with: Your data may be vulnerable to modification, but if you’ve set up the data refresh, any accidental or malicious changes will be corrected in time anyway. The thing about this feature is that it’s most useful not for public Web pages, but for pages behind the firewall. In effect, the Web Query feature provides an incredibly easy way to consume data in Excel that’s “published” from an application. Users just need a URL. They don’t need to know server and database names and since the data is read-only, providing credentials may be unnecessary, or can be handled using integrated security. If that’s not good enough, the Web Query can be saved to a special .iqy file, which can be edited to provide POST parameter data. The only requirement is that the data must be provided in an HTML table, with the first row providing the column names. From an ASP.NET project, it couldn’t be easier: a simple bound GridView control is totally compatible. Use a data source control with it, and you don’t even have to write any code. Users can link to pages that are part of an application’s UI, or developers can create pages that are specially designed for the purpose of providing an interface to the Web Query import feature. And none of this is Microsoft- or .NET-specific. You can create pages in any language you want (PHP comes to mind) that output the result set of a query in HTML table format, and then consume that data in a Web Query. Then build PivotTables and charts on the data, and in Excel 2007 or 2010 you can use conditional formatting to create scorecards and dashboards. This strategy allows you to create pages that function quite similarly to the OData XML feeds rendered when .NET developers create an “Astoria” WCF Data Service. And while it’s cool that PowerPivot and Excel 2010 can import such OData feeds, it’s good to know that older versions of Excel can function in a similar fashion, and can consume data produced by virtually any Web development platform. As a final matter, instead of just telling you that “older versions” of Excel support this feature, I’ll be more specific. To discover what the first version of Excel was to support Web queries, go to http://bit.ly/OldSchoolXL.

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Timeout Considerations for Solicit Response – Part 2

- by Michael Stephenson

To follow up a previous article about timeouts and how they can affect your application I have extended the sample we were using to include WCF. I will execute some test scenarios and discuss the results. The sample We begin by consuming exactly the same web service which is sitting on a remote server. This time I have created a .net 3.5 application which will consume the web service using the basichttp binding. To show you the configuration for the consumption of this web service please refer to the below diagram. You can see like before we also have the connectionManagement element in the configuration file. I have added a WCF service reference (also using the asynchronous proxy methods) and have the below code sample in the application which will asynchronously make the web service calls and handle the responses on a call back method invoked by a delegate. If you have read the previous article you will notice that the code is almost the same. Sample 1 – WCF with Default Timeouts In this test I set about recreating the same scenario as previous where we would run the test but this time using WCF as the messaging component. For the first test I would use the default configuration settings which WCF had setup when we added a reference to the web service. The timeout values for this test are: closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00" The Test We simulated 21 calls to the web service Test Results The client-side trace is as follows: The server-side trace is as follows: Some observations on the results are as follows: The timeouts happened quicker than in the previous tests because some calls were timing out before they attempted to connect to the server The first few calls that timed out did actually connect to the server and did execute successfully on the server Test 2 – Increase Open Connection Timeout & Send Timeout In this test I wanted to increase both the send and open timeout values to try and give everything a chance to go through. The timeout values for this test are: closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:10:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:10:00" The Test We simulated 21 calls to the web service Test Results The client side trace for this test was The server-side trace for this test was: Some observations on this test are: This test proved if the timeouts are high enough everything will just go through Test 3 – Increase just the Send Timeout In this test we wanted to increase just the send timeout. The timeout values for this test are: closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:10:00" The Test We simulated 21 calls to the web service Test Results The below is the client side trace The below is the server side trace Some observations on this test are: In this test from both the client and server perspective everything ran through fine The open connection timeout did not seem to have any effect Test 4 – Increase Just the Open Connection Timeout In this test I wanted to validate the change to the open connection setting by increasing just this on its own. The timeout values for this test are: closeTimeout="00:01:00" openTimeout="00:10:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:01:00" The Test We simulated 21 calls to the web service Test Results The client side trace was The server side trace was Some observations on this test are: In this test you can see that the open connection which relates to opening the channel timeout increase was not the thing which stopped the calls timing out It's the send of data which is timing out On the server you can see that the successful few calls were fine but there were also a few calls which hit the server but timed out on the client You can see that not all calls hit the server which was one of the problems with the WSE and ASMX options Test 5 – Smaller Increase in Send Timeout In this test I wanted to make a smaller increase to the send timeout than previous just to prove that it was the key setting which was controlling what was timing out. The timeout values for this test are: openTimeout="00:01:00" receiveTimeout="00:10:00" sendTimeout="00:02:30" The Test We simulated 21 calls to the web service Test Results The client side trace was The server side trace was Some observations on this test are: You can see that most of the calls got through fine On the client you can see that call 20 timed out but still hit the server and executed fine. Summary At this point between the two articles we have quite a lot of scenarios showing the different way the timeout setting have played into our original performance issue, and now we can see how WCF could offer an improved way to handle the problem. To summarise the differences in the timeout properties for the three technology stacks: ASMX The timeout value only applies to the execution time of your request on the server. The timeout does not consider how long your code might be waiting client side to get a connection. WSE The timeout value includes both the time to obtain a connection and also the time to execute the request. A timeout will not be thrown as an error until an attempt to connect to the server is made. This means a 40 second timeout setting may not throw the error until 60 seconds when the connection to the server is made. If the connection to the server is made you should be aware that your message will be processed and you should design for this. WCF The WCF send timeout is the setting most equivalent to the settings we were looking at previously. Like WSE this setting the counter includes the time to get a connection as well as the time to execute on a server. Unlike WSE and ASMX an error will be thrown as soon as the send timeout from making your call from user code has elapsed regardless of whether we are waiting for a connection or have an open connection to the server. This may to a user appear to have better latency in getting an error response compared to WSE or ASMX.

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Working with Reporting Services Filters–Part 1

- by smisner

There are two ways that you can filter data in Reporting Services. The first way, which usually provides a faster performance, is to use query parameters to apply a filter using the WHERE clause in a SQL statement. In that case, the structure of the filter depends upon the syntax recognized by the source database. Another way to filter data in Reporting Services is to apply a filter to a dataset, data region, or a group. Using this latter method, you can even apply multiple filters. However, the use of filter operators or the setup of multiple filters is not always obvious, so in this series of posts, I'll provide some more information about the configuration of filters. First, why not use query parameters exclusively for filtering? Here are a few reasons: You might want to apply a filter to part of the report, but not all of the report. Your dataset might retrieve data from a stored procedure, and doesn't allow you to pass a query parameter for filtering purposes. Your report might be set up as a snapshot on the report server and, in that case, cannot be dynamically filtered based on a query parameter. Next, let's look at how to set up a report filter in general. The process is the same whether you are applying the filter to a dataset, data region, or a group. When you go to the Filters page in the Properties dialog box for whichever of these items you selected (dataset, data region, group), you click the Add button to create a new filter. The interface looks like this: The Expression field is usually a field in the dataset, so to make it easier for you to make a selection,the drop-down list displays all of the current dataset fields. But notice the expression button to the right, which means that you can set up any type of expression-not just a dataset field. To the right of the expression button, you'll find a data type drop-down list. It's important to specify the correct data type for the field or expression you're using. Now for the operators. Here's a list of the options that you have: This Operator Performs This Action =, <>, >, >=, <, <=, Like Compares expression to value Top N, Bottom N Compares expression to Top (Bottom) set of N values (N = integer) Top %, Bottom % Compares expression to Top (Bottom) N percent of values (N = integer or float) Between Determines whether expression is between two values, inclusive In Determines whether expression is found in list of values Last, the Value is what you're comparing to the expression using the operator. The construction of a filter using some operators (=, <>, >, etc.) is fairly simple. If my dataset (for AdventureWorks data) has a Category field, and I have a parameter that prompts the user for a single category, I can set up a filter like this: Expression Data Type Operator Value [Category] Text = [@Category] But if I set the parameter to accept multiple values, I need to change the operator from = to In, just as I would have to do if I were using a query parameter. The parameter expression, [@Category], which translates to =Parameters!Category.Value, doesn’t need to change because it represents an array as soon as I change the parameter to allow multiple values. The “In” operator requires an array. With that in mind, let’s consider a variation on Value. Let’s say that I have a parameter that prompts the user for a particular year – and for simplicity’s sake, this parameter only allows a single value, and I have an expression that evaluates the previous year based on the user’s selection. Then I want to use these two values in two separate filters with an OR condition. That is, I want to filter either by the year selected OR by the year that was computed. If I create two filters, one for each year (as shown below), then the report will only display results if BOTH filter conditions are met – which would never be true. Expression Data Type Operator Value [CalendarYear] Integer = [@Year] [CalendarYear] Integer = =Parameters!Year.Value-1 To handle this scenario, we need to create a single filter that uses the “In” operator, and then set up the Value expression as an array. To create an array, we use the Split function after creating a string that concatenates the two values (highlighted in yellow) as shown below. Expression Data Type Operator Value =Cstr(Fields!CalendarYear.Value) Text In =Split( CStr(Parameters!Year.Value) + ”,” + CStr(Parameters!Year.Value-1) , “,”) Note that in this case, I had to apply a string conversion on the year integer so that I could concatenate the parameter selection with the calculated year. Pay attention to the second argument of the Split function—you must use a comma delimiter for the result to work correctly with the In operator. I also had to change the Expression value from [CalendarYear] (or =Fields!CalendarYear.Value) so that the expression would return a string that I could compare with the values in the string array. More fun with filter expressions in future posts!

