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  • XNA Notes 009

    - by George Clingerman
    This past week the MVPs (myself included) were on Microsoft campus for the MVP summit. So I apologize in advance if you did something cool or heard of something cool happening with XNA and XBLIGs and it’s not in my notes. I did my best to stay on top of things, but honestly this community is fast and furious with what it’s doing and creating. I really can’t keep up and that’s fantastic! But here’s what I *did* notice while I was there on Microsoft Campus (and I did make sure to point out to the XNA team several of these very cool happenings while I had their ears). Time Critical XNA News: The XNA team wants you to know that Dream Build Play registration is now open! http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/28/registration-now-open-for-dream-build-play-2011-challenge.aspx Join the XNA-UK create on March 24, 2011 at the Microsoft Tech Days Conference http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgenesis/archive/2011/02/27/join-the-xna-uk-crew-at-the-microsoft-tech-days-conference-on-24th-march-2011.aspx XNA Team: Shawn Hargreaves shares one of the coolest things that’s happened in the XNA community http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/03/02/xbox-indies-pivot-view.aspx Nick Gravelyn continues his unique marketing/work prioritization strategy as he tries to get to 5,000 Pixel Man users before he makes Pixel Man 2 (and he’s almost there!) http://nickgravelyn.com/pixelman2/ XNA MVPs: A lot of the XNA MVPs were at the Microsoft MVP Summit 2011. Due to NDAs, most things can’t be shared, but I’m sure if you’re curious you could ask them about the general vibe and feeling they got from the team and the future of XNA/XBLIG and more. Catalin Zima and team release the free WP7 game Chickens Can Dream http://twitter.com/CatalinZima/statuses/41174062923390976 http://www.amusedsloth.com/2011/02/chickens-can-dream-is-live/ Charles Humphrey (NemoKrad) posts his March talk source and PowerPoint http://xna-uk.net/blogs/randomchaos/archive/2011/03/04/march-2011-talk-post-processing-framework.aspx XNA Developers: Michael B. McLaughlin posts about ANTS Memory Profile and creates a CheckMemoryAllocationGame sample (extremely useful if you’re looking to see how much memory some operation allocates!) http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/02/28/ants-memory-profiler-7.0-review.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/01/checkmemoryallocationgame-sample.aspx Andy Schatz (2009 IGF winner for Monaco) talking XNA at GDC 2011 http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33313/GDC_2011_Andy_Schatz_Ill_Make_My_Last_Game_When_I_Die.php Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): Clover: A Curious Tale by BinaryTweed is coming as a Deal of the Week during St. Patricks Day http://majornelson.com/archive/2011/03/03/comingsoontothexboxlivemarketplacemarchthird.aspx Ska Studios away at GDC but still very post happy as always http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/02/swamped-picture-pack/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/28/the-february-showcase/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/02/25/good-morning-gato-51-smelling-the-roses/ Just Press Start interviews Matthew Mikuszewski of Darkwind Media about Blocks Indie http://justpressstart.net/?p=516 Gamergeddon Xbox Indie Game Round Up - February 27th http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/27/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-27th/ http://www.gamergeddon.com/category/xbox-360/indie-games/ GameMarx does a round up of all the Xbox Live Indie Game podcasts that are currently available http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/27/xbox-live-indie-game-podcasts.aspx GameMarx episode 11 http://www.gamemarx.com/video/the-show/26/ep-11-february-25-2011.aspx In perhaps what I feel is the most exciting news I’ve heard all week, Michael C. Neel (ViNull of GameMarx fame) re-launch XboxIndies.com! http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/03/01/the-relaunch-of-xboxindies-com.aspx http://xboxindies.com/ Armless Octopus shares a little of what they heard from Luke Schneider of Radiangames during his GDC 2011 talk http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/02/gdc-2011-luke-schneider-offers-insight-into-radiangames-success/ VVGindiecast Episode 1 with guests Derek Strickland(Mr_Deeke), Kris Steele(Kriswd40 from FunInfused Games) and Dave Voyles(From armlessoctopus.com) http://vvgtv.com/2011/02/25/vvgindiecast-xblig-podcast/ If you’re doing Xbox LIVE Indie Game Reviews get in touch with XboxIndies.com to get into their aggregated feed http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/76931/467189.aspx#467189 B.U.T.T.O.N and Flotilla represented XNA very well at the Independent Games Festival (are there any more games entered that were created using XNA? Stand up and be heard!) http://www.igf.com/php-bin/entry2011.php?id=374 Armless Ocotopus interview at GDC 2011 with Soulcaster creator Ian Stocker http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/04/gdc-2011-interview-with-soulcaster-creator-ian-stocker/ MommysBestGames gets a nod in the DarkBasic newsletter where it features the Explosionade Editor (just do a search for Explosionade to get to the interesting bits!) http://www.thegamecreators.com/pages/newsletters/newsletter_issue_98.html You may be hearing the cries of FortressCraft (coming soon to XBLIG) being so wrong for stealing the idea from MineCraft. But did you know the the game MineCraft started from was an XNA game called Infiniminer? XNA is getting it’s fingers into EVERYTHING! http://www.minecraftwiki.net/wiki/Infiniminer XNA Development: TorqueX is NOT dead thanks to the tremendous efforts of the XNA Community working on the CEV (special thanks to @PinoEire for all his hard work on making that happen!) http://www.garagegames.com/community/blogs/view/20878 http://torquecev.com/ Dave Henry has posted XNA 3.x adding platformer start kit to the network game state management on his new site http://twitter.com/#!/mort8088/status/43407715908853760 http://mort8088.com/2011/03/03/xna-3-x-adding-platformer-starter-kit-to-network-game-state-management/ Mark Bamford releases XNAViewer 4.0, great for running XNA games inside of a Windows Form (for building level editors, etc.) http://twitter.com/#!/xzodia04/status/43466830412660736 http://xnaviewer.codeplex.com/ Unit testing an XNA game with Resharper and NUnit http://smnbss.wordpress.com/2011/02/28/planetx-unit-testing-an-xna-game-with-resharper-and-nunit-wp7-xbox-xna/ XNA for Silverlight developers: Part 5 - Input (touch + gestures) http://ht.ly/1bxwUE Mike McLaughlin shares a link he stumbled across for those looking to understand vector and matrix math http://twitter.com/#!/mikebmcl/status/42587074725036032 http://chortle.ccsu.edu/VectorLessons/vectorIndex.html DigitalRune Resources Pooling in XNA (Part 1) http://www.digitalrune.com/Support/Blog/tabid/719/EntryId/84/DigitalRune-Helper-Library-Resource-Pooling-in-XNA-Part-1.aspx JohnK “bobthecbuilder” released a new SunBurn Update that lowers the requirements for Windows Games http://twitter.com/#!/bobthecbuilder/status/43457306578522112 http://www.synapsegaming.com/blogs/johnk/archive/2011/03/03/sunburn-update-windows-redistributable.aspx Quick update on the Indiefreaks Game Framework v0.4 development status http://indiefreaks.com/2011/03/04/quick-update-on-igf-v0-4-development/

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  • SQL SERVER – SHRINKFILE and TRUNCATE Log File in SQL Server 2008

    - by pinaldave
    Note: Please read the complete post before taking any actions. This blog post would discuss SHRINKFILE and TRUNCATE Log File. The script mentioned in the email received from reader contains the following questionable code: “Hi Pinal, If you could remember, I and my manager met you at TechEd in Bangalore. We just upgraded to SQL Server 2008. One of our jobs failed as it was using the following code. The error was: Msg 155, Level 15, State 1, Line 1 ‘TRUNCATE_ONLY’ is not a recognized BACKUP option. The code was: DBCC SHRINKFILE(TestDBLog, 1) BACKUP LOG TestDB WITH TRUNCATE_ONLY DBCC SHRINKFILE(TestDBLog, 1) GO I have modified that code to subsequent code and it works fine. But, are there other suggestions you have at the moment? USE [master] GO ALTER DATABASE [TestDb] SET RECOVERY SIMPLE WITH NO_WAIT DBCC SHRINKFILE(TestDbLog, 1) ALTER DATABASE [TestDb] SET RECOVERY FULL WITH NO_WAIT GO Configuration of our server and system is as follows: [Removed not relevant data]“ An email like this that suddenly pops out in early morning is alarming email. Because I am a dead, busy mind, so I had only one min to reply. I wrote down quickly the following note. (As I said, it was a single-minute email so it is not completely accurate). Here is that quick email shared with all of you. “Hi Mr. DBA [removed the name] Thanks for your email. I suggest you stop this practice. There are many issues included here, but I would list two major issues: 1) From the setting database to simple recovery, shrinking the file and once again setting in full recovery, you are in fact losing your valuable log data and will be not able to restore point in time. Not only that, you will also not able to use subsequent log files. 2) Shrinking file or database adds fragmentation. There are a lot of things you can do. First, start taking proper log backup using following command instead of truncating them and losing them frequently. BACKUP LOG [TestDb] TO  DISK = N'C:\Backup\TestDb.bak' GO Remove the code of SHRINKING the file. If you are taking proper log backups, your log file usually (again usually, special cases are excluded) do not grow very big. There are so many things to add here, but you can call me on my [phone number]. Before you call me, I suggest for accuracy you read Paul Randel‘s two posts here and here and Brent Ozar‘s Post here. Kind Regards, Pinal Dave” I guess this post is very much clear to you. Please leave your comments here. As mentioned, this is a very huge subject; I have just touched a tip of the ice-berg and have tried to point to authentic knowledge. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Backup and Restore, SQL Data Storage, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • SQLAuthority News – Professional Development and Community

    - by pinaldave
    I was recently invited by Hyderabad Techies to deliver a keynote for their 16-day online session called TECH THUNDERS. This event has been running from May 15 and will continue up to the end of the month May 30). There would be a total of 30 sessions. In every evening of those 16 day, there will be either one or two sessions from several noted industry experts. It is the same group which has received the Microsoft Community Impact Award as the Best User Group in India as for developers. I have never talked about Professional Development before. Even if this was my first time to do so, I still accepted the wonderful challenge for the sake of the thousands of audience who were expected to attend this online event. Time is of the essence; I had 15 minutes to deliver the keynote and open the event. The reason why I was nervous was because I had to cover precisely only 15 minutes- no more, no less. If I had an hour, I would have been very confident because I knew I could do a good job for sure. However, I still needed to open the event as great as it can be even if the time was short. I finally created a 6-slide small presentation. In reality, there were only two pages which had the main contents of my keynote, and the remaining slides were just wrappers and decors. You can download the complete slide deck from here. The image used in the slide deck is a curtsy of blog reader Roger Smith who sent it to me. The slide in which I spent a good amount of time is the slide which talks about Professional Development. The content of the slide is as follows: Today, Technology and You Keep your eyes, ears and senses open – Stay Active! You are not the first one who faced the problem – Search Online! Learn the web – Blogs, Forums and Friends! Trust the Technology, Not Print – Test Everything! Community and You! I had a very little time creating the slide deck as I was busy the whole day doing the Advanced SQL Server Training. I had put together these slides during the tea/coffee break of my session. Though it was just a six-bullet point, I had received quite a few emails right after keynote requesting me to talk more about this subject and share the details of my slide deck. I have talked with the event organizer and he will put the keynote online very soon. The subject of the talk is very simple; it revolves around the community. Time has changed, and Internet has come a long way from where it was many years ago. Now that we are all connected, help via the Internet and useful software is easily available around us. In fact, RSS, Newletters and few other technologies have progressed so much that the help through news is now being delivered to our door steps, instead of going out and seeking them. Sometimes, a simple search online solves a lot of problems of many developers. The community is now the first stop for any developer when he or she needs help or just wants to hang around and share some thoughts. I strongly suggest everybody to be a part of the Tech Community. Be it online, offline community or just a local user group, I strongly advise all of you to get involved. I am active in the Community, and I must say I recommend getting drawn into it. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: MVP, Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL User Group, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Community

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  • Some VS 2010 RC Updates (including patches for Intellisense and Web Designer fixes)

    - by ScottGu
    [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] We are continuing to make progress on shipping Visual Studio 2010.  I’d like to say a big thank you to everyone who has downloaded and tried out the VS 2010 Release Candidate, and especially to those who have sent us feedback or reported issues with it. This data has been invaluable in helping us find and fix remaining bugs before we ship the final release. Last month I blogged about a patch we released for the VS 2010 RC that fixed a bad intellisense crash issue.  This past week we released two additional patches that you can download and apply to the VS 2010 RC to immediately fix two other common issues we’ve seen people run into: Patch that fixes crashes with Tooltip invocation and when hovering over identifiers The Visual Studio team recently released a second patch that fixes some crashes we’ve seen when tooltips are displayed – most commonly when hovering over an identifier to view a QuickInfo tooltip. You can learn more about this issue from this blog post, and download and apply the patch here. Patch that fixes issues with the Web Forms designer not correctly adding controls to the auto-generated designer files The Visual Web Developer team recently released a patch that fixes issues where web controls are not correctly added to the .designer.cs file associated with the .aspx file – which means they can’t be programmed against in the code-behind file.  This issue is most commonly described as “controls are not being recognized in the code-behind” or “editing existing .aspx files regenerates the .aspx.designer.(vb or cs) file and controls are now missing” or “I can’t embed controls within the Ajax Control Toolkit TabContainer or the <asp:createuserwizard> control”. You can learn more about the issue here, and download the patch that fixes it here. Common Cause of Intellisense and IDE sluggishness on Windows XP, Vista, Win Server 2003/2008 systems Over the last few months we’ve occasionally seen reports of people seeing tremendous slowness when typing and using intellisense within VS 2010 despite running on decent machines.  It took us awhile to track down the cause – but we have found that the common culprit seems to be that these machines don’t have the latest versions of the UIA (Windows Automation) component installed. UIA 3 ships with Windows 7, and is a recommended Windows Update patch on XP and Vista (which is why we didn’t see the problem in our tests – since our machines are patched with all recommended updates).  Many systems (especially on XP) don’t automatically install recommended updates, though, and are running with older versions of UIA. This can cause significant performance slow-downs within the VS 2010 editor when large lists are displayed (for example: with intellisense). If you are running on Windows XP, Vista, or Windows Server 2003 or 2008 and are seeing any performance issues with the editor or IDE, please install the free UIA 3 update that can be downloaded from this page.  If you scroll down the page you’ll find direct links to versions for each OS. Note that we are making improvements to the final release of VS 2010 so that we don’t have big perf issues when UIA 3 isn’t installed – and we are also adding a message within the IDE that will warn you if you don’t have UIA 3 installed and accessibility is activated. Improved Text Rendering with WPF 4 and VS 2010 We recently made some nice changes to WPF 4 which improve the text clarity and text crispness over what was in the VS 2010/.NET 4 Release Candidate.  In particular these changes improve scenarios where you have a dark background with light text. You can learn more about these improvements in this WPF Team blog post.  These changes will be in the final release of VS 2010 and .NET 4. Hope this helps, Scott

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  • Oracle Internet Directory 11gR1 11.1.1.6 Certified with E-Business Suite

