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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 08, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, June 08, 2010New ProjectsAD CMS: CMS software project still in its initial development and design stage.Animated panel: Animated Panel is a WPF control that supports animation of its content on resize. Can be used in item controls (ListBox for example) as ItemsPanelT...Anurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: Hi there, this is Anurag P.'s public repository which contains most of c++ language examples and many command line(only) applications. Well , plea...atfas: atfasBibleNotes: A small application that uses BibleGateway to lookup scripture and add notes to themCarRental: How to Rent A Car.Food Innovation: This is the Food Innovation project.Generic Validation.NET: Generic Validation.NET is a flexible lightweight validation library for .NET, that can be used by any .NET project: ASP.NET Web Forms, ASP.NET MVC,...Komoi: Komoi is an app that will bring on a new form of web comic delivery.Liekhus Entity Framework XAF Extensions: Entity Framework extensions to support DevExpress eXpress Application Framework (XAF) code generation by Patrick Liekhus.Marketing: Desing Automation Marketing FlowMediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET makes it easy for normal PC users to convert media files to other formats. It is developed in Visual Basic.NETMemetic NPC Behavior Toolkit: This is a library based on the NeverWinter Nights' Memetic AI Toolkit by William Bull. This is an attempt at creating a C# edition of this brillia...MeVisLab QT VR Export: -Mudbox: This project for personal test. Prog2: wi ss10 2010 PSAdmin: PSAdmin is a web based administration tool that allows the easy execution of Windows PowerShell scripts within your environment.RIA Services Essentials: The RIA Services Essentials project contains sample applications/extensions demonstrating using and extending WCF RIA Services v1.SCSM Service Request: The Service Request project defines a new work item class called 'Service Request' and the corresponding form for that work item class. It is a go...SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NET: The Ultimate SSH Secure File Transfer (SFTP) .NET Component offers a comprehensive interface for SFTP, enabling you to quickly and easily incorpora...shitcore: Application demonstrating how to turn a crappy application into something useful. Read more about the refactoring in http://blog.gauffin.com (sear...SystemCentered Operations Manager Reporting: SystemCentered Reporting give Microsoft System Center Operations Manager administrators an extended set of performance reports aimed towards all us...TokyoTyrantClient: makes it easier for c# developer to write code to connect the tokyo tyrant. it support: 1.utf-8 encode 2.tcpClient pool 3.rich setting about tc...Ultimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET: Ultimate FTP is a 100%-managed .NET class library that adds powerful and comprehensive File Transfer capabilities to your .NET applications. WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: WCF 4 templates for Visual Studio 2010 providing a scenario-driven starting point.XCube: XCube is a basic command line interface, with support for files, user accounts(only in the GUI), and variables(only in DevMode). It is developed in...New ReleasesAdd-ons for EPiServer Relate+: EPiXternal.RelatePlus.Properties 0.1.0.0 Alpha: This is the Alpha release of EPiXternal.RelatePlus.Properties. The download is in the form of an .epimodule file that you can install with EPiServe...Add-ons for EPiServer Relate+: EPiXternal.RelatePlus.WebControl 0.1.0.0 Alpha: This is the Alpha release of EPiXternal.RelatePlus.WebControls. The download is in the form of an .epimodule file that you can install with EPiServ...Animated panel: AnimatedPanel v1: First version of AnimatedPanel.Anurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: C.L.O.S.E - V3: C.L.O.S.E - V3 Smaller than ever. More Useful than ever Run only CLOSEV3.exeAnurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: FLTK - 1.3.X: The Fast Lightining Tool Kit is back. This is the FLTK 1.3.X Tar ballAnurag Pallaprolu's Code Repository: KBHIT Function Code: This is a sample to teach about kbhit()Browser Gallese: Browser 1.0.0.15: Continua l'era del browser opensource con una novità:ho impiantato il P2P online. Adesso il browser ha bisogno di Java. Se non lo avete,cliccate qu...CC.Hearts Screen Saver: CC.Hearts Screen Saver 1.0.10.607: This is the initial release of CC.Hearts Screen Saver. Marking as stable but limited testing at this point so feedback is greatly welcomed.Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V32: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has ad...DotNetNuke® Skins: Default.css (beta): About The team has put together a cleaned up and optimized default.css file as a first step in moving toward more efficient CSS usage. Ideally, th...Dynamic Survey Forms - SharePoint Web Part: Code Fix 06-07-2010: Fix for editing existing forms Add: Requiered field option Add: Requiered field validation on submitFloe IRC Client: Floe 1.0 (2010-06): NOTE: You may have to uninstall your existing version for this installer to work properly. - Added /QUOTE command - Fixed bug where new message in...Folder Bookmarks: Folder Bookmarks 1.6.2.1: The latest version of Folder Bookmarks (1.6.2.1), with new Mini-Menu UI changes (1.3). Once you have extracted the file, do not delete any files/f...Food Innovation: Food Innovation 1.0: This is the V1.0 release.HERB.IQ: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 7: Alpha 0.1 Source code release 7 (skipped uploading 6)Liekhus Entity Framework XAF Extensions: Version 1.1.0: Initial project release. Ported the XAFDSL tool into the Entity Framework and made it work with the Visual Studio 2010 extensions.LogikBug's IoC Container: LogikBug's IoC Container v 1.1: In this release, I add the ability to extend the container using the LogikBug.Injection.Extensibility namespace.MediaCoder.NET: MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta Source Code: Source code for MediaCoder.NET v1.0 beta it includes everything - also the installer.Memetic NPC Behavior Toolkit: Wandering Meme Test: This was a code spike to see the first custom meme in action. The first meme chosen was the "Wander" meme. This is a Visual Studio 2010 solution. ...Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework: Silverlight Media Framework v2 (RC1): This is the first release candidate for the Microsoft Silverlight Media Framework v2. Note: The IIS Smooth Streaming Player Development Kit assem...mwNSPECT: mwNSPECT Beta: mwNSPECT Mapwindow plugin dll. Place in your MapWindow or BASINS plugins directory. Presently for testing everything, though very much known issu...mwNSPECT: mwNSPECT Beta Installer: Simplistic mwNSPECT Mapwindow plugin installer using Inno setup. Installs all the files you'll need for NSPECT into the C:\NSPECT folder and insta...Near forums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Release 1: First release of the SEO friendly ASP.NET MVC forum engine.NLog - Advanced .NET Logging: Nightly Build 2010.06.07.001: Changes since the last build:2010-06-06 22:13:02 Jarek Kowalski Added unit tests for common target behaviors. 2010-06-06 19:36:44 Jarek Kowalski c...patterns & practices – Enterprise Library: Enterprise Library 5.0 - Dev Guide (RC): This is a Release Candidate of the Developer's Guide, C# EditionPSAdmin: 1.0.0.0: This is an alpha release of PSAdmin and should be tested before putting into a production environment. This package is pre-compiled and ready for ...Refix - .NET dependency management: Refix v0.1.0.59 ALPHA: Still a very early version. Functional changes: Added new pre (prebuild) and fix commands (rfx help pre and rfx help fix for explanations).SCSM Service Request: Service Request Management Pack v0.1: !This is an ALPHA release. Please use for testing purposes only.! The management pack is not sealed which means that when a new version of the Se...SFTP Component for .NET CSharp, VB.NET, and ASP.NET: SFTP WinForms Client: SFTP WinForms ClientSharePoint Feature - Version history list Export to Excel: Export Item List Version 1.1: - allows you to select columns to export - multilanguage support Czech, English - some bug fix Install: "C:\Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft S...SharePoint Outlook Connector: Source Code for Version 1.2.4.3: Source Code for Version 1.2.4.3SharePoint PowerRSS: v1.0: Easy/Clean way to get SharePoint list data via more standard RSS feed. I found CleanRSS.aspx as part of SPRSS: Enhanced RSS Functionality for WSS ...Smith Async .NET Memcached Client: Smith.Amc 0.7.3810.36347: Smith Async Memcached client release 0.7.3810.36347 available First public release available. All memcached operations has been implemented except...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson five content: Here is Lesson five original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. The blog tutorial has now started over on http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkge...Star Trooper for XNA 2D Tutorial: Lesson six content: Here is Lesson six original content for the StarTrooper 2D XNA tutorial. The blog tutorial has now started over on http://xna-uk.net/blogs/darkgen...Stripper: Stripper.exe version 0.1.0: Stripper Remove Diacritics and other unwanted caracters to fabric a more standardized file naming. Especially French caracter and maybe other lang...SystemCentered Operations Manager Reporting: SystemCentered Reports V1: Reports Windows Computer General Performance When troubleshooting performance problems there are typically a set of "go to" performance counters t...TFS Buddy: TFS Buddy Beta 1.1: Minor changes +Added repeat function in action tab to simplyfy creating actions +Added app manifest to make the exe require run as Admin ~How the I...Thumbnail creator and image resizer: ThumbnailCreator1.2.1: ThumbnailCreator1.2.1 added importing of namespaces to .vb(previously in web.config)TokyoTyrantClient: TokyoTyrantClient release: 该客户端有如下特点： 1.支持TcpClient连接池 2.支持UTF-8编码 3.支持初始化链接数，链接过期时间，最大空闲时间，最长工作时间等设置。Ultimate FTP Component for .NET C#, VB.NET and ASP.NET: Build 519: New Release Download setup package at: http://www.componentsoft.net/component/download/?name=UltimateFtp Product Home Page: http://www.componentsof...visinia: visinia_1.2: The new stable version of visinia cms is out, it is visinia 1.2. It has many new features like the admin is one more time is given a new look. the ...WCF 4 Templates for Visual Studio 2010: AnonymousOverHttp: This template generates a WCF service application that exposes a BasicHttpBinding endpoint with maxed message size and reader quotas to provide an ...WhiteMoon: WhiteMoon 0.2.10 Source: The Source code of WhiteMoon 0.2 build 10Most Popular ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgeASP.NET MVC Time PlannerMoonyDesk (windows desktop widgets)NeatUploadOutSyncViperWorks IgnitionAgUnit - Silverlight unit testing with ReSharperSmith Async .NET Memcached ClientASP.NET MVC ExtensionsAviva Solutions C# Coding GuidelinesMost Active ProjectsCommunity Forums NNTP bridgepatterns & practices – Enterprise LibraryRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModuleGMap.NET - Great Maps for Windows Forms & PresentationN2 CMSStyleCopsmark C# LibraryBlogEngine.NET

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• MSCC: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp

  Mauritius participated and contributed to the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 (GWAB). Again! And this time stronger than ever, and together with 137 other locations in 56 countries world-wide. We had 62 named registrations, 7 guest additions and approximately 10 offline participants prior to the event day. Most interestingly the organisation of the GWAB through the MSCC helped to increased the number of craftsmen. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community has currently 138 registered members - in less than one year! Only with those numbers we can proudly say that all the preparations and hard work towards this event already paid off. Personally, I'm really grateful that we had this kind of response and the feedback from some attendees confirmed that the MSCC is on the right track here on Cyber Island Mauritius. Inspired and motivated by the success of this event, rest assured that there will be more public events like the GWAB. This time it took some time to reflect on our meetup, following my first impression right on spot: "Wow, what an experience to organise and participate in this global event. Overall, I've been very pleased with the preparations and the event itself. Surely, there have been some nicks that we have to address and to improve for future activities like this. Quite frankly, we are not professional event organisers (not yet) but we learned a lot over the past couple of days. A big Thank You to our event sponsors, namely Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific, Ceridian Mauritius and Emtel. Without them this event wouldn't have happened - Thank You! And to the cool team members of Microsoft Student Partners (MSPs). You geeks did a great job! Thanks!" So, how many attendees did we actually have? 61! - Awesome - 61 cloud computing instances to help on the research of diabetes. During Saturday afternoon there was even an online publication on L'Express: Les développeurs mauriciens se joignent au combat contre le diabète Reactions of other attendees Don't take my word for granted... Here are some impressions and feedback from our participants: "Awesome event, really appreciated the presentations :-)" -- Kevin on event comments "very interesting and enriching." -- Diana on event comments "#gwab #gwabmru 2014 great success. Looking forward for gwab 2015" -- Wasiim on Twitter "Was there till the end. Awesome Event. I'll surely join upcoming meetup sessions :)" -- Luchmun on event comments "#gwabmru was not that cool. left early" -- Mohammad on Twitter The overall feedback is positive but we are absolutely aware that there quite a number of problems we had to face. We are already looking into that and ideas / action plans on how we will be able to improve it for future events. The sessions We started the day with welcoming speeches by Thierry Coret, Sr. Marketing Manager of Microsoft Indian Ocean Islands & French Pacific and Vidia Mooneegan, Managing Director and Sr. Vice President of Ceridian Mauritius. The clear emphasis was on the endless possibilities of cloud computing and how it can enable any kind of sectors here in the country. Then it was about time to set up the cloud computing services in order to contribute each attendees cloud computing resources to the global research of diabetes, a step by step guide presented by Arnaud Meslier, Technical Evangelist at Microsoft. Given a rendering package and a configuration file it was very interesting to follow the single steps in Windows Azure. Also, during the day we were not sure whether the set up had been correctly, as Mauritius didn't show up on the results board - which should have been the case after approximately 20 to 30 minutes. Anyways, let the minions work... Next, Arnaud gave a brief overview of the variety of services Windows Azure has to offer. Whether you need a development environment for your websites or mobiles app, running a virtual machine with your existing applications or simply putting a SQL database online. No worries, Windows Azure has the right packages available and the online management portal is really easy t handle. After this, we got a little bit more business oriented while Wasiim Hosenbocus, employee at Ceridian, took the attendees through the inerts of a real-life application, and demoed a couple of the existing features. He did a great job by showing how the different services of Windows Azure can be created and pulled together. After the lunch break it is always tough to keep the audience awake... And it was my turn. I gave a brief overview on operating and managing a SQL database on Windows Azure. Well, there are actually two options available and depending on your individual requirements you should be aware of both. The simpler version is called SQL Database and while provisioning only takes a couple of seconds, you should take into consideration that SQL Database has a number of constraints, like limitations on the actual database size - up to 5 GB as web edition and up to 150 GB maximum as business edition -, among others. Next, it was Chervine Bhiwoo's session on Windows Azure Mobile Services. It was absolutely amazing to see that the mobiles services directly offers you various project templates, like Windows 8 Store App, Android app, iOS app, and even Xamarin cross-platform app development. So, within a couple of minutes you can have your first mobile app active and running on Windows Azure. Furthermore, Chervine showed the attendees that adding another user interface, like Web Sites running on ASP.NET MVC 4 only takes a couple of minutes, too. And last but not least, we rounded up the day with Windows Azure Websites and hosting of Virtual Machines presented by some members of the local Microsoft Students Partners programme. Surely, one of the big advantages using Windows Azure is the availability of pre-defined installation packages of known web applications, like WordPress, Joomla!, or Ghost. Compared to running your own web site with a traditional web hoster it is surely en par, and depending on your personal level of expertise, Windows Azure provides you more liberty in terms of configuration than maybe a shared hosting environment. Running a pre-defined web application is one thing but in case that you would like to have more control over your hosting environment it is highly advised to opt for a virtual machine. Provisioning of an Ubuntu 12.04 LTS system was very simple to do but it takes some more minutes than you might expect. So, please be patient and take your time while Windows Azure gets everything in place for you. Afterwards, you can use a SecureShell (ssh) client like Putty in case of a Linux-based machine, or Remote Desktop Services when operating a Windows Server system to log in into your virtual machine. At the end of the day we had a great Q&A session and we finalised the event with our raffle of goodies. Participation in the raffle was bound to submission of the session survey and most gratefully we had a give-away for everyone. What a nice coincidence to finish of the day. Note: All session slides (and demo codes) will be made available on the MSCC event page. Please, check the Files section over there. (Some) Visual impressions from the event Just to give you an idea about what has happened during the GWAB 2014 at Ebene... Speakers and Microsoft Student Partners are getting ready for the Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 GWAB 2014 attendees are fully integrated into the hands-on-labs and setting up their individuals cloud computing services 60 attendees at the GWAB 2014. Despite some technical difficulties we had a great time running the event GWAB 2014: Using the lunch break for networking and exchange of ideas - Great conversations and topics amongst attendees There are more pictures on the original event page: Questions & Answers Following are a couple of questions which have been asked and didn't get an answer during the event: Q: Is it possible to upload static pages via FTP? A: Yes, you can. Have a look at the right side column on the dashboard of your website. There you'll find information about the FTP and SFTP host names. You can use any FTP client, like ie. FileZilla to log in. FTP also gives you access to your log files. Q: What are the size limitations on SQL Database? A: 5 GB on the Web Edition, and 150 GB on the business edition. A maximum 150 databases (inclusing 'master') per SQL Database server. More details here: General Guidelines and Limitations (Azure SQL Database) Q: What's the maximum size of a SQL Server running in a Virtual Machine? A: The maximum Windows Azure VM has currently 8 CPU cores, 14 or 56 GB of RAM and 16x 1 TB hard drives. More details here: Virtual Machine and Cloud Service Sizes for Azure Q: How can we register for Windows Azure? A: Mauritius is currently not listed for phone verification. Please get in touch with Arnaud Meslier at Microsoft IOI & FP Q: Can I use my own domain name for Windows Azure websites? A: Yes, you can. But this might require to upscale your account to Standard. In case that I missed a question and answer, please use the comment section at the end of the article. Thanks! Final results Every participant was instructed during the hands-on-lab session on how to set up a cloud computing service in their account. Of course, I won't keep the results from you... Global Azure Lab GWAB 2014: Our cloud computing contribution to the research of diabetes And I would say Mauritius did a good job! Upcoming Events What are the upcoming events here in Mauritius? So far, we have the following ones (incomplete list as usual) in chronological order: Launch of Microsoft SQL Server 2014 (15.4.2014) Corsair Hackers Reboot (19.4.2014) WebCup (TBA ~ June 2014) Developers Conference (TBA ~ July 2014) Linuxfest 2014 (TBA ~ November 2014) Hopefully, there will be more announcements during the next couple of weeks and months. If you know about any other event, like a bootcamp, a code challenge or hackathon here in Mauritius, please drop me a note in the comment section below this article. Thanks! Networking and job/project opportunities Despite having technical presentations on Windows Azure an event like this always offers a great bunch of possibilities and opportunities to get in touch with new people in IT, have an exchange of experience with other like-minded people. As I already wrote about Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion - I had a great conversation with representatives of the University des Mascareignes which are currently embracing cloud infrastructure and cloud computing for their various campuses in the Indian Ocean. As for the MSCC it would be a great experience to stay in touch with them, and to work on upcoming, common activities. Furthermore, I had a very good conversation with Thierry and Ludovic of Microsoft IOI & FP on the necessity of user groups and IT communities here on the island. It's great to see that the MSCC is currently on a run and that local companies are sharing our thoughts on promoting IT careers and exchange of IT knowledge in such an open way. I'm also looking forward to be able to participate and to contribute on more events in the near future. My resume of the day We learned a lot today and there is always room for improvement! It was an awesome event and quite frankly it was a pleasure to spend the day with so many enthuastic IT people in the same room. It was a great experience to organise such event locally and participate on a global scale to support the GlyQ-IQ Technology in their research on diabetes. I was so pleased to see the involvement of new MSCC members in taking the opportunity to share and learn about the power of cloud computing. The Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is on the right way and this year's bootcamp on Windows Azure only marked the beginning of our journey. Thank you to our sponsors and my kudos to the MSPs! Update: Media coverage The event has been reported in local media, too. Following are some resources: Orange - Local - Business: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Maurice Info.mu: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète Le Quotidien Pg 2: Global Windows Azure Bootcamp 2014 - Le cloud pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète The Observer Pg 12: Le cloud, pour des recherches approfondies sur le diabète

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: ConcurrentBag and BlockingCollection