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texture mapping with lib3ds and SOIL help

- by Adam West

I'm having trouble with my project for loading a texture map onto a model. Any insight into what is going wrong with my code is fantastic. Right now the code only renders a teapot which I have assinged after creating it in 3DS Max. 3dsloader.cpp #include "3dsloader.h" Object::Object(std:: string filename) { m_TotalFaces = 0; m_model = lib3ds_file_load(filename.c_str()); // If loading the model failed, we throw an exception if(!m_model) { throw strcat("Unable to load ", filename.c_str()); } // set properties of texture coordinate generation for both x and y coordinates glTexGeni(GL_S, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_EYE_LINEAR); glTexGeni(GL_T, GL_TEXTURE_GEN_MODE, GL_EYE_LINEAR); // if not already enabled, enable texture generation if(! glIsEnabled(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S)) glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S); if(! glIsEnabled(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T)) glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T); } Object::~Object() { if(m_model) // if the file isn't freed yet lib3ds_file_free(m_model); //free up memory glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_S); glDisable(GL_TEXTURE_GEN_T); } void Object::GetFaces() { m_TotalFaces = 0; Lib3dsMesh * mesh; // Loop through every mesh. for(mesh = m_model->meshes;mesh != NULL;mesh = mesh->next) { // Add the number of faces this mesh has to the total number of faces. m_TotalFaces += mesh->faces; } } void Object::CreateVBO() { assert(m_model != NULL); // Calculate the number of faces we have in total GetFaces(); // Allocate memory for our vertices and normals Lib3dsVector * vertices = new Lib3dsVector[m_TotalFaces * 3]; Lib3dsVector * normals = new Lib3dsVector[m_TotalFaces * 3]; Lib3dsTexel* texCoords = new Lib3dsTexel[m_TotalFaces * 3]; Lib3dsMesh * mesh; unsigned int FinishedFaces = 0; // Loop through all the meshes for(mesh = m_model->meshes;mesh != NULL;mesh = mesh->next) { lib3ds_mesh_calculate_normals(mesh, &normals[FinishedFaces*3]); // Loop through every face for(unsigned int cur_face = 0; cur_face < mesh->faces;cur_face++) { Lib3dsFace * face = &mesh->faceL[cur_face]; for(unsigned int i = 0;i < 3;i++) { memcpy(&texCoords[FinishedFaces*3 + i], mesh->texelL[face->points[ i ]], sizeof(Lib3dsTexel)); memcpy(&vertices[FinishedFaces*3 + i], mesh->pointL[face->points[ i ]].pos, sizeof(Lib3dsVector)); } FinishedFaces++; } } // Generate a Vertex Buffer Object and store it with our vertices glGenBuffers(1, &m_VertexVBO); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_VertexVBO); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(Lib3dsVector) * 3 * m_TotalFaces, vertices, GL_STATIC_DRAW); // Generate another Vertex Buffer Object and store the normals in it glGenBuffers(1, &m_NormalVBO); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_NormalVBO); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(Lib3dsVector) * 3 * m_TotalFaces, normals, GL_STATIC_DRAW); // Generate a third VBO and store the texture coordinates in it. glGenBuffers(1, &m_TexCoordVBO); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_TexCoordVBO); glBufferData(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, sizeof(Lib3dsTexel) * 3 * m_TotalFaces, texCoords, GL_STATIC_DRAW); // Clean up our allocated memory delete vertices; delete normals; delete texCoords; // We no longer need lib3ds lib3ds_file_free(m_model); m_model = NULL; } void Object::applyTexture(const char*texfilename) { float imageWidth; float imageHeight; glGenTextures(1, & textureObject); // allocate memory for one texture textureObject = SOIL_load_OGL_texture(texfilename,SOIL_LOAD_AUTO,SOIL_CREATE_NEW_ID,SOIL_FLAG_MIPMAPS); glPixelStorei(GL_UNPACK_ALIGNMENT,1); glBindTexture(GL_TEXTURE_2D, textureObject); // use our newest texture glGetTexLevelParameterfv(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,GL_TEXTURE_WIDTH,&imageWidth); glGetTexLevelParameterfv(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,GL_TEXTURE_HEIGHT,&imageHeight); glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); // give the best result for texture magnification glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MIN_FILTER, GL_LINEAR); //give the best result for texture minification glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_S, GL_CLAMP); // don't repeat texture glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP); // don't repeat textureglTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_WRAP_T, GL_CLAMP); // don't repeat texture glTexEnvf(GL_TEXTURE_ENV, GL_TEXTURE_ENV_MODE,GL_MODULATE); glTexImage2D(GL_TEXTURE_2D,0,GL_RGB,imageWidth,imageHeight,0,GL_RGB,GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE,& textureObject); } void Object::Draw() const { // Enable vertex, normal and texture-coordinate arrays. glEnableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); glEnableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); // Bind the VBO with the normals. glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_NormalVBO); // The pointer for the normals is NULL which means that OpenGL will use the currently bound VBO. glNormalPointer(GL_FLOAT, 0, NULL); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_TexCoordVBO); glTexCoordPointer(2, GL_FLOAT, 0, NULL); glBindBuffer(GL_ARRAY_BUFFER, m_VertexVBO); glVertexPointer(3, GL_FLOAT, 0, NULL); // Render the triangles. glDrawArrays(GL_TRIANGLES, 0, m_TotalFaces * 3); glDisableClientState(GL_VERTEX_ARRAY); glDisableClientState(GL_NORMAL_ARRAY); glDisableClientState(GL_TEXTURE_COORD_ARRAY); } 3dsloader.h #include "main.h" #include "lib3ds/file.h" #include "lib3ds/mesh.h" #include "lib3ds/material.h" class Object { public: Object(std:: string filename); virtual ~Object(); virtual void Draw() const; virtual void CreateVBO(); void applyTexture(const char*texfilename); protected: void GetFaces(); unsigned int m_TotalFaces; Lib3dsFile * m_model; Lib3dsMesh* Mesh; GLuint textureObject; GLuint m_VertexVBO, m_NormalVBO, m_TexCoordVBO; }; Called in the main cpp file with: VBO,apply texture and draw (pretty simple, how ironic) and thats it, please help me forum :)

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Simple Preferred time control using silverlight 3.

