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• Application Performance Episode 2: Announcing the Judges!

  - by Michaela Murray

  The story so far… We’re writing a new book for ASP.NET developers, and we want you to be a part of it! If you work with ASP.NET applications, and have top tips, hard-won lessons, or sage advice for avoiding, finding, and fixing performance problems, we want to hear from you! And if your app uses SQL Server, even better – interaction with the database is critical to application performance, so we’re looking for database top tips too. There’s a Microsoft Surface apiece for the person who comes up with the best tip for SQL Server and the best tip for .NET. Of course, if your suggestion is selected for the book, you’ll get full credit, by name, Twitter handle, GitHub repository, or whatever you like. To get involved, just email your nuggets of performance wisdom to [email protected] – there are examples of what we’re looking for and full competition details at Application Performance: The Best of the Web. Enter the judges… As mentioned in my last blogpost, we have a mystery panel of celebrity judges lined up to select the prize-winning performance pointers. We’re now ready to reveal their secret identities! Judging your ASP.NET  tips will be: Jean-Phillippe Gouigoux, MCTS/MCPD Enterprise Architect and MVP Connected System Developer. He’s a board member at French software company MGDIS, and teaches algorithms, security, software tests, and ALM at the Université de Bretagne Sud. Jean-Philippe also lectures at IT conferences and writes articles for programming magazines. His book Practical Performance Profiling is published by Simple-Talk. Nik Molnar,  a New Yorker, ASP Insider, and co-founder of Glimpse, an open source ASP.NET diagnostics and debugging tool. Originally from Florida, Nik specializes in web development, building scalable, client-centric solutions. In his spare time, Nik can be found cooking up a storm in the kitchen, hanging with his wife, speaking at conferences, and working on other open source projects. Mitchel Sellers, Microsoft C# and DotNetNuke MVP. Mitchel is an experienced software architect, business leader, public speaker, and educator. He works with companies across the globe, as CEO of IowaComputerGurus Inc. Mitchel writes technical articles for online and print publications and is the author of Professional DotNetNuke Module Programming. He frequently answers questions on StackOverflow and MSDN and is an active participant in the .NET and DotNetNuke communities. Clive Tong, Software Engineer at Red Gate. In previous roles, Clive spent a lot of time working with Common LISP and enthusing about functional languages, and he’s worked with managed languages since before his first real job (which was a long time ago). Long convinced of the productivity benefits of managed languages, Clive is very interested in getting good runtime performance to keep managed languages practical for real-world development. And our trio of SQL Server specialists, ready to select your top suggestion, are (drumroll): Rodney Landrum, a SQL Server MVP who writes regularly about Integration Services, Analysis Services, and Reporting Services. He’s authored SQL Server Tacklebox, three Reporting Services books, and contributes regularly to SQLServerCentral, SQL Server Magazine, and Simple–Talk. His day job involves overseeing a large SQL Server infrastructure in Orlando. Grant Fritchey, Product Evangelist at Red Gate and SQL Server MVP. In an IT career spanning more than 20 years, Grant has written VB, VB.NET, C#, and Java. He’s been working with SQL Server since version 6.0. Grant volunteers with the Editorial Committee at PASS and has written books for Apress and Simple-Talk. Jonathan Allen, leader and founder of the PASS SQL South West user group. He’s been working with SQL Server since 1999 and enjoys performance tuning, development, and using SQL Server for business solutions. He’s spoken at SQLBits and SQL in the City, as well as local user groups across the UK. He’s also a moderator at ask.sqlservercentral.com.

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• SQLAuthority News – Weekend Experiment with NuoDB – Points to Pondor and Whitepaper

  - by pinaldave

  This weekend I have downloaded the latest beta version of NuoDB. I found it much improved and better UI. I was very much impressed as the installation was very smooth and I was up and running in less than 5 minutes with the product. The tools which are related to the Administration of the NuoDB seems to get makeover during this beta release. As per the claim they support now Solaris platform and have improved the native MacOS installation. I neither have Mac nor Solaris – I wish I would have experimented with the same. I will appreciate if anyone out there can confirm how the installations goes on these platforms. I have previously blogged about my experiment with NuoDB here: SQL SERVER – Weekend Project – Experimenting with ACID Transactions, SQL Compliant, Elastically Scalable Database SQL SERVER – Beginning NuoDB – Who will Benefit and How to Start SQL SERVER – Follow up on Beginning NuoDB – Who will Benefit and How to Start – Part 2 I am very impressed with the product so far and I have decided to understand the product further deep. Here are few of the questions which I am going to try to find answers with regards to NuoDB. Just so it is clear – NuoDB is not NOSQL, matter of the fact, it is following all the ACID properties of the database. If ACID properties are crucial why many NoSQL products are not adhering to it? (There are few out there do follow ACID but not all). I do understand the scalability of the database however does elasticity is crucial for the database and if yes how? (Elasticity is where the workload on the database is heavily fluctuating and the need of more than a single database server is coming up). How NuoDB has built scalable, elastic and 100% ACID compliance database which supports multiple platforms? How is NOSQL compared to NuoDB’s new architecture? In the next coming weeks, I am going to explore above concepts and dive deeper into the understanding of the same. Meanwhile I have read following white paper written by Experts at University of California at Santa Barbara. Very interesting read and great starter on the subject Database Scalability, Elasticity, and Autonomy in the Cloud. Additionally, my questions are also talking about NoSQL, this weekend I have started to learn about NoSQL from Pluralsight‘s online learning library. I will share my experience very soon. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL White Papers, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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• Attend Onsite Product Usability Testing or Tour Oracle HQ Usability Labs during Oracle OpenWorld 2014

  - by gaamoth-Oracle

   By Gozel Aamoth, Oracle Applications User Experience Oracle OpenWorld  is the world’s largest business and technology event, featuring thousands of sessions, including keynotes, technical sessions, demos, and hands-on labs. Hundreds of exhibitors will be sharing what they’re bringing to Oracle technology at this year’s conference, held in downtown  San Francisco from Sept. 29-Oct. 2. If you are an Oracle customer or partner planning to attend this  annual event, there are several ways to  meet face-to-face with members of the Oracle Applications  User Experience (UX) team. We’d like  to invite you to sign up for a usability feedback session, or  hop on one of our special chartered buses  to tour Oracle HQ’s usability labs. Here’s more  information about these exclusive events. Onsite product usability testing: Give us your feedback! Product usability testing is in progress at Oracle OpenWorld 2013. The Oracle Applications User Experience team will host an onsite usability lab, where Oracle customers and partners can participate in a usability feedback session, at Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Usability experts, product managers, and user interface designers have teamed up to provide Oracle customers and partners with the opportunity to contribute to and influence application design and direction while test-driving Oracle’s next-generation applications. Your feedback will affect the existing and future usability of Oracle applications, and help us develop applications that are intuitive and easy to use. What will we test? Participants will get a preview of proposed Oracle product designs for Oracle Human Capital Management Cloud and Oracle Sales Cloud, Oracle Fusion applications for Procurement and Supply Chain, Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft applications, Social Relationship Management, BI applications, Fusion Middleware, and more. Who can participate*? Regardless of your current job title, we have a session that might interest you. These one-on-one feedback sessions are popular, and space is very limited, so contact us  today to learn more. Dates: Sept. 29 – Oct. 1, 2014  Location: InterContinental Hotel, San Francisco, CA  Time: Advance sign-up is required for this event. RSVP now. If you have questions about this event, please contact Angela Johnston.  Take a tour of the Oracle HQ Usability Lab during OpenWorld 2014Members of Applications UX team lead Oracle OpenWorld lab tour attendeesto the usability labs at Oracle headquarters in Redwood City, CA. The Applications User Experience team will be offering a limited number of usability lab tours  at Oracle Headquarters in Redwood City, Calif., during Oracle OpenWorld 2014. Come take a look behind the scenes of Oracle’s research and development work on Thursday, Oct. 2, or Friday, Oct. 3. Receive an exclusive look into how Oracle tests applications designs, and see the direction that Oracle’s enterprise applications are heading, including demos of designs for devices such as the tablet and smartphone. Round-trip transportation will be provided. Pick-up and drop-off is at the InterContinental Hotel in San Francisco, next to Moscone West. Spots are limited, so sign up today! How to reserve your spot To RSVP, sign up here. For additional questions, send an e-mail to Jeannette Chadwick. To learn more about our team’s presence at Oracle OpenWorld this year, please visit our website, UsableApps. *Participation requires that your company or organization has a Customer Participation Confidentiality Agreement (CPCA) on file. If your company or organization does not have a CPCA on file, we will start this process.