  - by James Michael Hare

  In the first week of concurrent collections, began with a general introduction and discussed the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>.  The last post discussed the ConcurrentDictionary<T> .  Finally this week, we shall close with a discussion of the ConcurrentBag<T> and BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see C#/.NET Little Wonders: A Redux. Recap As you'll recall from the previous posts, the original collections were object-based containers that accomplished synchronization through a Synchronized member.  With the advent of .NET 2.0, the original collections were succeeded by the generic collections which are fully type-safe, but eschew automatic synchronization.  With .NET 4.0, a new breed of collections was born in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace.  Of these, the final concurrent collection we will examine is the ConcurrentBag and a very useful wrapper class called the BlockingCollection. For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this informative whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here. ConcurrentBag<T> – Thread-safe unordered collection. Unlike the other concurrent collections, the ConcurrentBag<T> has no non-concurrent counterpart in the .NET collections libraries.  Items can be added and removed from a bag just like any other collection, but unlike the other collections, the items are not maintained in any order.  This makes the bag handy for those cases when all you care about is that the data be consumed eventually, without regard for order of consumption or even fairness – that is, it’s possible new items could be consumed before older items given the right circumstances for a period of time. So why would you ever want a container that can be unfair?  Well, to look at it another way, you can use a ConcurrentQueue and get the fairness, but it comes at a cost in that the ordering rules and synchronization required to maintain that ordering can affect scalability a bit.  Thus sometimes the bag is great when you want the fastest way to get the next item to process, and don’t care what item it is or how long its been waiting. The way that the ConcurrentBag works is to take advantage of the new ThreadLocal<T> type (new in System.Threading for .NET 4.0) so that each thread using the bag has a list local to just that thread.  This means that adding or removing to a thread-local list requires very low synchronization.  The problem comes in where a thread goes to consume an item but it’s local list is empty.  In this case the bag performs “work-stealing” where it will rob an item from another thread that has items in its list.  This requires a higher level of synchronization which adds a bit of overhead to the take operation. So, as you can imagine, this makes the ConcurrentBag good for situations where each thread both produces and consumes items from the bag, but it would be less-than-idea in situations where some threads are dedicated producers and the other threads are dedicated consumers because the work-stealing synchronization would outweigh the thread-local optimization for a thread taking its own items. Like the other concurrent collections, there are some curiosities to keep in mind: IsEmpty(), Count, ToArray(), and GetEnumerator() lock collection Each of these needs to take a snapshot of whole bag to determine if empty, thus they tend to be more expensive and cause Add() and Take() operations to block. ToArray() and GetEnumerator() are static snapshots Because it is based on a snapshot, will not show subsequent updates after snapshot. Add() is lightweight Since adding to the thread-local list, there is very little overhead on Add. TryTake() is lightweight if items in thread-local list As long as items are in the thread-local list, TryTake() is very lightweight, much more so than ConcurrentStack() and ConcurrentQueue(), however if the local thread list is empty, it must steal work from another thread, which is more expensive. Remember, a bag is not ideal for all situations, it is mainly ideal for situations where a process consumes an item and either decomposes it into more items to be processed, or handles the item partially and places it back to be processed again until some point when it will complete.  The main point is that the bag works best when each thread both takes and adds items. For example, we could create a totally contrived example where perhaps we want to see the largest power of a number before it crosses a certain threshold.  Yes, obviously we could easily do this with a log function, but bare with me while I use this contrived example for simplicity. So let’s say we have a work function that will take a Tuple out of a bag, this Tuple will contain two ints.  The first int is the original number, and the second int is the last multiple of that number.  So we could load our bag with the initial values (let’s say we want to know the last multiple of each of 2, 3, 5, and 7 under 100. 1: var bag = new ConcurrentBag<Tuple<int, int>> 2: { 3: Tuple.Create(2, 1), 4: Tuple.Create(3, 1), 5: Tuple.Create(5, 1), 6: Tuple.Create(7, 1) 7: }; Then we can create a method that given the bag, will take out an item, apply the multiplier again, 1: public static void FindHighestPowerUnder(ConcurrentBag<Tuple<int,int>> bag, int threshold) 2: { 3: Tuple<int,int> pair; 4:  5: // while there are items to take, this will prefer local first, then steal if no local 6: while (bag.TryTake(out pair)) 7: { 8: // look at next power 9: var result = Math.Pow(pair.Item1, pair.Item2 + 1); 10:  11: if (result < threshold) 12: { 13: // if smaller than threshold bump power by 1 14: bag.Add(Tuple.Create(pair.Item1, pair.Item2 + 1)); 15: } 16: else 17: { 18: // otherwise, we're done 19: Console.WriteLine("Highest power of {0} under {3} is {0}^{1} = {2}.", 20: pair.Item1, pair.Item2, Math.Pow(pair.Item1, pair.Item2), threshold); 21: } 22: } 23: } Now that we have this, we can load up this method as an Action into our Tasks and run it: 1: // create array of tasks, start all, wait for all 2: var tasks = new[] 3: { 4: new Task(() => FindHighestPowerUnder(bag, 100)), 5: new Task(() => FindHighestPowerUnder(bag, 100)), 6: }; 7:  8: Array.ForEach(tasks, t => t.Start()); 9:  10: Task.WaitAll(tasks); Totally contrived, I know, but keep in mind the main point!  When you have a thread or task that operates on an item, and then puts it back for further consumption – or decomposes an item into further sub-items to be processed – you should consider a ConcurrentBag as the thread-local lists will allow for quick processing.  However, if you need ordering or if your processes are dedicated producers or consumers, this collection is not ideal.  As with anything, you should performance test as your mileage will vary depending on your situation! BlockingCollection<T> – A producers & consumers pattern collection The BlockingCollection<T> can be treated like a collection in its own right, but in reality it adds a producers and consumers paradigm to any collection that implements the interface IProducerConsumerCollection<T>.  If you don’t specify one at the time of construction, it will use a ConcurrentQueue<T> as its underlying store. If you don’t want to use the ConcurrentQueue, the ConcurrentStack and ConcurrentBag also implement the interface (though ConcurrentDictionary does not).  In addition, you are of course free to create your own implementation of the interface. So, for those who don’t remember the producers and consumers classical computer-science problem, the gist of it is that you have one (or more) processes that are creating items (producers) and one (or more) processes that are consuming these items (consumers).  Now, the crux of the problem is that there is a bin (queue) where the produced items are placed, and typically that bin has a limited size.  Thus if a producer creates an item, but there is no space to store it, it must wait until an item is consumed.  Also if a consumer goes to consume an item and none exists, it must wait until an item is produced. The BlockingCollection makes it trivial to implement any standard producers/consumers process set by providing that “bin” where the items can be produced into and consumed from with the appropriate blocking operations.  In addition, you can specify whether the bin should have a limited size or can be (theoretically) unbounded, and you can specify timeouts on the blocking operations. As far as your choice of “bin”, for the most part the ConcurrentQueue is the right choice because it is fairly light and maximizes fairness by ordering items so that they are consumed in the same order they are produced.  You can use the concurrent bag or stack, of course, but your ordering would be random-ish in the case of the former and LIFO in the case of the latter. So let’s look at some of the methods of note in BlockingCollection: BoundedCapacity returns capacity of the “bin” If the bin is unbounded, the capacity is int.MaxValue. Count returns an internally-kept count of items This makes it O(1), but if you modify underlying collection directly (not recommended) it is unreliable. CompleteAdding() is used to cut off further adds. This sets IsAddingCompleted and begins to wind down consumers once empty. IsAddingCompleted is true when producers are “done”. Once you are done producing, should complete the add process to alert consumers. IsCompleted is true when producers are “done” and “bin” is empty. Once you mark the producers done, and all items removed, this will be true. Add() is a blocking add to collection. If bin is full, will wait till space frees up Take() is a blocking remove from collection. If bin is empty, will wait until item is produced or adding is completed. GetConsumingEnumerable() is used to iterate and consume items. Unlike the standard enumerator, this one consumes the items instead of iteration. TryAdd() attempts add but does not block completely If adding would block, returns false instead, can specify TimeSpan to wait before stopping. TryTake() attempts to take but does not block completely Like TryAdd(), if taking would block, returns false instead, can specify TimeSpan to wait. Note the use of CompleteAdding() to signal the BlockingCollection that nothing else should be added.  This means that any attempts to TryAdd() or Add() after marked completed will throw an InvalidOperationException.  In addition, once adding is complete you can still continue to TryTake() and Take() until the bin is empty, and then Take() will throw the InvalidOperationException and TryTake() will return false. So let’s create a simple program to try this out.  Let’s say that you have one process that will be producing items, but a slower consumer process that handles them.  This gives us a chance to peek inside what happens when the bin is bounded (by default, the bin is NOT bounded). 1: var bin = new BlockingCollection<int>(5); Now, we create a method to produce items: 1: public static void ProduceItems(BlockingCollection<int> bin, int numToProduce) 2: { 3: for (int i = 0; i < numToProduce; i++) 4: { 5: // try for 10 ms to add an item 6: while (!bin.TryAdd(i, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10))) 7: { 8: Console.WriteLine("Bin is full, retrying..."); 9: } 10: } 11:  12: // once done producing, call CompleteAdding() 13: Console.WriteLine("Adding is completed."); 14: bin.CompleteAdding(); 15: } And one to consume them: 1: public static void ConsumeItems(BlockingCollection<int> bin) 2: { 3: // This will only be true if CompleteAdding() was called AND the bin is empty. 4: while (!bin.IsCompleted) 5: { 6: int item; 7:  8: if (!bin.TryTake(out item, TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(10))) 9: { 10: Console.WriteLine("Bin is empty, retrying..."); 11: } 12: else 13: { 14: Console.WriteLine("Consuming item {0}.", item); 15: Thread.Sleep(TimeSpan.FromMilliseconds(20)); 16: } 17: } 18: } Then we can fire them off: 1: // create one producer and two consumers 2: var tasks = new[] 3: { 4: new Task(() => ProduceItems(bin, 20)), 5: new Task(() => ConsumeItems(bin)), 6: new Task(() => ConsumeItems(bin)), 7: }; 8:  9: Array.ForEach(tasks, t => t.Start()); 10:  11: Task.WaitAll(tasks); Notice that the producer is faster than the consumer, thus it should be hitting a full bin often and displaying the message after it times out on TryAdd(). 1: Consuming item 0. 2: Consuming item 1. 3: Bin is full, retrying... 4: Bin is full, retrying... 5: Consuming item 3. 6: Consuming item 2. 7: Bin is full, retrying... 8: Consuming item 4. 9: Consuming item 5. 10: Bin is full, retrying... 11: Consuming item 6. 12: Consuming item 7. 13: Bin is full, retrying... 14: Consuming item 8. 15: Consuming item 9. 16: Bin is full, retrying... 17: Consuming item 10. 18: Consuming item 11. 19: Bin is full, retrying... 20: Consuming item 12. 21: Consuming item 13. 22: Bin is full, retrying... 23: Bin is full, retrying... 24: Consuming item 14. 25: Adding is completed. 26: Consuming item 15. 27: Consuming item 16. 28: Consuming item 17. 29: Consuming item 19. 30: Consuming item 18. Also notice that once CompleteAdding() is called and the bin is empty, the IsCompleted property returns true, and the consumers will exit. Summary The ConcurrentBag is an interesting collection that can be used to optimize concurrency scenarios where tasks or threads both produce and consume items.  In this way, it will choose to consume its own work if available, and then steal if not.  However, in situations where you want fair consumption or ordering, or in situations where the producers and consumers are distinct processes, the bag is not optimal. The BlockingCollection is a great wrapper around all of the concurrent queue, stack, and bag that allows you to add producer and consumer semantics easily including waiting when the bin is full or empty. That’s the end of my dive into the concurrent collections.  I’d also strongly recommend, once again, you read this excellent Microsoft white paper that goes into much greater detail on the efficiencies you can gain using these collections judiciously (here). Tweet Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Concurrent Collections,Little Wonders

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• 7u10: JavaFX packaging tools update

  - by igor

  Last weeks were very busy here in Oracle. JavaOne 2012 is next week. Come to see us there! Meanwhile i'd like to quickly update you on recent developments in the area of packaging tools. This is an area of ongoing development for the team, and we are  continuing to refine and improve both the tools and the process. Thanks to everyone who shared experiences and suggestions with us. We are listening and fixed many of reported issues. Please keep them coming as comments on the blog or (even better) file issues directly to the JIRA. In this post i'll focus on several new packaging features added in JDK 7 update 10: Self-Contained Applications: Select Java Runtime to bundle Self-Contained Applications: Create Package without Java Runtime Self-Contained Applications: Package non-JavaFX application Option to disable proxy setup in the JavaFX launcher Ability to specify codebase for WebStart application Option to update existing jar file Self-Contained Applications: Specify application icon Self-Contained Applications: Pass parameters on the command line All these features and number of other important bug fixes are available in the developer preview builds of JDK 7 update 10 (build 8 or later). Please give them a try and share your feedback! Self-Contained Applications: Select Java Runtime to bundle Packager tools in 7u6 assume current JDK (based on java.home property) is the source for embedded runtime. This is useful simplification for many scenarios but there are cases where ability to specify what to embed explicitly is handy. For example IDE may be using fixed JDK to build the project and this is not the version you want to bundle into your application. To make it more flexible we now allow to specify location of base JDK explicitly. It is optional and if you do not specify it then current JDK will be used (i.e. this change is fully backward compatible). New 'basedir' attribute was added to <fx:platform> tag. Its value is location of JDK to be used. It is ok to point to either JRE inside the JDK or JDK top level folder. However, it must be JDK and not JRE as we need other JDK tools for proper packaging and it must be recent version of JDK that is bundled with JavaFX (i.e. Java 7 update 6 or later). Here are examples (<fx:platform> is part of <fx:deploy> task): <fx:platform basedir="${java.home}"/> <fx:platform basedir="c:\tools\jdk7"/> Hint: this feature enables you to use packaging tools from JDK 7 update 10 (and benefit from bug fixes and other features described below) to create application package with bundled FCS version of JRE 7 update 6. Self-Contained Applications: Create Package without Java Runtime This may sound a bit puzzling at first glance. Package without embedded Java Runtime is not really self-contained and obviously will not help with: Deployment on fresh systems. JRE need to be installed separately (and this step will require admin permissions). Possible compatibility issues due to updates of system runtime. However, these packages are much much smaller in size. If download size matters and you are confident that user have recommended system JRE installed then this may be good option to consider if you want to improve user experience for install and launch. Technically, this is implemented as an extension of previous feature. Pass empty string as value for 'basedir' attribute and this will be treated as request to not bundle Java runtime, e.g. <fx:platform basedir=""/> Self-Contained Applications: Package non-JavaFX application One of popular questions people ask about self-contained applications - can i package my Java application as self-contained application? Absolutely. This is true even for tools shipped with JDK 7 update 6. Simply follow steps for creating package for Swing application with integrated JavaFX content and they will work even if your application does not use JavaFX. What's wrong with it? Well, there are few caveats: bundle size is larger because JavaFX is bundled whilst it is not really needed main application jar needs to be packaged to comply to JavaFX packaging requirements(and this may be not trivial to achieve in your existing build scripts) javafx application launcher may not work well with startup logic of your application (for example launcher will initialize networking stack and this may void custom networking settings in your application code) In JDK 7 update 6 <fx:deploy> was updated to accept arbitrary executable jar as an input. Self-contained application package will be created preserving input jar as-is, i.e. no JavaFX launcher will be embedded. This does not help with first point above but resolves other two. More formally following assertions must be true for packaging to succeed: application can be launched as "java -jar YourApp.jar" from the command line  mainClass attribute of <fx:application> refers to application main class <fx:resources> lists all resources needed for the application To give you an example lets assume we need to create a bundle for application consisting of 3 jars:     dist/javamain.jar     dist/lib/somelib.jar    dist/morelibs/anotherlib.jar where javamain.jar has manifest with      Main-Class: app.Main     Class-Path: lib/somelib.jar morelibs/anotherlib.jar Here is sample ant code to package it: <target name="package-bundle"> <taskdef resource="com/sun/javafx/tools/ant/antlib.xml" uri="javafx:com.sun.javafx.tools.ant" classpath="${javafx.tools.ant.jar}"/> <fx:deploy nativeBundles="all" width="100" height="100" outdir="native-packages/" outfile="MyJavaApp"> <info title="Sample project" vendor="Me" description="Test built from Java executable jar"/> <fx:application id="myapp" version="1.0" mainClass="app.Main" name="MyJavaApp"/> <fx:resources> <fx:fileset dir="dist"> <include name="javamain.jar"/> <include name="lib/somelib.jar"/> <include name="morelibs/anotherlib.jar"/> </fx:fileset> </fx:resources> </fx:deploy> </target> Option to disable proxy setup in the JavaFX launcher Since JavaFX 2.2 (part of JDK 7u6) properly packaged JavaFX applications  have proxy settings initialized according to Java Runtime configuration settings. This is handy for most of the application accessing network with one exception. If your application explicitly sets networking properties (e.g. socksProxyHost) then they must be set before networking stack is initialized. Proxy detection will initialize networking stack and therefore your custom settings will be ignored. One way to disable proxy setup by the embedded JavaFX launcher is to pass "-Djavafx.autoproxy.disable=true" on the command line. This is good for troubleshooting (proxy detection may cause significant startup time increases if network is misconfigured) but not really user friendly. Now proxy setup will be disabled if manifest of main application jar has "JavaFX-Feature-Proxy" entry with value "None". Here is simple example of adding this entry using <fx:jar> task: <fx:jar destfile="dist/sampleapp.jar"> <fx:application refid="myapp"/> <fx:resources refid="myresources"/> <fileset dir="build/classes"/> <manifest> <attribute name="JavaFX-Feature-Proxy" value="None"/> </manifest> </fx:jar> Ability to specify codebase for WebStart application JavaFX applications do not need to specify codebase (i.e. absolute location where application code will be deployed) for most of real world deployment scenarios. This is convenient as application does not need to be modified when it is moved from development to deployment environment. However, some developers want to ensure copies of their application JNLP file will redirect to master location. This is where codebase is needed. To avoid need to edit JNLP file manually <fx:deploy> task now accepts optional codebase attribute. If attribute is not specified packager will generate same no-codebase files as before. If codebase value is explicitly specified then generated JNLP files (including JNLP content embedded into web page) will use it.  Here is an example: <fx:deploy width="600" height="400" outdir="Samples" codebase="http://localhost/codebaseTest" outfile="TestApp"> .... </fx:deploy> Option to update existing jar file JavaFX packaging procedures are optimized for new application that can use ant or command line javafxpackager utility. This may lead to some redundant steps when you add it to your existing build process. One typical situation is that you might already have a build procedure that produces executable jar file with custom manifest. To properly package it as JavaFX executable jar you would need to unpack it and then use javafxpackager or <fx:jar> to create jar again (and you need to make sure you pass all important details from your custom manifest). We added option to pass jar file as an input to javafxpackager and <fx:jar>. This simplifies integration of JavaFX packaging tools into existing build  process as postprocessing step. By the way, we are looking for ways to simplify this further. Please share your suggestions! On the technical side this works as follows. Both <fx:jar> and javafxpackager will attempt to update existing jar file if this is the only input file. Update process will add JavaFX launcher classes and update the jar manifest with JavaFX attributes. Your custom attributes will be preserved. Update could be performed in place or result may be saved to a different file. Main-Class and Class-Path elements (if present) of manifest of input jar file will be used for JavaFX application  unless they are explicitly overriden in the packaging command you use. E.g. attribute mainClass of <fx:application> (or -appclass in the javafxpackager case) overrides existing Main-Class in the jar manifest. Note that class specified in the Main-Class attribute could either extend JavaFX Application or provide static main() method. Here are examples of updating jar file using javafxpackager: Create new JavaFX executable jar as a copy of given jar file javafxpackager -createjar -srcdir dist -srcfiles fish_proto.jar -outdir dist -outfile fish.jar  Update existing jar file to be JavaFX executable jar and use test.Fish as main application class javafxpackager -createjar -srcdir dist -appclass test.Fish -srcfiles fish.jar -outdir dist -outfile fish.jar  And here is example of using <fx:jar> to create new JavaFX executable jar from the existing fish_proto.jar: <fx:jar destfile="dist/fish.jar"> <fileset dir="dist"> <include name="fish_proto.jar"/> </fileset> </fx:jar> Self-Contained Applications: Specify application icon The only way to specify application icon for self-contained application using tools in JDK 7 update 6 is to use drop-in resources. Now this bug is resolved and you can also specify icon using <fx:icon> tag. Here is an example: <fx:deploy ...> <fx:info> <fx:icon href="default.png"/> </fx:info> ... </fx:deploy> Few things to keep in mind: Only default kind of icon is applicable to self-contained applications (as of now) Icon should follow platform specific rules for sizes and image format (e.g. .ico on Windows and .icns on Mac) Self-Contained Applications: Pass parameters on the command line JavaFX applications support two types of application parameters: named and unnamed (see the API for Application.Parameters). Static named parameters can be added to the application package using <fx:param> and unnamed parameters can be added using <fx:argument>. They are applicable to all execution modes including standalone applications. It is also possible to pass parameters to a JavaFX application from a Web page that hosts it, using <fx:htmlParam>.  Prior to JavaFX 2.2, this was only supported for embedded applications. Starting from JavaFX 2.2, <fx:htmlParam> is applicable to Web Start applications also. See JavaFX deployment guide for more details on this. However, there was no way to pass dynamic parameters to the self-contained application. This has been improved and now native launchers will  delegate parameters from command line to the application code. I.e. to pass parameter to the application you simply need to run it as "myapp.exe somevalue" and then use getParameters().getUnnamed().get(0) to get "somevalue".