    - by Elke Phelps (Oracle Development)
    Oracle E-Business Suite comes with native user authentication and management capabilities out-of-the-box. If you need more-advanced features, it's also possible to integrate it with Oracle Internet Directory and Oracle Single Sign-On or Oracle Access Manager, which allows you to link the E-Business Suite with third-party tools like Microsoft Active Directory, Windows Kerberos, and CA Netegrity SiteMinder.  For details about third-party integration architectures, see either of these article for EBS 11i and 12: In-Depth: Using Third-Party Identity Managers with E-Business Suite Release 12 In-Depth: Using Third-Party Identity Managers with the E-Business Suite Release 11i Oracle Internet Directory 11.1.1.6 is now certified with Oracle E-Business Suite Release 11i, 12.0 and 12.1.  OID 11.1.1.6 is part of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 Version 11.1.1.6.0, also known as FMW 11g Patchset 5.  Certified E-Business Suite releases are: EBS Release 11i 11.5.10.2 + ATG PH.H RUP 7 and higher EBS Release 12.0.6 and higher EBS Release 12.1.1 and higher Supported Configurations Oracle Internet Directory 11.1.1.5.0 can be integrated with two single sign-on solutions for EBS environments: Oracle Internet Directory and Directory Integration Platform from Fusion Middleware 11gR1 Patchset 5 (11.1.1.6.0) with Oracle Access Manager 10g (10.1.4.3) with an existing Oracle E-Business Suite system (Release 11i or 12.1.x). Oracle Internet Directory and Directory Integration Platform from Fusion Middleware 11gR1 Patchset 5 (11.1.1.6.0) with Oracle Access Manager 11gR1 (11.1.1.5) with an existing Oracle E-Business Suite system (Release 12.0.6 or higher or 12.1.x). Oracle Internet Directory (OID) and Directory Integration Platform (DIP) from Oracle Fusion Middleware 11gR1 Patchset 5  (11.1.1.6.0) with Oracle Single Sign-On Server and Oracle Delegated Administration Services Release 10g (10.1.4.3.0) with an existing Oracle E-Business Suite system (Release 11i, 12.0.6 or 12.1.x) Oracle Access Manager strongly recommended Oracle has two single sign-on solutions: Oracle Single Sign-On Server (OSSO) and Oracle Access Manager (OAM). Oracle strongly recommends that all new single sign-on implementations use Oracle Access Manager. Oracle Access Manager is the preferred solution going forward, and forms the basis of Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g. OSSO is no longer being actively developed and will not be ported to Oracle WebLogic Server. Platform certifications Oracle Internet Directory is certified to run on any operating system for which Oracle WebLogic Server 11g is certified. Refer to the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g System Requirements for more details.For information on operating systems supported by Oracle Internet Directory and its components, refer to the Oracle Identity and Access Management 11gR1 certification matrix.Integration with Oracle Internet Directory involves components spanning several different suites of Oracle products. There are no restrictions on which platform any particular component may be installed so long as the platform is supported for that component.References Overview of Single Sign-On Integration Options for Oracle E-Business Suite Note 1388152.1 Using the Latest Oracle Internet Directory 11gR1 Patchset with Oracle Single Sign-on and Oracle E-Business Suite (Note 876539.1) Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Access Manager 11g using Oracle E-Business Suite AccessGate (Note 1309013.1) Integrating Oracle E-Business Suite with Oracle Access Manager 10g using Oracle E-Business Suite AccessGate (Note 975182.1) Migrating Oracle Single Sign-On 10gR3 to Oracle Access Manager 11g with Oracle E-Business Suite (Note 1304550.1) Oracle Fusion Middleware Download, Installation & Configuration Readme Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) (Part Number E12002-09) Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Guide for Oracle Identity Management 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) (Part Number E10129-09) Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Planning Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) (Part Number E10125-06) Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide 11g Release 1 (11.1.1) (Part Number E16793-12) Related Articles Understanding Options for Integrating Oracle Access Manager with E-Business Suite In-Depth: Using Third-Party Identity Managers with E-Business Suite Release 12 In-Depth: Using Third-Party Identity Managers with the E-Business Suite Release 11i Oracle Access Manager 10gR3 Certified with E-Business Suite Portal 11.1.1.4 Certified with E-Business Suite Discoverer 11.1.1.4 Certified with E-Business Suite

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  • XNA Notes 006

    - by George Clingerman
    If you used to think the XNA community was small and inactive, hopefully these XNA Notes are opening your eyes. And I honestly feel like I’m still only catching the tail end of everything that’s going on. It’s a large and active community and you can be so mired down in one part of it you miss all sorts of cool stuff another part is doing. XNA is many things to a lot of people and that makes for a lot of really awesome things going on. So here’s what I saw going on this last week! Time Critical XNA New: XNA Team - Peer Review now closes for XNA 3.1 games http://blogs.msdn.com/b/xna/archive/2011/02/08/peer-review-pipeline-closed-for-new-xna-gs-3-1-games-or-updates-on-app-hub.aspx http://twitter.com/XNACommunity/statuses/34649816529256448 The XNA Team posts about a meet up with Microsoft for Creator’s going to be at GDC, March 3rd at the Lobby Bar http://on.fb.me/fZungJ XNA Team: @mklucher is busying playing the the bubblegum on WP7 made by a member of the XNA team (although reportedly made in Silverlight? Crazy! ;) ) http://twitter.com/mklucher/statuses/34645662737895426 http://bubblegum.me Shawn Hargreaves posts multiple posts (is this a sign that something new is coming from the XNA team? Usually when Shawn has time to post, something has just wrapped up…) Random Shuffle http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/09/random-shuffle.aspx Doing the right thing: resume, rewind or skip ahead http://blogs.msdn.com/b/shawnhar/archive/2011/02/10/doing-the-right-thing-resume-rewind-or-skip-ahead.aspx XNA Developers: Andrew Russel was on .NET Rocks recently talking with Carl and Richard about developing games for Xbox, iPhone and Android http://www.dotnetrocks.com/default.aspx?ShowNum=635 Eric W. releases the Fishing Girl source code into the wild http://ericw.ca/blog/posts/fishing-girl-now-open-source/ http://forums.create.msdn.com/forums/p/74642/454512.aspx#454512 BinaryTweedDeej reminds that XNA community that Indie City wants you involved http://twitter.com/BinaryTweedDeej/statuses/34596114028044288 http://www.indiecity.com Mike McLaughlin (@mikebmcl) releases his first two XNA articles on the TechNet wiki http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/xna-framework-overview.aspx http://social.technet.microsoft.com/wiki/contents/articles/content-pipeline-overview.aspx John Watte plays around with the Content Pipeline and Music Visualization exploring just what can be done. http://www.enchantedage.com/xna-content-pipeline-fft-song-analysis http://www.enchantedage.com/fft-in-xna-content-pipeline-for-beat-detection-for-the-win Simon Stevens writes up his talk on Vector Collision Physics http://www.simonpstevens.com/News/VectorCollisionPhysics @domipheus puts together an XNA Task Manager http://www.flickr.com/photos/domipheus/5405603197/ MadNinjaSkillz releases his fork of Nick's Easy Storage component on CodePlex http://twitter.com/MadNinjaSkillz/statuses/34739039068229634 http://ezstorage.codeplex.com @ActiveNick was interviewed by Rob Cameron and discusses Windows Phone 7, Bing Maps and XNA http://twitter.com/ActiveNick/statuses/35348548526546944 http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/cc537546 Radiangames (Luke Schneider) posts about converting his games from XNA to Unity http://radiangames.com/?p=592 UberMonkey (@ElementCy) posts about a new project in the works, CubeTest a Minecraft style terrain http://www.ubergamermonkey.com/personal-projects/new-project-in-the-works/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Ubergamermonkey+%28UberGamerMonkey%29 Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): VideoGamer Rob review Bonded Realities http://videogamerrob.wordpress.com/2011/02/05/xblig-review-bonded-realities/ XBLIG Round Up on Gamergeddon http://www.gamergeddon.com/2011/02/06/xbox-indie-game-round-up-february-6th/ Are gamers still rating Indie Games after the Xbox Dashboard update? http://www.gamemarx.com/news/2011/02/06/are-gamers-still-rating-indie-games-after-the-xbox-dashboard-update.aspx Joystiq - Xbox Live Indie Gems: Corrupted http://www.joystiq.com/2011/02/04/xbox-live-indie-gems-corrupted/ Raymond Matthews of DarkStarMatryx reviews (Almost) Total Mayhem and Aban Hawkins & the 1000 Spikes http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=225 http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=229 8 Bit Horse reviews Aban Hawkins & the 1000 spikes http://8bithorse.blogspot.com/2011/01/aban-hawkins-1000-spikes-xbl-indie.html 2010 wrap-up for FunInfused Games http://www.krissteele.net/blogdetails.aspx?id=245 NeoGaf roundup of January's XBLIGs http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=420528 Armless Ocotopus interviews Michael Ventnor creator of Bonded Realities http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/02/07/interview-michael-ventnor-of-red-crest-studios/ @recharge_media posts about the new city music for Woodvale in Sin Rising http://rechargemedia.com/2011/02/08/new-city-theme-woodvale/ @DrMisty posts some footage of YoYoYo in action http://www.mstargames.co.uk/mistryblogmain/54-yoyoyoblogs/184-video-update.html Xona Games - Decimation X3 on Reviews on the Run http://video.citytv.com/video/detail/782443063001.000000/reviews-on-the-run--february-8-2011/g4/ @benkane gives an early peek at his action RPG coming to XBLIG http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bDF_PrvtwU8 Rock, Paper Shotgun talks to Zeboyd games about bringing Cthulhu Saves the World to PC http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2011/02/11/summoning-cthulhu-natter-with-zeboyd/ Xbox LIVE Indieverse interviews the creator of Bonded Realities http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/2011/02/xbl-indieverse-interview-red-crest.html XNA Game Development: Dream-In-Code posts about an upcoming XNA Challenge/Coding contest http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/blog/1385/entry-3192-xna-challengecontest/ Sgt.Conker covers Fishing Girl and IndieFreaks Game Framework release http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/fishing-girl-did-not-sell-a-single-copy/ http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/02/indiefreaks-game-framework-v0-2-0-0/ @slyprid releases Transmute v0.40a with lots of new features and fixes http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/34125423067533312 http://twitter.com/slyprid/statuses/35326876243337216 http://forgottenstarstudios.com/ Jeff Brown writes an XNA 4.0 tutorial on Saving/Loading on the Xbox 360 http://www.robotfootgames.com/xna-tutorials/92-xna-tutorial-savingloading-on-xbox-360-40 XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 3- Animation http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-3-Animation-transforms.aspx?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+xna-connection-twitter-specific-stream+%28XNA+Connection%27s+Twitter+specific+stream%29 The news from Nokia is definitely something XNA developers will want to keep their eye on http://blogs.forum.nokia.com/blog/nokia-developer-news/2011/02/11/letter-to-developers?sf1066337=1

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  • cannot make ubuntu 64-bit v12.04 install work

    - by honestann
    I decided it was time to update my ubuntu (single boot) computer from 64-bit v10.04 to 64-bit v12.04. Unfortunately, for some reason (or reasons) I just can't make it work. Note that I am attempting a fresh install of 64-bit v12.04 onto a new 3TB hard disk, not an upgrade of the 1TB hard disk that contains my working 64-bit v10.04 installation. To perform the attempted install of v12.04 I unplug the SATA cable from the 1TB drive and plug it into the 3TB drive (to avoid risking damage to my working v10.04 installation). I downloaded the ubuntu 64-bit v12.04 install DVD ISO file (~1.6 GB) from the ubuntu releases webpage and burned it onto a DVD. I have downloaded the DVD ISO file 3 times and burned 3 of these installation DVDs (twice with v10.04 and once with my winxp64 system), but none of them work. I run the "check disk" on the DVDs at the beginning of the installation process to assure the DVD is valid. When installation completes and the system boots the 3TB drive, it reports "unknown filesystem". After installation on the 250GB drives, the system boots up fine. During every install I plug the same SATA cable (sda) into only one disk drive (the 3TB or one of the 250GB drives) and leave the other disk drives unconnected (for simplicity). It is my understanding that 64-bit ubuntu (and 64-bit linux in general) has no problem with 3TB disk drives. In the BIOS I have tried having EFI set to "enabled" and "auto" with no apparent difference (no success). I never bothered setting the BIOS to "non-EFI". I have tried partitioning the drive in a few ways to see if that makes a difference, but so far it has not mattered. Typically I manually create partitions something like this: 8GB /boot ext4 8GB swap 3TB / ext4 But I've also tried the following, just in case it matters: 8GB boot efi 8GB swap 8GB /boot ext4 3TB / ext4 Note: In the partition dialog I specify bootup on the same drive I am partitioning and installing ubuntu v12.04 onto. It is a VERY DANGEROUS FACT that the default for this always comes up with the wrong drive (some other drive, generally the external drive). Unless I'm stupid or misunderstanding something, this is very wrong and very dangerous default behavior. Note: If I connect the SATA cable to the 1TB drive that has been my ubuntu 64-bit v10.04 system drive for the past 2 years, it boots up and runs fine. I guess there must be a log file somewhere, and maybe it gives some hints as to what the problem is. I should be able to boot off the 1TB drive with the 3TB drive connected as a secondary (non-boot) drive and get the log file, assuming there is one and someone tells me the name (and where to find it if the name is very generic). After installation on the 3TB drive completes and the system reboots, the following prints out on a black screen: Loading Operating System ... Boot from CD/DVD : Boot from CD/DVD : error: unknown filesystem grub rescue> Note: I have two DVD burners in the system, hence the duplicate line above. Note: I install and boot 64-bit ubuntu v12.04 on both of my 250GB in this same system, but still cannot make the 3TB drive boot. Sigh. Any ideas? ========== motherboard == gigabyte 990FXA-UD7 CPU == AMD FX-8150 8-core bulldozer @ 3.6 GHz RAM == 8GB of DDR3 in 2 sticks (matched pair) HDD == seagate 3TB SATA3 @ 7200 rpm (new install 64-bit v12.04 FAILS) HDD == seagate 1TB SATA3 @ 7200 rpm (64-bit v10.04 WORKS for two years) HDD == seagate 250GB SATA2 @ 7200 rpm (new install 64-bit v12.04 WORKS) HDD == seagate 250GB SATA2 @ 7200 rpm (new install 64-bit v12.04 WORKS) GPU == nvidia GTX-285 ??? == no overclocking or other funky business USB == external seagate 2TB HDD for making backups DVD == one bluray burner (SATA) DVD == one DVD burner (SATA) 64-bit ubuntu v10.04 has booted and run fine on the seagate 1TB drive for 2 years.