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• Optimizing AES modes on Solaris for Intel Westmere

  - by danx

  Optimizing AES modes on Solaris for Intel Westmere Review AES is a strong method of symmetric (secret-key) encryption. It is a U.S. FIPS-approved cryptographic algorithm (FIPS 197) that operates on 16-byte blocks. AES has been available since 2001 and is widely used. However, AES by itself has a weakness. AES encryption isn't usually used by itself because identical blocks of plaintext are always encrypted into identical blocks of ciphertext. This encryption can be easily attacked with "dictionaries" of common blocks of text and allows one to more-easily discern the content of the unknown cryptotext. This mode of encryption is called "Electronic Code Book" (ECB), because one in theory can keep a "code book" of all known cryptotext and plaintext results to cipher and decipher AES. In practice, a complete "code book" is not practical, even in electronic form, but large dictionaries of common plaintext blocks is still possible. Here's a diagram of encrypting input data using AES ECB mode: Block 1 Block 2 PlainTextInput PlainTextInput | | | | \/ \/ AESKey-->(AES Encryption) AESKey-->(AES Encryption) | | | | \/ \/ CipherTextOutput CipherTextOutput Block 1 Block 2 What's the solution to the same cleartext input producing the same ciphertext output? The solution is to further process the encrypted or decrypted text in such a way that the same text produces different output. This usually involves an Initialization Vector (IV) and XORing the decrypted or encrypted text. As an example, I'll illustrate CBC mode encryption: Block 1 Block 2 PlainTextInput PlainTextInput | | | | \/ \/ IV >----->(XOR) +------------->(XOR) +---> . . . . | | | | | | | | \/ | \/ | AESKey-->(AES Encryption) | AESKey-->(AES Encryption) | | | | | | | | | \/ | \/ | CipherTextOutput ------+ CipherTextOutput -------+ Block 1 Block 2 The steps for CBC encryption are: Start with a 16-byte Initialization Vector (IV), choosen randomly. XOR the IV with the first block of input plaintext Encrypt the result with AES using a user-provided key. The result is the first 16-bytes of output cryptotext. Use the cryptotext (instead of the IV) of the previous block to XOR with the next input block of plaintext Another mode besides CBC is Counter Mode (CTR). As with CBC mode, it also starts with a 16-byte IV. However, for subsequent blocks, the IV is just incremented by one. Also, the IV ix XORed with the AES encryption result (not the plain text input). Here's an illustration: Block 1 Block 2 PlainTextInput PlainTextInput | | | | \/ \/ AESKey-->(AES Encryption) AESKey-->(AES Encryption) | | | | \/ \/ IV >----->(XOR) IV + 1 >---->(XOR) IV + 2 ---> . . . . | | | | \/ \/ CipherTextOutput CipherTextOutput Block 1 Block 2 Optimization Which of these modes can be parallelized? ECB encryption/decryption can be parallelized because it does more than plain AES encryption and decryption, as mentioned above. CBC encryption can't be parallelized because it depends on the output of the previous block. However, CBC decryption can be parallelized because all the encrypted blocks are known at the beginning. CTR encryption and decryption can be parallelized because the input to each block is known--it's just the IV incremented by one for each subsequent block. So, in summary, for ECB, CBC, and CTR modes, encryption and decryption can be parallelized with the exception of CBC encryption. How do we parallelize encryption? By interleaving. Usually when reading and writing data there are pipeline "stalls" (idle processor cycles) that result from waiting for memory to be loaded or stored to or from CPU registers. Since the software is written to encrypt/decrypt the next data block where pipeline stalls usually occurs, we can avoid stalls and crypt with fewer cycles. This software processes 4 blocks at a time, which ensures virtually no waiting ("stalling") for reading or writing data in memory. Other Optimizations Besides interleaving, other optimizations performed are Loading the entire key schedule into the 128-bit %xmm registers. This is done once for per 4-block of data (since 4 blocks of data is processed, when present). The following is loaded: the entire "key schedule" (user input key preprocessed for encryption and decryption). This takes 11, 13, or 15 registers, for AES-128, AES-192, and AES-256, respectively The input data is loaded into another %xmm register The same register contains the output result after encrypting/decrypting Using SSSE 4 instructions (AESNI). Besides the aesenc, aesenclast, aesdec, aesdeclast, aeskeygenassist, and aesimc AESNI instructions, Intel has several other instructions that operate on the 128-bit %xmm registers. Some common instructions for encryption are: pxor exclusive or (very useful), movdqu load/store a %xmm register from/to memory, pshufb shuffle bytes for byte swapping, pclmulqdq carry-less multiply for GCM mode Combining AES encryption/decryption with CBC or CTR modes processing. Instead of loading input data twice (once for AES encryption/decryption, and again for modes (CTR or CBC, for example) processing, the input data is loaded once as both AES and modes operations occur at in the same function Performance Everyone likes pretty color charts, so here they are. I ran these on Solaris 11 running on a Piketon Platform system with a 4-core Intel Clarkdale processor @3.20GHz. Clarkdale which is part of the Westmere processor architecture family. The "before" case is Solaris 11, unmodified. Keep in mind that the "before" case already has been optimized with hand-coded Intel AESNI assembly. The "after" case has combined AES-NI and mode instructions, interleaved 4 blocks at-a-time. « For the first table, lower is better (milliseconds). The first table shows the performance improvement using the Solaris encrypt(1) and decrypt(1) CLI commands. I encrypted and decrypted a 1/2 GByte file on /tmp (swap tmpfs). Encryption improved by about 40% and decryption improved by about 80%. AES-128 is slighty faster than AES-256, as expected. The second table shows more detail timings for CBC, CTR, and ECB modes for the 3 AES key sizes and different data lengths. » The results shown are the percentage improvement as shown by an internal PKCS#11 microbenchmark. And keep in mind the previous baseline code already had optimized AESNI assembly! The keysize (AES-128, 192, or 256) makes little difference in relative percentage improvement (although, of course, AES-128 is faster than AES-256). Larger data sizes show better improvement than 128-byte data. Availability This software is in Solaris 11 FCS. It is available in the 64-bit libcrypto library and the "aes" Solaris kernel module. You must be running hardware that supports AESNI (for example, Intel Westmere and Sandy Bridge, microprocessor architectures). The easiest way to determine if AES-NI is available is with the isainfo(1) command. For example, $ isainfo -v 64-bit amd64 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov amd_sysc cx8 tsc fpu 32-bit i386 applications pclmulqdq aes sse4.2 sse4.1 ssse3 popcnt tscp ahf cx16 sse3 sse2 sse fxsr mmx cmov sep cx8 tsc fpu No special configuration or setup is needed to take advantage of this software. Solaris libraries and kernel automatically determine if it's running on AESNI-capable machines and execute the correctly-tuned software for the current microprocessor. Summary Maximum throughput of AES cipher modes can be achieved by combining AES encryption with modes processing, interleaving encryption of 4 blocks at a time, and using Intel's wide 128-bit %xmm registers and instructions. References "Block cipher modes of operation", Wikipedia Good overview of AES modes (ECB, CBC, CTR, etc.) "Advanced Encryption Standard", Wikipedia "Current Modes" describes NIST-approved block cipher modes (ECB,CBC, CFB, OFB, CCM, GCM)

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• Eclipse has multiple issues after JRE-6 (OpenJDK) upgrade

  - by Eusebius

  I'm on 12.04 LTS, and trying to use Eclipse Indigo. This morning Ubuntu made me update the following packages: Preparing to replace icedtea-6-jre-cacao 6b24-1.11.3-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../icedtea-6-jre-cacao_6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement icedtea-6-jre-cacao ... Preparing to replace openjdk-6-jre-lib 6b24-1.11.3-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../openjdk-6-jre-lib_6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1_all.deb) ... Unpacking replacement openjdk-6-jre-lib ... Preparing to replace icedtea-6-jre-jamvm 6b24-1.11.3-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../icedtea-6-jre-jamvm_6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement icedtea-6-jre-jamvm ... Preparing to replace openjdk-6-jre-headless 6b24-1.11.3-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../openjdk-6-jre-headless_6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement openjdk-6-jre-headless ... Preparing to replace openjdk-6-jre 6b24-1.11.3-1ubuntu0.12.04.1 (using .../openjdk-6-jre_6b24-1.11.4-1ubuntu0.12.04.1_amd64.deb) ... Unpacking replacement openjdk-6-jre ... After that (but I cannot swear it is the root cause), I have the following issues in Eclipse: When trying to launch the simplest HelloWorld program (which behaves fine with manual javac/java), I get either nothing or: An internal error occurred during: "Launching HelloWorld". org/eclipse/jdt/debug/core/JDIDebugModel I get an "Error log" tab in the console panel, with an error: Could not create the view: An unexpected exception was thrown. (Follows a consequent NullPointerException stacktrace between sun.util.calendar.ZoneInfoFile.getZoneIDs(ZoneInfoFile.java:785) and org.eclipse.equinox.launcher.Main.main(Main.java:1386)) When trying to access the Installed JREs part of the preferences, I get a popup saying: Unable to create the selected preference page. An error occurred while automatically activating bundle org.eclipse.jdt.debug.ui (162). And the preference tab says An error has occurred when creating this preference page. Until today I had a manually installed Eclipse (one of the official bundles available on their site), I've tried to replace it by the repository version and I get the same errors. What should I do to make Eclipse work again? Another person reports: Same happened to me after updating last night. Already tried reinstalling Eclipse and Java, starting Eclipse with -clean and starting new workspace and new .eclipse dir, but nothing helps.

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• Responding to Invites

  - by Daniel Moth

  Following up from my post about Sending Outlook Invites here is a shorter one on how to respond. Whatever your choice (ACCEPT, TENTATIVE, DECLINE), if the sender has not unchecked the "Request Response" option, then send your response. Always send your response. Even if you think the sender made a mistake in keeping it on, send your response. Seriously, not responding is plain rude. If you knew about the meeting, and you are happy investing your time in it, and the time and location work for you, and there is an implicit/explicit agenda, then ACCEPT and send it. If one or more of those things don't work for you then you have a few options. Send a DECLINE explaining why. Reply with email to ask for further details or for a change to be made. If you don’t receive a response to your email, send a DECLINE when you've waited enough. Send a TENTATIVE if you haven't made up your mind yet. Hint: if they really require you there, they'll respond asking "why tentative" and you have a discussion about it. When you deem appropriate, instead of the options above, you can also use the counter propose feature of Outlook but IMO that feature has questionable interaction model and UI (on both sender and recipient) so many people get confused by it. BTW, two of my outlook rules are relevant to invites. The first one auto-marks as read the ACCEPT responses if there is no comment in the body of the accept (I check later who has accepted and who hasn't via the "Tracking" button of the invite). I don’t have a rule for the DECLINE and TENTATIVE cause typically I follow up with folks that send those.   The second rule ensures that all Invites go to a specific folder. That is the first folder I see when I triage email. It is also the only folder which I have configured to show a count of all items inside it, rather than the unread count - when sending a response to an invite the item disappears from the folder and hence it is empty and not nagging me. Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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• How do you keep code with continuations/callbacks readable?