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 21, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 21, 2012Popular ReleasesImapX 2: ImapX 2.0.0.6: An updated release of the ImapX 2 library, containing many bugfixes for both, the library and the sample application.Metodología General Ajustada - MGA: 03.05.05: Cambios John: Se modificó el Procedimiento Alamacenado PROF03ObjetivoProductoConsultarIdF03 que no incluía los campos de IdUnidadMedida y UnidadMedida, lo que generaba error en la capa de datos al leer estos campos (PasarDataSetAPROF03ObjetivoProductoInfo) y terminaba devolviendo NULL en los registros, esto no dejaba la información en la Exportación y por ende en la Importación no subían los Productos. Generación de instaladores. Soporte técnico por correo electrónico, telefónico y en sitio.WiX Toolset: WiX v3.7 RC: WiX v3.7 RC (3.7.1119.0) provides feature complete Bundle update and reference tracking plus several bug fixes. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/11/20/WiX-v3.7-Release-Candidate-availablePicturethrill: Version 2.11.20.0: Fixed up Bing image provider on Windows 8Excel AddIn to reset the last worksheet cell: XSFormatCleaner.xla: Modified the commandbar code to use CommandBar IDs instead of English names.Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 11: New feature - Added ITraceWriter, MemoryTraceWriter, DiagnosticsTraceWriter New feature - Added StringEscapeHandling with options to escape HTML and non-ASCII characters New feature - Added non-generic JToken.ToObject methods New feature - Deserialize ISet<T> properties as HashSet<T> New feature - Added implicit conversions for Uri, TimeSpan, Guid New feature - Missing byte, char, Guid, TimeSpan and Uri explicit conversion operators added to JToken New feature - Special case...EntitiesToDTOs - Entity Framework DTO Generator: EntitiesToDTOs.v3.0: DTOs and Assemblers can be generated inside project folders! Choose the types you want to generate! Support for Visual Studio 2012 !!! Support for new Entity Framework EDMX (format used by VS2012) ! Support for Enum Types! Optional automatic check for updates! Added the following methods to Assemblers! IEnumerable<DTO>.ToEntities() : ICollection<Entity> IEnumerable<Entity>.ToDTOs() : ICollection<DTO> Indicate class identifier for DTOs and Assemblers! Cleaner Assemblers code....mojoPortal: 2.3.9.4: see release notes on mojoportal.com http://www.mojoportal.com/mojoportal-2394-released Note that we have separate deployment packages for .NET 3.5 and .NET 4.0, but we recommend you to use .NET 4, we will probably drop support for .NET 3.5 once .NET 4.5 is available The deployment package downloads on this page are pre-compiled and ready for production deployment, they contain no C# source code and are not intended for use in Visual Studio. To download the source code see getting the lates...VidCoder: 1.4.6 Beta: Brought back the x264 advanced options panel due to popular demand. Thank you for all the feedback. x264 Preset/Profile/Tune/Level has been moved back to the Video tab, along with a copy of the "extra options" string. Added Fast Decode and Zero Latency checkboxes to support multiple Tunes. Added cropping option "None". Audio bitrates that are incompatible with the encoder (such as MP3 > 320 kbps) are no longer preset on the list. Fixed crash on opening VidCoder after de-selecting "re...DotNetNuke® Store: 03.01.07: What's New in this release? IMPORTANT: this version requires DotNetNuke 04.06.02 or higher! DO NOT REPORT BUGS HERE IN THE ISSUE TRACKER, INSTEAD USE THE DotNetNuke Store Forum! Bugs corrected: - Replaced some hard coded references to the default address provider classes by the corresponding interfaces to allow the creation of another address provider with a different name. New Features: - Added the 'pickup' delivery option at checkout. - Added the 'no delivery' option in the Store Admin ...Bundle Transformer - a modular extension for ASP.NET Web Optimization Framework: Bundle Transformer 1.6.10: Version: 1.6.10 Published: 11/18/2012 Now almost all of the Bundle Transformer's assemblies is signed (except BundleTransformer.Yui.dll); In BundleTransformer.SassAndScss the SassAndCoffee.Ruby library was replaced by my own implementation of the Sass- and SCSS-compiler (based on code of the SassAndCoffee.Ruby library version 2.0.2.0); In BundleTransformer.CoffeeScript added support of CoffeeScript version 1.4.0-3; In BundleTransformer.TypeScript added support of TypeScript version 0....ExtJS based ASP.NET 2.0 Controls: FineUI v3.2.0: +2012-11-18 v3.2.0 -?????????????????SelectedValueArray????????（◇?◆:）。 -???????????????????RecoverPropertiesFromJObject????（〓?〓、????、??、Vian_Pan）。 -????????????，?????????????，???SelectedValueArray???????（sam.chang）。 -??Alert.Show???????????（swtseaman）。 -???????????????，??Icon??IconUrl????（swtseaman）。 -?????????TimePicker（??）。 -?????????，??/res.axd?css=blue.css&v=1。 -????????，?????????????，???????。 -????MenuCheckBox（???????）。 -?RadioButton??AutoPostBack??。 -???????FCKEditor?????????...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 1.2: Please read our release notes for BugNET 1.2: http://blog.bugnetproject.com/bugnet-1-2-has-been-released Please do not post questions as reviews. Questions should be posted in the Discussions tab, where they will usually get promptly responded to. If you post a question as a review, you will pollute the rating, and you won't get an answer.Paint.NET PSD Plugin: 2.2.0: Changes: Layer group visibility is now applied to all layers within the group. This greatly improves the visual fidelity of complex PSD files that have hidden layer groups. Layer group names are prefixed so that users can get an indication of the layer group hierarchy. (Paint.NET has a flat list of layers, so the hierarchy is flattened out on load.) The progress bar now reports status when saving PSD files, instead of showing an indeterminate rolling bar. Performance improvement of 1...CRM 2011 Visual Ribbon Editor: Visual Ribbon Editor (1.3.1116.7): [IMPROVED] Detailed error message descriptions for FaultException [FIX] Fixed bug in rule CrmOfflineAccessStateRule which had incorrect State attribute name [FIX] Fixed bug in rule EntityPropertyRule which was missing PropertyValue attribute [FIX] Current connection information was not displayed in status bar while refreshing list of entitiesSuper Metroid Randomizer: Super Metroid Randomizer v5: v5 -Added command line functionality for automation purposes. -Implented Krankdud's change to randomize the Etecoon's item. NOTE: this version will not accept seeds from a previous version. The seed format has changed by necessity. v4 -Started putting version numbers at the top of the form. -Added a warning when suitless Maridia is required in a parsed seed. v3 -Changed seed to only generate filename-legal characters. Using old seeds will still work exactly the same. -Files can now be saved...Caliburn Micro: WPF, Silverlight, WP7 and WinRT/Metro made easy.: Caliburn.Micro v1.4: Changes This version includes many bug fixes across all platforms, improvements to nuget support and...the biggest news of all...full support for both WinRT and WP8. Download Contents Debug and Release Assemblies Samples Readme.txt License.txt Packages Available on Nuget Caliburn.Micro – The full framework compiled into an assembly. Caliburn.Micro.Start - Includes Caliburn.Micro plus a starting bootstrapper, view model and view. Caliburn.Micro.Container – The Caliburn.Micro invers...DirectX Tool Kit: November 15, 2012: November 15, 2012 Added support for WIC2 when available on Windows 8 and Windows 7 with KB 2670838 Cleaned up warning level 4 warningsDotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.02.05: Major Highlights Updated the system so that it supports nested folders in the App_Code folder Updated the Global Error Handling so that when errors within the global.asax handler happen, they are caught and shown in a page displaying the original HTTP error code Fixed issue that stopped users from specifying Link URLs that open on a new window Security FixesFixed issue in the Member Directory module that could show members to non authenticated users Fixed issue in the Lists modul...fastJSON: v2.0.10: - added MonoDroid projectNew Projects1121codeplex01: Today's task is to test portal on JapaneseAgileToDo: a to do list use wpf ef sqlce!Applay: Applay is a library that allows you to wrap authorization and validation around the services of your application layer by using a dynamic proxy.ArunimaErp: Enterprise Resource Planning Software for Arunima GroupBootCMS: BootCMS makes webdevelopment easy.codeplex01: I need go out for a whileCoding4Fun's Maelstrom: Introduced at //build/ 2012, Maelstrom is Coding4Fun's latest creation. Step up to the podium and battle against your opponent in full-on stereoscopic 3D!CTCS Project 2012: 11/21/2012 @ svn repository ctodo: TODO List Management Librarydeploy-with-ease: One-click deployment tool based on DrobBox files hostingDesign Resources .NET: D-R.NET is a set of pre-built implementations of oft-recurring application designs. D-R.NET saves considerable time and money in building user-focused applications: from basic to complex. DnfWeb: dnf??Dr.Peng: dr.peng ????????。DriveKeepAlive: Managed .NET service intended to keep external hard drives "awake" for immediate access. Developed in C# with Visual Studio 2008Ecommerce Platform: Ecommerce PlatformEventManagerReset: Project created for Reset meetings.FaceComparerDistributed: project of face compare distributed versionFileSystemExplorerExample: WPF MVVM Sample applicationFinlogiK ReSharper Contrib: FinlogiK ReSharper Contrib is a plugin for ReSharper 5.1 which adds code cleanup and inspection options for static qualifiers.Gestione Lampade Votive: Gestione dei canoni annuali dei loculi cimiteriali, con stampa di comunicazioni ai contribuenti e dei bollettini di conto corrente postale (a due o tre cedole).GI_PII: HABA BABA?GIV_P2: second projectHex o'clock: Projekt kolorowego zegara.IISProcessScheduler: Schedule processes from within IIS.Image Tagger & Resizer: Resize, and text in the lower right of picture with i.e. copyright information.IT Kohvik: ITK cafe school project.jean1121codeplex01: goodKooboo3 Helper: It's a developer tutorial code for kooboo cms v3. http://kooboo.codeplex.comMAVI: mobile application for the visually impaired: bill recognition & tag and recognize objects based on a specific stickerMecanismos de Segurança Interoperáveis para Serviços Web: Esse projeto pretende desenvolver um framework que forneça requisitos de segurança de forma interoperável através de Serviços Web. Metro UI For Windows Forms: Provides a set of controls and form templates for designing user interfaces based on a similar minimalist metro style. For those who love Windows Forms.NHSmartBootstrapper: In a "fast-changing" world, your LoB application needs to be ready to change as well. The usage of NHibernate Listeners together with smart application bootstrapping, even in a complex scenario, can lead to extensible and new-feature-ready applications. Office Add-In Monitor: Office Add-in Monitor protects add-ins from being disabled.Orchard Responsive Theme Machine: A responsive version of the Orchard CMS "Theme Machine" which is commonly used as a starting point for building custom themes. Supports many resolutions.Orchard Simple Contact Form: An Orchard CMS module that provides a simple contact form that sends an email. It can be used as either a content part or widget.Peon War: Peon war is a game where peons are fighting.Project Files Linker (VS Add-In): PFL project is used to generate multiple projects with links to the same files to achieve projects for different .NET FW versions.Quibbler - Universal News Reader: Quibbler is a product designed and developed by Indigo Architects. Quibbler is a desktop application which runs on user's machine and provides a intuitive user interface for reading news in offline mode. Quibbler is developed in WPF (.Net 3.5).Samcrypt: .SenchaTest: SenchaTestShared Genomics Project - Workbench Codebase: The Shared Genomics workbench enables a diverse user group of researchers to explore the associations between genetic and other factors in their datasets. It provides a graphical user interface to the analysis functions published in a sister Codeplex project i.e. MPI Codebase.SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack: This is the home of the SharePoint 2013 FBA Pack. The FBA Pack for SharePoint 2013 is currently in development and is coming soon.SharePoint Term Store PowerShell Backup & Restore Scripts: This project is focused on development of PowerShell script tools for backup and restore of SharePoint Managed Metadata service application Term Store taxonomy.SharpPlanets: A simple game completely designed and written in C#, inspired by JPlanets.SpaceShooter: A small hobbyist game. It is similar to the 2D Arcade shooter games.Stretched Background Image jQuery plugin: jQuery plugin for adding a stretched background image for any element in a web page. Uses an absolutely positioned image at z-index -1.Stsadm Templates for Visual Studio: The Stsadm Templates for Visual Studio 2005 and 2008 support you in making command extensions for SharePoint's commnand line tool stsadm.exe.SwissPost EasyTrack API: The SwissPost EasyTrack API allows you to track your parcels or letters everytime and in every application.System.Threading.Joins: The Joins project provides asynchronous concurrency semantics based on join calculus and modeled after the Microsoft Research C? (C Omega) project.T nagu Tetris: Meie versioon tuntud mängust tetris.testdd11202012tfs01: juktestddhg11202012hg01: stesttom11202012git02: fdsfdstesttom11202012hg01: gfdTetrissimus: Tetrissimus is an open source "Tetris" alike game totally written in DHTML (JavaScript, CSS and HTML) that uses keyboard. This cross-platform and cross-browser game was tested under BeOS, Linux, NetBSD, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, Windows and others.Thrift Client .NET for WinRT (Windows Store Apps): thrift .net client for WinRT applicationTwitter Bootstrap for SharePoint: A Masterpage for SharePoint 2010 including the twitter bootstrap front-end frameworkTX Spell .NET ActiveX Package: TX Spell .NET ActiveX Package enables you to add high-performance spell checking capabilities to your VB6 applications.USB ACCELEROMETER: This project is a test demo for usb accelerometer. Application plays music (mp3 file) while usb acc gives high values from its coordinate between interval.VfaAccoutApps: Cash Payment Application of Vf AsiaVisualPoint Use PowerPoint inside Visual Studio: VisualPoint lets you show PowerPoint presentations from inside Visual Studio. Future release will automate walkthroughs and presentations.VS2010 Rc1 Fix: Illustrates a fix for working with the ASAP.NET Wizard control with VS2010 RC1WebSite.Request: WebSite.Request launch web request (via XMLHTTP) on website. Use, for example, to make initial request to sharepoint URL and escape "slow first request" problem.WPF Checked ListBox: This is simple implementation of WPF Checked ListBoxWPortal: doing nothing. that's it. i just want to use the subversion management. XNA Capture the Flag for the Microsoft Zune: Capture the Flag is a 2d Capture the flag game made for the Zune platform using XNA 3.0 CTP. Players choose to join or start a network session in the main menu. When in game, the player uses left or right on the DPad to choose the team on which to play with. Once sides have been chosen the party leader presses the center button on the Dpad to start the game. Teams switch between offense and defense for a total of 4 rounds in each game. When the game is over the party leader simply presses th...XPS Indexer: Xps file indexing for Google Desktop