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  • GPGPU

    WhatGPU obviously stands for Graphics Processing Unit (the silicon powering the display you are using to read this blog post). The extra GP in front of that stands for General Purpose computing.So, altogether GPGPU refers to computing we can perform on GPU for purposes beyond just drawing on the screen. In effect, we can use a GPGPU a bit like we already use a CPU: to perform some calculation (that doesn’t have to have any visual element to it). The attraction is that a GPGPU can be orders of magnitude faster than a CPU.WhyWhen I was at the SuperComputing conference in Portland last November, GPGPUs were all the rage. A quick online search reveals many articles introducing the GPGPU topic. I'll just share 3 here: pcper (ignoring all pages except the first, it is a good consumer perspective), gizmodo (nice take using mostly layman terms) and vizworld (answering the question on "what's the big deal").The GPGPU programming paradigm (from a high level) is simple: in your CPU program you define functions (aka kernels) that take some input, can perform the costly operation and return the output. The kernels are the things that execute on the GPGPU leveraging its power (and hence execute faster than what they could on the CPU) while the host CPU program waits for the results or asynchronously performs other tasks.However, GPGPUs have different characteristics to CPUs which means they are suitable only for certain classes of problem (i.e. data parallel algorithms) and not for others (e.g. algorithms with branching or recursion or other complex flow control). You also pay a high cost for transferring the input data from the CPU to the GPU (and vice versa the results back to the CPU), so the computation itself has to be long enough to justify the overhead transfer costs. If your problem space fits the criteria then you probably want to check out this technology.HowSo where can you get a graphics card to start playing with all this? At the time of writing, the two main vendors ATI (owned by AMD) and NVIDIA are the obvious players in this industry. You can read about GPGPU on this AMD page and also on this NVIDIA page. NVIDIA's website also has a free chapter on the topic from the "GPU Gems" book: A Toolkit for Computation on GPUs.If you followed the links above, then you've already come across some of the choices of programming models that are available today. Essentially, AMD is offering their ATI Stream technology accessible via a language they call Brook+; NVIDIA offers their CUDA platform which is accessible from CUDA C. Choosing either of those locks you into the GPU vendor and hence your code cannot run on systems with cards from the other vendor (e.g. imagine if your CPU code would run on Intel chips but not AMD chips). Having said that, both vendors plan to support a new emerging standard called OpenCL, which theoretically means your kernels can execute on any GPU that supports it. To learn more about all of these there is a website: gpgpu.org. The caveat about that site is that (currently) it completely ignores the Microsoft approach, which I touch on next.On Windows, there is already a cross-GPU-vendor way of programming GPUs and that is the DirectX API. Specifically, on Windows Vista and Windows 7, the DirectX 11 API offers a dedicated subset of the API for GPGPU programming: DirectCompute. You use this API on the CPU side, to set up and execute the kernels that run on the GPU. The kernels are written in a language called HLSL (High Level Shader Language). You can use DirectCompute with HLSL to write a "compute shader", which is the term DirectX uses for what I've been referring to in this post as a "kernel". For a comprehensive collection of links about this (including tutorials, videos and samples) please see my blog post: DirectCompute.Note that there are many efforts to build even higher level languages on top of DirectX that aim to expose GPGPU programming to a wider audience by making it as easy as today's mainstream programming models. I'll mention here just two of those efforts: Accelerator from MSR and Brahma by Ananth. Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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  • MySQL Syslog Audit Plugin

    - by jonathonc
    This post shows the construction process of the Syslog Audit plugin that was presented at MySQL Connect 2012. It is based on an environment that has the appropriate development tools enabled including gcc,g++ and cmake. It also assumes you have downloaded the MySQL source code (5.5.16 or higher) and have compiled and installed the system into the /usr/local/mysql directory ready for use.  The information provided below is designed to show the different components that make up a plugin, and specifically an audit type plugin, and how it comes together to be used within the MySQL service. The MySQL Reference Manual contains information regarding the plugin API and how it can be used, so please refer there for more detailed information. The code in this post is designed to give the simplest information necessary, so handling every return code, managing race conditions etc is not part of this example code. Let's start by looking at the most basic implementation of our plugin code as seen below: /*    Copyright (c) 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved.    Author:  Jonathon Coombes    Licence: GPL    Description: An auditing plugin that logs to syslog and                 can adjust the loglevel via the system variables. */ #include <stdio.h> #include <string.h> #include <mysql/plugin_audit.h> #include <syslog.h> There is a commented header detailing copyright/licencing and meta-data information and then the include headers. The two important include statements for our plugin are the syslog.h plugin, which gives us the structures for syslog, and the plugin_audit.h include which has details regarding the audit specific plugin api. Note that we do not need to include the general plugin header plugin.h, as this is done within the plugin_audit.h file already. To implement our plugin within the current implementation we need to add it into our source code and compile. > cd /usr/local/src/mysql-5.5.28/plugin > mkdir audit_syslog > cd audit_syslog A simple CMakeLists.txt file is created to manage the plugin compilation: MYSQL_ADD_PLUGIN(audit_syslog audit_syslog.cc MODULE_ONLY) Run the cmake  command at the top level of the source and then you can compile the plugin using the 'make' command. This results in a compiled audit_syslog.so library, but currently it is not much use to MySQL as there is no level of api defined to communicate with the MySQL service. Now we need to define the general plugin structure that enables MySQL to recognise the library as a plugin and be able to install/uninstall it and have it show up in the system. The structure is defined in the plugin.h file in the MySQL source code.  /*   Plugin library descriptor */ mysql_declare_plugin(audit_syslog) {   MYSQL_AUDIT_PLUGIN,           /* plugin type                    */   &audit_syslog_descriptor,     /* descriptor handle               */   "audit_syslog",               /* plugin name                     */   "Author Name",                /* author                          */   "Simple Syslog Audit",        /* description                     */   PLUGIN_LICENSE_GPL,           /* licence                         */   audit_syslog_init,            /* init function     */   audit_syslog_deinit,          /* deinit function */   0x0001,                       /* plugin version                  */   NULL,                         /* status variables        */   NULL,                         /* system variables                */   NULL,                         /* no reserves                     */   0,                            /* no flags                        */ } mysql_declare_plugin_end; The general plugin descriptor above is standard for all plugin types in MySQL. The plugin type is defined along with the init/deinit functions and interface methods into the system for sharing information, and various other metadata information. The descriptors have an internally recognised version number so that plugins can be matched against the api on the running server. The other details are usually related to the type-specific methods and structures to implement the plugin. Each plugin has a type-specific descriptor as well which details how the plugin is implemented for the specific purpose of that plugin type. /*   Plugin type-specific descriptor */ static struct st_mysql_audit audit_syslog_descriptor= {   MYSQL_AUDIT_INTERFACE_VERSION,                        /* interface version    */   NULL,                                                 /* release_thd function */   audit_syslog_notify,                                  /* notify function      */   { (unsigned long) MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASSMASK |                     MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASSMASK }  /* class mask           */ }; In this particular case, the release_thd function has not been defined as it is not required. The important method for auditing is the notify function which is activated when an event occurs on the system. The notify function is designed to activate on an event and the implementation will determine how it is handled. For the audit_syslog plugin, the use of the syslog feature sends all events to the syslog for recording. The class mask allows us to determine what type of events are being seen by the notify function. There are currently two major types of event: 1. General Events: This includes general logging, errors, status and result type events. This is the main one for tracking the queries and operations on the database. 2. Connection Events: This group is based around user logins. It monitors connections and disconnections, but also if somebody changes user while connected. With most audit plugins, the principle behind the plugin is to track changes to the system over time and counters can be an important part of this process. The next step is to define and initialise the counters that are used to track the events in the service. There are 3 counters defined in total for our plugin - the # of general events, the # of connection events and the total number of events.  static volatile int total_number_of_calls; /* Count MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASS event instances */ static volatile int number_of_calls_general; /* Count MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASS event instances */ static volatile int number_of_calls_connection; The init and deinit functions for the plugin are there to be called when the plugin is activated and when it is terminated. These offer the best option to initialise the counters for our plugin: /*  Initialize the plugin at server start or plugin installation. */ static int audit_syslog_init(void *arg __attribute__((unused))) {     openlog("mysql_audit:",LOG_PID|LOG_PERROR|LOG_CONS,LOG_USER);     total_number_of_calls= 0;     number_of_calls_general= 0;     number_of_calls_connection= 0;     return(0); } The init function does a call to openlog to initialise the syslog functionality. The parameters are the service to log under ("mysql_audit" in this case), the syslog flags and the facility for the logging. Then each of the counters are initialised to zero and a success is returned. If the init function is not defined, it will return success by default. /*  Terminate the plugin at server shutdown or plugin deinstallation. */ static int audit_syslog_deinit(void *arg __attribute__((unused))) {     closelog();     return(0); } The deinit function will simply close our syslog connection and return success. Note that the syslog functionality is part of the glibc libraries and does not require any external factors.  The function names are what we define in the general plugin structure, so these have to match otherwise there will be errors. The next step is to implement the event notifier function that was defined in the type specific descriptor (audit_syslog_descriptor) which is audit_syslog_notify. /* Event notifier function */ static void audit_syslog_notify(MYSQL_THD thd __attribute__((unused)), unsigned int event_class, const void *event) { total_number_of_calls++; if (event_class == MYSQL_AUDIT_GENERAL_CLASS) { const struct mysql_event_general *event_general= (const struct mysql_event_general *) event; number_of_calls_general++; syslog(audit_loglevel,"%lu: User: %s Command: %s Query: %s\n", event_general->general_thread_id, event_general->general_user, event_general->general_command, event_general->general_query ); } else if (event_class == MYSQL_AUDIT_CONNECTION_CLASS) { const struct mysql_event_connection *event_connection= (const struct mysql_event_connection *) event; number_of_calls_connection++; syslog(audit_loglevel,"%lu: User: %s@%s[%s] Event: %d Status: %d\n", event_connection->thread_id, event_connection->user, event_connection->host, event_connection->ip, event_connection->event_subclass, event_connection->status ); } }   In the case of an event, the notifier function is called. The first step is to increment the total number of events that have occurred in our database.The event argument is then cast into the appropriate event structure depending on the class type, of general event or connection event. The event type counters are incremented and details are sent via the syslog() function out to the system log. There are going to be different line formats and information returned since the general events have different data compared to the connection events, even though some of the details overlap, for example, user, thread id, host etc. On compiling the code now, there should be no errors and the resulting audit_syslog.so can be loaded into the server and ready to use. Log into the server and type: mysql> INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so'; This will install the plugin and will start updating the syslog immediately. Note that the audit plugin attaches to the immediate thread and cannot be uninstalled while that thread is active. This means that you cannot run the UNISTALL command until you log into a different connection (thread) on the server. Once the plugin is loaded, the system log will show output such as the following: Oct  8 15:33:21 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: (null)  Query: INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so' Oct  8 15:33:21 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: Query  Query: INSTALL PLUGIN audit_syslog SONAME 'audit_syslog.so' Oct  8 15:33:40 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: (null)  Query: show tables Oct  8 15:33:40 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: Query  Query: show tables Oct  8 15:33:43 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: (null)  Query: select * from t1 Oct  8 15:33:43 machine mysql_audit:[8337]: 87: User: root[root] @ localhost []  Command: Query  Query: select * from t1 It appears that two of each event is being shown, but in actuality, these are two separate event types - the result event and the status event. This could be refined further by changing the audit_syslog_notify function to handle the different event sub-types in a different manner.  So far, it seems that the logging is working with events showing up in the syslog output. The issue now is that the counters created earlier to track the number of events by type are not accessible when the plugin is being run. Instead there needs to be a way to expose the plugin specific information to the service and vice versa. This could be done via the information_schema plugin api, but for something as simple as counters, the obvious choice is the system status variables. This is done using the standard structure and the declaration: /*  Plugin status variables for SHOW STATUS */ static struct st_mysql_show_var audit_syslog_status[]= {   { "Audit_syslog_total_calls",     (char *) &total_number_of_calls,     SHOW_INT },   { "Audit_syslog_general_events",     (char *) &number_of_calls_general,     SHOW_INT },   { "Audit_syslog_connection_events",     (char *) &number_of_calls_connection,     SHOW_INT },   { 0, 0, SHOW_INT } };   The structure is simply the name that will be displaying in the mysql service, the address of the associated variables, and the data type being used for the counter. It is finished with a blank structure to show that there are no more variables. Remember that status variables may have the same name for variables from other plugin, so it is considered appropriate to add the plugin name at the start of the status variable name to avoid confusion. Looking at the status variables in the mysql client shows something like the following: mysql> show global status like "audit%"; +--------------------------------+-------+ | Variable_name                  | Value | +--------------------------------+-------+ | Audit_syslog_connection_events | 1     | | Audit_syslog_general_events    | 2     | | Audit_syslog_total_calls       | 3     | +--------------------------------+-------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) The final connectivity piece for the plugin is to allow the interactive change of the logging level between the plugin and the system. This requires the ability to send changes via the mysql service through to the plugin. This is done using the system variables interface and defining a single variable to keep track of the active logging level for the facility. /* Plugin system variables for SHOW VARIABLES */ static MYSQL_SYSVAR_STR(loglevel, audit_loglevel,                         PLUGIN_VAR_RQCMDARG,                         "User can specify the log level for auditing",                         audit_loglevel_check, audit_loglevel_update, "LOG_NOTICE"); static struct st_mysql_sys_var* audit_syslog_sysvars[] = {     MYSQL_SYSVAR(loglevel),     NULL }; So now the system variable 'loglevel' is defined for the plugin and associated to the global variable 'audit_loglevel'. The check or validation function is defined to make sure that no garbage values are attempted in the update of the variable. The update function is used to save the new value to the variable. Note that the audit_syslog_sysvars structure is defined in the general plugin descriptor to associate the link between the plugin and the system and how much they interact. Next comes the implementation of the validation function and the update function for the system variable. It is worth noting that if you have a simple numeric such as integers for the variable types, the validate function is often not required as MySQL will handle the automatic check and validation of simple types. /* longest valid value */ #define MAX_LOGLEVEL_SIZE 100 /* hold the valid values */ static const char *possible_modes[]= { "LOG_ERROR", "LOG_WARNING", "LOG_NOTICE", NULL };  static int audit_loglevel_check(     THD*                        thd,    /*!< in: thread handle */     struct st_mysql_sys_var*    var,    /*!< in: pointer to system                                         variable */     void*                       save,   /*!< out: immediate result                                         for update function */     struct st_mysql_value*      value)  /*!< in: incoming string */ {     char buff[MAX_LOGLEVEL_SIZE];     const char *str;     const char **found;     int length;     length= sizeof(buff);     if (!(str= value->val_str(value, buff, &length)))         return 1;     /*         We need to return a pointer to a locally allocated value in "save".         Here we pick to search for the supplied value in an global array of         constant strings and return a pointer to one of them.         The other possiblity is to use the thd_alloc() function to allocate         a thread local buffer instead of the global constants.     */     for (found= possible_modes; *found; found++)     {         if (!strcmp(*found, str))         {             *(const char**)save= *found;             return 0;         }     }     return 1; } The validation function is simply to take the value being passed in via the SET GLOBAL VARIABLE command and check if it is one of the pre-defined values allowed  in our possible_values array. If it is found to be valid, then the value is assigned to the save variable ready for passing through to the update function. static void audit_loglevel_update(     THD*                        thd,        /*!< in: thread handle */     struct st_mysql_sys_var*    var,        /*!< in: system variable                                             being altered */     void*                       var_ptr,    /*!< out: pointer to                                             dynamic variable */     const void*                 save)       /*!< in: pointer to                                             temporary storage */ {     /* assign the new value so that the server can read it */     *(char **) var_ptr= *(char **) save;     /* assign the new value to the internal variable */     audit_loglevel= *(char **) save; } Since all the validation has been done already, the update function is quite simple for this plugin. The first part is to update the system variable pointer so that the server can read the value. The second part is to update our own global plugin variable for tracking the value. Notice that the save variable is passed in as a void type to allow handling of various data types, so it must be cast to the appropriate data type when assigning it to the variables. Looking at how the latest changes affect the usage of the plugin and the interaction within the server shows: mysql> show global variables like "audit%"; +-----------------------+------------+ | Variable_name         | Value      | +-----------------------+------------+ | audit_syslog_loglevel | LOG_NOTICE | +-----------------------+------------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec) mysql> set global audit_syslog_loglevel="LOG_ERROR"; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec) mysql> show global status like "audit%"; +--------------------------------+-------+ | Variable_name                  | Value | +--------------------------------+-------+ | Audit_syslog_connection_events | 1     | | Audit_syslog_general_events    | 11    | | Audit_syslog_total_calls       | 12    | +--------------------------------+-------+ 3 rows in set (0.00 sec) mysql> show global variables like "audit%"; +-----------------------+-----------+ | Variable_name         | Value     | +-----------------------+-----------+ | audit_syslog_loglevel | LOG_ERROR | +-----------------------+-----------+ 1 row in set (0.00 sec)   So now we have a plugin that will audit the events on the system and log the details to the system log. It allows for interaction to see the number of different events within the server details and provides a mechanism to change the logging level interactively via the standard system methods of the SET command. A more complex auditing plugin may have more detailed code, but each of the above areas is what will be involved and simply expanded on to add more functionality. With the above skeleton code, it is now possible to create your own audit plugins to implement your own auditing requirements. If, however, you are not of the coding persuasion, then you could always consider the option of the MySQL Enterprise Audit plugin that is available to purchase.