- by mohanbrij

Here I am going to show you a simple preferred time control, where you can select the day of the week and the time of the day. This can be used in lots of place where you may need to display the users preferred times. Sample screenshot is attached below. This control is developed using Silverlight 3 and VS2008, I am also attaching the source code with this post. This is a very basic example. You can download and customize if further for your requirement if you want. I am trying to explain in few words how this control works and what are the different ways in which you can customize it further. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml, in this file I have just hardcoded the controls and their positions which you can see in the screenshot above. In this example, to change the start day of the week and time, you will have to go and change the design in XAML file, its not controlled by your properties or implementation classes. You can also customize it to change the start day of the week, Language, Display format, styles, etc, etc. File: PreferredTimeControl.xaml.cs, In this control using the code below, first I am taking all the checkbox from my form and store it in the Global Variable, which I can use across my page. List<CheckBox> checkBoxList; #region Constructor public PreferredTimeControl() { InitializeComponent(); GetCheckboxes();//Keep all the checkbox in List in the Load itself } #endregion #region Helper Methods private List<CheckBox> GetCheckboxes() { //Get all the CheckBoxes in the Form checkBoxList = new List<CheckBox>(); foreach (UIElement element in LayoutRoot.Children) { if (element.GetType().ToString() == "System.Windows.Controls.CheckBox") { checkBoxList.Add(element as CheckBox); } } return checkBoxList; } Then I am exposing the two methods which you can use in the container form to get and set the values in this controls. /// <summary> /// Set the Availability on the Form, with the Provided Timings /// </summary> /// <param name="selectedTimings">Provided timings comes from the DB in the form 11,12,13....37 /// Where 11 refers to Monday Morning, 12 Tuesday Morning, etc /// Here 1, 2, 3 is for Morning, Afternoon and Evening respectively, and for weekdays /// 1,2,3,4,5,6,7 where 1 is for Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thrusday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday respectively /// So if we want Monday Morning, we can can denote it as 11, similarly for Saturday Evening we can write 36, etc /// </param> public void SetAvailibility(string selectedTimings) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { chk.IsChecked = false; } if (!String.IsNullOrEmpty(selectedTimings)) { string[] selectedString = selectedTimings.Split(','); foreach (string selected in selectedString) { foreach (CheckBox chk in checkBoxList) { if (chk.Tag.ToString() == selected) { chk.IsChecked = true; } } } } } /// <summary> /// Gets the Availibility from the selected checkboxes /// </summary> /// <returns>String in the format of 11,12,13...41,42...31,32...37</returns> public string GetAvailibility() { string selectedText = string.Empty; foreach (CheckBox chk in GetCheckboxes()) { if (chk.IsChecked == true) { selectedText = chk.Tag.ToString() + "," + selectedText; } } return selectedText; } In my example I am using the matrix format for Day and Time, for example Monday=1, Tuesday=2, Wednesday=3, Thursday = 4, Friday = 5, Saturday = 6, Sunday=7. And Morning = 1, Afternoon =2, Evening = 3. So if I want to represent Morning-Monday I will have to represent it as 11, Afternoon-Tuesday as 22, Morning-Wednesday as 13, etc. And in the other way to set the values in the control I am passing the values in the control in the same format as preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); So this will set the checkbox value for Morning-Monday, Morning-Tuesday, Morning-Wednesday, Morning-Saturday, Afternoon of Tuesday and Afternoon of Wednesday. To implement this control, first I have to import this control in xmlns namespace as xmlns:controls="clr-namespace:PreferredTimeControlApp" and finally put in your page wherever you want, <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" Style="{StaticResource LayoutRootGridStyle}"> <Border x:Name="ContentBorder" Style="{StaticResource ContentBorderStyle}"> <controls:PreferredTimeControl x:Name="preferredTimeControl"></controls:PreferredTimeControl> </Border> </Grid> And in the code behind you can just include this code: private void InitializeControl() { preferredTimeControl.SetAvailibility("11,12,13,16,23,22"); } And you are ready to go. For more details you can refer to my code attached. I know there can be even simpler and better way to do this. Let me know if any other ideas. Sorry, Guys Still I have used Silverlight 3 and VS2008, as from the system I am uploading this is still not upgraded, but still you can use the same code with Silverlight 4 and VS2010 without any changes. May be just it will ask you to upgrade your project which will take care of rest. Download Source Code. Thanks ~Brij

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How to create a PeopleCode Application Package/Application Class using PeopleTools Tables

- by Andreea Vaduva

This article describes how - in PeopleCode (Release PeopleTools 8.50) - to enable a grid without enabling each static column, using a dynamic Application Class. The goal is to disable the following grid with three columns “Effort Date”, ”Effort Amount” and “Charge Back” , when the Check Box “Finished with task” is selected , without referencing each static column; this PeopleCode could be used dynamically with any grid. If the check box “Finished with task” is cleared, the content of the grid columns is editable (and the buttons “+” and “-“ are available): So, you create an Application Package “CLASS_EXTENSIONS” that contains an Application Class “EWK_ROWSET”. This Application Class is defined with Class extends “ Rowset” and you add two news properties “Enabled” and “Visible”: After creating this Application Class, you use it in two PeopleCode Events : Rowinit and FieldChange : This code is very ‘simple’, you write only one command : ” &ERS2.Enabled = False” → and the entire grid is “Enabled”… and you can use this code with any Grid! So, the complete PeopleCode to create the Application Package is (with explanation in [….]) : ******Package CLASS_EXTENSIONS : [Name of the Package: CLASS_EXTENSIONS] --Beginning of the declaration part------------------------------------------------------------------------------ class EWK_ROWSET extends Rowset; [Definition Class EWK_ROWSET as a subclass of Class Rowset] method EWK_ROWSET(&RS As Rowset); [Constructor is the Method with the same name of the Class] property boolean Visible get set; property boolean Enabled get set; [Definition of the property “Enabled” in read/write] private [Before the word “private”, all the declarations are publics] method SetDisplay(&DisplaySW As boolean, &PropName As string, &ChildSW As boolean); instance boolean &EnSW; instance boolean &VisSW; instance Rowset &NextChildRS; instance Row &NextRow; instance Record &NextRec; instance Field &NextFld; instance integer &RowCnt, &RecCnt, &FldCnt, &ChildRSCnt; instance integer &i, &j, &k; instance CLASS_EXTENSIONS:EWK_ROWSET &ERSChild; [For recursion] Constant &VisibleProperty = "VISIBLE"; Constant &EnabledProperty = "ENABLED"; end-class; --End of the declaration part------------------------------------------------------------------------------ method EWK_ROWSET [The Constructor] /+ &RS as Rowset +/ %Super = &RS; end-method; get Enabled /+ Returns Boolean +/; Return &EnSW; end-get; set Enabled /+ &NewValue as Boolean +/; &EnSW = &NewValue; %This.InsertEnabled=&EnSW; %This.DeleteEnabled=&EnSW; %This.SetDisplay(&EnSW, &EnabledProperty, False); [This method is called when you set this property] end-set; get Visible /+ Returns Boolean +/; Return &VisSW; end-get; set Visible /+ &NewValue as Boolean +/; &VisSW = &NewValue; %This.SetDisplay(&VisSW, &VisibleProperty, False); end-set; method SetDisplay [The most important PeopleCode Method] /+ &DisplaySW as Boolean, +/ /+ &PropName as String, +/ /+ &ChildSW as Boolean +/ [Not used in our example] &RowCnt = %This.ActiveRowCount; &NextRow = %This.GetRow(1); [To know the structure of a line ] &RecCnt = &NextRow.RecordCount; For &i = 1 To &RowCnt [Loop for each Line] &NextRow = %This.GetRow(&i); For &j = 1 To &RecCnt [Loop for each Record] &NextRec = &NextRow.GetRecord(&j); &FldCnt = &NextRec.FieldCount; For &k = 1 To &FldCnt [Loop for each Field/Record] &NextFld = &NextRec.GetField(&k); Evaluate Upper(&PropName) When = &VisibleProperty &NextFld.Visible = &DisplaySW; Break; When = &EnabledProperty; &NextFld.Enabled = &DisplaySW; [Enable each Field/Record] Break; When-Other Error "Invalid display property; Must be either VISIBLE or ENABLED" End-Evaluate; End-For; End-For; If &ChildSW = True Then [If recursion] &ChildRSCnt = &NextRow.ChildCount; For &j = 1 To &ChildRSCnt [Loop for each Rowset child] &NextChildRS = &NextRow.GetRowset(&j); &ERSChild = create CLASS_EXTENSIONS:EWK_ROWSET(&NextChildRS); &ERSChild.SetDisplay(&DisplaySW, &PropName, &ChildSW); [For each Rowset child, call Method SetDisplay with the same parameters used with the Rowset parent] End-For; End-If; End-For; end-method; ******End of the Package CLASS_EXTENSIONS:[Name of the Package: CLASS_EXTENSIONS] About the Author: Pascal Thaler joined Oracle University in 2005 where he is a Senior Instructor. His area of expertise is Oracle Peoplesoft Technology and he delivers the following courses: For Developers: PeopleTools Overview, PeopleTools I &II, Batch Application Engine, Language Oriented Object PeopleCode, Administration Security For Administrators : Server Administration & Installation, Database Upgrade & Data Management Tools For Interface Users: Integration Broker (Web Service)