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• Prepping a conference

  - by Laurent Bugnion

  I have had the chance to talk at many conferences these past few years, and came up with a way to prepare them which works really well for me. Most importantly, it would make it quite easy to overcome an emergency (for example if my laptop would suddenly lose data). The whole code as well as the slides and other documents are in the cloud. I also use source control for my demos, so that I always have the latest and the greatest, but also a history of changes I made to my demos. Finally I have a system of code snippets which works great, and I often had very positive remarks from the audience regarding that. Putting everything in the cloud The one thing I used to be the most scared of was a sudden crash of my laptop, and being unable to restore in time for a conference. Most conferences ask speakers to send slides a few days (or weeks…) in advance, but let's face it, we all have last minute changes to our talks and I always come in the conference with updated slides that I pass to the management team. The answer to that dilemma used to be working off memory sticks, and that worked not bad. However last year I started putting all the documents relating to a conference in a DropBox folder, and that works great too. Obviously DropBox works only if you have connectivity, so if I for instance update slides while on an international flight, I cannot save to the cloud. The obvious answer to that is to backup everything on a memory stick… but I have to admit, I have been trusting my luck and working off my laptop HD and then synching everything to the cloud after landing. Of course on some US national flights you get WiFi on board, so in that case it is even simpler :) Usually after the conference is done, I remove the files from DropBox and copy them to their "final destination". They are backed up from there to BackBlaze, the great online backup service I am using routinely (I currently have about 90GB of data in BackBlaze). Outlining the presentations I like to have a written outline of my presentations written somewhere. I keep it simple, just write the various sections of the presentation with timing. I guess it is a remnant of the time when I was a private pilot, and using checklists for flight preparation. For example: Demo about designability 15' (0:37) Switch to Blend Open MainPage.xaml Create a DataTemplate ... Here I can immediately see during the presentation if I am taking too much time for my demo (0:37 is where I need to be when I am done with this section of the presentation, and 15' is the time that this particular section takes). I keep these sections reasonable, I don't detail every step of the preparation. Typically I have one such section for every 10-15 minutes of my talks. Yes, I am timing my presentations. I keep adjusting these numbers when I rehearse, and this really helps to feel more confident during the presentations. This is especially important for presentations that are long, like my MIX11 demo which clocked at 57 minutes (I had a lot of stuff to show…). Such presentations are risky, because if anything goes wrong, you will have to cut stuff, so the answer to that is: Rehearse, rehearse and when you're done rehearsing, rehearse a little more. I also have a "Preparation" section where I outline what I need to do before a presentation. For instance: Preparation Reboot in VHD Make sure MSN and Twitter are not running. Open VS10 and load demo Open Blend and load demo Run the WP7 emulator ... I typically start preparing my laptop an hour before the talk, starting everything I need to start and then putting my laptop to sleep. Saving and printing the outline, Timing Printing is a real problem because it is really hard to find a printer at most conference venues, and also quite hard in hotels. To solve that, I simply write everything in OneNote (synched to the cloud, now you start to know what I like ;) and then I print it to a PDF (I use CutePDFWriter) that I save to my Kindle. During the presentation, I read the outline off the Kindle (I mostly just need a quick check to see how I am timing). For timing during the presentation, I use the free tool ChronoGPS on my Windows Phone 7, but of course any phone these days has a clock/chrono application. In some conferences, they even have timers that the presenters can see, but they tend to count down and I prefer to count up… so I just use my own :) Source control for demos For demos, I create a separate folder and use Mercurial as source control. Mercurial has the huge advantage (over SVN or TFS) to work offline too, so I can commit while on a plane, and all the history is saved. Then when I have connectivity I push everything to the cloud (I am using the fantastic Trunksapp.com for my private repositories). Here too the obvious downside is the risk of losing my last changes if my laptop crashes before I can push to the cloud, and here too the obvious answer would be to work from a memory stick… though I have to admit I didn't do that lately (except when I was writing Silverlight 4 Unleashed, where I was really paranoid…) And code snippets? I am one of these presenters who hates to type in front of an audience. I can type really fast (writing two books has this advantage, it really teaches you to touch type and be fast at it) but in the context of an audience, on a stage where it is often damn cold (an issue I had a lot in past conferences, air conditioning can freeze your fingers and make it really hard to type), it doesn't work as well. I don't know for you, but I really dislike seeing a presentation where the speaker uses the backspace key more often than others ;) To solve that, I like to have my code ready in snippets, and drag them to the screen. Then I can spend time explaining each code snippet, while highlighting portions of the code (always highlight what you talk about, the audience often doesn't even see the cursor and doesn't know where you are on the screen!) Over the years I have used various solutions for code snippets, and now I have one which works really well… if you take a few precautions! I use the Visual Studio Toolbox. Preparing the code snippets You can store code snippets in the Toolbox for anything, XAML, C# etc. I arrange the snippets in the order in which I need them, which is a great way to remember what comes next in the presentation. I also separate them by topic, to make it easier to find them, for example when I switch to the slides and then back to the code. Remember that no matter how experienced you are, you will feel more nervous on stage than while you are preparing, so any way to make it easier for you is going to be beneficial to the audience. To store a code snippet, I do the following: Open the final demo that you want to show to the audience in Visual Studio. In your code, select a snippet of code that you want to explain in particular. Make sure that the Visual Studio Toolbox is open (menu View, Toolbox or Ctrl-Alt-X). Drag the selected snippet from the code window to the toolbox. (if needed) drag the snippet to the correct location (for example between two other code snippets so that you can access it as you speak through the demo). Right click on the snippet and select Rename Item from the context menu. Select a meaningful name. For me I use the following conventions: If it is a method, I use the method's name. If it is not a whole method, I use a descriptive name. If it is the content of a method (i.e. the body only, without the method's signature), I use "-> MethodName". This reminds me during the presentation that this is only the body, and that I need to insert that into an existing signature. This is the case, for instance, when I use Visual Studio to automatically generate the members of an interface’s implementation; then I only need to insert my snippet inside the generated method body. Saving the snippets This is the most important!! It happened to me a few times that VS10 lost its settings. When that happens, the snippets are lost too! Yeah that really sucks, especially (as it happened once) when this is the case about an hour before a talk… Stress and sweat follows, not good conditions to start a talk in front of an audience believe me. Thankfully, saving snippets is really easy with the following steps: Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Export selected environment settings and press Next. Uncheck All Settings. Then expand General Settings and select Toolbox (only!). Press Next. Select your source control folder and save under a meaningful name (for instance Snippets.vssettings). Commit to source control and push to the cloud. By the way, this also has the advantage of applying source control to the snippets file (which is an XML file), so you get history for free on that file! Reimporting the snippets If VS loses its settings and you need to reimport the snippets, this can be done super easily and very fast. Make sure that the Toolbox is empty. When you import snippets, they are merged with existing ones, they do not replace the content of the Toolbox. Unless merging is really what you want, make sure that your Toolbox is clean before you import, it is really easier. Select the menu Tools, Import and Export Settings. Select Import selected environment settings and press Next. Select No, just import new settings and press Next. Press Browse and select the Snippets.vssettings file. Press Finish. Et voila, all your snippets appear again in the Toolbox. Whew, the worst was averted and you can start your demo without sweating! (I had to do that once literally 5 minutes before the start of a demo, while my laptop was already hooked to the projector, and it went just fine). What about special tools? When using special tools (for example beta versions of tools you have an early access to), or a special configuration of your laptop, things can get tricky because you cannot really be sure that you will get a laptop with the same tools and the same configuration at the conference. To solve that, I use the following precautions: I make my demos from a Virtual Hard Disk. The great John Papa made a very easy-to-follow web page where he explains how to create a VHD and install Win7 to it. This gives you the full power of your laptop (as fast as booting from the metal). For me, I have a basic configuration that I saved on a USB harddrive (Win7 plus drivers, basic settings for desktop, folder options, taskbar etc) and Visual Studio 2010 SP1 on it. When preparing, I start by copying this "basis VHD" to my laptop. I install additional tools and configurations. I save the VHD back to the USB harddrive in a different folder. This would allow me to reinstall my demo environment quite fast, for example in case of harddrive failure. Replace the harddrive, copy the VHD to it, configure the BCD and you can start. Unfortunately this only works if the laptop itself still works. In the worst case of total failure, my security is to back all the installers up: The installers I use are synched on all my laptops and backed up to BackBlaze. If the worst happens and my laptop is absolutely broken, I can download the installer from BackBlaze and install on another laptop. This of course takes some time, and if that happens 5 minutes before a presentation, well… I don't have an answer to that, except of course crossing my fingers. Still, all that gives me additional security. Conclusion Remember folks, talking to an audience, large or small, will make you nervous. Just ask Scott Hanselman :) The goal here is to create the best possible conditions for you, and to create an environment where everything is saved and easy to restore, where everything is well known and provides you with additional confidence. The cooler you feel before the presentation (and during ;)), the better your presentation will be. Here too, the goal is to provide the best user experience you can have, which in turn will make it more enjoyable for your audience! Happy presenting :) Laurent   Laurent Bugnion (GalaSoft) Subscribe | Twitter | Facebook | Flickr | LinkedIn

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• Abstracting functionality

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/08/22/abstracting-functionality.aspxWhat is more important than data? Functionality. Yes, I strongly believe we should switch to a functionality over data mindset in programming. Or actually switch back to it. Focus on functionality Functionality once was at the core of software development. Back when algorithms were the first thing you heard about in CS classes. Sure, data structures, too, were important - but always from the point of view of algorithms. (Niklaus Wirth gave one of his books the title “Algorithms + Data Structures” instead of “Data Structures + Algorithms” for a reason.) The reason for the focus on functionality? Firstly, because software was and is about doing stuff. Secondly because sufficient performance was hard to achieve, and only thirdly memory efficiency. But then hardware became more powerful. That gave rise to a new mindset: object orientation. And with it functionality was devalued. Data took over its place as the most important aspect. Now discussions revolved around structures motivated by data relationships. (John Beidler gave his book the title “Data Structures and Algorithms: An Object Oriented Approach” instead of the other way around for a reason.) Sure, this data could be embellished with functionality. But nevertheless functionality was second. When you look at (domain) object models what you mostly find is (domain) data object models. The common object oriented approach is: data aka structure over functionality. This is true even for the most modern modeling approaches like Domain Driven Design. Look at the literature and what you find is recommendations on how to get data structures right: aggregates, entities, value objects. I´m not saying this is what object orientation was invented for. But I´m saying that´s what I happen to see across many teams now some 25 years after object orientation became mainstream through C++, Delphi, and Java. But why should we switch back? Because software development cannot become truly agile with a data focus. The reason for that lies in what customers need first: functionality, behavior, operations. To be clear, that´s not why software is built. The purpose of software is to be more efficient than the alternative. Money mainly is spent to get a certain level of quality (e.g. performance, scalability, security etc.). But without functionality being present, there is nothing to work on the quality of. What customers want is functionality of a certain quality. ASAP. And tomorrow new functionality needs to be added, existing functionality needs to be changed, and quality needs to be increased. No customer ever wanted data or structures. Of course data should be processed. Data is there, data gets generated, transformed, stored. But how the data is structured for this to happen efficiently is of no concern to the customer. Ask a customer (or user) whether she likes the data structured this way or that way. She´ll say, “I don´t care.” But ask a customer (or user) whether he likes the functionality and its quality this way or that way. He´ll say, “I like it” (or “I don´t like it”). Build software incrementally From this very natural focus of customers and users on functionality and its quality follows we should develop software incrementally. That´s what Agility is about. Deliver small increments quickly and often to get frequent feedback. That way less waste is produced, and learning can take place much easier (on the side of the customer as well as on the side of developers). An increment is some added functionality or quality of functionality.[1] So as it turns out, Agility is about functionality over whatever. But software developers’ thinking is still stuck in the object oriented mindset of whatever over functionality. Bummer. I guess that (at least partly) explains why Agility always hits a glass ceiling in projects. It´s a clash of mindsets, of cultures. Driving software development by demanding small increases in functionality runs against thinking about software as growing (data) structures sprinkled with functionality. (Excuse me, if this sounds a bit broad-brush. But you get my point.) The need for abstraction In the end there need to be data structures. Of course. Small and large ones. The phrase functionality over data does not deny that. It´s not functionality instead of data or something. It´s just over, i.e. functionality should be thought of first. It´s a tad more important. It´s what the customer wants. That´s why we need a way to design functionality. Small and large. We need to be able to think about functionality before implementing it. We need to be able to reason about it among team members. We need to be able to communicate our mental models of functionality not just by speaking about them, but also on paper. Otherwise reasoning about it does not scale. We learned thinking about functionality in the small using flow charts, Nassi-Shneiderman diagrams, pseudo code, or UML sequence diagrams. That´s nice and well. But it does not scale. You can use these tools to describe manageable algorithms. But it does not work for the functionality triggered by pressing the “1-Click Order” on an amazon product page for example. There are several reasons for that, I´d say. Firstly, the level of abstraction over code is negligible. It´s essentially non-existent. Drawing a flow chart or writing pseudo code or writing actual code is very, very much alike. All these tools are about control flow like code is.[2] In addition all tools are computationally complete. They are about logic which is expressions and especially control statements. Whatever you code in Java you can fully (!) describe using a flow chart. And then there is no data. They are about control flow and leave out the data altogether. Thus data mostly is assumed to be global. That´s shooting yourself in the foot, as I hope you agree. Even if it´s functionality over data that does not mean “don´t think about data”. Right to the contrary! Functionality only makes sense with regard to data. So data needs to be in the picture right from the start - but it must not dominate the thinking. The above tools fail on this. Bottom line: So far we´re unable to reason in a scalable and abstract manner about functionality. That´s why programmers are so driven to start coding once they are presented with a problem. Programming languages are the only tool they´ve learned to use to reason about functional solutions. Or, well, there might be exceptions. Mathematical notation and SQL may have come to your mind already. Indeed they are tools on a higher level of abstraction than flow charts etc. That´s because they are declarative and not computationally complete. They leave out details - in order to deliver higher efficiency in devising overall solutions. We can easily reason about functionality using mathematics and SQL. That´s great. Except for that they are domain specific languages. They are not general purpose. (And they don´t scale either, I´d say.) Bummer. So to be more precise we need a scalable general purpose tool on a higher than code level of abstraction not neglecting data. Enter: Flow Design. Abstracting functionality using data flows I believe the solution to the problem of abstracting functionality lies in switching from control flow to data flow. Data flow very naturally is not about logic details anymore. There are no expressions and no control statements anymore. There are not even statements anymore. Data flow is declarative by nature. With data flow we get rid of all the limiting traits of former approaches to modeling functionality. In addition, nomen est omen, data flows include data in the functionality picture. With data flows, data is visibly flowing from processing step to processing step. Control is not flowing. Control is wherever it´s needed to process data coming in. That´s a crucial difference and needs some rewiring in your head to be fully appreciated.[2] Since data flows are declarative they are not the right tool to describe algorithms, though, I´d say. With them you don´t design functionality on a low level. During design data flow processing steps are black boxes. They get fleshed out during coding. Data flow design thus is more coarse grained than flow chart design. It starts on a higher level of abstraction - but then is not limited. By nesting data flows indefinitely you can design functionality of any size, without losing sight of your data. Data flows scale very well during design. They can be used on any level of granularity. And they can easily be depicted. Communicating designs using data flows is easy and scales well, too. The result of functional design using data flows is not algorithms (too low level), but processes. Think of data flows as descriptions of industrial production lines. Data as material runs through a number of processing steps to be analyzed, enhances, transformed. On the top level of a data flow design might be just one processing step, e.g. “execute 1-click order”. But below that are arbitrary levels of flows with smaller and smaller steps. That´s not layering as in “layered architecture”, though. Rather it´s a stratified design à la Abelson/Sussman. Refining data flows is not your grandpa´s functional decomposition. That was rooted in control flows. Refining data flows does not suffer from the limits of functional decomposition against which object orientation was supposed to be an antidote. Summary I´ve been working exclusively with data flows for functional design for the past 4 years. It has changed my life as a programmer. What once was difficult is now easy. And, no, I´m not using Clojure or F#. And I´m not a async/parallel execution buff. Designing the functionality of increments using data flows works great with teams. It produces design documentation which can easily be translated into code - in which then the smallest data flow processing steps have to be fleshed out - which is comparatively easy. Using a systematic translation approach code can mirror the data flow design. That way later on the design can easily be reproduced from the code if need be. And finally, data flow designs play well with object orientation. They are a great starting point for class design. But that´s a story for another day. To me data flow design simply is one of the missing links of systematic lightweight software design. There are also other artifacts software development can produce to get feedback, e.g. process descriptions, test cases. But customers can be delighted more easily with code based increments in functionality. ? No, I´m not talking about the endless possibilities this opens for parallel processing. Data flows are useful independently of multi-core processors and Actor-based designs. That´s my whole point here. Data flows are good for reasoning and evolvability. So forget about any special frameworks you might need to reap benefits from data flows. None are necessary. Translating data flow designs even into plain of Java is possible. ?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 04, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Friday, February 04, 2011Popular ReleasesOJDetective: Branch828: New branch for testing.TVA Code Library: TVA Code Library v4.0.1 Release: This download contains TVA Code Library class libraries, tools, templates and help docs that target the .NET Framework 4.0. Build Date: 02/04/2011 Build Version: 4.0.1.62247 See TVA Code Library v4.0.1 Release Notes for a detailed list of changes.ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 for MVC3: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. ChangelogTargeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4.0 Additional UpdatePriority options for generating XML sitemaps Allow to specify target on SiteMapTitleAttribute One action with multiple routes and breadcrumbs Medium Trust optimizations Create SiteMapTitleAttribute for setting parent title IntelliSense for your sitemap with MvcSiteMapSchem...Rawr: Rawr 4.0.18 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab consists of six labs: one for logging, one for service location, and four for application setting manager. Each lab takes about 20 minutes to walk through. Each lab consists of a PDF document. You can go through the steps in the doc to create solution and then build/deploy the solution and run the lab. For those of you who wants to save the time, we included the final solution so you can just build/deploy the solution and run the lab.Value Injecter - object(s) to -> object mapper: 2.3: it lets you define your own convention-based matching algorithms (ValueInjections) in order to match up (inject) source values to destination values. inject from multiple sources in one InjectFrom added ConventionInjectionFacebook C# SDK: 5.0.1 (BETA): PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO GIVE US SOME FEEDBACK: Facebook C# SDK Survey This is second BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using t...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 10: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 9 ChangesAdded support for trends Added support for Silverlight 4 Elevated WP7 fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.7: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comPhalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (February 2011): Next release of Phalanger; again faster, more stable and ready for daily use. Based on many user experiences this release is one more step closer to be perfect compiler and runtime of your old PHP applications; or perfect platform for migrating to .NET. February 2011 release of Phalanger introduces several changes, enhancements and fixes. See complete changelist for all the changes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger....Chemistry Add-in for Word: Chemistry Add-in for Word - Version 1.0: On February 1, 2011, we announced the availability of version 1 of the Chemistry Add-in for Word, as well as the assignment of the open source project to the Outercurve Foundation by Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge. System RequirementsHardware RequirementsAny computer that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010. Software RequirementsYour computer must have the following software: Any version of Windows that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010, which includes Windows XP SP3 and...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.4: Updated mcmap, now supports new block types. Added a Worlds->'View Cache Folder' menu item.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.15005.000: Applied patch from rodpl for merging of stylecop setting files with settings in parent folder. Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new Objec...Minecraft Tools: Minecraft Topographical Survey 1.4: MTS requires version 4 of the .NET Framework - you must download it from Microsoft if you have not previously installed it. This version of MTS adds MCRegion support and fixes bugs that caused rendering to fail for some users. New in this version of MTS: Support for rendering worlds compressed with MCRegion Fixed rendering failure when encountering non-NBT files with the .dat extension Fixed rendering failure when encountering corrupt NBT files Minor GUI updates Note that the command...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 0.8: Fixed the following bugs: *Variable name error in the jvascript file that prevented the use of the deleted item template of the Datagrid *Now after the changes applied to an item of the DataGrid are cancelled all input fields are reset to the very initial value they had. *Other minor bugs. Added: *This version is available both for MVC2, and MVC 3. The MVC 3 version has a release number of 0.85. This way one can install both version. *Client Validation support has been added to all control...Office Web.UI: Beta preview (Source): This is the first Beta. it includes full source code and all available controls. Some designers are not ready, and some features are not finalized allready (missing properties, draft styles) ThanksASP.net Ribbon: Version 2.2: This release brings some new controls (part of Office Web.UI). A few bugs are fixed and it includes the "auto resize" feature as you resize the window. (It can cause an infinite loop when the window is too reduced, it's why this release is not marked as "stable"). I will release more versions 2.3, 2.4... until V3 which will be the official launch of Office Web.UI. Both products will evolve at the same speed. Thanks.xUnit.net - Unit Testing for .NET: xUnit.net 1.7: xUnit.net release 1.7Build #1540 Important notes for Resharper users: Resharper support has been moved to the xUnit.net Contrib project. Important note for TestDriven.net users: If you are having issues running xUnit.net tests in TestDriven.net, especially on 64-bit Windows, we strongly recommend you upgrade to TD.NET version 3.0 or later. This release adds the following new features: Added support for ASP.NET MVC 3 Added Assert.Equal(double expected, double actual, int precision) Ad...WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.0.0.3: Version: 2.0.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Remark The sample applications are using Microsoft’s IoC container MEF. However, the WPF Application Framework (WAF) doesn’t force you to use the same IoC container in your application. You can use ...VivoSocial: VivoSocial 7.4.2: Version 7.4.2 of VivoSocial has been released. If you experienced any issues with the previous version, please update your modules to the 7.4.2 release and see if they persist. If you have any questions about this release, please post them in our Support forums. If you are experiencing a bug or would like to request a new feature, please submit it to our issue tracker. Web Controls * Updated Business Objects and added a new SQL Data Provider File. Groups * Fixed a security issue whe...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1.1 for IIS 7: This is a minor release of PHP Manager for IIS 7. It contains all the functionality available in 56962 plus several bug fixes (see change list for more details). Also, this release includes Russian language support. SHA1 codes for the downloads are: PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x86.msi - 6570B4A8AC8B5B776171C2BA0572C190F0900DE2 PHPManagerForIIS-1.1.0-x64.msi - 12EDE004EFEE57282EF11A8BAD1DC1ADFD66A654New Projects.NET API for ZingChart: This is a .NET assembly that accepts key value pairs in the form of a dictionary object. It also allows you to set the properties needed for a ZingChart. It includes a ToJSON method that returns the appropriate JSON to rend either a Flash or HTML 5 version of ZingChart..net vkontakte api: vkontakte .net wrapper vor vkontakte api, written in C# 2.0CID Delivery: CIDContact Form for Umbraco: Contact Form for Umbraco is an extension for Umbraco (surprise!). It's supposed to be just like Umbraco: Simple, flexible and friendly.DashBoard: ProyectoenVerifyV2.0: Server Compare toolHttp Post: HttpPost makes it easier to post form data and upload files via HTTP. Supports uri-encoded and Multipart (http-boundary) formats. Written in C#, just 10 KBMemoDb: MemoDb is a memory database that supports transactionability. MemoDb is for mocking Linq providers in unit testing environments.MiRCraft: Mechanics Inspired Realitypower: educational purposesSpace Invaders Clone: <Space invaders clone> <C# with XNA 3.0>SSIS Dataflow Discoverer (DFLD): Dataflow Discoverer (DFLD) is a command-line discovery utility that detects and writes the metadata of SSIS dataflow columns to a SQL Server lookup table. DFLD detects Dataflows nested within containers up to any level of nesting. Test Case Editor 2010: TCE 2010 is a lightweight application that makes it easier for MTM users to edit both Test Cases and Shared Steps without using MTM. This project was inspired by ajryan at http://teststepseditor.codeplex.com However, it has since taken on a different functionality and appearance.TFS Project: Team Foundation ProjectTimeSnapper GCAL Plugin: TimeSnapper GCAL PluginTower of Hanoi: tower of hanoiTwilight 1.0 (Beta): My first Twitter application written in VB.Net and TwitterVB. It performs basic Twitter functions and is designed to run as a desktop client application. For more information about TwitterVB Goto http://twittervb.codeplex.comUnicode Regions Generator: A Silverlight app that generate unicode regions used in a file.WCF-Based Streaming File Server: Use a secure token to access a file on a remote UNC drive. The token expires after a period of time, and can be adapted into other security mechanismsWidget Twitter: Projeto que será apresentado no webcast Criando uma Aplicação (Widget) para o Twitter, no dia 24/02/2011.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 12, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, November 12, 2011Popular ReleasesDynamic PagedCollection (Silverlight / WPF Pagination): PagedCollection: All classes which facilitate your dynamic pagination in Silverlight or WPF !Media Companion: MC 3.422b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) TV Show Resolutions... Made the TV Shows folder list sorted. Re-visibled 'Manually Add Path' in Root Folders. Sorted list to process during new tv episode search Rebuild Movies now processes thru folders alphabetically Fix for issue #208 - Display Missing Episodes is not popu...DotSpatial: DotSpatial Release Candidate 1 (1.0.823): Supports loading extensions using System.ComponentModel.Composition. DemoMap compiled as x86 so that GDAL runs on x64 machines. How to: Use an Assembly from the WebBe aware that your browser may add an identifier to downloaded files which results in "blocked" dll files. You can follow the following link to learn how to "Unblock" files. Right click on the zip file before unzipping, choose properties, go to the general tab and click the unblock button. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library...XPath Visualizer: XPathVisualizer v1.3 Latest: This is v1.3.0.6 of XpathVisualizer. This is an update release for v1.3. These workitems have been fixed since v1.3.0.5: 7429 7432 7427MSBuild Extension Pack: November 2011: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack November 2011 release provides a collection of over 415 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GU...Quick Performance Monitor: Version 1.8.0: Now you can add multiple counters/instances at once! Yes, I know its overdue...CODE Framework: 4.0.11110.0: Various minor fixes and tweaks.Extensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.2: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many useful types such as ViewModel, CommandSubject, ListSubject, DictionarySubject, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T> and others. Various interactive labs that illustrate the runtime behavior of the extensio...Player Framework by Microsoft: HTML5 Player Framework 1.0: Additional DownloadsHTML5 Player Framework Examples - This is a set of examples showing how to setup and initialize the HTML5 Player Framework. This includes examples of how to use the Player Framework with both the HTML5 video tag and Silverlight player. Note: Be sure to unblock the zip file before using. Note: In order to test Silverlight fallback in the included sample app, you need to run the html and xap files over http (e.g. over localhost). Silverlight Players - Visit the Silverlig...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.6 - Final release - 64Bit: What’s New in 4.8.6 (Final release)A few minor issues have been fixed What’s New in 4.8.5 (Beta release)Assign projection tool. (Sergei Leschinsky) Projection dialects. (Sergei Leschinsky) Projections database converted to SQLite format. (Sergei Leschinsky) Basic code for database support - will be developed further (ShapefileDataClient class, IDataProvider interface). (Sergei Leschinsky) 'Export shapefile to database' tool. (Sergei Leschinsky) Made the GEOS library static. geos.dl...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.2.2011.1107、XCoder v4.5.2011.1108: v8.2.2011.1107 ?IEntityOperate.Create?Entity.CreateInstance??????forEdit，????????(FindByKeyForEdit)???，???false ??????Entity.CreateInstance，????forEdit，???????????????????? v8.2.2011.1103 ??MS????，??MaxMin??（????????）、NotIn??（????）、?Top??（??NotIn）、RowNumber??（?????） v8.2.2011.1101 SqlServer?????????DataPath，?????????????????????? Oracle?????????DllPath，????OCI??，???????????ORACLE_HOME?? Oracle?????XCode.Oracle.IsUseOwner，???????????Ow...Facebook C# SDK: v5.3.2: This is a RTW release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead of legacy rest api. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ (experimental) added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 (binaries not distributed in codeplex nor nuget.org, will need to manually build from Facebook-Net45.sln) added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added ne...Delete Inactive TS Ports: List and delete the Inactive TS Ports: UPDATEAdded support for windows 2003 servers and removed some null reference errors when the registry key was not present List and delete the Inactive TS Ports - The InactiveTSPortList.EXE accepts command line arguments The InactiveTSPortList.Standalone.WithoutPrompt.exe runs as a standalone exe without the need for any command line arguments.Ribbon Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: Ribbon Editor (0.1.2207.267): BUG FIXES: - Cannot add multiple JavaScript and Url under Actions - Cannot add <Or> node under <OrGroup> - Adding a rule under <Or> node put the new rule node at the wrong placeWF Designer Express: WF Designer Express v0.6: ?????（???????????） Multi Language（Now, Japanese and English）ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.60.0: Added almost full support for auto filters (missing custom date filters). See examples Filter Values, Custom Filters Fixed issues 7016, 7391, 7388, 7389, 7198, 7196, 7194, 7186, 7067, 7115, 7144Microsoft Research Boogie: Nightly builds: This download category contains automatically released nightly builds, reflecting the current state of Boogie's development. We try to make sure each nightly build passes the test suite. If you suspect that was not the case, please try the previous nightly build to see if that really is the problem. Also, please see the installation instructions.GoogleMap Control: GoogleMap Control 6.0: Major design changes to the control in order to achieve better scalability and extensibility for the new features comming with GoogleMaps API. GoogleMap control switched to GoogleMaps API v3 and .NET 4.0. GoogleMap control is 100% ScriptControl now, it requires ScriptManager to be registered on the pages where and before it is used. Markers, polylines, polygons and directions were implemented as ExtenderControl, instead of being inner properties of GoogleMap control. Better perfomance. Better...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: V2.1: Version 2.1 (click on the right) this uses V4.0 of .net Version 2.1 adds the following features: (apologize if I forget some, added a lot of little things) Manual Lookup with TV or Movie (finally huh!), you can look up a movie or TV episode directly, you can right click on anythign, and choose manual lookup, then will allow you to type anything you want to look up and it will assign it to the file you right clicked. No Rename: a very popular request, this is an option you can set so that t...SubExtractor: Release 1020: Feature: added "baseline double quotes" character to selector box Feature: added option to save SRT files as ANSI (instead of previous UTF-8 only) Feature: made "Save Sup files to Source directory" apply to both Sup and Idx source files. Fix: removed SDH text (...) or [...] that is split over 2 lines Fix: better decision-making in when to prefix a line with a '-' because SDH was removedNew Projects- Gemini - code branch: the branch for all Hzj_jie's code(MPLF) MediaPortal LoveFilm Plugin: MediaPortal LoveFilm (Love Film) Plugin. Browse films, add/remove from lists, streams etc._: _Batalha Naval em C#: Jogo de batalha naval para a disciplina de C#BusyHoliday - Making Outlook's Calendar Busy for Holidays: When users add holidays to their Outlook calendar these are added as an all day event. However, these are added as free time. With users in other countries, if they were to invite a user in a country with a public holiday, they won't be able to see that the user is on a public holiday or busy. BusyHoliday will update existing holidays as busy time. This may improve users ability to collaborate efficiently across geographical boundries. C# and MCU: C# and MCU and webCampo Minado C Sharp: C sharp source code of the game minefield.CP2011test: CP2011 TestDynamic PagedCollection (Silverlight / WPF Pagination): PagedCollection helps a developer to easily control the pagination of their collection. This collection doesnt need all datas in memory, it can be attached to RIA/SQL/XML data ... and load needed data one after the other. The PagedCollection can be used with Silverlight or WPF.Fast MVVM: The faster way to build your MVVM (Model, View, ViewModel) applications. It's a basic and educational way to learn and work with MVVM. We have more than just a pack of classes or templates. We have a new concept that turn it a little easier.Habitat: Core game services, frameworks and templates for desktop, mobile and web game developers.Historical Data Repository: Repository stores serializable timestamped data items in compressed files structured in a way that allows to quickly find data by time, quickly read and write data items in chronological order. Key features: - all data is stored under a single root folder; like file system, repository can contain a tree of folders each of which contains its own data stream; when reading, multiple streams can be combined into a single output stream maintaining chronological order; the tree structure can b...Immunity Buster: This game is for HIV. We will be making a virus which will help to spread the knowledge about the virus and have Fun among the peers.JoeCo Blog Application: JoeCo Blog Application for ECE 574jweis sso user center: jweis is a user center,distination is to use in a contry ,ssoKinect Shape Game Connect with Windows Phone: The classic Shape Game for Microsoft Kinect extended to allow players to join in the game and deploy shapes from their windows phone. Uses TCP sockets. For educational purposes. Free to download and distribute.Liekhus Behavior Driven DevExpress XAF: Using the BDD (Behavior Driven Development) techniques of SpecFlow and the EasyTest scriptability of DevExpress XAF (eXpress Application Framework), you can leverage test first style of application development in a speed never though imaginable.Linq to BBYOpen: C# Linq Provider to access the REST based BBYOpen services from BestBuy.Mi clima: This is the source code for the application "Mi clima" published in the Windows Phone Marketplace. MySqlQueryToolkit: This project bundles all of the common performance tests into a single handy user interface. Simply drop your query in and use the tools to make your query faster. Includes index suggestion, column data type and length suggestion and common profiling options.OData Validation Framework: Project to show how to validate data using client and server side OData/WCF Data ServicesOMR Table Data Syncronizer - Only Data: This tools compare and syncronize table data. No schema syncronizing included on this project. Data comparition is fastest! 1,000,000 data compare time is: ~200 ms.OrchardPo: This is the po file management module that is used on http://orchardproject.netResistance Calculator: A calculator for parallel and/or series resistanceSMS Team 5: h? th?ng g?i SMS t? d?ngSportsStore: Prueba en tfs de sports storeUDP Transport: This is an attempt at implementation of WCF UDP transport compliant with soa.udp OASIS Standard WebUtils: Biblioteca com funções genéricas úteis para uso com ASP NET MVC??a??e?a - Greek Government Open Data Program - Windows Mobile Client: ? efa?µ??? Open Government sa? d??e? ?µes? p??sßas? ap? t? ????t? sa? se ????? t??? ??µ???, ??e? t?? ap?f?se?? ?a? ??e? t?? dap??e? t?? ????????? ???t??? ?a? ???? t?? ?p??es??? t?? ????????? ??µ?s??? µ?s? t?? ??ße???t???? p?????µµat?? ??a??e?a.