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  • SQL SERVER – SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD – Wait Type – Day 8 of 28

    - by pinaldave
    This is a very interesting wait type and quite often seen as one of the top wait types. Let us discuss this today. From Book On-Line: Occurs when a task voluntarily yields the scheduler for other tasks to execute. During this wait the task is waiting for its quantum to be renewed. SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD Explanation: SQL Server has multiple threads, and the basic working methodology for SQL Server is that SQL Server does not let any “runnable” thread to starve. Now let us assume SQL Server OS is very busy running threads on all the scheduler. There are always new threads coming up which are ready to run (in other words, runnable). Thread management of the SQL Server is decided by SQL Server and not the operating system. SQL Server runs on non-preemptive mode most of the time, meaning the threads are co-operative and can let other threads to run from time to time by yielding itself. When any thread yields itself for another thread, it creates this wait. If there are more threads, it clearly indicates that the CPU is under pressure. You can fun the following DMV to see how many runnable task counts there are in your system. SELECT scheduler_id, current_tasks_count, runnable_tasks_count, work_queue_count, pending_disk_io_count FROM sys.dm_os_schedulers WHERE scheduler_id < 255 GO If you notice a two-digit number in runnable_tasks_count continuously for long time (not once in a while), you will know that there is CPU pressure. The two-digit number is usually considered as a bad thing; you can read the description of the above DMV over here. Additionally, there are several other counters (%Processor Time and other processor related counters), through which you can refer to so you can validate CPU pressure along with the method explained above. Reducing SOS_SCHEDULER_YIELD wait: This is the trickiest part of this procedure. As discussed, this particular wait type relates to CPU pressure. Increasing more CPU is the solution in simple terms; however, it is not easy to implement this solution. There are other things that you can consider when this wait type is very high. Here is the query where you can find the most expensive query related to CPU from the cache Note: The query that used lots of resources but is not cached will not be caught here. SELECT SUBSTRING(qt.TEXT, (qs.statement_start_offset/2)+1, ((CASE qs.statement_end_offset WHEN -1 THEN DATALENGTH(qt.TEXT) ELSE qs.statement_end_offset END - qs.statement_start_offset)/2)+1), qs.execution_count, qs.total_logical_reads, qs.last_logical_reads, qs.total_logical_writes, qs.last_logical_writes, qs.total_worker_time, qs.last_worker_time, qs.total_elapsed_time/1000000 total_elapsed_time_in_S, qs.last_elapsed_time/1000000 last_elapsed_time_in_S, qs.last_execution_time, qp.query_plan FROM sys.dm_exec_query_stats qs CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(qs.sql_handle) qt CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(qs.plan_handle) qp ORDER BY qs.total_worker_time DESC -- CPU time You can find the most expensive queries that are utilizing lots of CPU (from the cache) and you can tune them accordingly. Moreover, you can find the longest running query and attempt to tune them if there is any processor offending code. Additionally, pay attention to total_worker_time because if that is also consistently higher, then  the CPU under too much pressure. You can also check perfmon counters of compilations as they tend to use good amount of CPU. Index rebuild is also a CPU intensive process but we should consider that main cause for this query because that is indeed needed on high transactions OLTP system utilized to reduce fragmentations. Note: The information presented here is from my experience and there is no way that I claim it to be accurate. I suggest reading Book OnLine for further clarification. All of the discussions of Wait Stats in this blog is generic and varies from system to system. It is recommended that you test this on a development server before implementing it to a production server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Wait Stats, SQL Wait Types, T SQL, Technology

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  • What I don&rsquo;t like about WIF&rsquo;s Claims-based Authorization

    - by Your DisplayName here!
    In my last post I wrote about what I like about WIF’s proposed approach to authorization – I also said that I definitely would build upon that infrastructure for my own systems. But implementing such a system is a little harder as it could be. Here’s why (and that’s purely my perspective): First of all WIF’s authorization comes in two “modes” Per-request authorization. When an ASP.NET/WCF request comes in, the registered authorization manager gets called. For SOAP the SOAP action gets passed in. For HTTP requests (ASP.NET, WCF REST) the URL and verb. Imperative authorization This happens when you explicitly call the claims authorization API from within your code. There you have full control over the values for action and resource. In ASP.NET per-request authorization is optional (depends on if you have added the ClaimsAuthorizationHttpModule). In WCF you always get the per-request checks as soon as you register the authorization manager in configuration. I personally prefer the imperative authorization because first of all I don’t believe in URL based authorization. Especially in the times of MVC and routing tables, URLs can be easily changed – but then you also have to adjust your authorization logic every time. Also – you typically need more knowledge than a simple “if user x is allowed to invoke operation x”. One problem I have is, both the per-request calls as well as the standard WIF imperative authorization APIs wrap actions and resources in the same claim type. This makes it hard to distinguish between the two authorization modes in your authorization manager. But you typically need that feature to structure your authorization policy evaluation in a clean way. The second problem (which is somehow related to the first one) is the standard API for interacting with the claims authorization manager. The API comes as an attribute (ClaimsPrincipalPermissionAttribute) as well as a class to use programmatically (ClaimsPrincipalPermission). Both only allow to pass in simple strings (which results in the wrapping with standard claim types mentioned earlier). Both throw a SecurityException when the check fails. The attribute is a code access permission attribute (like PrincipalPermission). That means it will always be invoked regardless how you call the code. This may be exactly what you want, or not. In a unit testing situation (like an MVC controller) you typically want to test the logic in the function – not the security check. The good news is, the WIF API is flexible enough that you can build your own infrastructure around their core. For my own projects I implemented the following extensions: A way to invoke the registered claims authorization manager with more overloads, e.g. with different claim types or a complete AuthorizationContext. A new CAS attribute (with the same calling semantics as the built-in one) with custom claim types. A MVC authorization attribute with custom claim types. A way to use branching – as opposed to catching a SecurityException. I will post the code for these various extensions here – so stay tuned.

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  • MongoDB usage best practices

    - by andresv
    The project I'm working on uses MongoDB for some stuff so I'm creating some documents to help developers speedup the learning curve and also avoid mistakes and help them write clean & reliable code. This is my first version of it, so I'm pretty sure I will be adding more stuff to it, so stay tuned! C# Official driver notes The 10gen official MongoDB driver should always be referenced in projects by using NUGET. Do not manually download and reference assemblies in any project. C# driver quickstart guide: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Quickstart Reference links C# Language Center: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Language+Center MongoDB Server Documentation: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Home MongoDB Server Downloads: http://www.mongodb.org/downloads MongoDB client drivers download: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Drivers MongoDB Community content: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Community+Projects Tutorials Tutorial MongoDB con ASP.NET MVC - Ejemplo Práctico (Spanish):http://geeks.ms/blogs/gperez/archive/2011/12/02/tutorial-mongodb-con-asp-net-mvc-ejemplo-pr-225-ctico.aspx MongoDB and C#:http://www.codeproject.com/Articles/87757/MongoDB-and-C C# driver LINQ tutorial:http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+LINQ+Tutorial C# driver reference: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+Driver+Tutorial Safe Mode Connection The C# driver supports two connection modes: safe and unsafe. Safe connection mode (only applies to methods that modify data in a database like Inserts, Deletes and Updates. While the current driver defaults to unsafe mode (safeMode == false) it's recommended to always enable safe mode, and force unsafe mode on specific things we know aren't critical. When safe mode is enabled, the driver internal code calls the MongoDB "getLastError" function to ensure the last operation is completed before returning control the the caller. For more information on using safe mode and their implicancies on performance and data reliability see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/getLastError+Command If safe mode is not enabled, all data modification calls to the database are executed asynchronously (fire & forget) without waiting for the result of the operation. This mode could be useful for creating / updating non-critical data like performance counters, usage logging and so on. It's important to know that not using safe mode implies that data loss can occur without any notification to the caller. As with any wait operation, enabling safe mode also implies dealing with timeouts. For more information about C# driver safe mode configuration see: http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/CSharp+getLastError+and+SafeMode The safe mode configuration can be specified at different levels: Connection string: mongodb://hostname/?safe=true Database: when obtaining a database instance using the server.GetDatabase(name, safeMode) method Collection: when obtaining a collection instance using the database.GetCollection(name, safeMode) method Operation: for example, when executing the collection.Insert(document, safeMode) method Some useful SafeMode article: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4604868/mongodb-c-sharp-safemode-official-driver Exception Handling The driver ensures that an exception will be thrown in case of something going wrong, in case of using safe mode (as said above, when not using safe mode no exception will be thrown no matter what the outcome of the operation is). As explained here https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/mongodb-user/mS6jIq5FUiM there is no need to check for any returned value from a driver method inserting data. With updates the situation is similar to any other relational database: if an update command doesn't affect any records, the call will suceed anyway (no exception thrown) and you manually have to check for something like "records affected". For MongoDB, an Update operation will return an instance of the "SafeModeResult" class, and you can verify the "DocumentsAffected" property to ensure the intended document was indeed updated. Note: Please remember that an Update method might return a null instance instead of an "SafeModeResult" instance when safe mode is not enabled. Useful Community Articles Comments about how MongoDB works and how that might affect your application: http://ethangunderson.com/blog/two-reasons-to-not-use-mongodb/ FourSquare using MongoDB had serious scalability problems: http://mashable.com/2010/10/07/mongodb-foursquare/ Is MongoDB a replacement for Memcached? http://www.quora.com/Is-MongoDB-a-good-replacement-for-Memcached/answer/Rick-Branson MongoDB Introduction, shell, when not to use, maintenance, upgrade, backups, memory, sharding, etc: http://www.markus-gattol.name/ws/mongodb.html MongoDB Collection level locking support: https://jira.mongodb.org/browse/SERVER-1240 MongoDB performance tips: http://www.quora.com/MongoDB/What-are-some-best-practices-for-optimal-performance-of-MongoDB-particularly-for-queries-that-involve-multiple-documents Lessons learned migrating from SQL Server to MongoDB: http://www.wireclub.com/development/TqnkQwQ8CxUYTVT90/read MongoDB replication performance: http://benshepheard.blogspot.com.ar/2011/01/mongodb-replication-performance.html

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  • Silverlight Cream for March 26, 2010 -- #821

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Max Paulousky, Christian Schormann, John Papa, Phani Raj, David Anson(-2-, -3-), Brad Abrams(-2-), and Jeff Wilcox(-2-, -3-). Shoutouts: Jeff Wilcox posted his material from mix and some preview TestFramework bits: Unit Testing Silverlight & Windows Phone Applications – talk now online At MIX10, Jeff Wilcox demo'd an app called "Peppermint"... here's the bleeding edge demo: “Peppermint” MIX demo sources Erik Mork and Co. have put out their weekly This Week In Silverlight 3.25.2010 Brad Abrams has all his materials posted for his MIX10 session Mix2010: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for Microsoft Silverlight... including play-by-play of the demo and all source. Do you use Rooler? Well you should! Watch a video Pete Brown did with Pete Blois on Expression Blend, Windows Phone, Rooler Interested in Silverlight and XNA for WP7? Me too! Michael Klucher has a post outlining the two: Silverlight and XNA Framework Game Development and Compatibility From SilverlightCream.com: Modularity in Silverlight Applications - An Issue With ModuleInitializeException Max Paulousky has a truly ugly error trace listed by way of not having a reference listed, and the obvious simple solution. Next time he'll talk about the difficult situations. Using SketchFlow to Prototype for Windows Phone Christian Schormann has a tutorial up on using Expression Blend to develop for WP7 ... who better than Christian for that task?? Silverlight TV 18: WCF RIA Services Validation John Papa held forth with Nikhil Kothari on WCF RIA Services and validation just prior to MIX10, and was posted yesterday. Building SL3 applications using OData client Library with Vs 2010 RC Phani Raj walks through building an OData consumer in SL3, the first problem you're going to hit, and the easy solution to it. Tip: When creating a DependencyProperty, follow the handy convention of "wrapper+register+static+virtual" David Anson has a couple more of his 'Tips' up... this first is about Dependency Properties again... having a good foundation for all your Dependency Properties is a great way to avoid problems. Tip: Do not assign DependencyProperty values in a constructor; it prevents users from overriding them In the next post, David Anson talks about not assigning Dependency Property values in a constructor and gives one of the two ways to get around doing so. Tip: Set DependencyProperty default values in a class's default style if it's more convenient In his latest post, David Anson gives the second way to avoid setting a Dependency Property value in the constructor. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Brad Abrams Abrams adds SEO to the tutorial series he's doing. He begins with his PDC09 session material on the subject and then takes off on a great detailed tutorial all with source. Silverlight 4 + RIA Services - Ready for Business: Localizing Business Application Brad Abrams then discusses localization and Silverlight in another detailed tutorial with all code included. Silverlight Toolkit and the Windows Phone: WrapPanel, and a few others Jeff Wilcox has a few WP7 posts I'm going to push today. This first is from earlier this week and is about using the Toolkit in WP7 and better than that, he includes the bits you need if all you want is the WrapPanel Data binding user settings in Windows Phone applications In the next one from yesterday, Jeff Wilcox demonstrates saving some user info in Isolated Storage to improve the user experience, and shares all the necessary plumbing files, and other external links as well. Displaying 2D QR barcodes in Windows Phone applications In a post from today, Jeff Wilcox ported his Silverlight 2D QR Barcode app from last year into WP7 ... just very cool... get the source and display your Microsoft Tag. 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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  • XNA Notes 011

    - by George Clingerman
    Even with a lot of the XNA community working on Dream Build Play entries ( I swear I’m going to finish mine this year!) people are still finding time to do side projects and be amazingly active in the XNA and XBLIG community. With my one eye on my code and one eye on the community, here’s what I noticed these over achievers doing this past week! Time Critical XNA News: Xbox LIVE Indie Games sales data will be delayed March 17-20th due to some schedule maintenance http://create.msdn.com/en-us/news/indie_games_data_delay_march2011 GameMarx is releasing a series of videos to help raise donations for victims of the earthquakes and tsunami in Japan. Help out if you can! http://www.gamemarx.com/video/special/29/help-japan-sushido.aspx XNA MVPs: Catalin Zima shares his thoughts on the MVP summit and my book! http://www.catalinzima.com/2011/03/mvp-summit-2011/ Glenn Wilson (@mykre) helps the XNA team announce some new educational content that you don’t want to miss if you’re porting your app or game to Windows Phone 7 http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/653/Porting-your-App-or-Game-to-Windows-Phone-7.aspx and Windows Phone 7 from scratch http://www.virtualrealm.com.au/Blog/tabid/62/EntryId/654/Windows-Phone-from-Scratch.aspx and shares a link to some free architectural models and textures http://twitter.com/#!/Mykre/status/46410160784158720 George (that’s me!) shares his MVP Summit 2011 summary and XBLIG thoughts http://geekswithblogs.net/clingermangw/archive/2011/03/15/144366.aspx XNA Developers: @SmallCaveGames shares a Code of Ethics for Xbox LIVE Indie Game Developers http://smallcavegames.blogspot.com/2011/03/unofficial-xblig-developers-code-of.html Derek S adds more Xbox LIVE Indie Game studios to his master list of XBLIG links http://twitter.com/#!/Mr_Deeke/status/46140996056125440 http://xbl-indieverse.blogspot.com/p/xblig-links.html Making games and want to help kids? Then share your story with GameFace: America! http://gameitupinitiative.com/about-the-initiative/programs/gameface-america/ Xbox LIVE Indie Games (XBLIG): XonaGames shares some video footage of their booth from GDC 2011 Video 1: http://youtu.be/lxIV9nk3Gq4 Video 2: http://youtu.be/GgfrjqkxR_o Video 3: http://youtu.be/yVcpXrTX7SQ Joystiq on Mommy’s Best Games Serious Sam Double D http://www.joystiq.com/2011/03/16/the-most-important-thing-about-serious-sam-double-d/ And The Escapist recommends that gamers start learning to avoid cleavage now http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/108543-Boobie-Bomber-Makes-First-Appearance-in-Serious-Sam-Double-D Magiko Gaming started a blog on the XBLIG dashboard daily Top 10 games in the US. Good way to go back in time and look at the history of which games were in the the Top 10. http://dailytop10indiegames.wordpress.com/ Where are they going now? XBLIG developers at a crossroads.. http://www.gamesetwatch.com/2011/03/where_are_they_going_now_xblig.php http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/33527/InDepth_Where_Are_They_Going_Now_XBLIG_Developers_At_A_Crossroads_.php BinaryTweed’s Clover: A Curious Tail is Xbox LIVE’s Deal of the Week! http://www.armlessoctopus.com/2011/03/15/what-luck-clover-a-curious-tale-is-half-price-this-week/ Looking for an Xbox LIVE Indie Game to buy? Writings of Mass Deduction has over 125 suggestions at this point! http://writingsofmassdeduction.com/ SkaStudios shares Vampire Smile Achievements AND their PAX East 2011 Both Setup video http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/14/vampire-smile-achievement/ http://www.ska-studios.com/2011/03/15/pax-booth-setup-time-lapse/ MasterBlud and VVGTV starts a new community for XBLIG developers and gamers to join http://vvgtv.forumotion.com/ Raymond Matthews (@DrakstarMatryx) covers Mommy’s Best Games getting Serious http://www.darkstarmatryx.com/?p=286 XNA Development: Dave Henry (@mort8088) posts the 4th tutorial in his series XNA 4.0 SpriteBatch extended http://mort8088.com/2011/03/11/xna-4-0-tutorial-4-spritebatch-extended/ Tutorial 5 - Creating a manual blank texture http://mort8088.com/2011/03/13/xna-4-tutorial-5-manual-blank-texture/ XNA 4.0 Tutorial 6 - Spritesheet Object http://mort8088.com/2011/03/18/xna-4-0-tutorial-6-spritesheet-object/ Jason Mitchell shares a tutorial on setting the alpha value for spritebatch in XNA 4.0 http://www.jason-mitchell.com/index.php/2011/03/13/setting-alpha-value-for-spritebatch-draw-in-xna-4/ XNA for Silverlight Developers: Part 7 - Collision Detection http://www.silverlightshow.net/items/XNA-for-Silverlight-developers-Part-7-Collision-detection.aspx Markus Ewald (@Cygon4) shares the full Ninject 2.0 binding for XNA and Sunburn http://twitter.com/#!/Cygon4/status/48330203826622464 Michael B. McLaughlin shares an AccelerometerInput XNA GameComponent he created (which I’m probably going to snag for a game I’m working on...) http://geekswithblogs.net/mikebmcl/archive/2011/03/17/accelerometerinput-xna-gamecomponent.aspx Extra Credit tackles the building of a good tutorial. Must watch for all Indie game devs (thanks for pointing it out Evan Johnson!) http://twitter.com/#!/johnsonevan/status/48452115680604160 http://www.escapistmagazine.com/videos/view/extra-credits/2921-Tutorials-101 ExEn is fully funded at this point so definitely something for XBLIG developers to keep an eye on as they consider releasing their games on other platforms http://rockethub.com/projects/752-exen-xna-for-iphone-android-and-silverlight Channel 9 and Greg Duncan post Mixing the Game State Management and Platformer XNA Recipes http://channel9.msdn.com/coding4fun/blog/Mixing-the-Game-State-Management-and-Platformer-XNA-Recipes Sgt. Conker has noticed Mike McLaughlin has been crazy productive and has done a recap of his recent posts http://www.sgtconker.com/2011/03/recap-of-mikebmcls-posts/