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NDepend 4 – First Steps

- by Ricardo Peres

Introduction Thanks to Patrick Smacchia I had the chance to test NDepend 4. I can only say: awesome! This will be the first of a series of posts on NDepend, where I will talk about my discoveries. Keep in mind that I am just starting to use it, so more experienced users may find these too basic, I just hope I don’t say anything foolish! I must say that I am in no way affiliated with NDepend and I never actually met Patrick. Installation No installation program – a curious decision, I’m not against it -, just unzip the files to a folder and run the executable. It will optionally register itself with Visual Studio 2008, 2010 and 11 as well as RedGate’s Reflector; also, it automatically looks for updates. NDepend can either be used as a stand-alone program (with or without a GUI) or from within Visual Studio or Reflector. Getting Started One thing that really pleases me is the Getting Started section of the stand-alone, with links to pages on NDepend’s web site, featuring detailed explanations, which usually include screenshots and small videos (<5 minutes). There’s also an How do I with hierarchical navigation that guides us to through the major features so that we can easily find what we want. Usage There are two basic ways to use NDepend: Analyze .NET solutions, projects or assemblies; Compare two versions of the same assembly. I have so far not used NDepend to compare assemblies, so I will first talk about the first option. After selecting a solution and some of its projects, it generates a single HTML page with an highly detailed report of the analysis it produced. This includes some metrics such as number of lines of code, IL instructions, comments, types, methods and properties, the calculation of the cyclomatic complexity, coupling and lots of others indicators, typically grouped by type, namespace and assembly. The HTML also includes some nice diagrams depicting assembly dependencies, type and method relative proportions (according to the number of IL instructions, I guess) and assembly analysis relating to abstractness and stability. Useful, I would say. Then there’s the rules; NDepend tests the target assemblies against a set of more than 120 rules, grouped in categories Code Quality, Object Oriented Design, Design, Architecture and Layering, Dead Code, Visibility, Naming Conventions, Source Files Organization and .NET Framework Usage. The full list can be configured on the application, and an explanation of each rule can be found on the web site. Rules can be validated, violated and violated in a critical manner, and the HTML will contain the violated rules, their queries – more on this later - and results. The HTML uses some nice JavaScript effects, which allow paging and sorting of tables, so its nice to use. Similar to the rules, there are some queries that display results for a number (about 200) questions grouped as Object Oriented Design, API Breaking Changes (for assembly version comparison), Code Diff Summary (also for version comparison) and Dead Code. The difference between queries and rules is that queries are not classified as passes, violated or critically violated, just present results. The queries and rules are expressed through CQLinq, which is a very powerful LINQ derivative specific to code analysis. All of the included rules and queries can be enabled or disabled and new ones can be added, with intellisense to help. Besides the HTML report file, the NDepend application can be used to explore all analysis results, compare different versions of analysis reports and to run custom queries. Comparison to Other Analysis Tools Unlike StyleCop, NDepend only works with assemblies, not source code, so you can’t expect it to be able to enforce brackets placement, for example. It is more similar to FxCop, but you don’t have the option to analyze at the IL level, that is, other that the number of IL instructions and the complexity. What’s Next In the next days I’ll continue my exploration with a real-life test case. References The NDepend web site is http://www.ndepend.com/. Patrick keeps an updated blog on http://codebetter.com/patricksmacchia/ and he regularly monitors StackOverflow for questions tagged NDepend, which you can find on http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/ndepend. The default list of CQLinq rules, queries and statistics can be found at http://www.ndepend.com/DefaultRules/webframe.html. The syntax itself is described at http://www.ndepend.com/Doc_CQLinq_Syntax.aspx and its features at http://www.ndepend.com/Doc_CQLinq_Features.aspx.

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MySQL for Excel 1.1.0 GA has been released

- by Javier Treviño

The MySQL Windows Experience Team is proud to announce the release of MySQL for Excel version 1.1.0 GA, one of our newest products contained in the MySQL Installer suite. You can download it from our official Downloads page at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/installer/. The 1.1.0 release of MySQL for Excel introduces the following features: Edit MySQL Data. Edit MySQL Data This may be the coolest feature so far; users will be able to edit the data in a MySQL table using MS Excel in a very friendly and intuitive way. Edit Data supports inserting new rows, deleting existing rows and updating existing data as easy as playing with data in an Excel’s spreadsheet and pushing changes back to the server. Also this version contains the following bug fixes: Enabled the following checkboxes in the Append Data's Advanced Options dialog and added code in the Append Data dialog to use the checkboxes as follows: Automatically store the column mapping for the given table If checked the current mapping will be stored automatically after clicking the Append button if the append operation is successful and there is no mapping for the current connection.schema.table already; the new mapping is stored with a proposed name of Mapping. Reload stored column mapping for the selected table automatically If checked the first Stored Mapping found where all column names in the source grid match all column names in the target grid is automatically selected and applied when the Append Data dialog is loaded. Fixed code in Append Data that applies a stored column mapping to skip target columns where the associated mapping is empty (saved as a -1). Enclosed the Add-In's startup code in a try-catch block in order to log any possible error thrown during startup; and added information messages to the log at the beginning of the Add-In's startup code and at the end of the shutdown code. Also changed the wrapper method that calls the MySQLUtility to write messages to the log to make logging easier, thus changed the log call throughout all the code that contains a try-catch block. Added code to the main wix configuration file to check if a newer version is already installed and if so abort the installation Fixed code to refresh the Import Procedure Form's preview grid's data source to repaint its contents every time the Call button is pressed. Added code to re-pull connections after connections are migrated from Excel to Workbench. Fixed code so when the Append Data's Automatic Mapping is performed any subsequent change on a mapping resets the mapping to a Manual Mapping. Added code to the InfoDialog class to set the button text to "Show Details" or "Hide Details" depending on the status of the Details text container. Fixed a GUID in the main wix configuration file so now previous versions are uninstalled during a new installation. Added an option to the Export Data's Advanced Options dialog to remove columns with no data, by default the Export Dialog will only flag those columns as Excluded. Added code to display a warning and paint a column red if the column name in the Export Data dialog is not set, display a warning if the table name is not set, and stack warnings but not display them if a column is Excluded, warnings are displayed normally for columns if they are not Excluded anymore. Added code to prevent the Append and Export of Data if more than 1 selection is made (selecting more than 1 area holding the Ctrl key while selecting Excel cells). Fixed problem that prevented MySQL for Excel from loading when Display settings in Windows 7 is set to Adjust to Best Performance (Oracle bug 14521405 - UNHANDLED EXCEPTION IS THROWN WHEN LOADING MYSQL FOR EXCEL). Fixed code that renames the auto-generated Primary Key column when the Table name changes since it was not detecting if a column with the same name already existed in the table. The column duplication was not actually happening, it looked that way because the automatically generated PK column was not detecting a column had that same name. Fixed code in Export Data dialog to always set an empty string instead of null to the MySQLDataColumn properties that stores MySQL data types (MySQLDataType, RowsFrom1stDataType and RowsFrom2ndDataType). Added code to display a warning and color red a column which Data Type has not been set by the user or has been manually cleared. Added code to output to the application log exception messages consistently in all places where exceptions are catched. A series of blog posts explaining the new Edit MySQL Data feature and the other existing features are coming in this blog. You can access the MySQL for Excel documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.5/en/mysql-for-excel.html You can also post questions on our MySQL for Excel forum found at http://forums.mysql.com/. You can also post questions on our MySQL for Excel forum found at http://forums.mysql.com/. Enjoy and thanks for the support!