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• Part 2&ndash;Load Testing In The Cloud

  - by Tarun Arora

  Welcome to Part 2, In Part 1 we discussed the advantages of creating a Test Rig in the cloud, the Azure edge and the Test Rig Topology we want to get to. In Part 2, Let’s start by understanding the components of Azure we’ll be making use of followed by manually putting them together to create the test rig, so… let’s get down dirty start setting up the Test Rig.  What Components of Azure will I be using for building the Test Rig in the Cloud? To run the Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Compute and to enable communication between Test Controller and Test Agents we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect.  Azure Connect The Test Controller is on premise and the Test Agents are in the cloud (How will they talk?). To enable communication between the two, we’ll make use of Windows Azure Connect. With Windows Azure Connect, you can use a simple user interface to configure IPsec protected connections between computers or virtual machines (VMs) in your organization’s network, and roles running in Windows Azure. With this you can now join Windows Azure role instances to your domain, so that you can use your existing methods for domain authentication, name resolution, or other domain-wide maintenance actions. For more details refer to an overview of Windows Azure connect. A very useful video explaining everything you wanted to know about Windows Azure connect.  Azure Compute Windows Azure compute provides developers a platform to host and manage applications in Microsoft’s data centres across the globe. A Windows Azure application is built from one or more components called ‘roles.’ Roles come in three different types: Web role, Worker role, and Virtual Machine (VM) role, we’ll be using the Worker role to set up the Test Agents. A very nice blog post discussing the difference between the 3 role types. Developers are free to use the .NET framework or other software that runs on Windows with the Worker role or Web role. Developers can also create applications using languages such as PHP and Java. More on Windows Azure Compute. Each Windows Azure compute instance represents a virtual server... Virtual Machine Size CPU Cores Memory Cost Per Hour Extra Small Shared 768 MB $0.04 Small 1 1.75 GB $0.12 Medium 2 3.50 GB $0.24 Large 4 7.00 GB $0.48 Extra Large 8 14.00 GB $0.96   You might want to review the Windows Azure Pricing FAQ. Let’s Get Started building the Test Rig… Configuration Machine Role Comments VM – 1 Domain Controller for Playpit.com On Premise VM – 2 TFS, Test Controller On Premise VM – 3 Test Agent Cloud   In this blog post I would assume that you have the domain, Team Foundation Server and Test Controller Installed and set up already. If not, please refer to the TFS 2010 Installation Guide and this walkthrough on MSDN to set up your Test Controller. You can also download a preconfigured TFS 2010 VM from Brian Keller's blog, Brian also has some great hands on Labs on TFS 2010 that you may want to explore. I. Lets start building VM – 3: The Test Agent Download the Windows Azure SDK and Tools Open Visual Studio and create a new Windows Azure Project using the Cloud Template                   Choose the Worker Role for reasons explained in the earlier post         The WorkerRole.cs implements the Run() and OnStart() methods, no code changes required. You should be able to compile the project and run it in the compute emulator (The compute emulator should have been installed as part of the Windows Azure Toolkit) on your local machine.                   We will only be making changes to WindowsAzureProject, open ServiceDefinition.csdef. Ensure that the vmsize is small (remember the cost chart above). Import the “Connect” module. I am importing the Connect module because I need to join the Worker role VM to the Playpit domain. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect"/> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg and note that settings with key ‘Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.%%%%’ have been added to the configuration file. This is because you decided to import the connect module. See the config below. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="1" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>             Let’s go step by step and understand all the highlighted parameters and where you can find the values for them.       osFamily – By default this is set to 1 (Windows Server 2008 SP2). Change this to 2 if you want the Windows Server 2008 R2 operating system. The Advantage of using osFamily = “2” is that you get Powershell 2.0 rather than Powershell 1.0. In Powershell 2.0 you could simply use “powershell -ExecutionPolicy Unrestricted ./myscript.ps1” and it will work while in Powershell 1.0 you will have to change the registry key by including the following in your command file “reg add HKLM\Software\Microsoft\PowerShell\1\ShellIds\Microsoft.PowerShell /v ExecutionPolicy /d Unrestricted /f” before you can execute any power shell. The other reason you might want to move to os2 is if you wanted IIS 7.5.       Activation Token – To enable communication between the on premise machine and the Windows Azure Worker role VM both need to have the same token. Log on to Windows Azure Management Portal, click on Connect, click on Get Activation Token, this should give you the activation token, copy the activation token to the clipboard and paste it in the configuration file. Note – Later in the blog I’ll be showing you how to install connect on the on premise machine.                       EnableDomainJoin – Set the value to true, ofcourse we want to join the on windows azure worker role VM to the domain.       DomainFQDN, DomainControllerFQDN, DomainAccountName, DomainPassword, DomainOU, Administrators – This information is specific to your domain. I have extracted this information from the ‘service manager’ and ‘Active Directory Users and Computers’. Also, i created a new Domain-OU namely ‘CloudInstances’ so all my cloud instances joined to my domain show up here, this is optional. You can encrypt the DomainPassword – refer to the instructions here. Or hold fire, I’ll be covering that when i come to certificates and encryption in the coming section.       Now once you have filled all this information up, the configuration file should look something like below, <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> </ConfigurationSettings> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration> Next we will be enabling the Remote Desktop module in to the ServiceDefinition.csdef, we could make changes manually or allow a beautiful wizard to help us make changes. I prefer the second option. So right click on the Windows Azure project and choose Publish       Now once you get the publish wizard, if you haven’t already you would be asked to import your Windows Azure subscription, this is simply the Msdn subscription activation key xml. Once you have done click Next to go to the Settings page and check ‘Enable Remote Desktop for all roles’.       As soon as you do that you get another pop up asking you the details for the user that you would be logging in with (make sure you enter a reasonable expiry date, you do not want the user account to expire today). Notice the more information tag at the bottom, click that to get access to the certificate section. See screen shot below.       From the drop down select the option to create a new certificate        In the pop up window enter the friendly name for your certificate. In my case I entered ‘WAC – Test Rig’ and click ok. This will create a new certificate for you. Click on the view button to see the certificate details. Do you see the Thumbprint, this is the value that will go in the config file (very important). Now click on the Copy to File button to copy the certificate, we will need to import the certificate to the windows Azure Management portal later. So, make sure you save it a safe location.                                Click Finish and enter details of the user you would like to create with permissions for remote desktop access, once you have entered the details on the ‘Remote desktop configuration’ screen click on Ok. From the Publish Windows Azure Wizard screen press Cancel. Cancel because we don’t want to publish the role just yet and Yes because we want to save all the changes in the config file.       Now if you go to the ServiceDefinition.csdef file you will see that the RemoteAccess and RemoteForwarder roles have been imported for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceDefinition name="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceDefinition"> <WorkerRole name="WorkerRole1" vmsize="Small"> <Imports> <Import moduleName="Diagnostics" /> <Import moduleName="Connect" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteAccess" /> <Import moduleName="RemoteForwarder" /> </Imports> </WorkerRole> </ServiceDefinition> Now go to the ServiceConfiguration.Cloud.cscfg file and you see a whole bunch for setting “Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.%%%” values added for you. <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?> <ServiceConfiguration serviceName="WindowsAzureProject2" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/ServiceHosting/2008/10/ServiceConfiguration" osFamily="2" osVersion="*"> <Role name="WorkerRole1"> <Instances count="1" /> <ConfigurationSettings> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString" value="UseDevelopmentStorage=true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.ActivationToken" value="45f55fea-f194-4fbc-b36e-25604faac784" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Refresh" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.WaitForConnectivity" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Upgrade" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.EnableDomainJoin" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainFQDN" value="play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainControllerFQDN" value="WIN-KUDQMQFGQOL.play.pit.com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainAccountName" value="playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainPassword" value="************************" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainOU" value="OU=CloudInstances, DC=Play, DC=Pit, DC=com" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.Administrators" value="Playpit\Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Connect.DomainSiteName" value="" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.Enabled" value="true" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountUsername" value="Administrator" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountEncryptedPassword" value="MIIBnQYJKoZIhvcNAQcDoIIBjjCCAYoCAQAxggFOMIIBSgIBADAyMB4xHDAaBgNVBAMME1dpbmRvd 3MgQXp1cmUgVG9vbHMCEGa+B46voeO5T305N7TSG9QwDQYJKoZIhvcNAQEBBQAEggEABg4ol5Xol66Ip6QKLbAPWdmD4ae ADZ7aKj6fg4D+ATr0DXBllZHG5Umwf+84Sj2nsPeCyrg3ZDQuxrfhSbdnJwuChKV6ukXdGjX0hlowJu/4dfH4jTJC7sBWS AKaEFU7CxvqYEAL1Hf9VPL5fW6HZVmq1z+qmm4ecGKSTOJ20Fptb463wcXgR8CWGa+1w9xqJ7UmmfGeGeCHQ4QGW0IDSBU6ccg vzF2ug8/FY60K1vrWaCYOhKkxD3YBs8U9X/kOB0yQm2Git0d5tFlIPCBT2AC57bgsAYncXfHvPesI0qs7VZyghk8LVa9g5IqaM Cp6cQ7rmY/dLsKBMkDcdBHuCTAzBgkqhkiG9w0BBwEwFAYIKoZIhvcNAwcECDRVifSXbA43gBApNrp40L1VTVZ1iGag+3O1" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.AccountExpiration" value="2012-11-27T23:59:59.0000000+00:00" /> <Setting name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteForwarder.Enabled" value="true" /> </ConfigurationSettings> <Certificates> <Certificate name="Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.RemoteAccess.PasswordEncryption" thumbprint="AA23016CF0BDFC344400B5B82706B608B92E4217" thumbprintAlgorithm="sha1" /> </Certificates> </Role> </ServiceConfiguration>          Okay let’s look at them one at a time,       Enabled - Yes, we would like to enable Remote Access.       AccountUserName – This is the user name you entered while you were on the publish windows azure role screen, as detailed above.       AccountEncrytedPassword – Try and decode that, the certificate is used to encrypt the password you specified for the user account. Remember earlier i said, either use the instructions or wait and i’ll be showing you encryption, now the user account i am using for rdp has the same password as my domain password, so i can simply copy the value of the AccountEncryptedPassword to the DomainPassword as well.       AccountExpiration – This is the expiration as you specified in the wizard earlier, make sure your account does not expire today.       Remote Forwarder – Check out the documentation, below is how I understand it, -- One role in an application that implements a remote desktop connection must import the RemoteForwarder module. The two modules work together to enable the remote desktop connections to role instances. -- If you have multiple roles defined in the service model, it does not matter which role you add the RemoteForwarder module to, but you must add it to only one of the role definitions.       Certificate – Remember the certificate thumbprint from the wizard, the on premise machine and windows azure role machine that need to speak to each other must have the same thumbprint. More on that when we install Windows Azure connect Endpoints on the on premise machine. As i said earlier, in this blog post, I’ll be showing you the manual process so i won’t be scripting any star up tasks to install the test agent or register the test agent with the TFS Server. I’ll be showing you all this cool stuff in the next blog post, that’s because it’s important to understand the manual side of it, it becomes easier for you to troubleshoot in case something fails. Having said that, the changes we have made are sufficient to spin up the Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent VM, have it connected with the play.pit.com domain and have remote access enabled on it. Before we deploy the Test Agent VM we need to set up Windows Azure Connect on the TFS Server. II. Windows Azure Connect: Setting up Connect on VM – 2 i.e. TFS & Test Controller Glad you made it so far, now to enable communication between the on premise TFS/Test Controller and Azure-ed Test Agent we need to enable communication. We have set up the Azure connect module in the Test Agent configuration, now the connect end points need to be enabled on the on premise machines, let’s have a look at how we can do this. Log on to VM – 2 running the TFS Server and Test Controller Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network Click on Virtual Network, if you already have a subscription you should see the below screen shot, if not, you would be asked to complete the subscription first        Click on Install Local Endpoints from the top left on the panel and you get a url appended with a token id in it, remember the token i showed you earlier, in theory the token you get here should match the token you added to the Test Agent config file.        Copy the url to the clip board and paste it in IE explorer (important, the installation at present only works out of IE and you need to have cookies enabled in order to complete the installation). As stated in the pop up, you can NOT download and run the software later, you need to run it as is, since it contains a token. Once the installation completes you should see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray.                         Right click the Azure Connect icon, choose Diagnostics and refer to this link for diagnostic detail terminology. NOTE – Unfortunately I could not see the Windows Azure connect icon in the system tray, a bit of binging with Google revealed that the azure connect icon is only shown when the ‘Windows Azure Connect Endpoint’ Service is started. So go to services.msc and make sure that the service is started, if not start it, unfortunately again, the service did not start for me on a manual start and i realised that one of the dependant services was disabled, you can look at the service dependencies and start them and then start windows azure connect. Bottom line, you need to start Windows Azure connect service before you can proceed. Please refer here on MSDN for more on Troubleshooting Windows Azure connect. (Follow the next step as well)   Now go back to the Windows Azure Management Portal and from Groups and Roles create a new group, lets call it ‘Test Rig’. Make sure you add the VM – 2 (the TFS Server VM where you just installed the endpoint).       Now if you go back to the Azure Connect icon in the system tray and click ‘Refresh Policy’ you will notice that the disconnected status of the icon should change to ready for connection. III. Importing Certificate in to Windows Azure Management Portal But before that you need to import the certificate you created in Step I in to the Windows Azure Management Portal. Log on to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on ‘Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN’ and then ‘Management Certificates’ followed by Add Certificates as shown in the screen shot below        Browse to the location where you saved the certificate earlier, remember… Refer to Step I in case you forgot.        Now you should be able to see the imported certificate here, make sure the thumbprint of the certificate matches the one you inserted in the config files        IV. Publish Windows Azure Worker Role aka Test Agent Having completed I, II and III, you are ready to publish the Test Agent VM – 3 to the cloud. Go to Visual Studio and right click the Windows Azure project and select Publish. Verify the infomration in the wizard, from the advanced settings tab, you can also enabled capture of intellitrace or profiling information.         Click Next and Click Publish! From the view menu bar select the Windows Azure Activity Log window.       Now you should be able to see the deployment progress in real time.             In the Windows Azure Management Portal, you should also be able to see the progress of creation of a new Worker Role.       Once the deployment is complete you should be able to RDP (go to run prompt type mstsc and in the pop up the machine name) in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM from the Playpit network using the domain admin user account. In case you are unable to log in to the Test Agent using the domain admin user account it means the process of joining the Test Agent to the domain has failed! But the good news is, because you imported the connect module, you can connect to the Test Agent machine using Windows Azure Management Portal and troubleshoot the reason for failure, you will be able to log in with the user name and password you specified in the config file for the keys ‘RemoteAccess.AccountUsername, RemoteAccess.EncryptedPassword (just that enter the password unencrypted)’, fix it or manually join the machine to the domain. Once you have managed to Join the Test Agent VM to the Domain move to the next step.      So, log in to the Test Agent Worker Role VM with the Playpit Domain Administrator and verify that you can log in, the machine is connected to the domain and the connect service is successfully running. If yes, give your self a pat on the back, you are 80% mission accomplished!         Go to the Windows Azure Management Portal and click on Virtual Network, click on Groups and Roles and click on Test Rig, click Edit Group, the edit the Test Rig group you created earlier. In the Connect to section, click on Add to select the worker role you have just deployed. Also, check the ‘Allow connections between endpoints in the group’ with this you will enable to communication between test controller and test agents and test agents/test agents. Click Save.      Now, you are ready to deploy the Test Agent software on the Worker Role Test Agent VM and configure it to work with the Test Controller. V. Configuring VM – 3: Installing Test Agent and Associating Test Agent to Controller Log in to the Worker Role Test Agent VM that you have just successfully deployed, make sure you log in with the domain administrator account. Download the All Agents software from MSDN, ‘en_visual_studio_agents_2010_x86_x64_dvd_509679.iso’, extract the iso and navigate to where you have extracted the iso. In my case, i have extracted the iso to “C:\Resources\Temp\VsAgentSetup”. Open the Test Agent folder and double click on setup.exe. Once you have installed the Test Agent you should reach the configuration window. If you face any issues installing TFS Test Agent on the VM, refer to the walkthrough on MSDN.       Once you have successfully installed the Test Agent software you will need to configure the test agent. Right click the test agent configuration tool and run as a different user. i.e. an Administrator. This is really to run the configuration wizard with elevated privileges (you might have UAC block something's otherwise).        In the run options, you can select ‘service’ you do not need to run the agent as interactive un less you are running coded UI tests. I have specified the domain administrator to connect to the TFS Test Controller. In real life, i would never do that, i would create a separate test user service account for this purpose. But for the blog post, we are using the most powerful user so that any policies or restrictions don’t block you.        Click the Apply Settings button and you should be all green! If not, the summary usually gives helpful error messages that you can resolve and proceed. As per my experience, you may run in to either a permission or a firewall blocking communication issue.        And now the moment of truth! Go to VM –2 open up Visual Studio and from the Test Menu select Manage Test Controller       Mission Accomplished! You should be able to see the Test Agent that you have just configured here,         VI. Creating and Running Load Tests on your brand new Azure-ed Test Rig I have various blog posts on Performance Testing with Visual Studio Ultimate, you can follow the links and videos below, Blog Posts: - Part 1 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 2 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate - Part 3 – Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 Ultimate Videos: - Test Tools Configuration & Settings in Visual Studio - Why & How to Record Web Performance Tests in Visual Studio Ultimate - Goal Driven Load Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate Now that you have created your load tests, there is one last change you need to make before you can run the tests on your Azure Test Rig, create a new Test settings file, and change the Test Execution method to ‘Remote Execution’ and select the test controller you have configured the Worker Role Test Agent against in our case VM – 2 So, go on, fire off a test run and see the results of the test being executed on the Azur-ed Test Rig. Review and What’s next? A quick recap of the benefits of running the Test Rig in the cloud and what i will be covering in the next blog post AND I would love to hear your feedback! Advantages Utilizing the power of Azure compute to run a heavy virtual user load. Benefiting from the Azure flexibility, destroy Test Agents when not in use, takes < 25 minutes to spin up a new Test Agent. Most important test Network Latency, (network latency and speed of connection are two different things – usually network latency is very hard to test), by placing the Test Agents in Microsoft Data centres around the globe, one can actually test the lag in transferring the bytes not because of a slow connection but because the page has been requested from the other side of the globe. Next Steps The process of spinning up the Test Agents in windows Azure is not 100% automated. I am working on the Worker process and power shell scripts to make the role deployment, unattended install of test agent software and registration of the test agent to the test controller automated. In the next blog post I will show you how to make the complete process unattended and automated. Remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Hope you enjoyed this post, I would love to hear your feedback! If you have any recommendations on things that I should consider or any questions or feedback, feel free to leave a comment. See you in Part III.   Share this post : CodeProject