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  • JustMock and Moles – A short overview for TDD alpha geeks

    - by RoyOsherove
    People have been lurking near my house, asking me to write something about Moles and JustMock, so I’ll try to be as objective as possible, taking in the fact that I work at Typemock. If I were NOT working at Typemock I’d write: JustMock JustMock tries to be Typemock at so many levels it’s not even funny. Technically they work the same and the API almost looks like it’s a search and replace work based on the Isolator API (awesome compliment!), but JustMock still has too many growing pains and bugs to be usable. Also, JustMock is missing alot of the legacy abilities such as Non public faking, faking all types and various other things that are really needed in real legacy code. Biggest thing (in terms of isolation integration) is that it does not integrate with other profilers such as coverage, NCover etc.) When JustMock comes out of beta, I feel that it should cost about half as Isolator costs, as it currently provides about half the abilities. Moles Moles is an addon of Pex and was originally only intended to work within the Pex environment. It started as a research project and now it’s a power-tool for VS (so it’s a separate install) Now it’s it’s own little stubbing framework. It’s not really an Isolation framework in the classic sense, because it does not provide any kind of API built in to verify object interactions. You have to use manual flags all on your own to do that. It generates two types of classes per assembly: Manual Stubs(just like you’d hand code them) and Mole classes. Each Mole class is a special API to change and break the behavior that the corresponding type. so MDateTime is how you change behavior for DateTime. In that sense the API is al over the place, and it can become highly unreadable and unmentionable over time in your test. Also, the Moles API isn’t really designed to deal with real Legacy code. It only deals with public types and methods. anything internal or private is ignored and you can’t change its behavior. You also can’t control static constructors. That takes about 95% of legacy scenarios out of the picture if that’s what you’re trying to use it for. Personally, I found it hard to get used to the idea of two parallel APIs for different abilities, and when to choose which. and I know this stuff. I would expect more usability from the API to make it more widely used. I don’t think that Moles in planning to go that route. Publishing it as an Isolation framework is really an afterthought of a tool that was design with a specific task in mind, and generic Isolation isn’t it. it’s only hope is DEQ – a simple code example that shows a simple Isolation API built on the Moles generic engine. Moles can and should be used for very simple cases of detouring functionality such a simple static methods or interfaces and virtual functions (like rhinomock and MOQ do).   Oh, Wait. Ah, good thing I work at Typemock. I won’t write all that. I’ll just write: JustMock and Moles are great tools that enlarge the market space for isolation related technologies, and they prove that the idea of productivity and unit testing can go hand in hand and get people hooked. I look forward to compete with them at this growing market.

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  • Collation errors in business

    - by Rob Farley
    At the PASS Summit last month, I did a set (Lightning Talk) about collation, and in particular, the difference between the “English” spoken by people from the US, Australia and the UK. One of the examples I gave was that in the US drivers might stop for gas, whereas in Australia, they just open the window a little. This is what’s known as a paraprosdokian, where you suddenly realise you misunderstood the first part of the sentence, based on what was said in the second. My current favourite is Emo Phillip’s line “I like to play chess with old men in the park, but it can be hard to find thirty-two of them.” Essentially, this a collation error, one that good comedians can get mileage from. Unfortunately, collation is at its worst when we have a computer comparing two things in different collations. They might look the same, and sound the same, but if one of the things is in SQL English, and the other one is in Windows English, the poor database server (with no sense of humour) will get suspicious of developers (who all have senses of humour, obviously), and declare a collation error, worried that it might not realise some nuance of the language. One example is the common scenario of a case-sensitive collation and a case-insensitive one. One may think that “Rob” and “rob” are the same, but the other might not. Clearly one of them is my name, and the other is a verb which means to steal (people called “Nick” have the same problem, of course), but I have no idea whether “Rob” and “rob” should be considered the same or not – it depends on the collation. I told a lie before – collation isn’t at its worst in the computer world, because the computer has the sense to complain about the collation issue. People don’t. People will say something, with their own understanding of what they mean. Other people will listen, and apply their own collation to it. I remember when someone was asking me about a situation which had annoyed me. They asked if I was ‘pissed’, and I said yes. I meant that I was annoyed, but they were asking if I’d been drinking. It took a moment for us to realise the misunderstanding. In business, the problem is escalated. A business user may explain something in a particular way, using terminology that they understand, but using words that mean something else to a technical person. I remember a situation with a checkbox on a form (back in VB6 days from memory). It was used to indicate that something was approved, and indicated whether a particular database field should store True or False – nothing more. However, the client understood it to mean that an entire workflow system would be implemented, with different users have permission to approve items and more. The project manager I’d just taken over from clearly hadn’t appreciated that, and I faced a situation of explaining the misunderstanding to the client. Lots of fun... Collation errors aren’t just a database setting that you can ignore. You need to remember that Americans speak a different type of English to Aussies and Poms, and techies speak a different language to their clients.

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  • SQL – Quick Start with Admin Sections of NuoDB – Manage NuoDB Database

    - by Pinal Dave
    In the yesterday’s blog post we have seen that it is extremely easy to install the NuoDB database on your local machine. Now that the application is properly set up, let us explore NuoDB a bit more and get you familiar with the how it works and what the important areas of the NuoDB are that you should learn. As we have already installed NuoDB, now we will quickly start with two of the important areas in NuoDB: 1) Admin and 2) Explorer. In this blog post I will explore how the Admin Section of the NuoDB Console works.  In the next blog post we will learn how the Explorer Section works. Let us go to the NuoDB Console by typing the following URL in your browser: http://localhost:8080/ It will bring you to the following screen: On this screen you can see a big Start QuickStart button. Click on the button and it will bring you to following screen. On this screen you will find very important information about Domain and Database Settings. It is our habit that we do not read what is written on the screen and keep on clicking on continue without reading. While we are familiar with most wizards, we can often miss the very important message on the screen. Please note the information of Domain Settings and Database Settings from the following screen before clicking on Create Database. Domain Settings User: quickstart Password: quickstart Database Settings User: dba Password: goalie Database: test Schema: HOCKEY Once you click on the Create Database button it will immediately start creating sample database. First, it will start a Storage Manager and right after that it will start a Transaction Engine. Once the engine is up, it will Create a Schema and Sample Data. On the success of the creating the sample database it will show the following screen. Now is the time where we can explore the NuoDB Admin or NuoDB Explorer. If you click on Admin, it will first show following login screen. Enter for the username “domain” and for the password “bird”. Alternatively you can enter “quickstart”  twice for username and password.  It works as too. Once you enter into the Admin Section, on the left side you can see information about NuoDB and Admin Console and on the right side you can see the domain overview area. From this Administrative section you can do any of the following tasks: Create a view of the entire domain Add and remove databases Start and stop NuoDB Transaction Engines and Storage Managers Monitor transaction across all the NuoDB databases On the right side of the Admin Section we can see various information about a particular NuoDB domain. You can quickly view various alerts, find out information about the number of host machines that are provisioned for the domain, and see the number of databases and processes that are running in the domain. If you click on the “1 host” link you will be able to see various processes, CPU usage and other information. In the Processes Section you can see that there are two different types of processes. The first process (where you can see the floppy drive icon) represents a running Storage Manager process and the second process a running Transaction Engine process. You can click on the links for the Storage Manager and Transaction Engine to see further statistical details right down to the last byte of the data. There are various charts available for analysis as well. I think the product is quite mature and the user can add different monitor charts to the Admin section. Additionally, the Admin section is the place where you can create and manage new databases. I hope today’s tutorial gives you enough confidence that you can try out NuoDB and checkout various administrative activities with the database. I am personally impressed with their dashboard related to various counters. For more information about how the NuoDB architecture works and what a Storage Manager or Transaction Engine does, check out this short video with NuoDB CTO Seth Proctor:  In the next blog post, we will try out the Explorer section of NuoDB, which allows us to run SQL queries and write SQL code.  Meanwhile, I strongly suggest you download and install NuoDB and get yourself familiar with the product. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: NuoDB

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  • SharePoint Saturday Michigan 2010 Recap, Slides, and Photos

    - by Brian Jackett
    This past weekend I attended SharePoint Saturday Michigan (SPSMI) in Ann Arbor, Michigan.  For those unfamiliar, SharePoint Saturday is a community driven event where various speakers gather to present at a FREE conference on all topics related to SharePoint.  This made my third SharePoint Saturday attended and second I’ve spoken at.  I believe today it was announced that about 210 people total attended the event.  I was very happy with the turnout, especially the ratio of male to female attendees.  Typically with computer related conferences the ratio leans towards more males attending, but both Peter Serzo (one of conference organizers) and I both commented to each other that at the end of the day it appeared to be close to 40% women in the crowd.  So here’s my recap of the weekend. Arrival     Friday afternoon I drove up from Columbus, OH to Ann Arbor, MI and arrived around 4pm.  I was attempting to avoid the rush hour traffic and construction backups.  Turned out to be a good idea because other speakers coming up Friday got stuck on a highway which literally closed down in both directions due to a bad accident.  I was talking my friend Sean McDonough through the highway closing and this was the first time I had seen a solid black traffic line on Google Maps.  Most of us are familiar with Green, Yellow, and Red, but this line was black if that tells you how bad it got. Speaker “Dinner”     Fast forward a few hours and it was time for the speaker “dinner.”  I put “dinner” in quotes because with this night alone SPSMI set a new bar for nicest and most extravagant speaker appreciation events for SharePoint Saturday.  By tapping into some very influential contacts, the conference organizers were able to provide a truck limo (yep you heard right) with refreshments, access to an underground suite at the Palace of Auburn Hills, and courtside tickets to see the Detroit Pistons play that night.  Being a Michigan native I have to say that I was absolutely floored by this experience and very thankful to our conference organizers Peter, Sebastian, and Jesse along with Trillium Teamologies. Sessions     The actual conference started Saturday morning at 9am with the keynote by Rob Collie who is the Microsoft program manager for PowerPivot.  The day continued and I attended the following sessions: Mike Watson (@mikewat) – “SharePoint 2010 Fight Night: Devs vs. Admins” Karl Swedeberg (@kswedberg) – “A Walk on the Client Side with jQuery“ [my session] Brian Jackett (@briantjackett) - “Real World Deployment of SharePoint 2007 Solutions” Jeff Willinger (@jwillie) - “Social Computing and Collaboration Inside and Outside the 4 Walls” Paul Schaeflein (@paulschaeflein) – “PowerShell for the SharePoint Developer” My Presentation     I had a great time presenting my session on Deploying SharePoint 2007 Solutions, but it wasn’t without its fair share of technical issues.  As my session was right after lunch I came in to my room 10 mins early to set up my laptop, slides, and demos.  As a quick background note, a few months ago I got an upgraded laptop from my company Sogeti and have been dual booting it between XP (factory installed) and Windows Server 2008 R2 w/ Hyper-V.  As such I had prepared all of my demo virtual machines to run under Hyper-V.  About 3 minutes before my session was scheduled to start though it became apparent that I did not have the correct display drivers to connect Windows Server 2008 R2 to the projector…     As you can imagine this was a slight cause for concern as I was potentially going to be unable to give my presentation.  Luckily for me I usually prepare for such unforeseen issues and had my presentation and some spare VMs that would run on XP on my external hard drive.  Knowing this I rebooted my machine into XP and began my presentation without slides until about 5 mins into the session when everything was up and running on XP.  Despite this being the first time I gave this presentation I have to say it was one of my favorites I’ve given so far.  The audience was very engaged in the session and I received some great, positive feedback afterwards.  Thanks to all who attended my session, I appreciate it very much. Link to Presentation Files     For those of you who attended my session and would like my slides or demo PowerShell scripts they can be found on my SkyDrive at the link below.  Also, if you have a few minutes and wouldn’t mind rating my session I have this session posted on SpeakerRate.  As speakers we always appreciate any and all feedback attendees offer, so thank you if you are able to provide any. SkyDrive folder with session files Rate my SharePoint 2007 Solutions session   Picture Albums     For everyone else, here are my pictures from the weekend.  The first link is to my FaceBook album which will have tagging (recommend this one.)  The second is to my Live album if you care for higher resolution images. http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2154482&id=21905041&l=a3fb72ee8c View Full Album Conclusion     A big thank you goes out to all of the organizers, speakers, sponsors, and attendees of SPSMI.  As I’ve said so many times, without each and every one of you these events wouldn’t be possible.  I thoroughly enjoyed this trip back to my home state and presenting a new session.  For those interested in my upcoming schedule I will be giving two sessions on PowerShell at SharePoint Saturday Charlotte in April, helping plan Stir Trek: Iron Man Edition in May, and I’m submitting sessions to Day of .Net Ann Arbor in May as well.  Beyond that I haven’t planned out any travels.  Thanks for reading my recap.  Look forward to more technical posts now that I have a short break in conferences.         -Frog Out   links: Michigan image

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  • “I could use a little help here” or “I can do it myself, thank you” for Cloud Projects

    - by BuckWoody
    Windows Azure allows you to write code in languages within the .NET stack, you can use Java, C++, PHP, NodeJS and others. Code is code - other than keeping things stateless, using a Web or Worker Role in Azure is not all that different from working with an on-premises system. However…. Working in a scalable, component-based stateless architecture that can use federated security is not all that common for many developers. Some are used to owning the server, scaling up, and state-full paradigms that have a single security domain. Making the transition whilst trying to create a new software application or even port a previous one can be daunting. Sure, we have absolutely tons of free training, kits, videos, online books and more to learn on your own, but some things like architecture can be pivotal as you move along. So the question is, should you just strike out on your own for a Cloud project, or get Microsoft Consulting Services or another partner to work with you on your first one? I use a few decision points to help guide the projects I assist in. Note: I’m a huge fan of having help that ends up giving you training and leaves you in charge. If you do engage with someone to help you, make sure you keep this clear and take more and more ownership yourself as the project progresses. How much time do you have? Usually the first thing I ask is about the timeline for the project. It doesn’t matter how skilled you are, if you have a short window to get things done it’s better to get help - especially if this is your first cloud project. Having someone that knows the platform well can save you amazing amounts of time. If you have longer, then start with the training in the link above and once you feel confident, jump in. How complex is the project? If there are a lot of moving parts, it’s best to engage a partner. The reason is that certain interactions - particularly things like Service Bus or Data Integration  - can be quite different than what you may have encountered before. How many people do you have? I have a “pizza rule” about projects I’ve used in my career - if it takes over two pizzas to feed everyone on the project, it’s too big and will fail. That being said, one developer and a one-week deadline does not a good project make, usually. It’s best to have at least one architect (or someone in that role) guiding the project along, and at least two developers to work on a cloud project. That’s a generalization of course, since I’ve seen great software on Azure with one developer writing code all by herself, but for more complex projects, more (to a point) is better. The nice thing about bringing on a partner is that you don’t have to hire them full time - they help you and then they go away. How critical is the project? There’s no shame in using some help. If the platform is new, if the project is large and complex, and if it is critical to the business, you should engage a partner. That’s regardless of Cloud or anything else - get some help. You don’t want to hit your company’s bottom line in a negative way, but you have to innovate and get them a competitive advantage. Do your research, make sure the partner is qualified to help you, and get it done. Don’t let these questions scare you off. There are lots of projects you can implement on Windows and SQL Azure with nothing other than the Software Development Kit (SDK) that you get for free with Windows Azure. And assistance comes in many forms - sometimes just phone support, a friend you can ask. Microsoft Consulting Services or any of our great partners. You can get help on just the architecture piece or have them show you how to write the code. They’ll get involved as little or as much as you like.