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Adventures in Windows 8: Understanding and debugging design time data in Expression Blend

- by Laurent Bugnion

One of my favorite features in Expression Blend is the ability to attach a Visual Studio debugger to Blend. First let’s start by answering the question: why exactly do you want to do that? Note: If you are familiar with the creation and usage of design time data, feel free to scroll down to the paragraph titled “When design time data fails”. Creating design time data for your app When a designer works on an app, he needs to see something to design. For “static” UI such as buttons, backgrounds, etc, the user interface elements are going to show up in Blend just fine. If however the data is fetched dynamically from a service (web, database, etc) or created dynamically, most probably Blend is going to show just an empty element. The classical way to design at that stage is to run the application, navigate to the screen that is under construction (which can involve delays, need to log in, etc…), to measure what is on the screen (colors, margins, width and height, etc) using various tools, going back to Blend, editing the properties of the elements, running again, etc. Obviously this is not ideal. The solution is to create design time data. For more information about the creation of design time data by mocking services, you can refer to two talks of mine “Deep dive MVVM” and “MVVM Applied From Silverlight to Windows Phone to Windows 8”. The source code for these talks is here and here. Design time data in MVVM Light One of the main reasons why I developed MVVM Light is to facilitate the creation of design time data. To illustrate this, let’s create a new MVVM Light application in Visual Studio. Install MVVM Light from here: http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com (use the MSI in the Download section). After installing, make sure to read the Readme that opens up in your favorite browser, you will need one more step to install the Project Templates. Start Visual Studio 2012. Create a new MvvmLight (Win8) app. Run the application. You will see a string showing “Welcome to MVVM Light”. In the Solution explorer, right click on MainPage.xaml and select Open in Blend. Now you should see “Welcome to MVVM Light [Design]” What happens here is that Expression Blend runs different code at design time than the application runs at runtime. To do this, we use design-time detection (as explained in a previous article) and use that information to initialize a different data service at design time. To understand this better, open the ViewModelLocator.cs file in the ViewModel folder and see how the DesignDataService is used at design time, while the DataService is used at runtime. In a real-life applicationm, DataService would be used to connect to a web service, for instance. When design time data fails Sometimes however, the creation of design time data fails. It can be very difficult to understand exactly what is happening. Expression Blend is not giving a lot of information about what happened. Thankfully, we can use a trick: Attaching a debugger to Expression Blend and debug the design time code. In WPF and Silverlight (including Windows Phone 7), you could simply attach the debugger to Blend.exe (using the “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” option even for Silverlight!!) In Windows 8 however, things are just a bit different. This is because the designer that renders the actual representation of the Windows 8 app runs in its own process. Let’s illustrate that: Open the file DesignDataService in the Design folder. Modify the GetData method to look like this: public void GetData(Action<DataItem, Exception> callback) { throw new Exception(); // Use this to create design time data var item = new DataItem("Welcome to MVVM Light [design]"); callback(item, null); } Go to Blend and build the application. The build succeeds, but now the page is empty. The creation of the design time data failed, but we don’t get a warning message. We need to investigate what’s wrong. Close MainPage.xaml Go to Visual Studio and select the menu Debug, Attach to Process. Update: Make sure that you select “Managed (v4.5, v4.0) code” in the “Attach to” field. Find the process named XDesProc.exe. You should have at least two, one for the Visual Studio 2012 designer surface, and one for Expression Blend. Unfortunately in this screen it is not obvious which is which. Let’s find out in the Task Manager. Press Ctrl-Alt-Del and select Task Manager Go to the Details tab and sort the processes by name. Find the one that says “Blend for Microsoft Visual Studio 2012 XAML UI Designer” and write down the process ID. Go back to the Attach to Process dialog in Visual Studio. sort the processes by ID and attach the debugger to the correct instance of XDesProc.exe. Open the MainViewModel (in the ViewModel folder) Place a breakpoint on the first line of the MainViewModel constructor. Go to Blend and open the MainPage.xaml again. At this point, the debugger breaks in Visual Studio and you can execute your code step by step. Simply step inside the dataservice call, and find the exception that you had placed there. Visual Studio gives you additional information which helps you to solve the issue. More info and Conclusion I want to thank the amazing people on the Expression Blend team for being very fast in guiding me in that matter and encouraging me to blog about it. More information about the XDesProc.exe process can be found here. I had to work on a Windows 8 app for a few days without design time data because of an Exception thrown somewhere in the code, and it was really painful. With the debugger, finding the issue was a simple matter of stepping into the code until it threw the exception. Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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Mocking HttpContext with JustMock

- by mehfuzh

In post , i will show a test code that will mock the various elements needed to complete a HTTP page request and assert the expected page cycle steps. To begin, i have a simple enumeration that has my predefined page steps: public enum PageStep { PreInit, Load, PreRender, UnLoad } Once doing so, i first created the page object [not mocking]. Page page = new Page(); Here, our target is to fire up the page process though ProcessRequest call, now if we take a look inside method though reflector, we will find calls stack like : ProcessRequest –> ProcessRequestWithNoAssert –> SetInstrinsics –> Finallly ProcessRequest. Inside SetIntrinsics , where it requires calls from HttpRequest, HttpResponse and HttpBrowserCababilities. With this , we can easily know what are classes / calls we need to mock in order to get though the expected call. Accordingly, for HttpBrowserCapabilities our required test code will look like: Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredRenderingMime).Returns("text/html"); Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredResponseEncoding).Returns("UTF-8"); Mock.Arrange(() => browser.PreferredRequestEncoding).Returns("UTF-8"); Now, HttpBrowserCapabilities is get though [Instance]HttpRequest.Browser. Therefore, we create the HttpRequest mock: var request = Mock.Create<HttpRequest>(); Then , add the required get call : Mock.Arrange(() => request.Browser).Returns(browser); As, [instance]Browser.PerferrredResponseEncoding and [instance]Browser.PreferredResponseEncoding are also set to the request object and to make that they are set properly, we can add the following lines as well [not required though]. bool requestContentEncodingSet = false; Mock.ArrangeSet(() => request.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")).DoInstead(() => requestContentEncodingSet = true); Similarly, for response we can write: var response = Mock.Create<HttpResponse>(); bool responseContentEncodingSet = false; Mock.ArrangeSet(() => response.ContentEncoding = Encoding.GetEncoding("UTF-8")).DoInstead(() => responseContentEncodingSet = true); Finally , I created a mock of HttpContext and set the Request and Response properties that will returns the mocked version. var context = Mock.Create<HttpContext>(); Mock.Arrange(() => context.Request).Returns(request); Mock.Arrange(() => context.Response).Returns(response); As, Page internally calls RenderControl method , we just need to replace that with our one and optionally we can check if invoked properly: bool rendered = false; Mock.Arrange(() => page.RenderControl(Arg.Any<HtmlTextWriter>())).DoInstead(() => rendered = true); That’s it, the rest of the code is simple, where i asserted the page cycle with the PageSteps that i defined earlier: var pageSteps = new Queue<PageStep>(); page.PreInit += delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.PreInit); }; page.Load += delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.Load); }; page.PreRender += delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.PreRender); }; page.Unload += delegate { pageSteps.Enqueue(PageStep.UnLoad); }; page.ProcessRequest(context); Assert.True(requestContentEncodingSet); Assert.True(responseContentEncodingSet); Assert.True(rendered); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.PreInit); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.Load); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.PreRender); Assert.Equal(pageSteps.Dequeue(), PageStep.UnLoad); Mock.Assert(request); Mock.Assert(response); You can get the test class shown in this post here to give a try by yourself with of course JustMock. Enjoy!!