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• C#/.NET Little Wonders: The ConcurrentDictionary

  - by James Michael Hare

  Once again we consider some of the lesser known classes and keywords of C#.  In this series of posts, we will discuss how the concurrent collections have been developed to help alleviate these multi-threading concerns.  Last week’s post began with a general introduction and discussed the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T>.  Today's post discusses the ConcurrentDictionary<T> (originally I had intended to discuss ConcurrentBag this week as well, but ConcurrentDictionary had enough information to create a very full post on its own!).  Finally next week, we shall close with a discussion of the ConcurrentBag<T> and BlockingCollection<T>. For more of the "Little Wonders" posts, see the index here. Recap As you'll recall from the previous post, the original collections were object-based containers that accomplished synchronization through a Synchronized member.  While these were convenient because you didn't have to worry about writing your own synchronization logic, they were a bit too finely grained and if you needed to perform multiple operations under one lock, the automatic synchronization didn't buy much. With the advent of .NET 2.0, the original collections were succeeded by the generic collections which are fully type-safe, but eschew automatic synchronization.  This cuts both ways in that you have a lot more control as a developer over when and how fine-grained you want to synchronize, but on the other hand if you just want simple synchronization it creates more work. With .NET 4.0, we get the best of both worlds in generic collections.  A new breed of collections was born called the concurrent collections in the System.Collections.Concurrent namespace.  These amazing collections are fine-tuned to have best overall performance for situations requiring concurrent access.  They are not meant to replace the generic collections, but to simply be an alternative to creating your own locking mechanisms. Among those concurrent collections were the ConcurrentStack<T> and ConcurrentQueue<T> which provide classic LIFO and FIFO collections with a concurrent twist.  As we saw, some of the traditional methods that required calls to be made in a certain order (like checking for not IsEmpty before calling Pop()) were replaced in favor of an umbrella operation that combined both under one lock (like TryPop()). Now, let's take a look at the next in our series of concurrent collections!For some excellent information on the performance of the concurrent collections and how they perform compared to a traditional brute-force locking strategy, see this wonderful whitepaper by the Microsoft Parallel Computing Platform team here. ConcurrentDictionary – the fully thread-safe dictionary The ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue> is the thread-safe counterpart to the generic Dictionary<TKey, TValue> collection.  Obviously, both are designed for quick – O(1) – lookups of data based on a key.  If you think of algorithms where you need lightning fast lookups of data and don’t care whether the data is maintained in any particular ordering or not, the unsorted dictionaries are generally the best way to go. Note: as a side note, there are sorted implementations of IDictionary, namely SortedDictionary and SortedList which are stored as an ordered tree and a ordered list respectively.  While these are not as fast as the non-sorted dictionaries – they are O(log2 n) – they are a great combination of both speed and ordering -- and still greatly outperform a linear search. Now, once again keep in mind that if all you need to do is load a collection once and then allow multi-threaded reading you do not need any locking.  Examples of this tend to be situations where you load a lookup or translation table once at program start, then keep it in memory for read-only reference.  In such cases locking is completely non-productive. However, most of the time when we need a concurrent dictionary we are interleaving both reads and updates.  This is where the ConcurrentDictionary really shines!  It achieves its thread-safety with no common lock to improve efficiency.  It actually uses a series of locks to provide concurrent updates, and has lockless reads!  This means that the ConcurrentDictionary gets even more efficient the higher the ratio of reads-to-writes you have. ConcurrentDictionary and Dictionary differences For the most part, the ConcurrentDictionary<TKey,TValue> behaves like it’s Dictionary<TKey,TValue> counterpart with a few differences.  Some notable examples of which are: Add() does not exist in the concurrent dictionary. This means you must use TryAdd(), AddOrUpdate(), or GetOrAdd().  It also means that you can’t use a collection initializer with the concurrent dictionary. TryAdd() replaced Add() to attempt atomic, safe adds. Because Add() only succeeds if the item doesn’t already exist, we need an atomic operation to check if the item exists, and if not add it while still under an atomic lock. TryUpdate() was added to attempt atomic, safe updates. If we want to update an item, we must make sure it exists first and that the original value is what we expected it to be.  If all these are true, we can update the item under one atomic step. TryRemove() was added to attempt atomic, safe removes. To safely attempt to remove a value we need to see if the key exists first, this checks for existence and removes under an atomic lock. AddOrUpdate() was added to attempt an thread-safe “upsert”. There are many times where you want to insert into a dictionary if the key doesn’t exist, or update the value if it does.  This allows you to make a thread-safe add-or-update. GetOrAdd() was added to attempt an thread-safe query/insert. Sometimes, you want to query for whether an item exists in the cache, and if it doesn’t insert a starting value for it.  This allows you to get the value if it exists and insert if not. Count, Keys, Values properties take a snapshot of the dictionary. Accessing these properties may interfere with add and update performance and should be used with caution. ToArray() returns a static snapshot of the dictionary. That is, the dictionary is locked, and then copied to an array as a O(n) operation.  GetEnumerator() is thread-safe and efficient, but allows dirty reads. Because reads require no locking, you can safely iterate over the contents of the dictionary.  The only downside is that, depending on timing, you may get dirty reads. Dirty reads during iteration The last point on GetEnumerator() bears some explanation.  Picture a scenario in which you call GetEnumerator() (or iterate using a foreach, etc.) and then, during that iteration the dictionary gets updated.  This may not sound like a big deal, but it can lead to inconsistent results if used incorrectly.  The problem is that items you already iterated over that are updated a split second after don’t show the update, but items that you iterate over that were updated a split second before do show the update.  Thus you may get a combination of items that are “stale” because you iterated before the update, and “fresh” because they were updated after GetEnumerator() but before the iteration reached them. Let’s illustrate with an example, let’s say you load up a concurrent dictionary like this: 1: // load up a dictionary. 2: var dictionary = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, int>(); 3:  4: dictionary["A"] = 1; 5: dictionary["B"] = 2; 6: dictionary["C"] = 3; 7: dictionary["D"] = 4; 8: dictionary["E"] = 5; 9: dictionary["F"] = 6; Then you have one task (using the wonderful TPL!) to iterate using dirty reads: 1: // attempt iteration in a separate thread 2: var iterationTask = new Task(() => 3: { 4: // iterates using a dirty read 5: foreach (var pair in dictionary) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine(pair.Key + ":" + pair.Value); 8: } 9: }); And one task to attempt updates in a separate thread (probably): 1: // attempt updates in a separate thread 2: var updateTask = new Task(() => 3: { 4: // iterates, and updates the value by one 5: foreach (var pair in dictionary) 6: { 7: dictionary[pair.Key] = pair.Value + 1; 8: } 9: }); Now that we’ve done this, we can fire up both tasks and wait for them to complete: 1: // start both tasks 2: updateTask.Start(); 3: iterationTask.Start(); 4:  5: // wait for both to complete. 6: Task.WaitAll(updateTask, iterationTask); Now, if I you didn’t know about the dirty reads, you may have expected to see the iteration before the updates (such as A:1, B:2, C:3, D:4, E:5, F:6).  However, because the reads are dirty, we will quite possibly get a combination of some updated, some original.  My own run netted this result: 1: F:6 2: E:6 3: D:5 4: C:4 5: B:3 6: A:2 Note that, of course, iteration is not in order because ConcurrentDictionary, like Dictionary, is unordered.  Also note that both E and F show the value 6.  This is because the output task reached F before the update, but the updates for the rest of the items occurred before their output (probably because console output is very slow, comparatively). If we want to always guarantee that we will get a consistent snapshot to iterate over (that is, at the point we ask for it we see precisely what is in the dictionary and no subsequent updates during iteration), we should iterate over a call to ToArray() instead: 1: // attempt iteration in a separate thread 2: var iterationTask = new Task(() => 3: { 4: // iterates using a dirty read 5: foreach (var pair in dictionary.ToArray()) 6: { 7: Console.WriteLine(pair.Key + ":" + pair.Value); 8: } 9: }); The atomic Try…() methods As you can imagine TryAdd() and TryRemove() have few surprises.  Both first check the existence of the item to determine if it can be added or removed based on whether or not the key currently exists in the dictionary: 1: // try add attempts an add and returns false if it already exists 2: if (dictionary.TryAdd("G", 7)) 3: Console.WriteLine("G did not exist, now inserted with 7"); 4: else 5: Console.WriteLine("G already existed, insert failed."); TryRemove() also has the virtue of returning the value portion of the removed entry matching the given key: 1: // attempt to remove the value, if it exists it is removed and the original is returned 2: int removedValue; 3: if (dictionary.TryRemove("C", out removedValue)) 4: Console.WriteLine("Removed C and its value was " + removedValue); 5: else 6: Console.WriteLine("C did not exist, remove failed."); Now TryUpdate() is an interesting creature.  You might think from it’s name that TryUpdate() first checks for an item’s existence, and then updates if the item exists, otherwise it returns false.  Well, note quite... It turns out when you call TryUpdate() on a concurrent dictionary, you pass it not only the new value you want it to have, but also the value you expected it to have before the update.  If the item exists in the dictionary, and it has the value you expected, it will update it to the new value atomically and return true.  If the item is not in the dictionary or does not have the value you expected, it is not modified and false is returned. 1: // attempt to update the value, if it exists and if it has the expected original value 2: if (dictionary.TryUpdate("G", 42, 7)) 3: Console.WriteLine("G existed and was 7, now it's 42."); 4: else 5: Console.WriteLine("G either didn't exist, or wasn't 7."); The composite Add methods The ConcurrentDictionary also has composite add methods that can be used to perform updates and gets, with an add if the item is not existing at the time of the update or get. The first of these, AddOrUpdate(), allows you to add a new item to the dictionary if it doesn’t exist, or update the existing item if it does.  For example, let’s say you are creating a dictionary of counts of stock ticker symbols you’ve subscribed to from a market data feed: 1: public sealed class SubscriptionManager 2: { 3: private readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, int> _subscriptions = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, int>(); 4:  5: // adds a new subscription, or increments the count of the existing one. 6: public void AddSubscription(string tickerKey) 7: { 8: // add a new subscription with count of 1, or update existing count by 1 if exists 9: var resultCount = _subscriptions.AddOrUpdate(tickerKey, 1, (symbol, count) => count + 1); 10:  11: // now check the result to see if we just incremented the count, or inserted first count 12: if (resultCount == 1) 13: { 14: // subscribe to symbol... 15: } 16: } 17: } Notice the update value factory Func delegate.  If the key does not exist in the dictionary, the add value is used (in this case 1 representing the first subscription for this symbol), but if the key already exists, it passes the key and current value to the update delegate which computes the new value to be stored in the dictionary.  The return result of this operation is the value used (in our case: 1 if added, existing value + 1 if updated). Likewise, the GetOrAdd() allows you to attempt to retrieve a value from the dictionary, and if the value does not currently exist in the dictionary it will insert a value.  This can be handy in cases where perhaps you wish to cache data, and thus you would query the cache to see if the item exists, and if it doesn’t you would put the item into the cache for the first time: 1: public sealed class PriceCache 2: { 3: private readonly ConcurrentDictionary<string, double> _cache = new ConcurrentDictionary<string, double>(); 4:  5: // adds a new subscription, or increments the count of the existing one. 6: public double QueryPrice(string tickerKey) 7: { 8: // check for the price in the cache, if it doesn't exist it will call the delegate to create value. 9: return _cache.GetOrAdd(tickerKey, symbol => GetCurrentPrice(symbol)); 10: } 11:  12: private double GetCurrentPrice(string tickerKey) 13: { 14: // do code to calculate actual true price. 15: } 16: } There are other variations of these two methods which vary whether a value is provided or a factory delegate, but otherwise they work much the same. Oddities with the composite Add methods The AddOrUpdate() and GetOrAdd() methods are totally thread-safe, on this you may rely, but they are not atomic.  It is important to note that the methods that use delegates execute those delegates outside of the lock.  This was done intentionally so that a user delegate (of which the ConcurrentDictionary has no control of course) does not take too long and lock out other threads. This is not necessarily an issue, per se, but it is something you must consider in your design.  The main thing to consider is that your delegate may get called to generate an item, but that item may not be the one returned!  Consider this scenario: A calls GetOrAdd and sees that the key does not currently exist, so it calls the delegate.  Now thread B also calls GetOrAdd and also sees that the key does not currently exist, and for whatever reason in this race condition it’s delegate completes first and it adds its new value to the dictionary.  Now A is done and goes to get the lock, and now sees that the item now exists.  In this case even though it called the delegate to create the item, it will pitch it because an item arrived between the time it attempted to create one and it attempted to add it. Let’s illustrate, assume this totally contrived example program which has a dictionary of char to int.  And in this dictionary we want to store a char and it’s ordinal (that is, A = 1, B = 2, etc).  So for our value generator, we will simply increment the previous value in a thread-safe way (perhaps using Interlocked): 1: public static class Program 2: { 3: private static int _nextNumber = 0; 4:  5: // the holder of the char to ordinal 6: private static ConcurrentDictionary<char, int> _dictionary 7: = new ConcurrentDictionary<char, int>(); 8:  9: // get the next id value 10: public static int NextId 11: { 12: get { return Interlocked.Increment(ref _nextNumber); } 13: } Then, we add a method that will perform our insert: 1: public static void Inserter() 2: { 3: for (int i = 0; i < 26; i++) 4: { 5: _dictionary.GetOrAdd((char)('A' + i), key => NextId); 6: } 7: } Finally, we run our test by starting two tasks to do this work and get the results… 1: public static void Main() 2: { 3: // 3 tasks attempting to get/insert 4: var tasks = new List<Task> 5: { 6: new Task(Inserter), 7: new Task(Inserter) 8: }; 9:  10: tasks.ForEach(t => t.Start()); 11: Task.WaitAll(tasks.ToArray()); 12:  13: foreach (var pair in _dictionary.OrderBy(p => p.Key)) 14: { 15: Console.WriteLine(pair.Key + ":" + pair.Value); 16: } 17: } If you run this with only one task, you get the expected A:1, B:2, ..., Z:26.  But running this in parallel you will get something a bit more complex.  My run netted these results: 1: A:1 2: B:3 3: C:4 4: D:5 5: E:6 6: F:7 7: G:8 8: H:9 9: I:10 10: J:11 11: K:12 12: L:13 13: M:14 14: N:15 15: O:16 16: P:17 17: Q:18 18: R:19 19: S:20 20: T:21 21: U:22 22: V:23 23: W:24 24: X:25 25: Y:26 26: Z:27 Notice that B is 3?  This is most likely because both threads attempted to call GetOrAdd() at roughly the same time and both saw that B did not exist, thus they both called the generator and one thread got back 2 and the other got back 3.  However, only one of those threads can get the lock at a time for the actual insert, and thus the one that generated the 3 won and the 3 was inserted and the 2 got discarded.  This is why on these methods your factory delegates should be careful not to have any logic that would be unsafe if the value they generate will be pitched in favor of another item generated at roughly the same time.  As such, it is probably a good idea to keep those generators as stateless as possible. Summary The ConcurrentDictionary is a very efficient and thread-safe version of the Dictionary generic collection.  It has all the benefits of type-safety that it’s generic collection counterpart does, and in addition is extremely efficient especially when there are more reads than writes concurrently. Tweet Technorati Tags: C#, .NET, Concurrent Collections, Collections, Little Wonders, Black Rabbit Coder,James Michael Hare