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  • Google TV Gets Bad Reception. Can Media Center Pull in the Signal?

    - by andrewbrust
    The news hit Monday morning that Google has decided to delay the release of its Google TV platform, and has asked its OEMs to delay any products that embed the software.  Coming just about two weeks prior to the 2011 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), Google’s timing is about the worst imaginable.  CES is where the platform should have had its coming out party, especially given all the anticipation that has built up since its initial announcement came 7 months ago. At last year’s CES, it seemed every consumer electronics company had fashioned its own software stack for Internet-based video programming and applications/widgets on its TVs, optical disc players and set top boxes.  In one case, I even saw two platforms on a single TV set (one provided by Yahoo and the other one native to the TV set). The whole point of Google TV was to solve this problem and offer a standard, embeddable platform.  But that won’t be happening, at least not for a while.  Google seems unable to get it together, and more proprietary approaches, like Apple TV, don’t seem to be setting the world of TV-Internet convergence on fire, either. It seems to me, that when it comes to building a “TV operating system,” Windows Media Center is still the best of a bad bunch.  But it won’t stay so for much longer without some changes.  Will Redmond pick up the ball that Google has fumbled?  I’m skeptical, but hopeful.  Regardless, here are some steps that could help Microsoft make the most of Google’s faux pas: Introduce a new Media Center version that uses XBox 360, rather than Windows 7 (or 8), as the platform.  TV platforms should be appliance-like, not PC-like.  Combine that notion with the runaway sales numbers for Xbox 360 Kinect, and the mass appeal it has delivered for Xbox, and the switch form Windows makes even more sense. As I have pointed out before, Microsoft’s Xbox implementation of its Mediaroom platform (announced and demoed at last year’s CES) gets Redmond 80% of the way toward this goal.  Nothing stops Microsoft from going the other 20%, other than its own apathy, which I hope has dissipated. Reverse the decision to remove Drive Extender technology from Windows Home Server (WHS), and create deep integration between WHS and Media Center.  I have suggested this previously as well, but the recent announcement that Drive Extender would be dropped from WHS 2.0 creates the need for me to a) join the chorus of people urging Microsoft to reconsider and b) reiterate the importance of Media Center-WHS integration in the context of a Google compete scenario. Enable Windows Phone 7 (WP7) as a Media Center client.  This would tighten the integration loop already established between WP7, Xbox and Zune.  But it would also counter Echostar/DISH Network/Sling Media, strike a blow against Google/Android (and even Apple/iOS) and could be the final strike against TiVO. Bring the WP7 user interface to Media Center and Kinect-enable it.  This would further the integration discussed above and would be appropriate recognition of WP7’s Metro UI having been built on the heritage of the original Media Center itself.  And being able to run your DVR even if you can’t find the remote (or can’t see its buttons in the dark) could be a nifty gimmick. Microsoft can do this but its consumer-oriented organization, responsible for Xbox, Zune and WP7, has to take the reins here, or none of this will likely work.  There’s a significant chance that won’t happen, but I won’t let that stop me from hoping that it does and insisting that it must.  Honestly, this fight is Microsoft’s to lose.

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  • Four New Java Champions

    - by Tori Wieldt
    Four luminaries in the Java community have been selected as new Java Champions. The are Agnes Crepet, Lars Vogel, Yara Senger and Martijn Verburg. They were selected for their technical knowledge, leadership, inspiration, and tireless work for the community. Here is how they rock the Java world: Agnes Crepet Agnes Crepet (France) is a passionate technologist with over 11 years of software engineering experience, especially in the Java technologies, as a Developer, Architect, Consultant and Trainer. She has been using Java since 1999, implementing multiple kinds of applications (from 20 days to 10000 men days) for different business fields (banking, retail, and pharmacy). Currently she is a Java EE Architect for a French pharmaceutical company, the homeopathy world leader. She is also the co-founder, with other passionate Java developers, of a software company named Ninja Squad, dedicated to Software Craftsmanship. Agnes is the leader of two Java User Groups (JUG), the Lyon JUG Duchess France and the founder of the Mix-IT Conferenceand theCast-IT Podcast, two projects about Java and Agile Development. She speaks at Java and JUG conferences around the world and regularly writes articles about the Java Ecosystem for the French print Developer magazine Programmez! and for the Duchess Blog. Follow Agnes @agnes_crepet. Lars Vogel Lars Vogel (Germany) is the founder and CEO of the vogella GmbH and works as Java, Eclipse and Android consultant, trainer and book author. He is a regular speaker at international conferences, such as EclipseCon, Devoxx, Droidcon and O'Reilly's Android Open. With more than one million visitors per month, his website vogella.com is one of the central sources for Java, Eclipse and Android programming information. Lars is committer in the Eclipse project and received in 2010 the "Eclipse Top Contributor Award" and 2012 the "Eclipse Top Newcomer Evangelist Award." Follow Lars on Twitter @vogella. Yara Senger Yara Senger (Brazil) has been a tireless Java activist in Brazil for many years. She is President of SouJava and she is an alternate representative of the group on the JCP Executive Committee. Yara has led SouJava in many initiatives, from technical events to social activities. She is co-founder and director of GlobalCode, which trains developers throughout Brazil.  Last year, she was recipient of the Duke Choice's Award, for the JHome embedded environment.  Yara is also an active speaker, giving presentations in many countries, including JavaOne SF, JavaOne Latin Ameria, JavaOne India, JFokus, and JUGs throughout Brazil. Yara is editor of InfoQ Brasil and also frequently posts at http://blog.globalcode.com.br/search/label/Yara. Follow Yara @YaraSenger. Martijn Verburg Martijn Verburg (UK) is the CTO of jClarity (a Java/JVM performance cloud tooling start-up) and has over 12 years experience as a Java/JVM technology professional and OSS mentor in a variety of organisations from start-ups to large enterprises. He is the co-leader of the London Java Community (~2800 developers) and leads the global effort for the Java User Group "Adopt a JSR" and "Adopt OpenJDK" programmes. These programmes encourage day to day Java developer involvement with OpenJDK, Java standards (JSRs), an important relationship for keeping the Java ecosystem relevant to the 9 million Java developers out there today. As a leading expert on technical team optimisation, his talks and presentations are in high demand by major conferences (JavaOne, Devoxx, OSCON, QCon) where you'll often find him challenging the industry status quo via his alter ego "The Diabolical Developer." You can read more in the OTN ariticle "Challenging the Diabolical Developer: A Conversation with JavaOne Rock Star Martijn Verburg." Follow Martijn @karianna. 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. Java Champions get the opportunity to provide feedback, ideas, and direction that will help Oracle grow the Java Platform. Congratulations to these new Java Champions!

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  • Silverlight Recruiting Application Part 5 - Jobs Module / View