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Creating Property Set Expression Trees In A Developer Friendly Way

- by Paulo Morgado

In a previous post I showed how to create expression trees to set properties on an object. The way I did it was not very developer friendly. It involved explicitly creating the necessary expressions because the compiler won’t generate expression trees with property or field set expressions. Recently someone contacted me the help develop some kind of command pattern framework that used developer friendly lambdas to generate property set expression trees. Simply putting, given this entity class: public class Person { public string Name { get; set; } } The person in question wanted to write code like this: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name = "me"); Where et is the expression tree that represents the property assignment. So, if we can’t do this, let’s try the next best thing that is splitting retrieving the property information from the retrieving the value to assign o the property: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name, () => "me"); And this is something that the compiler can handle. The implementation of Set receives an expression to retrieve the property information from and another expression the retrieve the value to assign to the property: public static Expression<Action<TEntity>> Set<TEntity, TValue>( Expression<Func<TEntity, TValue>> propertyGetExpression, Expression<Func<TValue>> valueExpression) The implementation of this method gets the property information form the body of the property get expression (propertyGetExpression) and the value expression (valueExpression) to build an assign expression and builds a lambda expression using the same parameter of the property get expression as its parameter: public static Expression<Action<TEntity>> Set<TEntity, TValue>( Expression<Func<TEntity, TValue>> propertyGetExpression, Expression<Func<TValue>> valueExpression) { var entityParameterExpression = (ParameterExpression)(((MemberExpression)(propertyGetExpression.Body)).Expression); return Expression.Lambda<Action<TEntity>>( Expression.Assign(propertyGetExpression.Body, valueExpression.Body), entityParameterExpression); } And now we can use the expression to translate to another context or just compile and use it: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name, () => name); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: p => (p.Name = “me”) var d = et.Compile(); d(person); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: me It can even support closures: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name, () => name); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: p => (p.Name = value(<>c__DisplayClass0).name) var d = et.Compile(); name = "me"; d(person); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: me name = "you"; d(person); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: you Not so useful in the intended scenario (but still possible) is building an expression tree that receives the value to assign to the property as a parameter: public static Expression<Action<TEntity, TValue>> Set<TEntity, TValue>(Expression<Func<TEntity, TValue>> propertyGetExpression) { var entityParameterExpression = (ParameterExpression)(((MemberExpression)(propertyGetExpression.Body)).Expression); var valueParameterExpression = Expression.Parameter(typeof(TValue)); return Expression.Lambda<Action<TEntity, TValue>>( Expression.Assign(propertyGetExpression.Body, valueParameterExpression), entityParameterExpression, valueParameterExpression); } This new expression can be used like this: var et = Set((Person p) => p.Name); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: (p, Param_0) => (p.Name = Param_0) var d = et.Compile(); d(person, "me"); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: me d(person, "you"); Console.WriteLine(person.Name); // Prints: you The only caveat is that we need to be able to write code to read the property in order to write to it.

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Problems with opening CHM Help files from Network or Internet

- by Rick Strahl

As a publisher of a Help Creation tool called Html Help Help Builder, I’ve seen a lot of problems with help files that won't properly display actual topic content and displays an error message for topics instead. Here’s the scenario: You go ahead and happily build your fancy, schmanzy Help File for your application and deploy it to your customer. Or alternately you've created a help file and you let your customers download them off the Internet directly or in a zip file. The customer downloads the file, opens the zip file and copies the help file contained in the zip file to disk. She then opens the help file and finds the following unfortunate result: The help file comes up with all topics in the tree on the left, but a Navigation to the WebPage was cancelled or Operation Aborted error in the Help Viewer's content window whenever you try to open a topic. The CHM file obviously opened since the topic list is there, but the Help Viewer refuses to display the content. Looks like a broken help file, right? But it's not - it's merely a Windows security 'feature' that tries to be overly helpful in protecting you. The reason this happens is because files downloaded off the Internet - including ZIP files and CHM files contained in those zip files - are marked as as coming from the Internet and so can potentially be malicious, so do not get browsing rights on the local machine – they can’t access local Web content, which is exactly what help topics are. If you look at the URL of a help topic you see something like this: mk:@MSITStore:C:\wwapps\wwIPStuff\wwipstuff.chm::/indexpage.htm which points at a special Microsoft Url Moniker that in turn points the CHM file and a relative path within that HTML help file. Try pasting a URL like this into Internet Explorer and you'll see the help topic pop up in your browser (along with a warning most likely). Although the URL looks weird this still equates to a call to the local computer zone, the same as if you had navigated to a local file in IE which by default is not allowed. Unfortunately, unlike Internet Explorer where you have the option of clicking a security toolbar, the CHM viewer simply refuses to load the page and you get an error page as shown above. How to Fix This - Unblock the Help File There's a workaround that lets you explicitly 'unblock' a CHM help file. To do this: Open Windows Explorer Find your CHM file Right click and select Properties Click the Unblock button on the General tab Here's what the dialog looks like: Clicking the Unblock button basically, tells Windows that you approve this Help File and allows topics to be viewed. Is this insecure? Not unless you're running a really old Version of Windows (XP pre-SP1). In recent versions of Windows Internet Explorer pops up various security dialogs or fires script errors when potentially malicious operations are accessed (like loading Active Controls), so it's relatively safe to run local content in the CHM viewer. Since most help files don't contain script or only load script that runs pure JavaScript access web resources this works fine without issues. How to avoid this Problem As an application developer there's a simple solution around this problem: Always install your Help Files with an Installer. The above security warning pop up because Windows can't validate the source of the CHM file. However, if the help file is installed as part of an installation the installation and all files associated with that installation including the help file are trusted. A fully installed Help File of an application works just fine because it is trusted by Windows. Summary It's annoying as all hell that this sort of obtrusive marking is necessary, but it's admittedly a necessary evil because of Microsoft's use of the insecure Internet Explorer engine that drives the CHM Html Engine's topic viewer. Because help files are viewing local content and script is allowed to execute in CHM files there's potential for malicious code hiding in CHM files and the above precautions are supposed to avoid any issues. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012 Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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Top ten things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead