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 22, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 22, 2012Popular ReleasesTelerik CAB Enabling Kit for RadControls for WinForms: TCEK 2012.1.321.20: major update, new Workspaces and UIAdapters Workspaces: - RadDockWorkspace - RadPageViewWorkspace - RadFormWorkspace - RadFormMdiWorkspace - RadTabbedMdiWorkspace UI Adapters: - RadCommandBarUIAdapter - RadRibbonBarUIAdapter - RadTreeNodeUiAdapter - RadTreeViewUIAdapter - RadItemCollectionUIAdapter - (RadMenu, RadStatusStrip, all controls that support RadItem collections)People's Note: People's Note 0.40: Version 0.40 adds an option to compact the database from the profile screen. Compacting a database can make it smaller and faster by removing empty spaces left over by editing, moving, and deleting notes. To install: copy the appropriate CAB file onto your WM device and run it.Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework - a centralized code sample library: C++, .NET Coding Guideline: Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework Coding Guideline This document describes the coding style guideline for native C++ and .NET (C# and VB.NET) programming used by the Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework project team.SQL Monitor - managing sql server performance: SQLMon 4.2 alpha 13: 1. added logic fault checking in analysis. automatically detect dead loop or memory leakage in stored procedures, for details please refer to http://sqlmon.codeplex.com/workitem/32469WebDAV for WHS: Version 1.0.67: - Added: Check whether the Remote Web Access is turned on or not; - Added: Check for Add-In updates;Metodología General Ajustada - MGA: 02.02.01: Cambios John: Se actualizan los seis formularios de Identificaciòn para que despuès de guardar actualice las grillas, de tal manera que no se dupliquen los registros al guardar. Se genera instalador con los cambios y se actualiza la base datos con ùltimos cambios en el SP de Flujo de Caja.xyzzy+: xyzzy+ 0.2.2.235+0: SHA1: 4a0258736e7df52bb6e2304178b7fcf02414ae17 PrerequisitesMicrosoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (x86) (ja) FeaturesUnicode Visual Style Known ProblemsCharacter encodings other than Shift_JIS and UTF-X may be broken. Functions related to character encodings may not work. (ex. iso-code-char)Phalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 3.0 (March 2012) for .NET 4.0: March release of Phalanger 3.0 significantly enhances performance, adds new features and fixes many issues. See following for the list of main improvements: New features: Phalanger Tools installable for Visual Studio 2011 Beta "filter" extension with several most used filters implemented DomDocument HTML parser, loadHTML() method mail() PHP compatible function PHP 5.4 T_CALLABLE token PHP 5.4 "callable" type hint PCRE: UTF32 characters in range support configuration supports <c...Nearforums - ASP.NET MVC forum engine: Nearforums v8.0: Version 8.0 of Nearforums, the ASP.NET MVC Forum Engine, containing new features: Internationalization Custom authentication provider Access control list for forums and threads Webdeploy package checksum: abc62990189cf0d488ef915d4a55e4b14169bc01 Visit Roadmap for more details.BIDS Helper: BIDS Helper 1.6: This beta release is the first to support SQL Server 2012 (in addition to SQL Server 2005, 2008, and 2008 R2). Since it is marked as a beta release, we are looking for bug reports in the next few months as you use BIDS Helper on real projects. In addition to getting all existing BIDS Helper functionality working appropriately in SQL Server 2012 (SSDT), the following features are new... Analysis Services Tabular Smart Diff Tabular Actions Editor Tabular HideMemberIf Tabular Pre-Build ...Json.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 1: New feature - Windows 8 Metro build New feature - JsonTextReader automatically reads ISO strings as dates New feature - Added DateFormatHandling to control whether dates are written in the MS format or ISO format, with ISO as the default New feature - Added DateTimeZoneHandling to control reading and writing DateTime time zone details New feature - Added async serialize/deserialize methods to JsonConvert New feature - Added Path to JsonReader/JsonWriter/ErrorContext and exceptions w...SCCM Client Actions Tool: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11: SCCM Client Actions Tool v1.11 is the latest version. It comes with following changes since last version: Fixed a bug when ping and cmd.exe kept running in endless loop after action progress was finished. Fixed update checking from Codeplex RSS feed. The tool is downloadable as a ZIP file that contains four files: ClientActionsTool.hta – The tool itself. Cmdkey.exe – command line tool for managing cached credentials. This is needed for alternate credentials feature when running the HTA...WebSocket4Net: WebSocket4Net 0.5: Changes in this release fixed the wss's default port bug improved JsonWebSocket supported set client access policy protocol for silverlight fixed a handshake issue in Silverlight fixed a bug that "Host" field in handshake hadn't contained port if the port is not default supported passing in Origin parameter for handshaking supported reacting pings from server side fixed a bug in data sending fixed the bug sending a closing handshake with no message which would cause an excepti...SuperWebSocket, a .NET WebSocket Server: SuperWebSocket 0.5: Changes included in this release: supported closing handshake queue checking improved JSON subprotocol supported sending ping from server to client fixed a bug about sending a closing handshake with no message refactored the code to improve protocol compatibility fixed a bug about sub protocol configuration loading in Mono improved BasicSubProtocol added JsonWebSocketSessionSurvey™ - web survey & form engine: Survey™ 2.0: The new stable Survey™ Project 2.0.0.1 version contains many new features like: Technical changes: - Use of Jquery, ASTreeview, Tabs, Tooltips and new menuprovider Features & Bugfixes: Survey list and search function Folder structure for surveys New Menustructure Library list New Library fields User list and search functions Layout options for a survey with CSS, page header and footer New IP filter security feature Enhanced Token Management New Question fields as ID, Alias...AppBarUtils for Windows Phone SDK 7.1: AppBarUtils 1.2: This release contains IconUri dependency property for both AppBarItemCommand and AppBarItemTrigger as requested by shawnoster at http://appbarutils.codeplex.com/discussions/321745. When using this IconUri dependency property, please be sure to set the Type property to AppBarItemType.Button or just omit this property entirely, because it is only for app bar icon button. The demo has been updated to show how to use this new IconUri dependency property with a new lock button on the app bar. Wh...Offline Navigation for Windows Phone 7: 0.1 Alpha: This is the 0.1 alpha release of source code.SmartNet: V1.0.0.0: DY SmartNet ?????? V1.0Javascript .NET: Javascript .NET v0.6: Upgraded to the latest stable branch of v8 (/tags/3.9.18), and switched to using their scons build system. We no longer include v8 source code as part of this project's source code. Simultaneous multithreaded use of v8 now supported (v8 Isolates), although different contexts may not share objects or call each other. 64-bit .Net 4.0 DLL now included. (Download now includes x86 and x64 for both .Net 3.5 and .Net 4.0.)MyRouter (Virtual WiFi Router): MyRouter 1.0.7: This release should be more stable there were a few bug fixes including the x64 issue as well as an error popping up when MyRouter started this was caused by a NULL valueNew ProjectsActivities.WMI: WF4 ?????? WMI ??????????????? Activities library related WMI, available in WF4Append Customisation Service: A lightweight windows service for applying customisations to enterprise webapps: monitors a file and makes sure your code is always appended to the end of the file. Disable the service, and your customisations go away. c# .net 4. Useful for customising branding/design, javascript, css and so on - in applications such as Dynamics CRM 2011.ASP.NET Security Module: Modulo de seguridad para aplicaciones Web asp.netavgdx: This project is just for Directx 11 learningDaabli: A lightweight C# version of the Daabli serialization framework for C++. If your application needs to load objects and data from human readable text files, then Daabli could be useful to you. It is designed to be as easy to use as possible and works with a 'C' style human editable format. The original C++ version is available here: http://daabli.sourceforge.net/ DNN Simple Tweet: DNN Simple Tweet is a simple DotNetNuke module for display of Twitter Feeds. Using the stock Twitter Profile Widget, its settings allow you to change the Twitter User name, Tweet colors, etc. Developed in VB. DNN version 6 and higher required. *NUISANCE* When selecting between "Display All" and "Timed Interval" for Twitter Behavior, the iColorPicker for the colors will disappear. This is due to the post-back which is occurring and the use of Javascript of the color picker. Updat...Don't We-KC and Sway: Don't We-KC and SwayEksponent CropUp: CropUp is a simple geometric algorithm for "weighted auto cropping". A focus point and optional "area of interest" are defined (e.g. a face in a group pictures). These are shown instead of random stomachs when the picture needs to be sized to a specific format. Umbraco package.Enterprise Modular Application: Guidelines to create Enterprise modular applications in .NET framework, independent of any specific framework.Escape From Canyon: Escape from canyon is a little game project (for academic purpose only) developed using XNA 4.0 and F#FIX Sample code using QuickFIX to connect to TT FIX Adapter: Sample FIX client provides a starting place for developers to connect to the TT FIX Adapter. It's developed in C# using QuickFIX as the FIX engine.FSGreeNetWork: FSGreeNetWorkGac Library -- C++ Utilities for GPU Accelerated GUI and Script: C++ Utilities for GPU Accelerated GUI and ScriptJhVirtualKeyboard for WPF and Silverlight: JhVirtualKeyboard is a virtual-keyboard for software developers to use with either WPF or Silverlight projects. With it - you now have a simple way to provide your users with the ability to enter characters in different languages and alphabets, or any Unicode character. Developed in C#, using Visual Studio 2010 and .NET 4 More information can be found on my blog article at: http://designforge.wordpress.com/2011/01/06/jhvirtualkeyboard/ by James W. HurstKrishaWeb: Krisha webNetFrameworkExtensions: Simple plain framework to add a lot of features to .NET framework core. Most of the features are added in form of extension methods.pav2: proyecto pav 2 SharePoint (2010) Connected Server: Display which web server a user is connected to in the Personal Actions drop down menu (user name in upper right). An extremely useful aid when troubleshooting issues in a multi-server SharePoint environment. I took the exisiting version which ran on MOSS 2007 and rebuilt it to run on SharePoint 2010. <b>Acknowledgements:</b> Full credit goes to Nathan Yorke for the original project http://spconnectedserver.codeplex.com which worked on MOSS 2007. SharePoint 2010 Gauge Web Part: SharePoint 2010 Gauge Web Part can be connected to any column of the “number” type in SharePoint list includes External Lists (only the farm solution version) and show calculations on column values. It supports 2 views: 1. The Gauge View 2. The Simple Indicator View SMTP Test Suite: SMTP server/client that can be used to test other servers/clients. Purely a test tool as most SMTP verbs are accepted without any checking.StarterCSS: StarterCorev4.css is inspired from Starter.master. This CSS file give you detailed explanation on the different class files on corev4.css. StarterCorev4.css will make you understand the purpose of each class files when you do ctrl + click on your master page css class.Triangle.NET: Triangle.NET is a 2D meshing software written in C#. It generates (constrained) Delaunay triangulations and quality meshes of point sets or planar straight line graphs. It is a port of Jonathan Shewchuk's Triangle software written in C.WorkFile: workfile about codeioXNA Electric Effect: An electric effect implemented using XNA 4 fro Windows Phone 7. It provides an easy way to configure settings to create realistic electric effects, lightening effects, etc.

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• Testing Entity Framework applications, pt. 3: NDbUnit