    Now we starting getting into a more code-heavy portion of this series, thankfully though this means the groundwork is all set for the most part and after adding the modules we will have a complete application that can be provided with full source. The Jobs module will have two concerns- adding and maintaining jobs that can then be broadcast out to the website. How they are displayed on the site will be handled by our admin system (which will just poll from this common database), so we aren't too concerned with that, but rather with getting the information into the system and allowing the backend administration/HR users to keep things up to date. Since there is a fair bit of information that we want to display, we're going to move editing to a separate view so we can get all that information in an easy-to-use spot. With all the files created for this module, the project looks something like this: And now... on to the code. XAML for the Job Posting View All we really need for the Job Posting View is a RadGridView and a few buttons. This will let us both show off records and perform operations on the records without much hassle. That XAML is going to look something like this: 01.<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" 02.Background="White"> 03.<Grid.RowDefinitions> 04.<RowDefinition Height="30" /> 05.<RowDefinition /> 06.</Grid.RowDefinitions> 07.<StackPanel Orientation="Horizontal"> 08.<Button x:Name="xAddRecordButton" 09.Content="Add Job" 10.Width="120" 11.cal:Click.Command="{Binding AddRecord}" 12.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 13.<Button x:Name="xEditRecordButton" 14.Content="Edit Job" 15.Width="120" 16.cal:Click.Command="{Binding EditRecord}" 17.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 18.</StackPanel> 19.<telerikGrid:RadGridView x:Name="xJobsGrid" 20.Grid.Row="1" 21.IsReadOnly="True" 22.AutoGenerateColumns="False" 23.ColumnWidth="*" 24.RowDetailsVisibilityMode="VisibleWhenSelected" 25.ItemsSource="{Binding MyJobs}" 26.SelectedItem="{Binding SelectedJob, Mode=TwoWay}" 27.command:SelectedItemChangedEventClass.Command="{Binding SelectedItemChanged}"> 28.<telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> 29.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Job Title" 30.DataMemberBinding="{Binding JobTitle}" 31.UniqueName="JobTitle" /> 32.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Location" 33.DataMemberBinding="{Binding Location}" 34.UniqueName="Location" /> 35.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Resume Required" 36.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsResume}" 37.UniqueName="NeedsResume" /> 38.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="CV Required" 39.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsCV}" 40.UniqueName="NeedsCV" /> 41.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Overview Required" 42.DataMemberBinding="{Binding NeedsOverview}" 43.UniqueName="NeedsOverview" /> 44.<telerikGrid:GridViewDataColumn Header="Active" 45.DataMemberBinding="{Binding IsActive}" 46.UniqueName="IsActive" /> 47.</telerikGrid:RadGridView.Columns> 48.</telerikGrid:RadGridView> 49.</Grid> I'll explain what's happening here by line numbers: Lines 11 and 16: Using the same type of click commands as we saw in the Menu module, we tie the button clicks to delegate commands in the viewmodel. Line 25: The source for the jobs will be a collection in the viewmodel. Line 26: We also bind the selected item to a public property from the viewmodel for use in code. Line 27: We've turned the event into a command so we can handle it via code in the viewmodel. So those first three probably make sense to you as far as Silverlight/WPF binding magic is concerned, but for line 27... This actually comes from something I read onDamien Schenkelman's blog back in the day for creating an attached behavior from any event. So, any time you see me using command:Whatever.Command, the backing for it is actually something like this: SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior.cs: 01.public class SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior : CommandBehaviorBase<Telerik.Windows.Controls.DataControl> 02.{ 03.public SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DataControl element) 04.: base(element) 05.{ 06.element.SelectionChanged += new EventHandler<SelectionChangeEventArgs>(element_SelectionChanged); 07.} 08.void element_SelectionChanged(object sender, SelectionChangeEventArgs e) 09.{ 10.// We'll only ever allow single selection, so will only need item index 0 11.base.CommandParameter = e.AddedItems[0]; 12.base.ExecuteCommand(); 13.} 14.} SelectedItemChangedEventClass.cs: 01.public class SelectedItemChangedEventClass 02.{ 03.#region The Command Stuff 04.public static ICommand GetCommand(DependencyObject obj) 05.{ 06.return (ICommand)obj.GetValue(CommandProperty); 07.} 08.public static void SetCommand(DependencyObject obj, ICommand value) 09.{ 10.obj.SetValue(CommandProperty, value); 11.} 12.public static readonly DependencyProperty CommandProperty = 13.DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("Command", typeof(ICommand), 14.typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventClass), new PropertyMetadata(OnSetCommandCallback)); 15.public static void OnSetCommandCallback(DependencyObject dependencyObject, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) 16.{ 17.DataControl element = dependencyObject as DataControl; 18.if (element != null) 19.{ 20.SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior behavior = GetOrCreateBehavior(element); 21.behavior.Command = e.NewValue as ICommand; 22.} 23.} 24.#endregion 25.public static SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior GetOrCreateBehavior(DataControl element) 26.{ 27.SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior behavior = element.GetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty) as SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior; 28.if (behavior == null) 29.{ 30.behavior = new SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(element); 31.element.SetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty, behavior); 32.} 33.return behavior; 34.} 35.public static SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior GetSelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DependencyObject obj) 36.{ 37.return (SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior)obj.GetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty); 38.} 39.public static void SetSelectedItemChangedEventBehavior(DependencyObject obj, SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior value) 40.{ 41.obj.SetValue(SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty, value); 42.} 43.public static readonly DependencyProperty SelectedItemChangedEventBehaviorProperty = 44.DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached("SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior", 45.typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventBehavior), typeof(SelectedItemChangedEventClass), null); 46.} These end up looking very similar from command to command, but in a nutshell you create a command based on any event, determine what the parameter for it will be, then execute. It attaches via XAML and ties to a DelegateCommand in the viewmodel, so you get the full event experience (since some controls get a bit event-rich for added functionality). Simple enough, right? Viewmodel for the Job Posting View The Viewmodel is going to need to handle all events going back and forth, maintaining interactions with the data we are using, and both publishing and subscribing to events. Rather than breaking this into tons of little pieces, I'll give you a nice view of the entire viewmodel and then hit up the important points line-by-line: 001.public class JobPostingViewModel : ViewModelBase 002.{ 003.private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; 004.private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; 005.public DelegateCommand<object> AddRecord { get; set; } 006.public DelegateCommand<object> EditRecord { get; set; } 007.public DelegateCommand<object> SelectedItemChanged { get; set; } 008.public RecruitingContext context; 009.private QueryableCollectionView _myJobs; 010.public QueryableCollectionView MyJobs 011.{ 012.get { return _myJobs; } 013.} 014.private QueryableCollectionView _selectionJobActionHistory; 015.public QueryableCollectionView SelectedJobActionHistory 016.{ 017.get { return _selectionJobActionHistory; } 018.} 019.private JobPosting _selectedJob; 020.public JobPosting SelectedJob 021.{ 022.get { return _selectedJob; } 023.set 024.{ 025.if (value != _selectedJob) 026.{ 027._selectedJob = value; 028.NotifyChanged("SelectedJob"); 029.} 030.} 031.} 032.public SubscriptionToken editToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 033.public SubscriptionToken addToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 034.public JobPostingViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAgg, IRegionManager regionmanager) 035.{ 036.// set Unity items 037.this.eventAggregator = eventAgg; 038.this.regionManager = regionmanager; 039.// load our context 040.context = new RecruitingContext(); 041.this._myJobs = new QueryableCollectionView(context.JobPostings); 042.context.Load(context.GetJobPostingsQuery()); 043.// set command events 044.this.AddRecord = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.AddNewRecord); 045.this.EditRecord = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.EditExistingRecord); 046.this.SelectedItemChanged = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.SelectedRecordChanged); 047.SetSubscriptions(); 048.} 049.#region DelegateCommands from View 050.public void AddNewRecord(object obj) 051.{ 052.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobEvent>().Publish(true); 053.} 054.public void EditExistingRecord(object obj) 055.{ 056.if (_selectedJob == null) 057.{ 058.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<NotifyUserEvent>().Publish("No job selected."); 059.} 060.else 061.{ 062.this._myJobs.EditItem(this._selectedJob); 063.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobEvent>().Publish(this._selectedJob); 064.} 065.} 066.public void SelectedRecordChanged(object obj) 067.{ 068.if (obj.GetType() == typeof(ActionHistory)) 069.{ 070.// event bubbles up so we don't catch items from the ActionHistory grid 071.} 072.else 073.{ 074.JobPosting job = obj as JobPosting; 075.GrabHistory(job.PostingID); 076.} 077.} 078.#endregion 079.#region Subscription Declaration and Events 080.public void SetSubscriptions() 081.{ 082.EditJobCompleteEvent editComplete = eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>(); 083.if (editToken != null) 084.editComplete.Unsubscribe(editToken); 085.editToken = editComplete.Subscribe(this.EditCompleteEventHandler); 086.AddJobCompleteEvent addComplete = eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>(); 087.if (addToken != null) 088.addComplete.Unsubscribe(addToken); 089.addToken = addComplete.Subscribe(this.AddCompleteEventHandler); 090.} 091.public void EditCompleteEventHandler(bool complete) 092.{ 093.if (complete) 094.{ 095.JobPosting thisJob = _myJobs.CurrentEditItem as JobPosting; 096.this._myJobs.CommitEdit(); 097.this.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 098.{ 099.ActionHistory myAction = new ActionHistory(); 100.myAction.PostingID = thisJob.PostingID; 101.myAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been edited by {1}", thisJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 102.myAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 103.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddActionEvent>().Publish(myAction); 104.} 105., null); 106.} 107.else 108.{ 109.this._myJobs.CancelEdit(); 110.} 111.this.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "JobPostingsView"); 112.} 113.public void AddCompleteEventHandler(JobPosting job) 114.{ 115.if (job == null) 116.{ 117.// do nothing, new job add cancelled 118.} 119.else 120.{ 121.this.context.JobPostings.Add(job); 122.this.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 123.{ 124.ActionHistory myAction = new ActionHistory(); 125.myAction.PostingID = job.PostingID; 126.myAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been added by {1}", job.JobTitle, "default user"); 127.myAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 128.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddActionEvent>().Publish(myAction); 129.} 130., null); 131.} 132.this.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "JobPostingsView"); 133.} 134.#endregion 135.public void GrabHistory(int postID) 136.{ 137.context.ActionHistories.Clear(); 138._selectionJobActionHistory = new QueryableCollectionView(context.ActionHistories); 139.context.Load(context.GetHistoryForJobQuery(postID)); 140.} Taking it from the top, we're injecting an Event Aggregator and Region Manager for use down the road and also have the public DelegateCommands (just like in the Menu module). We also grab a reference to our context, which we'll obviously need for data, then set up a few fields with public properties tied to them. We're also setting subscription tokens, which we have not yet seen but I will get into below. The AddNewRecord (50) and EditExistingRecord (54) methods should speak for themselves for functionality, the one thing of note is we're sending events off to the Event Aggregator which some module, somewhere will take care of. Since these aren't entirely relying on one another, the Jobs View doesn't care if anyone is listening, but it will publish AddJobEvent (52), NotifyUserEvent (58) and EditJobEvent (63)regardless. Don't mind the GrabHistory() method so much, that is just grabbing history items (visibly being created in the SubmitChanges callbacks), and adding them to the database. Every action will trigger a history event, so we'll know who modified what and when, just in case. ;) So where are we at? Well, if we click to Add a job, we publish an event, if we edit a job, we publish an event with the selected record (attained through the magic of binding). Where is this all going though? To the Viewmodel, of course! XAML for the AddEditJobView This is pretty straightforward except for one thing, noted below: 001.<Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot" 002.Background="White"> 003.<Grid x:Name="xEditGrid" 004.Margin="10" 005.validationHelper:ValidationScope.Errors="{Binding Errors}"> 006.<Grid.Background> 007.<LinearGradientBrush EndPoint="0.5,1" 008.StartPoint="0.5,0"> 009.<GradientStop Color="#FFC7C7C7" 010.Offset="0" /> 011.<GradientStop Color="#FFF6F3F3" 012.Offset="1" /> 013.</LinearGradientBrush> 014.</Grid.Background> 015.<Grid.RowDefinitions> 016.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 017.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 018.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 019.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 020.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 021.<RowDefinition Height="100" /> 022.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 023.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 024.<RowDefinition Height="40" /> 025.</Grid.RowDefinitions> 026.<Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 027.<ColumnDefinition Width="150" /> 028.<ColumnDefinition Width="150" /> 029.<ColumnDefinition Width="300" /> 030.<ColumnDefinition Width="100" /> 031.</Grid.ColumnDefinitions> 032.<!-- Title --> 033.<TextBlock Margin="8" 034.Text="{Binding AddEditString}" 035.TextWrapping="Wrap" 036.Grid.Column="1" 037.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 038.FontSize="16" /> 039.<!-- Data entry area--> 040. 041.<TextBlock Margin="8,0,0,0" 042.Style="{StaticResource LabelTxb}" 043.Grid.Row="1" 044.Text="Job Title" 045.VerticalAlignment="Center" /> 046.<TextBox x:Name="xJobTitleTB" 047.Margin="0,8" 048.Grid.Column="1" 049.Grid.Row="1" 050.Text="{Binding activeJob.JobTitle, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 051.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 052.<TextBlock Margin="8,0,0,0" 053.Grid.Row="2" 054.Text="Location" 055.d:LayoutOverrides="Height" 056.VerticalAlignment="Center" /> 057.<TextBox x:Name="xLocationTB" 058.Margin="0,8" 059.Grid.Column="1" 060.Grid.Row="2" 061.Text="{Binding activeJob.Location, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 062.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 063. 064.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 065.Grid.Row="3" 066.Text="Description" 067.TextWrapping="Wrap" 068.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 069. 070.<TextBox x:Name="xDescriptionTB" 071.Height="84" 072.TextWrapping="Wrap" 073.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 074.Grid.Column="1" 075.Grid.Row="3" 076.Text="{Binding activeJob.Description, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 077.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 078.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 079.Grid.Row="4" 080.Text="Requirements" 081.TextWrapping="Wrap" 082.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 083. 084.<TextBox x:Name="xRequirementsTB" 085.Height="84" 086.TextWrapping="Wrap" 087.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 088.Grid.Column="1" 089.Grid.Row="4" 090.Text="{Binding activeJob.Requirements, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 091.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 092.<TextBlock Margin="8,11,8,0" 093.Grid.Row="5" 094.Text="Qualifications" 095.TextWrapping="Wrap" 096.VerticalAlignment="Top" /> 097. 098.<TextBox x:Name="xQualificationsTB" 099.Height="84" 100.TextWrapping="Wrap" 101.ScrollViewer.VerticalScrollBarVisibility="Auto" 102.Grid.Column="1" 103.Grid.Row="5" 104.Text="{Binding activeJob.Qualifications, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}" 105.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" /> 106.<!-- Requirements Checkboxes--> 107. 108.<CheckBox x:Name="xResumeRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 109.Content="Resume Required" 110.Grid.Row="6" 111.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 112.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsResume, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 113. 114.<CheckBox x:Name="xCoverletterRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 115.Content="Cover Letter Required" 116.Grid.Column="2" 117.Grid.Row="6" 118.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsCV, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 119. 120.<CheckBox x:Name="xOverviewRequiredCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 121.Content="Overview Required" 122.Grid.Row="7" 123.Grid.ColumnSpan="2" 124.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.NeedsOverview, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 125. 126.<CheckBox x:Name="xJobActiveCB" Margin="8,8,8,15" 127.Content="Job is Active" 128.Grid.Column="2" 129.Grid.Row="7" 130.IsChecked="{Binding activeJob.IsActive, Mode=TwoWay, NotifyOnValidationError=True, ValidatesOnExceptions=True}"/> 131. 132.<!-- Buttons --> 133. 134.<Button x:Name="xAddEditButton" Margin="8,8,0,10" 135.Content="{Binding AddEditButtonString}" 136.cal:Click.Command="{Binding AddEditCommand}" 137.Grid.Column="2" 138.Grid.Row="8" 139.HorizontalAlignment="Left" 140.Width="125" 141.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 142. 143.<Button x:Name="xCancelButton" HorizontalAlignment="Right" 144.Content="Cancel" 145.cal:Click.Command="{Binding CancelCommand}" 146.Margin="0,8,8,10" 147.Width="125" 148.Grid.Column="2" 149.Grid.Row="8" 150.telerik:StyleManager.Theme="Windows7" /> 151.</Grid> 152.</Grid> The 'validationHelper:ValidationScope' line may seem odd. This is a handy little trick for catching current and would-be validation errors when working in this whole setup. This all comes from an approach found on theJoy Of Code blog, although it looks like the story for this will be changing slightly with new advances in SL4/WCF RIA Services, so this section can definitely get an overhaul a little down the road. The code is the fun part of all this, so let us see what's happening under the hood. Viewmodel for the AddEditJobView We are going to see some of the same things happening here, so I'll skip over the repeat info and get right to the good stuff: 001.public class AddEditJobViewModel : ViewModelBase 002.{ 003.private readonly IEventAggregator eventAggregator; 004.private readonly IRegionManager regionManager; 005. 006.public RecruitingContext context; 007. 008.private JobPosting _activeJob; 009.public JobPosting activeJob 010.{ 011.get { return _activeJob; } 012.set 013.{ 014.if (_activeJob != value) 015.{ 016._activeJob = value; 017.NotifyChanged("activeJob"); 018.} 019.} 020.} 021. 022.public bool isNewJob; 023. 024.private string _addEditString; 025.public string AddEditString 026.{ 027.get { return _addEditString; } 028.set 029.{ 030.if (_addEditString != value) 031.{ 032._addEditString = value; 033.NotifyChanged("AddEditString"); 034.} 035.} 036.} 037. 038.private string _addEditButtonString; 039.public string AddEditButtonString 040.{ 041.get { return _addEditButtonString; } 042.set 043.{ 044.if (_addEditButtonString != value) 045.{ 046._addEditButtonString = value; 047.NotifyChanged("AddEditButtonString"); 048.} 049.} 050.} 051. 052.public SubscriptionToken addJobToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 053.public SubscriptionToken editJobToken = new SubscriptionToken(); 054. 055.public DelegateCommand<object> AddEditCommand { get; set; } 056.public DelegateCommand<object> CancelCommand { get; set; } 057. 058.private ObservableCollection<ValidationError> _errors = new ObservableCollection<ValidationError>(); 059.public ObservableCollection<ValidationError> Errors 060.{ 061.get { return _errors; } 062.} 063. 064.private ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> _valResults = new ObservableCollection<ValidationResult>(); 065.public ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> ValResults 066.{ 067.get { return this._valResults; } 068.} 069. 070.public AddEditJobViewModel(IEventAggregator eventAgg, IRegionManager regionmanager) 071.{ 072.// set Unity items 073.this.eventAggregator = eventAgg; 074.this.regionManager = regionmanager; 075. 076.context = new RecruitingContext(); 077. 078.AddEditCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.AddEditJobCommand); 079.CancelCommand = new DelegateCommand<object>(this.CancelAddEditCommand); 080. 081.SetSubscriptions(); 082.} 083. 084.#region Subscription Declaration and Events 085. 086.public void SetSubscriptions() 087.{ 088.AddJobEvent addJob = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobEvent>(); 089. 090.if (addJobToken != null) 091.addJob.Unsubscribe(addJobToken); 092. 093.addJobToken = addJob.Subscribe(this.AddJobEventHandler); 094. 095.EditJobEvent editJob = this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobEvent>(); 096. 097.if (editJobToken != null) 098.editJob.Unsubscribe(editJobToken); 099. 100.editJobToken = editJob.Subscribe(this.EditJobEventHandler); 101.} 102. 103.public void AddJobEventHandler(bool isNew) 104.{ 105.this.activeJob = null; 106.this.activeJob = new JobPosting(); 107.this.activeJob.IsActive = true; // We assume that we want a new job to go up immediately 108.this.isNewJob = true; 109.this.AddEditString = "Add New Job Posting"; 110.this.AddEditButtonString = "Add Job"; 111. 112.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "AddEditJobView"); 113.} 114. 115.public void EditJobEventHandler(JobPosting editJob) 116.{ 117.this.activeJob = null; 118.this.activeJob = editJob; 119.this.isNewJob = false; 120.this.AddEditString = "Edit Job Posting"; 121.this.AddEditButtonString = "Edit Job"; 122. 123.MakeMeActive(this.regionManager, "MainRegion", "AddEditJobView"); 124.} 125. 126.#endregion 127. 128.#region DelegateCommands from View 129. 130.public void AddEditJobCommand(object obj) 131.{ 132.if (this.Errors.Count > 0) 133.{ 134.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 135. 136.foreach (var valR in this.Errors) 137.{ 138.errorMessages.Add(valR.Exception.Message); 139.} 140. 141.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<DisplayValidationErrorsEvent>().Publish(errorMessages); 142. 143.} 144.else if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(this.activeJob, new ValidationContext(this.activeJob, null, null), _valResults, true)) 145.{ 146.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 147. 148.foreach (var valR in this._valResults) 149.{ 150.errorMessages.Add(valR.ErrorMessage); 151.} 152. 153.this._valResults.Clear(); 154. 155.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<DisplayValidationErrorsEvent>().Publish(errorMessages); 156.} 157.else 158.{ 159.if (this.isNewJob) 160.{ 161.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(this.activeJob); 162.} 163.else 164.{ 165.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(true); 166.} 167.} 168.} 169. 170.public void CancelAddEditCommand(object obj) 171.{ 172.if (this.isNewJob) 173.{ 174.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<AddJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(null); 175.} 176.else 177.{ 178.this.eventAggregator.GetEvent<EditJobCompleteEvent>().Publish(false); 179.} 180.} 181. 182.#endregion 183.} 184.} We start seeing something new on line 103- the AddJobEventHandler will create a new job and set that to the activeJob item on the ViewModel. When this is all set, the view calls that familiar MakeMeActive method to activate itself. I made a bit of a management call on making views self-activate like this, but I figured it works for one reason. As I create this application, views may not exist that I have in mind, so after a view receives its 'ping' from being subscribed to an event, it prepares whatever it needs to do and then goes active. This way if I don't have 'edit' hooked up, I can click as the day is long on the main view and won't get lost in an empty region. Total personal preference here. :) Everything else should again be pretty straightforward, although I do a bit of validation checking in the AddEditJobCommand, which can either fire off an event back to the main view/viewmodel if everything is a success or sent a list of errors to our notification module, which pops open a RadWindow with the alerts if any exist. As a bonus side note, here's what my WCF RIA Services metadata looks like for handling all of the validation: private JobPostingMetadata() { } [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage = "Description should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength = 1)] [Required(ErrorMessage = "Description is required.")] public string Description; [Required(ErrorMessage="Active Status is Required")] public bool IsActive; [StringLength(100, ErrorMessage = "Posting title must be more than 3 but less than 100 characters.", MinimumLength = 3)] [Required(ErrorMessage = "Job Title is required.")] public bool JobTitle; [Required] public string Location; public bool NeedsCV; public bool NeedsOverview; public bool NeedsResume; public int PostingID; [Required(ErrorMessage="Qualifications are required.")] [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage="Qualifications should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength=1)] public string Qualifications; [StringLength(2500, ErrorMessage = "Requirements should be more than one and less than 2500 characters.", MinimumLength = 1)] [Required(ErrorMessage="Requirements are required.")] public string Requirements;   The RecruitCB Alternative See all that Xaml I pasted above? Those are now two pieces sitting in the JobsView.xaml file now. The only real difference is that the xEditGrid now sits in the same place as xJobsGrid, with visibility swapping out between the two for a quick switch. I also took out all the cal: and command: command references and replaced Button events with clicks and the Grid selection command replaced with a SelectedItemChanged event. Also, at the bottom of the xEditGrid after the last button, I add a ValidationSummary (with Visibility=Collapsed) to catch any errors that are popping up. Simple as can be, and leads to this being the single code-behind file: 001.public partial class JobsView : UserControl 002.{ 003.public RecruitingContext context; 004.public JobPosting activeJob; 005.public bool isNew; 006.private ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> _valResults = new ObservableCollection<ValidationResult>(); 007.public ObservableCollection<ValidationResult> ValResults 008.{ 009.get { return this._valResults; } 010.} 011.public JobsView() 012.{ 013.InitializeComponent(); 014.this.Loaded += new RoutedEventHandler(JobsView_Loaded); 015.} 016.void JobsView_Loaded(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 017.{ 018.context = new RecruitingContext(); 019.xJobsGrid.ItemsSource = context.JobPostings; 020.context.Load(context.GetJobPostingsQuery()); 021.} 022.private void xAddRecordButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 023.{ 024.activeJob = new JobPosting(); 025.isNew = true; 026.xAddEditTitle.Text = "Add a Job Posting"; 027.xAddEditButton.Content = "Add"; 028.xEditGrid.DataContext = activeJob; 029.HideJobsGrid(); 030.} 031.private void xEditRecordButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 032.{ 033.activeJob = xJobsGrid.SelectedItem as JobPosting; 034.isNew = false; 035.xAddEditTitle.Text = "Edit a Job Posting"; 036.xAddEditButton.Content = "Edit"; 037.xEditGrid.DataContext = activeJob; 038.HideJobsGrid(); 039.} 040.private void xAddEditButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 041.{ 042.if (!Validator.TryValidateObject(this.activeJob, new ValidationContext(this.activeJob, null, null), _valResults, true)) 043.{ 044.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 045.foreach (var valR in this._valResults) 046.{ 047.errorMessages.Add(valR.ErrorMessage); 048.} 049.this._valResults.Clear(); 050.ShowErrors(errorMessages); 051.} 052.else if (xSummary.Errors.Count > 0) 053.{ 054.List<string> errorMessages = new List<string>(); 055.foreach (var err in xSummary.Errors) 056.{ 057.errorMessages.Add(err.Message); 058.} 059.ShowErrors(errorMessages); 060.} 061.else 062.{ 063.if (this.isNew) 064.{ 065.context.JobPostings.Add(activeJob); 066.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 067.{ 068.ActionHistory thisAction = new ActionHistory(); 069.thisAction.PostingID = activeJob.PostingID; 070.thisAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been edited by {1}", activeJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 071.thisAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 072.context.ActionHistories.Add(thisAction); 073.context.SubmitChanges(); 074.}, null); 075.} 076.else 077.{ 078.context.SubmitChanges((s) => 079.{ 080.ActionHistory thisAction = new ActionHistory(); 081.thisAction.PostingID = activeJob.PostingID; 082.thisAction.Description = String.Format("Job '{0}' has been added by {1}", activeJob.JobTitle, "default user"); 083.thisAction.TimeStamp = DateTime.Now; 084.context.ActionHistories.Add(thisAction); 085.context.SubmitChanges(); 086.}, null); 087.} 088.ShowJobsGrid(); 089.} 090.} 091.private void xCancelButton_Click(object sender, RoutedEventArgs e) 092.{ 093.ShowJobsGrid(); 094.} 095.private void ShowJobsGrid() 096.{ 097.xAddEditRecordButtonPanel.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 098.xEditGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 099.xJobsGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 100.} 101.private void HideJobsGrid() 102.{ 103.xAddEditRecordButtonPanel.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 104.xJobsGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Collapsed; 105.xEditGrid.Visibility = Visibility.Visible; 106.} 107.private void ShowErrors(List<string> errorList) 108.{ 109.string nm = "Errors received: \n"; 110.foreach (string anerror in errorList) 111.nm += anerror + "\n"; 112.RadWindow.Alert(nm); 113.} 114.} The first 39 lines should be pretty familiar, not doing anything too unorthodox to get this up and running. Once we hit the xAddEditButton_Click on line 40, we're still doing pretty much the same things except instead of checking the ValidationHelper errors, we both run a check on the current activeJob object as well as check the ValidationSummary errors list. Once that is set, we again use the callback of context.SubmitChanges (lines 68 and 78) to create an ActionHistory which we will use to track these items down the line. That's all? Essentially... yes. If you look back through this post, most of the code and adventures we have taken were just to get things working in the MVVM/Prism setup. Since I have the whole 'module' self-contained in a single JobView+code-behind setup, I don't have to worry about things like sending events off into space for someone to pick up, communicating through an Infrastructure project, or even re-inventing events to be used with attached behaviors. Everything just kinda works, and again with much less code. Here's a picture of the MVVM and Code-behind versions on the Jobs and AddEdit views, but since the functionality is the same in both apps you still cannot tell them apart (for two-strike): Looking ahead, the Applicants module is effectively the same thing as the Jobs module, so most of the code is being cut-and-pasted back and forth with minor tweaks here and there. So that one is being taken care of by me behind the scenes. Next time, we get into a new world of fun- the interview scheduling module, which will pull from available jobs and applicants for each interview being scheduled, tying everything together with RadScheduler to the rescue. Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • The Next Wave of PeopleSoft Capabilities for the Staffing Industry Is Here