  - by Heinzi

  Summary: Are there some well-established best-practice patterns that I can follow to keep my code readable in spite of using asynchronous code and callbacks? I'm using a JavaScript library that does a lot of stuff asynchronously and heavily relies on callbacks. It seems that writing a simple "load A, load B, ..." method becomes quite complicated and hard to follow using this pattern. Let me give a (contrived) example. Let's say I want to load a bunch of images (asynchronously) from a remote web server. In C#/async, I'd write something like this: disableStartButton(); foreach (myData in myRepository) { var result = await LoadImageAsync("http://my/server/GetImage?" + myData.Id); if (result.Success) { myData.Image = result.Data; } else { write("error loading Image " + myData.Id); return; } } write("success"); enableStartButton(); The code layout follows the "flow of events": First, the start button is disabled, then the images are loaded (await ensures that the UI stays responsive) and then the start button is enabled again. In JavaScript, using callbacks, I came up with this: disableStartButton(); var count = myRepository.length; function loadImage(i) { if (i >= count) { write("success"); enableStartButton(); return; } myData = myRepository[i]; LoadImageAsync("http://my/server/GetImage?" + myData.Id, function(success, data) { if (success) { myData.Image = data; } else { write("error loading image " + myData.Id); return; } loadImage(i+1); } ); } loadImage(0); I think the drawbacks are obvious: I had to rework the loop into a recursive call, the code that's supposed to be executed in the end is somewhere in the middle of the function, the code starting the download (loadImage(0)) is at the very bottom, and it's generally much harder to read and follow. It's ugly and I don't like it. I'm sure that I'm not the first one to encounter this problem, so my question is: Are there some well-established best-practice patterns that I can follow to keep my code readable in spite of using asynchronous code and callbacks?

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• BizTalk 2009 - Architecture Decisions

  - by StuartBrierley

  In the first step towards implementing a BizTalk 2009 environment, from development through to live, I put forward a proposal that detailed the options available, as well as the costs and benefits associated with these options, to allow an informed discusion to take place with the business drivers and budget holders of the project.  This ultimately lead to a decision being made to implement an initial BizTalk Server 2009 environment using the Standard Edition of the product. It is my hope that in the long term, as projects require it and allow, we will be looking to implement my ideal recommendation of a multi-server enterprise level environment, but given the differences in cost and the likely initial work load for the environment this was not something that I could fully recommend at this time.  However, it must be noted that this decision was made in full awareness of the limits of the standard edition, and the business drivers of this project were made fully aware of the risks associated with running without the failover capabilities of the enterprise edition. When considering the creation of this new BizTalk Server 2009 environment, I have also recommended the creation of the following pre-production environments:   Usage Environment Development Development of solutions; Unit testing against technical specifications; Initial load testing; Testing of deployment packages;  Visual Studio; BizTalk; SQL; Client PCs/Laptops; Server environment similar to Live implementation; Test Testing of Solutions against business and technical requirements;  BizTalk; SQL; Server environment similar to Live implementation; Pseudo-Live As Live environment to allow testing against Live implementation; Acts as back-up hardware in case of failure of Live environment; BizTalk; SQL; Server environment identical to Live implementation; The creation of these differing environments allows for the separation of the various stages of the development cycle.  The development environment is for use when actively developing a solution, it is a potentially volatile environment whose state at any given time can not be guaranteed.  It allows developers to carry out initial tests in an environment that is similar to the live environment and also provides an area for the testing of deployment packages prior to any release to the test environment. The test environment is intended to be a semi-volatile environment that is similar to the live environment.  It will change periodically through the development of a solution (or solutions) but should be otherwise stable.  It allows for the continued testing of a solution against requirements without the worry that the environment is being actively changed by any ongoing development.  This separation of development and test is crucial in ensuring the quality and control of the tested solution. The pseudo-live environment should be considered to be an almost static environment.  It should mimic the live environment and can act as back up hardware in the case of live failure.  This environment acts as an area to allow for “as live” testing, where the performance and behaviour of the live solutions can be replicated.  There should be relatively few changes to this environment, with software releases limited to “release candidate” level releases prior to going live. Whereas the pseudo-live environment should always mimic the live environment, to save on costs the development and test servers could be implemented on lower specification hardware.  Consideration can also be given to the use of a virtual server environment to further reduce hardware costs in the development and test environments, indeed this virtual approach can also be extended to pseudo-live and live assuming the underlying technology is in place. Although there is no requirement for the development and test server environments to be identical to live, the overriding architecture implemented should be the same as in live and an understanding must be gained of the performance differences to be expected across the different environments.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 13, 2011 -- #1059

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: András Velvárt, WIndowsPhoneGeek(-2-), Jesse Liberty(-2-), Victor Gaudioso, Kunal Chowdhury, Jeremy Likness, Michael Crump, and Dhananjay Kumar. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Application Library Caching in Silverlight 4" Kunal Chowdhury WP7: "Handling WP7 orientation changes via Visual States" András Velvárt Shoutouts: Joe McBride gave a MEF Head User Group presentation and has posted How to Become a MEF Head – Slides & Code From SilverlightCream.com: Handling WP7 orientation changes via Visual States András Velvárt has an Expression Blend/WP7 post up discussing WP7 orientation changes and handling them via Visual States ... see an example from his SurfCube app, and a behavior to handle the control... with source. WP7 PerformanceProgressBar in depth WIndowsPhoneGeek has a post up discussing the WP7 Performance bar from the Windows Phone Toolkit. This is an update on the Toolkit based on the Feb 2011 release. Great explanation of the PerformanceProgressBar, external links, and sample code. Getting data out of WP7 WMAppManifest is easy with Coding4Fun PhoneHelper Next WindowsPhoneGeek has a post up about the PhoneHelper in the Coding4Fun TOolkit, and using it to get data out of the WMAppManifest easily. Good discussion, Links, and code as always Silverlight Unit Test For Phone In Jesse Liberty's "Windows Phone From Scratch" number 41, he's discussing Unit Testing for WP7... he gives some good external links and some good examples. Yet Another Podcast #27–Paul Betts Jesse Liberty's next post is his "Yet Another Podcast" number 27, and an interview with Paul Betts, the creator of Reactive UI... check out the podcast and also the good links listed. New Silverlight Video Tutorial: How to use the Fluid Move Behavior Victor Gaudioso has a new video tutorial up on using the Fluid Move Behavior... making a selected item animate from a ListBox to a Master Details Grid. Application Library Caching in Silverlight 4 Kunal Chowdhury takes a break from SilverlightZone long enough to write a post about Application Library Caching... for example on-demand loading of a 3rd-party XAP. Jounce Part 13: Navigation Parameters Jeremy Likness has his 13th post of a series in understanding his Jounce MVVM framework up. This episode surrounds a new release and what it contains, the primary focus being navigation parameters... that is you can raise a navigation event with a payload. Profiling Silverlight Applications after installing Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Michael Crump digs into the performance wizard for Silverlight that we get with VS2010 SP1. He shows how to get and read a profile... great intro to a new tool. Binding XML File to Data Grid in Silverlight Dhananjay Kumar demonstrates reading an XML file using LINQ to XML and binding the result to a Silverlight DataGrid Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Merge sort versus quick sort performance

  - by Giorgio

  I have implemented merge sort and quick sort using C (GCC 4.4.3 on Ubuntu 10.04 running on a 4 GB RAM laptop with an Intel DUO CPU at 2GHz) and I wanted to compare the performance of the two algorithms. The prototypes of the sorting functions are: void merge_sort(const char **lines, int start, int end); void quick_sort(const char **lines, int start, int end); i.e. both take an array of pointers to strings and sort the elements with index i : start <= i <= end. I have produced some files containing random strings with length on average 4.5 characters. The test files range from 100 lines to 10000000 lines. I was a bit surprised by the results because, even though I know that merge sort has complexity O(n log(n)) while quick sort is O(n^2), I have often read that on average quick sort should be as fast as merge sort. However, my results are the following. Up to 10000 strings, both algorithms perform equally well. For 10000 strings, both require about 0.007 seconds. For 100000 strings, merge sort is slightly faster with 0.095 s against 0.121 s. For 1000000 strings merge sort takes 1.287 s against 5.233 s of quick sort. For 5000000 strings merge sort takes 7.582 s against 118.240 s of quick sort. For 10000000 strings merge sort takes 16.305 s against 1202.918 s of quick sort. So my question is: are my results as expected, meaning that quick sort is comparable in speed to merge sort for small inputs but, as the size of the input data grows, the fact that its complexity is quadratic will become evident? Here is a sketch of what I did. In the merge sort implementation, the partitioning consists in calling merge sort recursively, i.e. merge_sort(lines, start, (start + end) / 2); merge_sort(lines, 1 + (start + end) / 2, end); Merging of the two sorted sub-array is performed by reading the data from the array lines and writing it to a global temporary array of pointers (this global array is allocate only once). After each merge the pointers are copied back to the original array. So the strings are stored once but I need twice as much memory for the pointers. For quick sort, the partition function chooses the last element of the array to sort as the pivot and scans the previous elements in one loop. After it has produced a partition of the type start ... {elements <= pivot} ... pivotIndex ... {elements > pivot} ... end it calls itself recursively: quick_sort(lines, start, pivotIndex - 1); quick_sort(lines, pivotIndex + 1, end); Note that this quick sort implementation sorts the array in-place and does not require additional memory, therefore it is more memory efficient than the merge sort implementation. So my question is: is there a better way to implement quick sort that is worthwhile trying out? If I improve the quick sort implementation and perform more tests on different data sets (computing the average of the running times on different data sets) can I expect a better performance of quick sort wrt merge sort? EDIT Thank you for your answers. My implementation is in-place and is based on the pseudo-code I have found on wikipedia in Section In-place version: function partition(array, 'left', 'right', 'pivotIndex') where I choose the last element in the range to be sorted as a pivot, i.e. pivotIndex := right. I have checked the code over and over again and it seems correct to me. In order to rule out the case that I am using the wrong implementation I have uploaded the source code on github (in case you would like to take a look at it). Your answers seem to suggest that I am using the wrong test data. I will look into it and try out different test data sets. I will report as soon as I have some results.