- by iamjames

For those of you that don't know, The Walking Dead is a popular American TV show on AMC about a group of people trying to survive in a zombie-filled world.Here's the top ten eleven things that don't make sense on the show (and have never been explained) 1) They never visit stores. No Walmarts, Kmarts, Targets, shopping malls, pawn shops, gas stations, etc. You'd think that would be the first place you'd visit for supplies, but they never have. Not once. There was a tiny corner store they visited in a small town, and while many products were already gone they did find several useful items. 2) They never raid houses. Why not? One would imagine that they would want to search houses for useful items, but they don't.3) They don't use 2 way radios. Modern 2-way radios have a 36-mile range. That's probably best possible range, but even if the range is only 10% of that, 3.6 miles, that's still more than enough for most situations, for the occasional "hey zombies attacking can you give me a hand?" or "there's zombies walking by stay inside until they leave" or "remember to pick up milk at the store love mom". And yes they would need batteries or recharging, but they have been using gas-powered generators on the show and I'm sure a car charger would work.4) They use gas-guzzling vehicles. Every vehicle they have is from the 80s or 90s except for the new Kia SUV there for product placement. Why? They should all be driving new small SUVs or hybrids. Visit a dealership and steal more fuel-efficient vehicles, because while the Walmart's might be empty from people raiding them for supplies, I'm sure most people weren't thinking "Gee, I should go car shopping" when the infection hit5) They drive a motorcycle. Seriously? Let's find the least protective vehicle and drive that. And while motorcycles get reasonable gas mileage, 5 people in a SUV gets better gas mileage per person than 5 people all driving motorcycles so it doesn't make economical sense either.6) They drive loud vehicles. The motorcycle used is commonly referred to as a chopper and is about as loud as a motorcycle can get. The zombies are attracted to loud noise, so wouldn't it make more sense to drive vehicles that makes less sound? Because as soon as you stop the bike and get off you're surrounded by zombies that heard you coming. And it's not just the bike, the ~1980s Chevy SUV in the show is also very loud.7) They never run out of food. Seems like that would be a almost daily struggle, keeping enough food available for about a dozen people, yet I've never seen them visit a grocery store or local convenience store to stock up.8) They don't carry swords, machetes, clubs, etc. Let's face it, biting is not a very effective means of attack. It's good for animals because they have fangs and little else, but humans have been finding better ways of killing each other since forever. So why doesn't everyone on the show carry a sword or machete or at least a baseball bat? Anything is better than wasting valuable bullets all the time. Sure, dozen zombies approaching? Shoot them. One zombie approaching? Save the bullet, cut off it's head. 9) They do not wear protective clothing. Human teeth are not exactly the sharpest teeth in the animal kingdom. The leather shoes your dog ripped to shreds within minutes would probably take you days to bite through. So why do they walk around half-naked? Yes I know it's hot in Atlanta, but you'd think they'd at least have some tough leather coats or something for protection. Maybe put a few small vent holes in the fabric if it's really hot. Or better: make your own chainmail. Chainmail was used for thousands of years for protection from swords and is still used by scuba divers for protection from sharks. If swords and sharks can't puncture it, human teeth don't stand a chance. 10) They don't build barricades or dig trenches around properties. In Season 2 they stayed at a farm in the middle of no where. While being far away from people is a great way to stay far away from zombies, it would still make sense to build some sort of defenses. Hordes of zombies would knock down almost any fence, but what about a trench or moat? Maybe something not too wide so it can be jumped over easily but a zombie would fall into because I haven't seen too many jumping zombies on the show. 11) They don't live in a mall or tall office building. A mall would be perfect. They have large security gates designed to keep even hundreds of people from breaking in and offer lots of supplies and food. They're usually hundreds of thousands of square feet and fully enclosed, one could probably live their entire life happily in a mall. Tall office building with on-site cafeteria would be another good choice. They also usually offer good security and office furniture could be pushed out of the windows to crush approaching zombies, and the cafeteria is usually stocked to provide food for hundreds or thousands of office workers so food wouldn't be a problem for a long time. So there you have it, eleven things that don't make sense in The Walking Dead. Have any of your own you'd like to add or were one of these things covered in the show? Let me know in the comments.

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WebCenter Content (WCC) Trace Sections

- by Kevin Smith

Kyle has a good post on how to modify the size and number of WebCenter Content (WCC) trace files. His post reminded me I have been meaning to write a post on WCC trace sections for a while. searchcache - Tells you if you query was found in the WCC search cache. searchquery - Shows the processing of the query as it is converted form what the user submitted to the end query that will be sent to the database. Shows conversion from the universal query syntax to the syntax specific to the search solution WCC is configured to use. services (verbose) - Lists the filters that are called for each service. This will let you know what filters are available for each service and will also tell you what filters are used by WCC add-on components and any custom components you have installed. The How To Component Sample has a list of filters, but it has not been updated since 7.5, so it is a little outdated now. With each new release WCC adds more filters. If you have a filter that has no code attached to it you will see output like this: services/6 09.25 06:40:26.270 IdcServer-423 Called filter event computeDocName with no filter plugins registered When a WCC add-on or custom component uses a filter you will see trace output like this: services/6 09.25 06:40:26.275 IdcServer-423 Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionValidateCheckinData with parameter postValidateCheckinDataservices/6 09.25 06:40:26.275 IdcServer-423 Calling filter event postValidateCheckinData on class collections.CollectionFilters with parameter postValidateCheckinData As you can see from this sample output it is possible to have multiple code points using the same filter. systemdatabase - Dumps the database call AFTER it executes. This can be somewhat troublesome if you are trying to track down some weird database problems. We had a problem where WCC was getting into a deadlock situation. We turned on the systemdatabase trace section and thought we had the problem database call, but it turned out since it printed out the database call after it was executed we were looking at the database call BEFORE the one causing the deadlock. We ended up having to turn on tracing at the database level to see the database call WCC was making that was causing the deadlock. socketrequests (verbose) - dumps the actual messages received and sent over the socket connection by WCC for a service. If you have gzip enabled you will see junk on the response coming back from WCC. For debugging disable the gzip of the WCC response.Here is an example of the dump of the request for a GET_SEARCH_RESULTS service call. socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: REMOTE_USER=sysadmin.USER-AGENT=Java;.Stel socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: lent.CIS.11g.CONTENT_TYPE=text/html.HEADER socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: _ENCODING=UTF-8.REQUEST_METHOD=POST.CONTEN socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: T_LENGTH=270.HTTP_HOST=CIS.$$$$.NoHttpHead socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: ers=0.IsJava=1.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESUL socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: [email protected] socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: calData.SortField=dDocName.ClientEncoding= socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: UTF-8.IdcService=GET_SEARCH_RESULTS.UserTi socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: meZone=UTC.UserDateFormat=iso8601.SortDesc socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: =ASC.QueryText=dDocType..matches..`Documen socketrequests/6 09.25 06:46:02.501 IdcServer-6 request: t`.@end. userstorage, jps - Provides trace details for user authentication and authorization. Includes information on the determination of what roles and accounts a user has access to. In 11g a new trace section, jps, was added with the addition of the JpsUserProvider to communicate with WebLogic Server. The WCC developers decide when to use the verbose option for their trace output, so sometime you need to try verbose to see what different information you get. One of the things I would always have liked to see if the ability to turn on verbose output selectively for individual trace sections. When you turn on verbose output you get it for all trace sections you have enabled. This can quickly fill up your trace files with a lot of information if you have the socket trace section turned on.

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Beginner Geek: How to Use Multiple Monitors to Be More Productive

- by Chris Hoffman

Many people swear by multiple monitors, whether they’re geeks or just people who need to be productive. Why use just one monitor when you can use two or more and see more at once? Additional monitors allow you to expand your desktop, getting more screen real estate for your open programs. Windows makes it very easy to set up additional monitors, and your computer probably has the necessary ports. Why Use Multiple Monitors? Multiple monitors give you more screen real estate. Hook up multiple monitors to a computer and you can move your mouse back and forth between them, dragging programs between monitors as if you had an extra-large desktop. People who swear by multiple monitors use them to display multiple things on-screen at a time. Rather than Alt+Tabbing and task switching to glance at another window, you can just look over with your eyes and then look back to the program you’re using. Some examples of use cases for multiple monitors include: Coders who want to view their code on one display with the other display reserved for documentation. They can just glance over at the documentation and look back at their primary workspace. Anyone who needs to view something while working. Viewing a web page while writing an email, viewing another document while writing an something, or working with two large spreadsheets and having both visible at once. People who need to keep an eye on information, whether it’s email or up-to-date statistics, while working. Gamers who want to see more of the game world, extending the game across multiple displays. Geeks who just want to watch a video on one screen while doing something else on the other screen. Hooking Up Multiple Monitors Hooking up an additional monitor to your computer should be very simple. Most new computers come with more than one port for a monitor — whether DVI, HDMI, the older VGA port, or a mix. Some computers may include splitter cables that allow you to connect multiple monitors to a single port. Most laptops also come with ports that allow you to hook up an external monitor. Plug a monitor into your laptop’s DVI or VGA port and Windows will allow you to use both your laptop’s integrated display and the external monitor at once. This all depends on the ports your computer has and how your monitor connects. If you have an old VGA monitor lying around and you have a modern laptop with only DVI or HDMI connectors, you may need an adapter that allows you to plug your monitor’s VGA cable into the new port. Be sure to take your computer’s ports into account before you get another monitor for it. Managing Multiple Monitors With Windows Windows makes using multiple monitors easy. Just plug the monitor into the appropriate port on your computer and Windows should automatically extend your desktop onto it. You can now just drag and drop windows between monitors. To control how this works, right-click your Windows desktop and select Screen resolution. Choose an option from the Multiple displays box. The Extend option extends your desktop onto an additional monitor, while the other options are mainly useful if you’re using an additional monitor for presentations — for example, you could mirror your laptop’s desktop onto a large monitor or blank your laptop’s screen while it’s connected to a larger display. Be sure to arrange your monitors properly so Windows understands how your monitors are physically positioned. Windows 8 allows you to extend your Windows taskbar across multiple monitors. You’ll find this option in the taskbar’s options window — right-click the taskbar and select Properties. You can also choose where you want Windows to display taskbar buttons for open programs — on any monitor’s taskbar or only on the taskbar on the associated monitor. Windows 7 doesn’t have these convenient features built-in — your second monitor won’t have a taskbar. To extend your taskbar onto an additional monitor, you’ll need a third-party utility like the free and open-source Dual Monitor Taskbar. If you just have a single monitor, you can also use the Aero Snap feature to quickly place multiple Windows applications side by side. On Windows 7 or 8, press Windows Key + Left or Windows Key + Right to make the current window take up the left or right half of your display. You could also drag any window’s title bar to the left or right edges of your screen and release the window. How useful this feature is depends on your monitor’s size and resolution. If you have a large, high-resolution monitor, it will allow you to see a lot. If you have a smaller laptop monitor with the seemingly standard 1366×768 resolution, you won’t be able to see much of each snapped window at once, so snapping windows may not be practical. Image Credit: Chance Reecher on Flickr, Camp Atterbury Joint Maneuver Training Center on Flickr, Xavier Caballe on Flickr