    - by Mark Rosenberg
    With the release of PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 in January this year, we introduced substantial new capabilities for our Staffing Industry customers. Through a co-development project with Infosys Limited, we have enriched Oracle's PeopleSoft Staffing Solution with new tools aimed at accelerating and improving the quality of job order fulfillment, increasing branch recruiter productivity, and driving profitable growth. Staffing industry firms succeed based on their ability to rapidly, cost-effectively, and continually fill their pipelines with new clients and job orders, recruit the best talent, and match orders with talent. Pressure to execute in each of these functional areas is even more acute on staffing firms as contingent labor becomes a more substantial and permanent part of the workforce mix. In an industry that creates value through speedy execution, there is little room for manual, inefficient processes and brittle, custom integrations, which throttle profitability and growth. The latest wave of investment in the PeopleSoft Staffing Solution focuses on generating efficiency and flexibility for our customers. Simplicity To operate profitably and continue growing, a Staffing enterprise needs its client management, recruiting, order fulfillment, and other processes to function in harmony. Most importantly, they need to be simple for recruiters, branch managers, and applicants to access and understand. The latest PeopleSoft Staffing Solution set of enhancements includes numerous automated defaulting mechanisms and information-rich dashboard pagelets that even a new employee can learn quickly. Pending Applicant, Agenda management, Search, and other pagelets are just a few of the newest, easy-to-use tools that not only aggregate and summarize information, but also provide instant access to applicants, tasks, and key reports for branch staff. Productivity The leading firms in the Staffing industry are those that can more efficiently orchestrate large numbers of candidates, clients, and orders than their competitors can. PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 delivers productivity boosters that Staffing firms can leverage to streamline tasks and processes for competitive advantage. For example, we enhanced the Recruiting Funnel, which manages the candidate on-boarding process, with a highly interactive user interface. It integrates disparate Staffing business processes and exploits new PeopleTools technologies to offer a superior on-boarding user experience. Automated creation of agenda items and assignment tasks for each candidate minimizes setup and organizes assignment steps for the on-boarding process. Mass updates of tasks and instant access to the candidate overview page (which we also expanded), candidate event status, event counts, and other key data enable recruiters to better serve clients and candidates. Lower TCO Constructing and maintaining an efficient yet flexible labor supply chain can be complicated, let alone expensive. Traditionally, Staffing firms have been challenged in controlling their technology cost of ownership because connecting candidate and client-facing tools involved building and integrating custom applications and technologies and managing staff turnover, placing heavy demands on IT and support staff. With PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2, there are two major enhancements that aggressively tackle these challenges. First, we added another integration framework to enable cost-effective linking of the Staffing firm’s PeopleSoft applications and its job board distributors. (The first PeopleSoft 9.1 Feature Pack released in March 2011 delivered an integration framework to connect to resume parsing providers.) Second, we introduced the teaming concept to enable work to be partitioned to groups, as well as individuals. These two capabilities, combined with a host of others, position Staffing firms to configure and grow their businesses without growing their IT and overhead expenditures. For our Staffing Industry customers, PeopleSoft Financials and Supply Chain Management 9.1 Feature Pack 2 is loaded with high-value tools aimed at enabling and sustaining a flexible labor supply chain. For more information, contact [email protected] or [email protected].

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 26, 2011 -- #1036

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this all-submittal Issue: XamlNinja, Kevin Dockx, Steve Wortham, Andrea Boschin, Mick Norman, Colin Eberhardt, and Rudi Grobler(-2-, -3-, -4-, -5-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Getting an invalid cross-thread exception in Silverlight?" Kevin Dockx WP7: "WP7 Contrib – the last messenger" XamlNinja ISO: "How many files are too many files for isolated storage?" Mick Norman Shoutouts: Telerik announced a free WP7 Webinars series that you probably don't want to miss: Join Us for the Special Free Windows Phone 7 Webinars Series. Guest lecturers - Shawn Wildermuth and Mark Arteaga From SilverlightCream.com: WP7 Contrib – the last messenger XamlNinja has a great post up extending Laurent's IMessenger to deal with a tricky issue of trying to fire a message from one VM to another even if the 2nd VM isn't alive yet... oh, and this is in WP7Contrib, so go grab it! Getting an invalid cross-thread exception in Silverlight? Kevin Dockx has a solution to a problem we've all had... the 'invalid cross-thread exception' ... and the solution is even for those of us trying to do this in a VM... cool and easy solution, Kevin! Mastering Storyboards One Mistake at a Time Steve Wortham is back with a tutorial with a great title :) ... check out the progression from one success to another in this picture/title viewer ... don't miss the very end where he has the control rolled up into a CaptionedImageHyperlink, and a link to download it! Windows Phone 7 - Part #2: Your First Application Andrea Boschin has part 2 of his SilverlightShow WP7 series up. Lots of good intro material here on the manifest file and app.xaml ... he even gets into the ApplicationBar, phone orientation, and the Metro theme. How many files are too many files for isolated storage? Mick Norman alerted me to his blog early this morning, and this is his latest post... interesting tests of how many files are too many for ISO on your WP7... and I have to admit... he's stuffing a boatload of them out there in these tests! ... great info Mick! and thanks for the links. A Navigator Control For Visiblox Time Series Charts Colin Eberhardt's latest post is about creating an interactive navigator for large time series datasets in Visiblox charts.... check the images at the top of the post, and it'll be obvious :) ... very cool stuff. MVVM Frameworks with WP7 support Rudi Grobler has been very busy and if you check the dates, these posts are all in a day or two! This first highlights two contenders for MVVM on WP7: Caliburn and MVVMLight... both well-supported... quick intro to each followed by good links out to the author's sites Reading barcodes from your WP7 device Rudi Grobler also has a cool post up on reading barcodes with your WP7... he's using the ZXing Barcode Scanning Library, and makes quick work of the job. Taking Sterling for a Test-Drive Rudi Grobler has a quick intro to Sterlink, Jeremy Likness' ISO database for Silverlight up... quickly taking care of writing and reading back data. SQLite on WP7 After his discussion of Sterling, Rudi Grobler is now demonstrating the use of SQLite that has been ported to WP7. Check out his demo code... looks pretty easy to use. Hacking the WP7 Camera (The basics) Rudi Grobler's latest post is on getting direct access to the camera on WP7... be sure to do all the downloads and check out the external links he has. 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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  • IOUG and Oracle Enterprise Manager User Community Twitter Chat and Sessions at OpenWorld

    - by Anand Akela
    Like last many years, we will have annual Oracle Users Forum on Sunday, September 30th, 2012 at Moscone West, Levels 2 & 3 . It will be open to all registered attendees of Oracle Open World and conferences running from September 29 to October 5, 2012 . This will be a great  opportunity to meet with colleagues, peers, and subject matter experts to share best practices, tips, and techniques around Oracle technologies. You could sit in on a special interest group (SIG) meeting or session and learn how to get more out of Oracle technologies and applications. IOUG and Oracle Enterprise Manager team invites you to join a Twitter Chat on Sunday, Sep. 30th from 11:30 AM to 12:30 PM.  IOUG leaders, Enterprise Manager SIG contributors and many Oracle Users Forum speakers will answer questions related to their experience with Oracle Enterprise Manager and the activities and resources available for  Enterprise Manager SIG members. You can participate in the chat using hash tag #em12c on Twitter.com or by going to  tweetchat.com/room/em12c      (Needs Twitter credential for participating).  Feel free to join IOUG and Enterprise team members at the User Group Pavilion on 2nd Floor, Moscone West. Here is the complete list of Oracle Enterprise Manager sessions during the Oracle Users Forum : Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Time Session Title Speakers Location 8:00AM - 8:45AM UGF4569 - Oracle RAC Migration with Oracle Automatic Storage Management and Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c VINOD Emmanuel -Database Engineering, Dell, Inc. Wendy Chen - Sr. Systems Engineer, Dell, Inc. Moscone West - 2011 8:00AM - 8:45AM UGF10389 -  Monitoring Storage Systems for Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Anand Ranganathan - Product Manager, NetApp Moscone West - 2016 9:00AM - 10:00AM UGF2571 - Make Oracle Enterprise Manager Sing and Dance with the Command-Line Interface Ray Smith - Senior Database Administrator, Portland General Electric Moscone West - 2011 10:30AM - 11:30AM UGF2850 - Optimal Support: Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control, My Oracle Support, and More April Sims - DBA, Southern Utah University Moscone West - 2011 11:30AM - 12:30PM IOUG and Oracle Enterprise Manager Joint Tweet Chat  Join IOUG Leaders, IOUG's Enterprise Manager SIG Contributors and Speakers on Twitter and ask questions related to practitioner's experience with Oracle Enterprise Manager and the new IOUG 's Enterprise Manager SIG. To attend and participate in the chat, please use hash tag #em12c on twitter.com or your favorite Twitter client. You can also go to tweetchat.com/room/em12c to watch the conversation or login with your twitter credentials to ask questions. User Group Pavilion 2nd Floor, Moscone West 12:30PM-2:00PM UGF5131 - Migrating from Oracle Enterprise Manager 10g Grid Control to 12c Cloud Control    Leighton Nelson - Database Administrator, Mercy Moscone West - 2011 2:15PM-3:15PM UGF6511 -  Database Performance Tuning: Get the Best out of Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c Cloud Control Mike Ault - Oracle Guru, TEXAS MEMORY SYSTEMS INC Tariq Farooq - CEO/Founder, BrainSurface Moscone West - 2011 3:30PM-4:30PM UGF4556 - Will It Blend? Verifying Capacity in Server and Database Consolidations Jeremiah Wilton - Database Technology, Blue Gecko / DatAvail Moscone West - 2018 3:30PM-4:30PM UGF10400 - Oracle Enterprise Manager 12c: Monitoring, Metric Extensions, and Configuration Best Practices Kellyn Pot'Vin - Sr. Technical Consultant, Enkitec Moscone West - 2011 Stay Connected: Twitter |  Face book |  You Tube |  Linked in |  Newsletter

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