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• C#: LINQ vs foreach - Round 1.

  - by James Michael Hare

  So I was reading Peter Kellner's blog entry on Resharper 5.0 and its LINQ refactoring and thought that was very cool.  But that raised a point I had always been curious about in my head -- which is a better choice: manual foreach loops or LINQ?    The answer is not really clear-cut.  There are two sides to any code cost arguments: performance and maintainability.  The first of these is obvious and quantifiable.  Given any two pieces of code that perform the same function, you can run them side-by-side and see which piece of code performs better.   Unfortunately, this is not always a good measure.  Well written assembly language outperforms well written C++ code, but you lose a lot in maintainability which creates a big techncial debt load that is hard to offset as the application ages.  In contrast, higher level constructs make the code more brief and easier to understand, hence reducing technical cost.   Now, obviously in this case we're not talking two separate languages, we're comparing doing something manually in the language versus using a higher-order set of IEnumerable extensions that are in the System.Linq library.   Well, before we discuss any further, let's look at some sample code and the numbers.  First, let's take a look at the for loop and the LINQ expression.  This is just a simple find comparison:       // find implemented via LINQ     public static bool FindViaLinq(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         return list.Any(item => item == target);     }         // find implemented via standard iteration     public static bool FindViaIteration(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         foreach (var i in list)         {             if (i == target)             {                 return true;             }         }           return false;     }   Okay, looking at this from a maintainability point of view, the Linq expression is definitely more concise (8 lines down to 1) and is very readable in intention.  You don't have to actually analyze the behavior of the loop to determine what it's doing.   So let's take a look at performance metrics from 100,000 iterations of these methods on a List<int> of varying sizes filled with random data.  For this test, we fill a target array with 100,000 random integers and then run the exact same pseudo-random targets through both searches.                       List<T> On 100,000 Iterations     Method      Size     Total (ms)  Per Iteration (ms)  % Slower     Any         10       26          0.00046             30.00%     Iteration   10       20          0.00023             -     Any         100      116         0.00201             18.37%     Iteration   100      98          0.00118             -     Any         1000     1058        0.01853             16.78%     Iteration   1000     906         0.01155             -     Any         10,000   10,383      0.18189             17.41%     Iteration   10,000   8843        0.11362             -     Any         100,000  104,004     1.8297              18.27%     Iteration   100,000  87,941      1.13163             -   The LINQ expression is running about 17% slower for average size collections and worse for smaller collections.  Presumably, this is due to the overhead of the state machine used to track the iterators for the yield returns in the LINQ expressions, which seems about right in a tight loop such as this.   So what about other LINQ expressions?  After all, Any() is one of the more trivial ones.  I decided to try the TakeWhile() algorithm using a Count() to get the position stopped like the sample Pete was using in his blog that Resharper refactored for him into LINQ:       // Linq form     public static int GetTargetPosition1(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         return list.TakeWhile(item => item != target).Count();     }       // traditionally iterative form     public static int GetTargetPosition2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         int count = 0;           foreach (var i in list)         {             if(i == target)             {                 break;             }               ++count;         }           return count;     }   Once again, the LINQ expression is much shorter, easier to read, and should be easier to maintain over time, reducing the cost of technical debt.  So I ran these through the same test data:                       List<T> On 100,000 Iterations     Method      Size     Total (ms)  Per Iteration (ms)  % Slower     TakeWhile   10       41          0.00041             128%     Iteration   10       18          0.00018             -     TakeWhile   100      171         0.00171             88%     Iteration   100      91          0.00091             -     TakeWhile   1000     1604        0.01604             94%     Iteration   1000     825         0.00825             -     TakeWhile   10,000   15765       0.15765             92%     Iteration   10,000   8204        0.08204             -     TakeWhile   100,000  156950      1.5695              92%     Iteration   100,000  81635       0.81635             -     Wow!  I expected some overhead due to the state machines iterators produce, but 90% slower?  That seems a little heavy to me.  So then I thought, well, what if TakeWhile() is not the right tool for the job?  The problem is TakeWhile returns each item for processing using yield return, whereas our for-loop really doesn't care about the item beyond using it as a stop condition to evaluate. So what if that back and forth with the iterator state machine is the problem?  Well, we can quickly create an (albeit ugly) lambda that uses the Any() along with a count in a closure (if a LINQ guru knows a better way PLEASE let me know!), after all , this is more consistent with what we're trying to do, we're trying to find the first occurence of an item and halt once we find it, we just happen to be counting on the way.  This mostly matches Any().       // a new method that uses linq but evaluates the count in a closure.     public static int TakeWhileViaLinq2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         int count = 0;         list.Any(item =>             {                 if(item == target)                 {                     return true;                 }                   ++count;                 return false;             });         return count;     }     Now how does this one compare?                         List<T> On 100,000 Iterations     Method         Size     Total (ms)  Per Iteration (ms)  % Slower     TakeWhile      10       41          0.00041             128%     Any w/Closure  10       23          0.00023             28%     Iteration      10       18          0.00018             -     TakeWhile      100      171         0.00171             88%     Any w/Closure  100      116         0.00116             27%     Iteration      100      91          0.00091             -     TakeWhile      1000     1604        0.01604             94%     Any w/Closure  1000     1101        0.01101             33%     Iteration      1000     825         0.00825             -     TakeWhile      10,000   15765       0.15765             92%     Any w/Closure  10,000   10802       0.10802             32%     Iteration      10,000   8204        0.08204             -     TakeWhile      100,000  156950      1.5695              92%     Any w/Closure  100,000  108378      1.08378             33%     Iteration      100,000  81635       0.81635             -     Much better!  It seems that the overhead of TakeAny() returning each item and updating the state in the state machine is drastically reduced by using Any() since Any() iterates forward until it finds the value we're looking for -- for the task we're attempting to do.   So the lesson there is, make sure when you use a LINQ expression you're choosing the best expression for the job, because if you're doing more work than you really need, you'll have a slower algorithm.  But this is true of any choice of algorithm or collection in general.     Even with the Any() with the count in the closure it is still about 30% slower, but let's consider that angle carefully.  For a list of 100,000 items, it was the difference between 1.01 ms and 0.82 ms roughly in a List<T>.  That's really not that bad at all in the grand scheme of things.  Even running at 90% slower with TakeWhile(), for the vast majority of my projects, an extra millisecond to save potential errors in the long term and improve maintainability is a small price to pay.  And if your typical list is 1000 items or less we're talking only microseconds worth of difference.   It's like they say: 90% of your performance bottlenecks are in 2% of your code, so over-optimizing almost never pays off.  So personally, I'll take the LINQ expression wherever I can because they will be easier to read and maintain (thus reducing technical debt) and I can rely on Microsoft's development to have coded and unit tested those algorithm fully for me instead of relying on a developer to code the loop logic correctly.   If something's 90% slower, yes, it's worth keeping in mind, but it's really not until you start get magnitudes-of-order slower (10x, 100x, 1000x) that alarm bells should really go off.  And if I ever do need that last millisecond of performance?  Well then I'll optimize JUST THAT problem spot.  To me it's worth it for the readability, speed-to-market, and maintainability.

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• Victor Grazi, Java Champion!

  - by Tori Wieldt

  Congratulations to Victor Grazi, who has been made a Java Champion! He was nominated by his peers and selected as a Java Champion for his experience as a developer, and his work in the Java and Open Source communities. Grazi is a Java evangelist and serves on the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process, representing Credit Suisse - the first non-technology vendor on the JCP. He also arranges the NY Java SIG meetings at Credit Suisse's New York campus each month, and he says it has been a valuable networking opportunity. He also is the spec lead for JSR 354, the Java Money and Currency API. Grazi has been building real time financial systems in Java since JDK version 1.02! In 1996, the internet was just starting to happen, Grazi started a dot com called Supermarkets to Go, that provided an on-line shopping presence to supermarkets and grocers. Grazi wrote most of the code, which was a great opportunity for him to learn Java and UI development, as well as database management. Next, he went to work at Bank of NY building a trading system. He studied for Java certification, and he noted that getting his certification was a game changer because it helped him started to learn the nuances of the Java language. He has held other development positions, "You may have noticed that you don't get as much junk mail from Citibank as you used to - that is thanks to one of my projects!" he told us. Grazi joined Credit Suisse in 2005 and is currently Vice President on the central architecture team. Grazi is proud of his open source project, Java Concurrent Animated, a series of animations that visualize the functionality of the components in the java.util.concurrent library. "It has afforded me the opportunity to speak around the globe" and because of it, has discovered that he really enjoys doing public presentations. He is a fine addition to the Java Champions program. The Java Champions are an exclusive group of passionate Java technology and community leaders who are community-nominated and selected under a project sponsored by Oracle. Nominees are named and selected through a peer review process. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. This interchange may be in the form of technical discussions and/or community-building activities with Oracle's Java Development and Developer Program teams.

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• Now Shipping! NetAdvantage for .NET 2010 Volume 3!