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How to Customize Fonts and Colors for Gnome Panels in Ubuntu Linux

- by The Geek

Earlier this week we showed you how to make the Gnome Panels totally transparent, but you really need some customized fonts and colors to make the effect work better. Here’s how to do it. This article is the first part of a multi-part series on how to customize the Ubuntu desktop, written by How-To Geek reader and ubergeek, Omar Hafiz. Changing the Gnome Colors the Easy Way You’ll first need to install Gnome Color Chooser which is available in the default repositories (the package name is gnome-color-chooser). Then go to System > Preferences > Gnome Color Chooser to launch the program. When you see all these tabs you immediately know that Gnome Color Chooser does not only change the font color of the panel, but also the color of the fonts all over Ubuntu, desktop icons, and many other things as well. Now switch to the panel tab, here you can control every thing about your panels. You can change font, font color, background and background color of the panels and start menus. Tick the “Normal” option and choose the color you want for the panel font. If you want you can change the hover color of the buttons on the panel by too. A little below the color option is the font options, this includes the font, font size, and the X and Y positioning of the font. The first two options are pretty straight forward, they change the typeface and the size. The X-Padding and Y-Padding may confuse you but they are interesting, they may give a nice look for your panels by increasing the space between items on your panel like this: X-Padding: Y-Padding: The bottom half of the window controls the look of your start menus which is the Applications, Places, and Systems menus. You can customize them just the way you did with the panel. Alright, this was the easy way to change the font of your panels. Changing the Gnome Theme Colors the Command-Line Way The other hard (not so hard really) way will be changing the configuration files that tell your panel how it should look like. In your Home Folder, press Ctrl+H to show the hidden files, now find the file “.gtkrc-2.0”, open it and insert this line in it. If there are any other lines in the file leave them intact. include “/home/<username>/.gnome2/panel-fontrc” Don’t forget to replace the <user_name> with you user account name. When done close and save the file. Now navigate the folder “.gnome2” from your Home Folder and create a new file and name it “panel-fontrc”. Open the file you just created with a text editor and paste the following in it: style “my_color”{fg[NORMAL] = “#FF0000”}widget “*PanelWidget*” style “my_color”widget “*PanelApplet*” style “my_color” This text will make the font red. If you want other colors you’ll need to replace the Hex value/HTML Notation (in this case #FF0000) with the value of the color you want. To get the hex value you can use GIMP, Gcolor2 witch is available in the default repositories or you can right-click on your panel > Properties > Background tab then click to choose the color you want and copy the Hex value. Don’t change any other thing in the text. When done, save and close. Now press Alt+F2 and enter “killall gnome-panel” to force it to restart or you can log out and login again. Most of you will prefer the first way of changing the font and color for it’s ease of applying and because it gives you much more options but, some may not have the ability/will to download and install a new program on their machine or have reasons of their own for not to using it, that’s why we provided the two way. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Here’s a Super Simple Trick to Defeating Fake Anti-Virus Malware The Splendiferous Array of Culinary Tools [Infographic] Add a Real-Time Earth Wallpaper App to Ubuntu with xplanetFX The Citroen GT – An Awesome Video Game Car Brought to Life [Video] Final Man vs. Machine Round of Jeopardy Unfolds; Watson Dominates Give Chromium-Based Browser Desktop Notifications a Native System Look in Ubuntu Chrome Time Track Is a Simple Task Time Tracker

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Adding a Network Loopback Adapter to Windows 8

- by Greg Low

I have to say that I continue to be frustrated with finding out how to do things in Windows 8. Here's another one and it's recorded so it might help someone else. I've also documented what I tried so that if anyone from the product group ever reads this, they'll understand how I searched for it and might try to make it easier.I wanted to add a network loopback adapter, to have a fixed IP address to work with when using an "internal" network with Hyper-V. (The fact that I even need to do this is also painful. I don't know why Hyper-V can't make it easy to work with host system folders, etc. as easily as I can with VirtualPC, VirtualBox, etc. but that's a topic for another day).In the end, what I needed was a known IP address on the same network that my guest OS was using, via the internal network (which allows connectivity from the host OS to/from guest OS's).I started by looking in the network adapters areas but there is no "add" functionality there. Realising that this was likely to be another unexpected challenge, I resorted to searching for info on doing this. I found KB article 2777200 entitled "Installing the Microsoft Loopback Adapter in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012". Aha, I thought that's what I'd need. It describes the symptom as "You are trying to install the Microsoft Loopback Adapter, but are unable to find it." and that certainly sounded like me. There's a certain irony in documenting that something's hard to find instead of making it easier to find. Anyway, you'd hope that in that article, they'd then provide a step by step example of how to do it, but what they supply is this: The Microsoft Loopback Adapter was renamed in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. The new name is "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter". When using the Add Hardware Wizard to manually add a network adapter, choose Manufacturer "Microsoft" and choose network adapter "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter".The trick with this of course is finding the "Add Hardware Wizard". In Control Panel -> Hardware and Sound, there are options to "Add a device" and for "Device Manager". I tried the "Add a device" wizard (seemed logical to me) but after that wizard tries it's best, it just tells you that there isn't any hardware that it thinks it needs to install. It offers a link for when you can't find what you're looking for, but that leads to a generic help page that tells you how to do things like turning on your printer.In Device Manager, I checked the options in the program menus, and nothing useful was present. I even tried right-clicking "Network adapters", hoping that would lead to an option to add one, also to no avail.So back to the search engine I went, to try to find out where the "Add Hardware Wizard" is. Turns out I was in the right place in Device Manager, but I needed to right-click the computer's name, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware". No doubt that hasn't changed location lately but it's a while since I needed to add one so I'd forgotten. Regardless, I'm left wondering why it couldn't be in the menu as well.Anyway, for a step by step list, you need to do the following:1. From Control Panel, select "Device Manager" under the "Devices and Printers" section of the "Hardware and Sound" tab.2. Right-click the name of the computer at the top of the tree, and choose "Add Legacy Hardware".3. In the "Welcome to the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Next.4. In the "The wizard can help you install other hardware" window, choose "Install the hardware that I manually select from a list" option and click Next.5. In the "The wizard did not find any new hardware on your computer" window, click Next.6. In the "From the list below, select the type of hardware you are installing" window, select "Network Adapters" from the list, and click Next.7. In the "Select Network Adapter" window, from the Manufacturer list, choose Microsoft, then in the Network Adapter window, choose "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter", then click Next.8. In the "The wizard is ready to install your hardware" window, click Next.9. In the "Completing the Add Hardware Wizard" window, click Finish.Then you need to continue to set the IP address, etc.10. Back in Control Panel, select the "Network and Internet" tab, click "View Network Status and Tasks".11. In the "View your basic network information and set up connections" window, click "Change adapter settings".12. Right-click the new adapter that has been added (find it in the list by checking the device name of "Microsoft KM-TEST Loopback Adapter"), and click Properties.

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