  The new NetAdvantage Ultimate includes all four Line of Business user interface control sets for ASP .NET, Windows Forms, WPF and Silverlight plus two advanced Data Visualization UI control sets for WPF and Silverlight. With six NetAdvantage products in one robust package, Infragistics® gives you hundreds of controls and infinite development possibilities. Unified XAML Product Strategy-Share Code, Get More Controls In the 10.3 release, Infragistics continues to deliver code parity between the XAML platforms, WPF and Silverlight. In the line of business toolsets, Infragistics introduces the new xamSchedule™, full-featured, Outlook® 2010-style schedule controls, and the new xamDataTree™, a data bound tree view that comfortably handles tens of thousands of tree nodes. Mimicking our Silverlight Drag and Drop Framework, the WPF Drag and Drop Framework CTP empowers you to add your own rich touches to your applications. Track Users' Behaviors New to all NetAdvantage Silverlight controls is the Infragistics Analytics Framework (IGAF), which empowers you to track user behavior in RIAs running on Silverlight 4. Building on the Microsoft® Silverlight Analytics Framework, with IGAF you can analyze the user's behaviors to ensure the experience you want to deliver. NetAdvantage for Windows Forms--New Office® 2010 Ribbon and Application Menu 2010 Create new experiences with Windows Forms. Now with Office 2010 styling, NetAdvantage for Windows Forms has new features such as Microsoft® Office 2010 ribbon and enhanced Infragistics.Excel to export the contents of the high performance WinGrid™ into Microsoft Excel® 2010. The new Windows Message Support enables Infragistics standalone editor controls to process numerous Windows® OS messages, allowing them to respond just like native controls to changes in the Windows environment. Create Faster Web 2.0 Experiences with NetAdvantage for ASP .NET Infragistics continues to push the envelope to deliver the fastest ASP .NET WebForms controls available on the market. Our lightning fast ASP .NET grids are now enhanced with XPS/PDF Exporting and Summary Rows. This release also includes support for jQuery Templating (as a CTP) within our WebDataGrid™ and WebDataTree™ controls allowing you to quickly cut down overall page size. Deliver Business Intelligence with Power, Flexibility and the Office 2010 Experience NetAdvantage for WPF Data Visualization and NetAdvantage for Silverlight Data Visualization help you deliver flexible, powerful and usable end user experiences in Business Intelligence applications. Both suites include the Pivot Grid that delivers the full power of online analytical processing (OLAP) to present multi-dimensional data, sliced and diced in cross-tabulated form for end users to drill down into, interact with and easily extract meaning from the data. Mapping Made Easy 10.3 marks the official release of the WPF Data Visualization xamMap™ control to map anything and everything from geographic to geo-spacial mapping data. Map layers allow you to add successive levels of detail, navigational panes for panning in all directions, color swatch panes that facilitate value scales like Choropleth shading, and scale panes allowing users to zoom-in and out. Both toolsets introduce the first of many relationship maps! With the xamOrgChart™ CTP you can map out organizational charts of up to 50K employees, competitive brackets (think World Cup) and any other relational, organizational map your application needs. http://www.infragistics.com span.fullpost {display:none;}

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• Custom Model Binding of IEnumerable Properties in ASP.Net MVC 2

  - by Doug Lampe

  MVC 2 provides a GREAT feature for dealing with enumerable types.  Let's say you have an object with a parent/child relationship and you want to allow users to modify multiple children at the same time.  You can simply use the following syntax for any indexed enumerables (arrays, generic lists, etc.) and then your values will bind to your enumerable model properties. 1: <% using (Html.BeginForm("TestModelParameter", "Home")) 2: { %> 3: < table > 4: < tr >< th >ID</th><th>Name</th><th>Description</th></tr> 5: <% for (int i = 0; i < Model.Items.Count; i++) 6: { %> 7: < tr > 8: < td > 9: <%= i %> 10: </ td > 11: < td > 12: <%= Html.TextBoxFor(m => m.Items[i].Name) %> 13: </ td > 14: < td > 15: <%= Model.Items[i].Description %> 16: </ td > 17: </ tr > 18: <% } %> 19: </ table > 20: < input type ="submit" /> 21: <% } %> Then just update your model either by passing it into your action method as a parameter or explicitly with UpdateModel/TryUpdateModel. 1: public ActionResult TestTryUpdate() 2: { 3: ContainerModel model = new ContainerModel(); 4: TryUpdateModel(model); 5:   6: return View("Test", model); 7: } 8:   9: public ActionResult TestModelParameter(ContainerModel model) 10: { 11: return View("Test", model); 12: } Simple right?  Well, not quite.  The problem is the DefaultModelBinder and how it sets properties.  In this case our model has a property that is a generic list (Items).  The first bad thing the model binder does is create a new instance of the list.  This can be fixed by making the property truly read-only by removing the set accessor.  However this won't help because this behaviour continues.  As the model binder iterates through the items to "set" their values, it creates new instances of them as well.  This means you lose any information not passed via the UI to your controller so in the examplel above the "Description" property would be blank for each item after the form posts. One solution for this is custom model binding.  I have put together a solution which allows you to retain the structure of your model.  Model binding is a somewhat advanced concept so you may need to do some additional research to really understand what is going on here, but the code is fairly simple.  First we will create a binder for the parent object which will retain the state of the parent as well as some information on which children have already been bound. 1: public class ContainerModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder 2: { 3: /// <summary> 4: /// Gets an instance of the model to be used to bind child objects. 5: /// </summary> 6: public ContainerModel Model { get; private set; } 7:   8: /// <summary> 9: /// Gets a list which will be used to track which items have been bound. 10: /// </summary> 11: public List<ItemModel> BoundItems { get; private set; } 12:   13: public ContainerModelBinder() 14: { 15: BoundItems = new List<ItemModel>(); 16: } 17:   18: protected override object CreateModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, Type modelType) 19: { 20: // Set the Model property so child binders can find children. 21: Model = base.CreateModel(controllerContext, bindingContext, modelType) as ContainerModel; 22:   23: return Model; 24: } 25: } Next we will create the child binder and have it point to the parent binder to get instances of the child objects.  Note that this only works if there is only one property of type ItemModel in the parent class since the property to find the item in the parent is hard coded. 1: public class ItemModelBinder : DefaultModelBinder 2: { 3: /// <summary> 4: /// Gets the parent binder so we can find objects in the parent's collection 5: /// </summary> 6: public ContainerModelBinder ParentBinder { get; private set; } 7: 8: public ItemModelBinder(ContainerModelBinder containerModelBinder) 9: { 10: ParentBinder = containerModelBinder; 11: } 12:   13: protected override object CreateModel(ControllerContext controllerContext, ModelBindingContext bindingContext, Type modelType) 14: { 15: // Find the item in the parent collection and add it to the bound items list. 16: ItemModel item = ParentBinder.Model.Items.FirstOrDefault(i => !ParentBinder.BoundItems.Contains(i)); 17: ParentBinder.BoundItems.Add(item); 18: 19: return item; 20: } 21: } Finally, we will register these binders in Global.asax.cs so they will be used to bind the classes. 1: protected void Application_Start() 2: { 3: AreaRegistration.RegisterAllAreas(); 4:   5: ContainerModelBinder containerModelBinder = new ContainerModelBinder(); 6: ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(ContainerModel), containerModelBinder); 7: ModelBinders.Binders.Add(typeof(ItemModel), new ItemModelBinder(containerModelBinder)); 8:   9: RegisterRoutes(RouteTable.Routes); 10: } I'm sure some of my fellow geeks will comment that this could be done more efficiently by simply rewriting some of the methods of the default model binder to get the same desired behavior.  I like my method shown here because it extends the binder class instead of modifying it so it minimizes the potential for unforseen problems. In a future post (if I ever get around to it) I will explore creating a generic version of these binders.

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• Silverlight Cream for March 14, 2011 -- #1060

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Lazar Nikolov, Rudi Grobler, WindowsPhoneGeek, Jesse Liberty, Pete Brown, Jessica Foster, Chris Rouw, Andy Beaulieu, and Colin Eberhardt. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "A Silverlight Resizable TextBlock (and other resizable things)" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Retrofitting the Trial API" Jessica Foster Shoutouts: Rudi Grobler has a post up that's not Silverlight, but it's cool stuff you may be interested in: WPF Themes now available on NuGet From SilverlightCream.com: Simulating rain in Silverlight Lazar Nikolov has a cool tutorial up at SilverlightShow... Simulating rain. Nice demo near to top, and source code plus a very nice tutorial on the entire process. Making the ApplicationBar bindable Rudi Grobler has a couple new posts up... first this one on making the WP7 AppBar bindable... he's created 2 simple wrappers that make it possible to bind to a method... with source as usual! All about Splash Screens in WP7 – Creating animated Splash Screen WindowsPhoneGeek's latest is about splash screens in WP7, but he goes one better with animated splash screens. Lots of good information including closing points in more of a FAQ-style listing. Testing Network Availability Jesse Liberty's latest is on testing for network availability in your WP7 app. This should be required reading for anyone building a WP7 app, since you never know when the network is going to be there or not. Lighting up on Windows 7 with Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight Pete Brown's latest post is about the Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight or NESL library. Pete describes what NESL is, a link to the library, installing it, and tons more information. If you wanna know or try NESL... this looks like the place to start. Retrofitting the Trial API Jessica Foster paused on the way to shipping her WP7 app to add in the trial API code. Check out what she went through to complete that task, as she explains the steps and directions she took. Good description, links, and code. WP7 Insights #2: Creating a Splash Screen in WP7 In the 2nd post in his series on WP7 development, Chris Rouw is discussing a WP7 splash screen. He gives some good external links for references then gets right into discussing his code. Air Hockey for Windows Phone 7 Andy Beaulieu shares a tutorial he wrote for the Expression Toolbox site, using the Physics Helper Library and Farseer Physics Engine -- an Air Hockey game for WP7. A Silverlight Resizable TextBlock (and other resizable things) I think Michael Washington had the best comment about Colin Eberhardt's latest outing: "Another WOW example" ... drop this in the pretty darn cool category: an attached behavior that uses a Thumb control within a popup to adorn any UI element to allow the user to resize it! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Anatomy of a .NET Assembly - Custom attribute encoding

  - by Simon Cooper

  In my previous post, I covered how field, method, and other types of signatures are encoded in a .NET assembly. Custom attribute signatures differ quite a bit from these, which consequently affects attribute specifications in C#. Custom attribute specifications In C#, you can apply a custom attribute to a type or type member, specifying a constructor as well as the values of fields or properties on the attribute type: public class ExampleAttribute : Attribute { public ExampleAttribute(int ctorArg1, string ctorArg2) { ... } public Type ExampleType { get; set; } } [Example(5, "6", ExampleType = typeof(string))] public class C { ... } How does this specification actually get encoded and stored in an assembly? Specification blob values Custom attribute specification signatures use the same building blocks as other types of signatures; the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. However, they significantly differ from other types of signatures, in that the actual parameter values need to be stored along with type information. There are two types of specification arguments in a signature blob; fixed args and named args. Fixed args are the arguments to the attribute type constructor, named arguments are specified after the constructor arguments to provide a value to a field or property on the constructed attribute type (PropertyName = propValue) Values in an attribute blob are limited to one of the basic types (one of the number types, character, or boolean), a reference to a type, an enum (which, in .NET, has to use one of the integer types as a base representation), or arrays of any of those. Enums and the basic types are easy to store in a blob - you simply store the binary representation. Strings are stored starting with a compressed integer indicating the length of the string, followed by the UTF8 characters. Array values start with an integer indicating the number of elements in the array, then the item values concatentated together. Rather than using a coded token, Type values are stored using a string representing the type name and fully qualified assembly name (for example, MyNs.MyType, MyAssembly, Version=1.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=0123456789abcdef). If the type is in the current assembly or mscorlib then just the type name can be used. This is probably done to prevent direct references between assemblies solely because of attribute specification arguments; assemblies can be loaded in the reflection-only context and attribute arguments still processed, without loading the entire assembly. Fixed and named arguments Each entry in the CustomAttribute metadata table contains a reference to the object the attribute is applied to, the attribute constructor, and the specification blob. The number and type of arguments to the constructor (the fixed args) can be worked out by the method signature referenced by the attribute constructor, and so the fixed args can simply be concatenated together in the blob without any extra type information. Named args are different. These specify the value to assign to a field or property once the attribute type has been constructed. In the CLR, fields and properties can be overloaded just on their type; different fields and properties can have the same name. Therefore, to uniquely identify a field or property you need: Whether it's a field or property (indicated using byte values 0x53 and 0x54, respectively) The field or property type The field or property name After the fixed arg values is a 2-byte number specifying the number of named args in the blob. Each named argument has the above information concatenated together, mostly using the basic ELEMENT_TYPE values, in the same way as a method or field signature. A Type argument is represented using the byte 0x50, and an enum argument is represented using the byte 0x55 followed by a string specifying the name and assembly of the enum type. The named argument property information is followed by the argument value, using the same encoding as fixed args. Boxed objects This would be all very well, were it not for object and object[]. Arguments and properties of type object allow a value of any allowed argument type to be specified. As a result, more information needs to be specified in the blob to interpret the argument bytes as the correct type. So, the argument value is simple prepended with the type of the value by specifying the ELEMENT_TYPE or name of the enum the value represents. For named arguments, a field or property of type object is represented using the byte 0x51, with the actual type specified in the argument value. Some examples... All property signatures start with the 2-byte value 0x0001. Similar to my previous post in the series, names in capitals correspond to a particular byte value in the ELEMENT_TYPE structure. For strings, I'll simply give the string value, rather than the length and UTF8 encoding in the actual blob. I'll be using the following enum and attribute types to demonstrate specification encodings: class AttrAttribute : Attribute { public AttrAttribute() {} public AttrAttribute(Type[] tArray) {} public AttrAttribute(object o) {} public AttrAttribute(MyEnum e) {} public AttrAttribute(ushort x, int y) {} public AttrAttribute(string str, Type type1, Type type2) {} public int Prop1 { get; set; } public object Prop2 { get; set; } public object[] ObjectArray; } enum MyEnum : int { Val1 = 1, Val2 = 2 } Now, some examples: Here, the the specification binds to the (ushort, int) attribute constructor, with fixed args only. The specification blob starts off with a prolog, followed by the two constructor arguments, then the number of named arguments (zero): [Attr(42, 84)] 0x0001 0x002a 0x00000054 0x0000 An example of string and type encoding: [Attr("MyString", typeof(Array), typeof(System.Windows.Forms.Form))] 0x0001 "MyString" "System.Array" "System.Windows.Forms.Form, System.Windows.Forms, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" 0x0000 As you can see, the full assembly specification of a type is only needed if the type isn't in the current assembly or mscorlib. Note, however, that the C# compiler currently chooses to fully-qualify mscorlib types anyway. An object argument (this binds to the object attribute constructor), and two named arguments (a null string is represented by 0xff and the empty string by 0x00) [Attr((ushort)40, Prop1 = 12, Prop2 = "")] 0x0001 U2 0x0028 0x0002 0x54 I4 "Prop1" 0x0000000c 0x54 0x51 "Prop2" STRING 0x00 Right, more complicated now. A type array as a fixed argument: [Attr(new[] { typeof(string), typeof(object) })] 0x0001 0x00000002 // the number of elements "System.String" "System.Object" 0x0000 An enum value, which is simply represented using the underlying value. The CLR works out that it's an enum using information in the attribute constructor signature: [Attr(MyEnum.Val1)] 0x0001 0x00000001 0x0000 And finally, a null array, and an object array as a named argument: [Attr((Type[])null, ObjectArray = new object[] { (byte)2, typeof(decimal), null, MyEnum.Val2 })] 0x0001 0xffffffff 0x0001 0x53 SZARRAY 0x51 "ObjectArray" 0x00000004 U1 0x02 0x50 "System.Decimal" STRING 0xff 0x55 "MyEnum" 0x00000002 As you'll notice, a null object is encoded as a null string value, and a null array is represented using a length of -1 (0xffffffff). How does this affect C#? So, we can now explain why the limits on attribute arguments are so strict in C#. Attribute specification blobs are limited to basic numbers, enums, types, and arrays. As you can see, this is because the raw CLR encoding can only accommodate those types. Special byte patterns have to be used to indicate object, string, Type, or enum values in named arguments; you can't specify an arbitary object type, as there isn't a generalised way of encoding the resulting value in the specification blob. In particular, decimal values can't be encoded, as it isn't a 'built-in' CLR type that has a native representation (you'll notice that decimal constants in C# programs are compiled as several integer arguments to DecimalConstantAttribute). Jagged arrays also aren't natively supported, although you can get around it by using an array as a value to an object argument: [Attr(new object[] { new object[] { new Type[] { typeof(string) } }, 42 })] Finally... Phew! That was a bit longer than I thought it would be. Custom attribute encodings are complicated! Hopefully this series has been an informative look at what exactly goes on inside a .NET assembly. In the next blog posts, I'll be carrying on with the 'Inside Red Gate' series.

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• Recording Topics manually and automatically

  - by maria.cozzolino(at)oracle.com

  When you are recording UPK topics, the default mode for recording is manual recording, where you tell the system when to record each screen shot. This mode allows you to take the exact screen shot you need. However, it does get a bit tedious when you are recording long topics, especially if you forget to take a few screen shots. In UPK 3.5, a new version of recording was introduced - Automatic Recording. It was designed to simplify the recording process by automatically capturing screen shots as you perform your transaction. If you haven't experimented with Automatic Recording, I'd recommend you give it a try - it might make your recording life easier. If you are recording with sound, you can also narrate your topic while recording it. To turn on Automatic Recording: 1. In Tools/Options, there are two recorder tabs. The first tab, under content defaults, includes settings that you may want to share between developers, like whether keyboard shortcuts are automatically captured. 2. The second tab is the one that contains the personal preferences, like screen shot capture key and whether to record automatically or manually. On this tab, choose the option for Automatic Recording. 3. Save the settings. Note that this setting will NOT impact content defaults; this is for your user only. When you launch the recorder, you will notice a slightly different message with guidance on how to start and stop automatic recording. Once you start recording, the recorder window is hidden until the end of the recording session to allow you to capture your transaction. In the task tray, there is a series of icons that let you know that you are capturing content. You can pause the recording, as well as set and view your sound levels if you are using sound. A camera appears during each screen capture to help you know when the system is capturing a screen shot, and a context indicator appears to show the recognition. With automatic recording, you can let the system capture the necessary screen shots. It may provide a more natural recording experience, and is probably easier for the untrained developer. On the other hand, you have a bit more control with manual recording on which screen shot appears, but it also means you have to remember to capture the screen shot. :) We'd be interested in hearing which type of recording you do, and any rationale on why you made that choice. Please comment and let us know. --Maria Cozzolino, Manager of UPK Software Requirements and UI Design

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• The enterprise vendor con - connecting SSD's using SATA 2 (3Gbits) thus limiting there performance

  - by tonyrogerson

  When comparing SSD against Hard drive performance it really makes me cross when folk think comparing an array of SSD running on 3GBits/sec to hard drives running on 6GBits/second is somehow valid. In a paper from DELL (http://www.dell.com/downloads/global/products/pvaul/en/PowerEdge-PowerVaultH800-CacheCade-final.pdf) on increasing database performance using the DELL PERC H800 with Solid State Drives they compare four SSD drives connected at 3Gbits/sec against ten 10Krpm drives connected at 6Gbits [Tony slaps forehead while shouting DOH!]. It is true in the case of hard drives it probably doesn’t make much difference 3Gbit or 6Gbit because SAS and SATA are both end to end protocols rather than shared bus architecture like SCSI, so the hard drive doesn’t share bandwidth and probably can’t get near the 600MiBytes/second throughput that 6Gbit gives unless you are doing contiguous reads, in my own tests on a single 15Krpm SAS disk using IOMeter (8 worker threads, queue depth of 16 with a stripe size of 64KiB, an 8KiB transfer size on a drive formatted with an allocation size of 8KiB for a 100% sequential read test) I only get 347MiBytes per second sustained throughput at an average latency of 2.87ms per IO equating to 44.5K IOps, ok, if that was 3GBits it would be less – around 280MiBytes per second, oh, but wait a minute [...fingers tap desk] You’ll struggle to find in the commodity space an SSD that doesn’t have the SATA 3 (6GBits) interface, SSD’s are fast not only low latency and high IOps but they also offer a very large sustained transfer rate, consider the OCZ Agility 3 it so happens that in my masters dissertation I did the same test but on a difference box, I got 374MiBytes per second at an average latency of 2.67ms per IO equating to 47.9K IOps – cost of an 240GB Agility 3 is £174.24 (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/240gb-ocz-agility-3-ssd-25-sata-6gb-s-sandforce-2281-read-525mb-s-write-500mb-s-85k-iops), but that same drive set in a box connected with SATA 2 (3Gbits) would only yield around 280MiBytes per second thus losing almost 100MiBytes per second throughput and a ton of IOps too. So why the hell are “enterprise” vendors still only connecting SSD’s at 3GBits? Well, my conspiracy states that they have no interest in you moving to SSD because they’ll lose so much money, the argument that they use SATA 2 doesn’t wash, SATA 3 has been out for some time now and all the commodity stuff you buy uses it now. Consider the cost, not in terms of price per GB but price per IOps, SSD absolutely thrash Hard Drives on that, it was true that the opposite was also true that Hard Drives thrashed SSD’s on price per GB, but is that true now, I’m not so sure – a 300GByte 2.5” 15Krpm SAS drive costs £329.76 ex VAT (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/300gb-seagate-st9300653ss-savvio-15k3-25-hdd-sas-6gb-s-15000rpm-64mb-cache-27ms) which equates to £1.09 per GB compared to a 480GB OCZ Agility 3 costing £422.10 ex VAT (http://www.scan.co.uk/products/480gb-ocz-agility-3-ssd-25-sata-6gb-s-sandforce-2281-read-525mb-s-write-410mb-s-30k-iops) which equates to £0.88 per GB. Ok, I compared an “enterprise” hard drive with a “commodity” SSD, ok, so things get a little more complicated here, most “enterprise” SSD’s are SLC and most commodity are MLC, SLC gives more performance and wear, I’ll talk about that another day. For now though, don’t get sucked in by vendor marketing, SATA 2 (3Gbit) just doesn’t cut it, SSD need 6Gbit to breath and even that SSD’s are pushing. Alas, SSD’s are connected using SATA so all the controllers I’ve seen thus far from HP and DELL only do SATA 2 – deliberate? Well, I’ll let you decide on that one.

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• Avoiding Flicker with JQuery Tabs

  - by Damon

  I am a huge fan of JQuery because it seems like every time I want to do something it has a plugin that already does it.  Adding a tabbed interface to a web page was always quite an annoyance, but JQuery UI offers a pretty descent tabs solution (click here to see it).  If you read through the documentation, you'll find that you can create a tabbed interface by calling the tabs() method on an element containing an unordered list.  The only problem that I've experienced with the method is that on slower machines you can see the unordered list render out in its original state before being updated into the final tabbed interface.  A quick way to fix that issues is to set the CSS display property of the element to none, then call the show() method directly after calling the tabs() method.  This keeps the element completely hidden while JQuery sets up the tabs interface and eliminates the flicker. <SCRIPT type="text/javascript">      $(function()      {           $("#tabs").tabs();           $("#tabs").show();      }); </SCRIPT> <div id="tabs" style="display:none;">     <ul>         <li><a href="#tabs-1">First Tab</a></li>         <li><a href="#tabs-2">Second Tab</a></li>         <li><a href="#tabs-3">Third Tab</a></li>     </ul>     ... </div>

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• Java Spotlight Episode 78: Jasper Potts on the JavaFX Scene Builder

  - by Roger Brinkley

  Tweet An interview with Jasper Potts about the new JavaFX Scene Builder. Joining us this week on the Java All Star Developer Panel are Dalibor Topic, Java Free and Open Source Software Ambassador and Arun Gupta, Java EE Guy. Right-click or Control-click to download this MP3 file. You can also subscribe to the Java Spotlight Podcast Feed to get the latest podcast automatically. If you use iTunes you can open iTunes and subscribe with this link:  Java Spotlight Podcast in iTunes. Show Notes News JavaFX Scene Builder Developer Preview available for testing. Java EE Unlock the Java EE 6 Platform using NetBeans 7.1 Tuning GlassFish for Production JSF 2.2 Update from Ed Burns John Rose at Microsoft's Lang.NEXT summit Recording of John's Java 8 presentation Jeroen Frijters' presentation on IKVM.NET Martin Odersky's keynote JVM Language Summit 2012 July 30 – August 1; Oracle Santa Clara (same as last year) CFP coming in a few days JVM Language Summit 2011 Presentations & Recordings Proposed development schedule for JDK 8 Say hello to Mathias Axelsson Events April 11, Cleveland JUG, Cleveland, OH April 12, GreenJUG, Greenville, SC April 17-18, JavaOne Russia, Moscow Russia April 18–20, Devoxx France, Paris, France April 17-20, GIDS, Bangalore April 21, Java Summit, Chennai April 26, Mix-IT, Lyon, France, May 3-4, JavaOne India, Hyderabad, India May 5, Bangalore, Pune, ?? - JUG outreach May 7, OTN Developer Day, Mumbai May 8, OTN Developer Day, Delhi Feature InterviewJasper Potts is the Developer Experience Architect for the Java Client Group at Oracle. Responsible for technical design for everything thats sis on the core platform including Controls, Tools, Samples and Blueprints. Formally a lead engineer on the JavaFX & Swing teams working on the new JavaFX UI Controls and Graphics frameworks. Also responsible for designing, developing and presenting demos during the keynotes at JavaOne and Devoxx. A JavaOne Rockstar presenter having presented many sessions on JavaFX and Swing at many conferences. Prior to Sun he founded Xerto a desktop applications company developing Imagery a Java professional photo management application. In this interview Jasper talks about the recently release JavaFX Scene Builder. Mail Bag What’s Cool Contribute to GlassFish in Five Different Ways Stephen Chin and James Weaver join Oracle Adam Bien - Building Java FX 2 Libraries From Source With Maven 3 Paul Sandoz - Java Boomerang Building Jigsaw on Mac OS X using VirtualBox Mandy Chung: Jigsaw for Mac OS X

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• Fixing the #mvvmlight code snippets in Visual Studio 11

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  If you installed the latest MVVM Light version for Windows 8, you may encounter an issue where code snippets are not displayed correctly in the Intellisense popup. I am working on a fix, but for now here is how you can solve the issue manually. The code snippets MVVM Light, when installed correctly, will install a set of code snippets that are very useful to allow you to type less code. As I use to say, code is where bugs are, so you want to type as little of that as possible ;) With code snippets, you can easily auto-insert segments of code and easily replace the keywords where needed. For instance, every coder who uses MVVM as his favorite UI pattern for XAML based development is used to the INotifyPropertyChanged implementation, and how boring it can be to type these “observable properties”. Obviously a good fix would be something like an “Observable” attribute, but that is not supported in the language or the framework for the moment. Another fix involves “IL weaving”, which is a post-build operation modifying the generate IL code and inserting the “RaisePropertyChanged” instruction. I admire the invention of those who developed that, but it feels a bit too much like magic to me. I prefer more “down to earth” solutions, and thus I use the code snippets. Fixing the issue Normally, you should see the code snippets in Intellisense when you position your cursor in a C# file and type mvvm. All MVVM Light snippets start with these 4 letters. Normal MVVM Light code snippets However, in Windows 8 CP, there is an issue that prevents them to appear correctly, so you won’t see them in the Intellisense windows. To restore that, follow the steps: In Visual Studio 11, open the menu Tools, Code Snippets Manager. In the combobox, select Visual C#. Press Add… Navigate to C:\Program Files (x86)\Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft)\Mvvm Light Toolkit\SnippetsWin8 and select the CSharp folder. Press Select Folder. Press OK to close the Code Snippets Manager. Now if you type mvvm in a C# file, you should see the snippets in your Intellisense window. Cheers Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Virtual Developer Day: Oracle Fusion Development - December 11th - 10:00-14:00 CET

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  Get up to date and learn everything you wanted to know about Oracle ADF & Fusion Development plus live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staff. Oracle Application Development Framework (ADF) is the standards based, strategic framework for Oracle Fusion Applications and Oracle Fusion Middleware. Oracle ADF's integration with the Oracle SOA Suite, Oracle WebCenter and Oracle BI creates a complete productive development platform for your custom applications. Join us at this FREE virtual event and learn the latest in Fusion Development including: Is Oracle ADF development faster and simpler than Forms, Apex or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle ADF development with Eclipse Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development Application Lifecycle Management with ADF Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration Live Q&A chats with Oracle technical staff Developer lead, manager or architect – this event has something for everyone. Don't miss this opportunity. December 11th, 2012 9:00 – 13:00 GMT 10:00 – 14:00 CET 12:00 – 16:00 AST 13:00 – 17:00 MSK 14:30 – 18:30 IST Register online now for this FREE event! Agenda 9:00 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. Opening 9:30 a.m. – 10:00 a.m. Keynote Oracle Fusion Development Track 1 Introduction to Fusion Development Track 2 What's New in Fusion Development Track 3 Fusion Development in the Enterprise Track 4 Hands On Lab - WebCenter Portal and ADF Lab w/ JDeveloper 10:00 a.m. – 11:00 a.m. Is Oracle ADF development faster and simpler than Forms, Apex or .Net? Mobile Application Development with ADF Mobile Oracle WebCenter Portal and ADF Development Lab materials can be found on event wiki here. Q&A about the lab is available throughout the event. 11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m. Rich Web UI made simple – an ADF Faces Overview Oracle Enterprise Pack for Eclipse - ADF Development Building Process Centric Applications with ADF and BPM 12:00 p.m. – 1:00 p.m. Next Generation Controller for JSF Application Lifecycle Management for ADF Oracle Business Intelligence and ADF Integration View Session Abstracts We look forward to welcoming you at this free event!  

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• Using commands with ApplicationBarMenuItem and ApplicationBarButton in Windows Phone 7

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  Unfortunately, in the current version of the Windows Phone 7 Silverlight framework, it is not possible to attach any command on the ApplicationBarMenuItem and ApplicationBarButton controls. These two controls appear in the Application Bar, for example with the following markup: <phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> <shell:ApplicationBar x:Name="MainPageApplicationBar"> <shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems> <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem Text="Add City" /> <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem Text="Add Country" /> </shell:ApplicationBar.MenuItems> <shell:ApplicationBar.Buttons> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/Resources/appbar.feature.video.rest.png" /> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/Resources/appbar.feature.settings.rest.png" /> <shell:ApplicationBarIconButton IconUri="/Resources/appbar.refresh.rest.png" /> </shell:ApplicationBar.Buttons> </shell:ApplicationBar> </phoneNavigation:PhoneApplicationPage.ApplicationBar> This code will create the following UI: Application bar, collapsed Application bar, expanded ApplicationBarItems are not, however, controls. A quick look in MSDN shows the following hierarchy for ApplicationBarMenuItem, for example: Unfortunately, this prevents all the mechanisms that are normally used to attach a Command (for example a RelayCommand) to a control. For example, the attached behavior present in the class ButtonBaseExtension (from the Silverlight 3 version of the MVVM Light toolkit) can only be attached to a DependencyObject. Similarly, Blend behaviors (such as EventToCommand from the toolkit’s Extras library) needs a FrameworkElement to work. Using code behind The alternative is to use code behind. As I said in my MIX10 talk, the MVVM police will not take your family away if you use code behind (this quote was actually suggested to me by Glenn Block); the code behind is there for a reason. In our case, invoking a command in the ViewModel requires the following code: In MainPage.xaml: <shell:ApplicationBarMenuItem Text="My Menu 1" Click="ApplicationBarMenuItemClick"/> In MainPage.xaml.cs private void ApplicationBarMenuItemClick( object sender, System.EventArgs e) { var vm = DataContext as MainViewModel; if (vm != null) { vm.MyCommand.Execute(null); } } Conclusion Resorting to code behind to bridge the gap between the View and the ViewModel is less elegant than using attached behaviors, either through an attached property or through a Blend behavior. It does, however, work fine. I don’t have any information if future changes in the Windows Phone 7 Application Bar API will make this easier. In the mean time, I would recommend using code behind instead.   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Prevent your Silverlight XAP file from caching in your browser.

  - by mbcrump

  If you work with Silverlight daily then you have run into this problem. Your XAP file has been cached in your browser and you have to empty your browser cache to resolve it. If your using Google Chrome then you typically do the following: Go to Options –> Clear Browsing History –> Empty the Cache and finally click Clear Browsing data. As you can see, this is a lot of unnecessary steps. It is even worse when you have a customer that says, “I can’t see the new features you just implemented!” and you realize it’s a cached xap problem.  I have been struggling with a way to prevent my XAP file from caching inside of a browser for a while now and decided to implement the following solution. If the Visual Studio Debugger is attached then add a unique query string to the source param to force the XAP file to be refreshed. If the Visual Studio Debugger is not attached then add the source param as Visual Studio generates it. This is also in case I forget to remove the above code in my production environment. I want the ASP.NET code to be inline with my .ASPX page. (I do not want a separate code behind .cs page or .vb page attached to the .aspx page.) Below is an example of the hosting code generated when you create a new Silverlight project. As a quick refresher, the hard coded param name = “source” specifies the location of your XAP file.  <form id="form1" runat="server" style="height:100%"> <div id="silverlightControlHost"> <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication2.xap"/> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50826.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50826.0" style="text-decoration:none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> </a> </object><iframe id="_sl_historyFrame" style="visibility:hidden;height:0px;width:0px;border:0px"></iframe></div> </form> We are going to use a little bit of inline ASP.NET to generate the param name = source dynamically to prevent the XAP file from caching. Lets look at the completed solution: <form id="form1" runat="server" style="height:100%"> <div id="silverlightControlHost"> <object data="data:application/x-silverlight-2," type="application/x-silverlight-2" width="100%" height="100%"> <% string strSourceFile = @"ClientBin/SilverlightApplication2.xap"; string param; if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached) //Debugger Attached - Refresh the XAP file. param = "<param name=\"source\" value=\"" + strSourceFile + "?" + DateTime.Now.Ticks + "\" />"; else { //Production Mode param = "<param name=\"source\" value=\"" + strSourceFile + "\" />"; } Response.Write(param); %> <param name="onError" value="onSilverlightError" /> <param name="background" value="white" /> <param name="minRuntimeVersion" value="4.0.50826.0" /> <param name="autoUpgrade" value="true" /> <a href="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=149156&v=4.0.50826.0" style="text-decoration:none"> <img src="http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=161376" alt="Get Microsoft Silverlight" style="border-style:none"/> </a> </object><iframe id="_sl_historyFrame" style="visibility:hidden;height:0px;width:0px;border:0px"></iframe></div> </form> We add the location to our XAP file to strSourceFile and if the debugger is attached then it will append DateTime.Now.Ticks to the XAP file source and force the browser to download the .XAP. If you view the page source of your Silverlight Application then you can verify it worked properly by looking at the param name = “source” tag as shown below. <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication2.xap?634299001187160148" /> If the debugger is not attached then it will use the standard source tag as shown below. <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication2.xap"/> At this point you may be asking, How do I prevent my XAP file from being cached on my production app? Well, you have two easy options: 1) I really don’t recommend this approach but you can force the XAP to be refreshed everytime with the following code snippet.  <param name="source" value="ClientBin/SilverlightApplication2.xap?<%=Guid.NewGuid().ToString() %>"/> NOTE: You could also substitute the “Guid.NewGuid().ToString() for anything that create a random field. (I used DateTime.Now.Ticks earlier). 2) Another solution that I like even better involves checking the XAP Creation Date and appending it to the param name = source. This method was described by Lars Holm Jenson. <% string strSourceFile = @"ClientBin/SilverlightApplication2.xap"; string param; if (System.Diagnostics.Debugger.IsAttached) param = "<param name=\"source\" value=\"" + strSourceFile + "\" />"; else { string xappath = HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(@"") + @"\" + strSourceFile; DateTime xapCreationDate = System.IO.File.GetLastWriteTime(xappath); param = "<param name=\"source\" value=\"" + strSourceFile + "?ignore=" + xapCreationDate.ToString() + "\" />"; } Response.Write(param); %> As you can see, this problem has been solved. It will work with all web browsers and stubborn proxy servers that are caching your .XAP. If you enjoyed this article then check out my blog for others like this. You may also want to subscribe to my blog or follow me on Twitter.   Subscribe to my feed

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• Attach to Process in Visual Studio

  - by Daniel Moth

  One option for achieving step 1 in the Live Debugging process is attaching to an already running instance of the process that hosts your code, and this is a good place for me to talk about debug engines. You can attach to a process by selecting the "Debug" menu and then the "Attach To Process…" menu in Visual Studio 11 (Ctrl+Alt+P with my keyboard bindings), and you should see something like this screenshot: I am not going to explain this UI, besides being fairly intuitive, there is good documentation on MSDN for the Attach dialog. I do want to focus on the row of controls that starts with the "Attach to:" label and ends with the "Select..." button. Between them is the readonly textbox that indicates the debug engine that will be used for the selected process if you click the "Attach" button. If you haven't encountered that term before, read on MSDN about debug engines. Notice that the "Type" column shows the Code Type(s) that can be detected for the process. Typically each debug engine knows how to debug a specific code type (the two terms tend to be used interchangeably). If you click on a different process in the list with a different code type, the debug engine used will be different. However note that this is the automatic behavior. If you believe you know best, or more typically you want to choose the debug engine for a process using more than one code type, you can do so by clicking the "Select..." button, which should yield a "Select Code Type" dialog like this one: In this dialog you can switch to the debug engine you want to use by checking the box in front of your desired one, then hit "OK", then hit "Attach" to use it. Notice that the dialog suggests that you can select more than one. Not all combinations work (you'll get an error if you select two incompatible debug engines), but some do. Also notice in the list of debug engines one of the new players in Visual Studio 11, the GPU debug engine - I will be covering that on the C++ AMP team blog (and no, it cannot be combined with any others in this release). Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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