  - by Thomas Weller

  This is the third of a three part series that deals with the issue of faking test data in the context of a legacy app that was built with Microsoft's Entity Framework (EF) on top of an MS SQL Server database – a scenario that can be found very often. Please read the first part for a description of the sample application, a discussion of some general aspects of unit testing in a database context, and of some more specific aspects of the here discussed EF/MSSQL combination. Lately, I wondered how you would ‘mock’ the data layer of a legacy application, when this data layer is made up of an MS Entity Framework (EF) model in combination with a MS SQL Server database. Originally, this question came up in the context of how you could enable higher-level integration tests (automated UI tests, to be exact) for a legacy application that uses this EF/MSSQL combo as its data store mechanism – a not so uncommon scenario. The question sparked my interest, and I decided to dive into it somewhat deeper. What I've found out is, in short, that it's not very easy and straightforward to do it – but it can be done. The two strategies that are best suited to fit the bill involve using either the (commercial) Typemock Isolator tool or the (free) NDbUnit framework. The use of Typemock was discussed in the previous post, this post now will present the NDbUnit approach... NDbUnit is an Apache 2.0-licensed open-source project, and like so many other Nxxx tools and frameworks, it is basically a C#/.NET port of the corresponding Java version (DbUnit namely). In short, it helps you in flexibly managing the state of a database in that it lets you easily perform basic operations (like e.g. Insert, Delete, Refresh, DeleteAll)  against your database and, most notably, lets you feed it with data from external xml files. Let's have a look at how things can be done with the help of this framework. Preparing the test data Compared to Typemock, using NDbUnit implies a totally different approach to meet our testing needs.  So the here described testing scenario requires an instance of an SQL Server database in operation, and it also means that the Entity Framework model that sits on top of this database is completely unaffected. First things first: For its interactions with the database, NDbUnit relies on a .NET Dataset xsd file. See Step 1 of their Quick Start Guide for a description of how to create one. With this prerequisite in place then, the test fixture's setup code could look something like this: [TestFixture, TestsOn(typeof(PersonRepository))] [Metadata("NDbUnit Quickstart URL",           "http://code.google.com/p/ndbunit/wiki/QuickStartGuide")] [Description("Uses the NDbUnit library to provide test data to a local database.")] public class PersonRepositoryFixture {     #region Constants     private const string XmlSchema = @"..\..\TestData\School.xsd";     #endregion // Constants     #region Fields     private SchoolEntities _schoolContext;     private PersonRepository _personRepository;     private INDbUnitTest _database;     #endregion // Fields     #region Setup/TearDown     [FixtureSetUp]     public void FixtureSetUp()     {         var connectionString = ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["School_Test"].ConnectionString;         _database = new SqlDbUnitTest(connectionString);         _database.ReadXmlSchema(XmlSchema);         var entityConnectionStringBuilder = new EntityConnectionStringBuilder         {             Metadata = "res://*/School.csdl|res://*/School.ssdl|res://*/School.msl",             Provider = "System.Data.SqlClient",             ProviderConnectionString = connectionString         };         _schoolContext = new SchoolEntities(entityConnectionStringBuilder.ConnectionString);         _personRepository = new PersonRepository(this._schoolContext);     }     [FixtureTearDown]     public void FixtureTearDown()     {         _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.DeleteAll);         _schoolContext.Dispose();     }     ...  As you can see, there is slightly more fixture setup code involved if your tests are using NDbUnit to provide the test data: Because we're dealing with a physical database instance here, we first need to pick up the test-specific connection string from the test assemblies' App.config, then initialize an NDbUnit helper object with this connection along with the provided xsd file, and also set up the SchoolEntities and the PersonRepository instances accordingly. The _database field (an instance of the INdUnitTest interface) will be our single access point to the underlying database: We use it to perform all the required operations against the data store. To have a flexible mechanism to easily insert data into the database, we can write a helper method like this: private void InsertTestData(params string[] dataFileNames) {     _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.DeleteAll);     if (dataFileNames == null)     {         return;     }     try     {         foreach (string fileName in dataFileNames)         {             if (!File.Exists(fileName))             {                 throw new FileNotFoundException(Path.GetFullPath(fileName));             }             _database.ReadXml(fileName);             _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.InsertIdentity);         }     }     catch     {         _database.PerformDbOperation(DbOperationFlag.DeleteAll);         throw;     } } This lets us easily insert test data from xml files, in any number and in a  controlled order (which is important because we eventually must fulfill referential constraints, or we must account for some other stuff that imposes a specific ordering on data insertion). Again, as with Typemock, I won't go into API details here. - Unfortunately, there isn't too much documentation for NDbUnit anyway, other than the already mentioned Quick Start Guide (and the source code itself, of course) - a not so uncommon problem with smaller Open Source Projects. Last not least, we need to provide the required test data in xml form. A snippet for data from the People table might look like this, for example: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <School xmlns="http://tempuri.org/School.xsd">   <Person>     <PersonID>1</PersonID>     <LastName>Abercrombie</LastName>     <FirstName>Kim</FirstName>     <HireDate>1995-03-11T00:00:00</HireDate>   </Person>   <Person>     <PersonID>2</PersonID>     <LastName>Barzdukas</LastName>     <FirstName>Gytis</FirstName>     <EnrollmentDate>2005-09-01T00:00:00</EnrollmentDate>   </Person>   <Person>     ... You can also have data from various tables in one single xml file, if that's appropriate for you (but beware of the already mentioned ordering issues). It's true that your test assembly may end up with dozens of such xml files, each containing quite a big amount of text data. But because the files are of very low complexity, and with the help of a little bit of Copy/Paste and Excel magic, this appears to be well manageable. Executing some basic tests Here are some of the possible tests that can be written with the above preparations in place: private const string People = @"..\..\TestData\School.People.xml"; ... [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetNameList")] public void GetNameList_ListOrdering_ReturnsTheExpectedFullNames() {     InsertTestData(People);     List<string> names =         _personRepository.GetNameList(NameOrdering.List);     Assert.Count(34, names);     Assert.AreEqual("Abercrombie, Kim", names.First());     Assert.AreEqual("Zheng, Roger", names.Last()); } [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetNameList")] [DependsOn("RemovePerson_CalledOnce_DecreasesCountByOne")] public void GetNameList_NormalOrdering_ReturnsTheExpectedFullNames() {     InsertTestData(People);     List<string> names =         _personRepository.GetNameList(NameOrdering.Normal);     Assert.Count(34, names);     Assert.AreEqual("Alexandra Walker", names.First());     Assert.AreEqual("Yan Li", names.Last()); } [Test, TestsOn("PersonRepository.AddPerson")] public void AddPerson_CalledOnce_IncreasesCountByOne() {     InsertTestData(People);     int count = _personRepository.Count;     _personRepository.AddPerson(new Person { FirstName = "Thomas", LastName = "Weller" });     Assert.AreEqual(count + 1, _personRepository.Count); } [Test, TestsOn("PersonRepository.RemovePerson")] public void RemovePerson_CalledOnce_DecreasesCountByOne() {     InsertTestData(People);     int count = _personRepository.Count;     _personRepository.RemovePerson(new Person { PersonID = 33 });     Assert.AreEqual(count - 1, _personRepository.Count); } Not much difference here compared to the corresponding Typemock versions, except that we had to do a bit more preparational work (and also it was harder to get the required knowledge). But this picture changes quite dramatically if we look at some more demanding test cases: Ok, and what if things are becoming somewhat more complex? Tests like the above ones represent the 'easy' scenarios. They may account for the biggest portion of real-world use cases of the application, and they are important to make sure that it is generally sound. But usually, all these nasty little bugs originate from the more complex parts of our code, or they occur when something goes wrong. So, for a testing strategy to be of real practical use, it is especially important to see how easy or difficult it is to mimick a scenario which represents a more complex or exceptional case. The following test, for example, deals with the case that there is some sort of invalid input from the caller: [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetCourseMembers")] [Row(null, typeof(ArgumentNullException))] [Row("", typeof(ArgumentException))] [Row("NotExistingCourse", typeof(ArgumentException))] public void GetCourseMembers_WithGivenVariousInvalidValues_Throws(string courseTitle, Type expectedInnerExceptionType) {     var exception = Assert.Throws<RepositoryException>(() =>                                 _personRepository.GetCourseMembers(courseTitle));     Assert.IsInstanceOfType(expectedInnerExceptionType, exception.InnerException); } Apparently, this test doesn't need an 'Arrange' part at all (see here for the same test with the Typemock tool). It acts just like any other client code, and all the required business logic comes from the database itself. This doesn't always necessarily mean that there is less complexity, but only that the complexity happens in a different part of your test resources (in the xml files namely, where you sometimes have to spend a lot of effort for carefully preparing the required test data). Another example, which relies on an underlying 1-n relationship, might be this: [Test, MultipleAsserts, TestsOn("PersonRepository.GetCourseMembers")] public void GetCourseMembers_WhenGivenAnExistingCourse_ReturnsListOfStudents() {     InsertTestData(People, Course, Department, StudentGrade);     List<Person> persons = _personRepository.GetCourseMembers("Macroeconomics");     Assert.Count(4, persons);     Assert.ForAll(         persons,         @p => new[] { 10, 11, 12, 14 }.Contains(@p.PersonID),         "Person has none of the expected IDs."); } If you compare this test to its corresponding Typemock version, you immediately see that the test itself is much simpler, easier to read, and thus much more intention-revealing. The complexity here lies hidden behind the call to the InsertTestData() helper method and the content of the used xml files with the test data. And also note that you might have to provide additional data which are not even directly relevant to your test, but are required only to fulfill some integrity needs of the underlying database. Conclusion The first thing to notice when comparing the NDbUnit approach to its Typemock counterpart obviously deals with performance: Of course, NDbUnit is much slower than Typemock. Technically,  it doesn't even make sense to compare the two tools. But practically, it may well play a role and could or could not be an issue, depending on how much tests you have of this kind, how often you run them, and what role they play in your development cycle. Also, because the dataset from the required xsd file must fully match the database schema (even in parts that otherwise wouldn't be relevant to you), it can be quite cumbersome to be in a team where different people are working with the database in parallel. My personal experience is – as already said in the first part – that Typemock gives you a better development experience in a 'dynamic' scenario (when you're working in some kind of TDD-style, you're oftentimes executing the tests from your dev box, and your database schema changes frequently), whereas the NDbUnit approach is a good and solid solution in more 'static' development scenarios (when you need to execute the tests less frequently or only on a separate build server, and/or the underlying database schema can be kept relatively stable), for example some variations of higher-level integration or User-Acceptance tests. But in any case, opening Entity Framework based applications for testing requires a fair amount of resources, planning, and preparational work – it's definitely not the kind of stuff that you would call 'easy to test'. Hopefully, future versions of EF will take testing concerns into account. Otherwise, I don't see too much of a future for the framework in the long run, even though it's quite popular at the moment... The sample solution A sample solution (VS 2010) with the code from this article series is available via my Bitbucket account from here (Bitbucket is a hosting site for Mercurial repositories. The repositories may also be accessed with the Git and Subversion SCMs - consult the documentation for details. In addition, it is possible to download the solution simply as a zipped archive – via the 'get source' button on the very right.). The solution contains some more tests against the PersonRepository class, which are not shown here. Also, it contains database scripts to create and fill the School sample database. To compile and run, the solution expects the Gallio/MbUnit framework to be installed (which is free and can be downloaded from here), the NDbUnit framework (which is also free and can be downloaded from here), and the Typemock Isolator tool (a fully functional 30day-trial is available here). Moreover, you will need an instance of the Microsoft SQL Server DBMS, and you will have to adapt the connection strings in the test projects App.config files accordingly.

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• How to add new filters to CAML queries in SharePoint 2007

  - by uruit

    Normal 0 21 false false false ES-UY X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} One flexibility SharePoint has is CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language). CAML it’s a markup language like html that allows developers to do queries against SharePoint lists, it’s syntax is very easy to understand and it allows to add logical conditions like Where, Contains, And, Or, etc, just like a SQL Query. For one of our projects we have the need to do a filter on SharePoint views, the problem here is that the view it’s a list containing a CAML Query with the filters the view may have, so in order to filter the view that’s already been filtered before, we need to append our filters to the existing CAML Query. That’s not a trivial task because the where statement in a CAML Query it’s like this: <Where>   <And>     <Filter1 />     <Filter2 />   </And> </Where> If we want to add a new logical operator, like an OR it’s not just as simple as to append the OR expression like the following example: <Where>   <And>     <Filter1 />     <Filter2 />   </And>   <Or>     <Filter3 />   </Or> </Where> But instead the correct query would be: <Where>   <Or>     <And>       <Filter1 />       <Filter2 />     </And>     <Filter3 />   </Or> </Where> Notice that the <Filter# /> tags are for explanation purpose only. In order to solve this problem we created a simple component, it has a method that receives the current query (could be an empty query also) and appends the expression you want to that query. Example: string currentQuery = @“ <Where>    <And>     <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>A</Value></Contains>     <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>B</Value></Contains>   </And> </Where>”; currentQuery = CAMLQueryBuilder.AppendQuery(     currentQuery,     “<Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>C</Value></Contains>”,     CAMLQueryBuilder.Operators.Or); The fist parameter this function receives it’s the actual query, the second it’s the filter you want to add, and the third it’s the logical operator, so basically in this query we want all the items that the title contains: the character A and B or the ones that contains the character C. The result query is: <Where>   <Or>      <And>       <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>A</Value></Contains>       <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>B</Value></Contains>     </And>     <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>C</Value></Contains>   </Or> </Where>             The code:   First of all we have an enumerator inside the CAMLQueryBuilder class that has the two possible Options And, Or. public enum Operators { And, Or }   Then we have the main method that’s the one that performs the append of the filters. public static string AppendQuery(string containerQuery, string logicalExpression, Operators logicalOperator){   In this method the first we do is create a new XmlDocument and wrap the current query (that may be empty) with a “<Query></Query>” tag, because the query that comes with the view doesn’t have a root element and the XmlDocument must be a well formatted xml.   XmlDocument queryDoc = new XmlDocument(); queryDoc.LoadXml("<Query>" + containerQuery + "</Query>");   The next step is to create a new XmlDocument containing the logical expression that has the filter needed.   XmlDocument logicalExpressionDoc = new XmlDocument(); logicalExpressionDoc.LoadXml("<root>" + logicalExpression + "</root>"); In these next four lines we extract the expression from the recently created XmlDocument and create an XmlElement.                  XmlElement expressionElTemp = (XmlElement)logicalExpressionDoc.SelectSingleNode("/root/*"); XmlElement expressionEl = queryDoc.CreateElement(expressionElTemp.Name); expressionEl.InnerXml = expressionElTemp.InnerXml;   Below are the main steps in the component logic. The first “if” checks if the actual query doesn’t contains a “Where” clause. In case there’s no “Where” we add it and append the expression.   In case that there’s already a “Where” clause, we get the entire statement that’s inside the “Where” and reorder the query removing and appending elements to form the correct query, that will finally filter the list.   XmlElement whereEl; if (!containerQuery.Contains("Where")) { queryDoc.FirstChild.AppendChild(queryDoc.CreateElement("Where")); queryDoc.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where").AppendChild(expressionEl); } else { whereEl = (XmlElement)queryDoc.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where"); if (!containerQuery.Contains("<And>") &&                 !containerQuery.Contains("<Or>"))        {              XmlElement operatorEl = queryDoc.CreateElement(GetName(logicalOperator)); XmlElement existingExpression = (XmlElement)whereEl.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where/*"); whereEl.RemoveChild(existingExpression);                 operatorEl.AppendChild(existingExpression);               operatorEl.AppendChild(expressionEl);                 whereEl.AppendChild(operatorEl);        }        else        {              XmlElement operatorEl = queryDoc.CreateElement(GetName(logicalOperator)); XmlElement existingOperator = (XmlElement)whereEl.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where/*");                 whereEl.RemoveChild(existingOperator);               operatorEl.AppendChild(existingOperator);               operatorEl.AppendChild(expressionEl);                 whereEl.AppendChild(operatorEl);         }  }  return queryDoc.FirstChild.InnerXml }     Finally the GetName method converts the Enum option to his string equivalent.   private static string GetName(Operators logicalOperator) {       return Enum.GetName(typeof(Operators), logicalOperator); }        This component helped our team a lot using SharePoint 2007 and modifying the queries, but now in SharePoint 2010; that wouldn’t be needed because of the incorporation of LINQ to SharePoint. This new feature enables the developers to do typed queries against SharePoint lists without the need of writing any CAML code.   Normal 0 21 false false false ES-UY X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} Post written by Sebastian Rodriguez - Portals and Collaboration Solutions @ UruIT  

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• How to add new filters to CAML queries in SharePoint 2007

  - by uruit

  Normal 0 21 false false false ES-UY X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} One flexibility SharePoint has is CAML (Collaborative Application Markup Language). CAML it’s a markup language like html that allows developers to do queries against SharePoint lists, it’s syntax is very easy to understand and it allows to add logical conditions like Where, Contains, And, Or, etc, just like a SQL Query. For one of our projects we have the need to do a filter on SharePoint views, the problem here is that the view it’s a list containing a CAML Query with the filters the view may have, so in order to filter the view that’s already been filtered before, we need to append our filters to the existing CAML Query. That’s not a trivial task because the where statement in a CAML Query it’s like this: <Where>   <And>     <Filter1 />     <Filter2 />   </And> </Where> If we want to add a new logical operator, like an OR it’s not just as simple as to append the OR expression like the following example: <Where>   <And>     <Filter1 />     <Filter2 />   </And>   <Or>     <Filter3 />   </Or> </Where> But instead the correct query would be: <Where>   <Or>     <And>       <Filter1 />       <Filter2 />     </And>     <Filter3 />   </Or> </Where> Notice that the <Filter# /> tags are for explanation purpose only. In order to solve this problem we created a simple component, it has a method that receives the current query (could be an empty query also) and appends the expression you want to that query. Example: string currentQuery = @“ <Where>    <And>     <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>A</Value></Contains>     <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>B</Value></Contains>   </And> </Where>”; currentQuery = CAMLQueryBuilder.AppendQuery(     currentQuery,     “<Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>C</Value></Contains>”,     CAMLQueryBuilder.Operators.Or); The fist parameter this function receives it’s the actual query, the second it’s the filter you want to add, and the third it’s the logical operator, so basically in this query we want all the items that the title contains: the character A and B or the ones that contains the character C. The result query is: <Where>   <Or>      <And>       <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>A</Value></Contains>       <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>B</Value></Contains>     </And>     <Contains><FieldRef Name='Title' /><Value Type='Text'>C</Value></Contains>   </Or> </Where>     The code:   First of all we have an enumerator inside the CAMLQueryBuilder class that has the two possible Options And, Or. public enum Operators { And, Or }   Then we have the main method that’s the one that performs the append of the filters. public static string AppendQuery(string containerQuery, string logicalExpression, Operators logicalOperator){   In this method the first we do is create a new XmlDocument and wrap the current query (that may be empty) with a “<Query></Query>” tag, because the query that comes with the view doesn’t have a root element and the XmlDocument must be a well formatted xml.   XmlDocument queryDoc = new XmlDocument(); queryDoc.LoadXml("<Query>" + containerQuery + "</Query>");   The next step is to create a new XmlDocument containing the logical expression that has the filter needed.   XmlDocument logicalExpressionDoc = new XmlDocument(); logicalExpressionDoc.LoadXml("<root>" + logicalExpression + "</root>"); In these next four lines we extract the expression from the recently created XmlDocument and create an XmlElement.                  XmlElement expressionElTemp = (XmlElement)logicalExpressionDoc.SelectSingleNode("/root/*"); XmlElement expressionEl = queryDoc.CreateElement(expressionElTemp.Name); expressionEl.InnerXml = expressionElTemp.InnerXml;   Below are the main steps in the component logic. The first “if” checks if the actual query doesn’t contains a “Where” clause. In case there’s no “Where” we add it and append the expression.   In case that there’s already a “Where” clause, we get the entire statement that’s inside the “Where” and reorder the query removing and appending elements to form the correct query, that will finally filter the list.   XmlElement whereEl; if (!containerQuery.Contains("Where")) { queryDoc.FirstChild.AppendChild(queryDoc.CreateElement("Where")); queryDoc.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where").AppendChild(expressionEl); } else { whereEl = (XmlElement)queryDoc.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where"); if (!containerQuery.Contains("<And>") &&                 !containerQuery.Contains("<Or>"))        {              XmlElement operatorEl = queryDoc.CreateElement(GetName(logicalOperator)); XmlElement existingExpression = (XmlElement)whereEl.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where/*"); whereEl.RemoveChild(existingExpression);                 operatorEl.AppendChild(existingExpression);               operatorEl.AppendChild(expressionEl);                 whereEl.AppendChild(operatorEl);        }        else        {              XmlElement operatorEl = queryDoc.CreateElement(GetName(logicalOperator)); XmlElement existingOperator = (XmlElement)whereEl.SelectSingleNode("/Query/Where/*");                 whereEl.RemoveChild(existingOperator);               operatorEl.AppendChild(existingOperator);               operatorEl.AppendChild(expressionEl);                 whereEl.AppendChild(operatorEl);         }  }  return queryDoc.FirstChild.InnerXml }     Finally the GetName method converts the Enum option to his string equivalent.   private static string GetName(Operators logicalOperator) {       return Enum.GetName(typeof(Operators), logicalOperator); }        Normal 0 21 false false false ES-UY X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 21 false false false ES-UY X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0cm; mso-para-margin-right:0cm; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0cm; line-height:115%; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} This component helped our team a lot using SharePoint 2007 and modifying the queries, but now in SharePoint 2010; that wouldn’t be needed because of the incorporation of LINQ to SharePoint. This new feature enables the developers to do typed queries against SharePoint lists without the need of writing any CAML code.  But there is still much development to the 2007 version, so I hope this information is useful for other members.  Post Normal 0 21 false false false ES-UY X-NONE X-NONE /* 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-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0cm; 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-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; mso-fareast-language:EN-US;} written by Sebastian Rodriguez - Portals and Collaboration Solutions @ UruIT

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 22, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, November 22, 2011Popular ReleasesDeveloper Team Article System Management: DTASM v1.3: ?? ??? ???? 3 ????? ???? ???? ????? ??? : - ????? ?????? ????? ???? ?? ??? ???? ????? ?? ??? ? ?? ???? ?????? ???? ?? ???? ????? ?? . - ??? ?? ???? ????? ???? ????? ???? ???? ?? ????? , ?????? ????? ????? ?? ??? . - ??? ??????? ??? ??? ???? ?? ????? ????? ????? .VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.22: The new version contains Silverlight 5 library: Vlc.DotNet.Silverlight. A sample could be tested here The new version add and correct many features : Correction : Reinitialize some variables Deprecate : Logging API, since VLC 1.2 (08/20/2011) Add subitem in LocationMedia (for Youtube videos, ...) Update Wpf sample to use Youtube videos Many others correctionsSharePoint 2010 FBA Pack: SharePoint 2010 FBA Pack 1.2.0: Web parts are now fully customizable via html templates (Issue #323) FBA Pack is now completely localizable using resource files. Thank you David Chen for submitting the code as well as Chinese translations of the FBA Pack! The membership request web part now gives the option of having the user enter the password and removing the captcha (Issue # 447) The FBA Pack will now work in a zone that does not have FBA enabled (Another zone must have FBA enabled, and the zone must contain the me...SharePoint 2010 Education Demo Project: Release SharePoint SP1 for Education Solutions: This release includes updates to the Content Packs for SharePoint SP1. All Content Packs have been updated to install successfully under SharePoint SP1SQL Monitor - tracking sql server activities: SQLMon 4.1 alpha 6: 1. improved support for schema 2. added find reference when right click on object list 3. added object rename supportBugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.126: First stable release of version 0.9. Upgrades from 0.8 are fully supported and upgrades to future releases will also be supported. This release is now compiled against the .NET 4.0 framework and is a requirement. Because of this the web.config has significantly changed. After upgrading, you will need to configure the authentication settings for user registration and anonymous access again. Please see our installation / upgrade instructions for more details: http://wiki.bugnetproject.c...Anno 2070 Assistant: v0.1.0 (STABLE): Version 0.1.0 Features Production Chains Eco Production Chains (Complete) Tycoon Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Production Chains (Disabled - Incomplete) Supply (Disabled - Incomplete) Calculator (Disabled - Incomplete) Building Layouts Eco Building Layouts (Complete) Tycoon Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Tech Building Layouts (Disabled - Incomplete) Credits (Complete)Free SharePoint 2010 Sites Templates: SharePoint Server 2010 Sites Templates: here is the list of sites templates to be downloadedVsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 30 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) Build 30 (beta)New: Support for TortoiseSVN 1.7 added. (the download contains both setups, for TortoiseSVN 1.6 and 1.7) New: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog displays conflicted files now. New: OpenModifiedDocument allows to group items by changelist now. Fix: OpenModifiedDocumentDialog caused Visual Studio 2010 to freeze sometimes. Fix: The installer didn...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.30: Highlight features & improvements: • Performance optimization. • Back in stock notifications. • Product special price support. • Catalog mode (based on customer role) To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).WPF Converters: WPF Converters V1.2.0.0: support for enumerations, value types, and reference types in the expression converter's equality operators the expression converter now handles DependencyProperty.UnsetValue as argument values correctly (#4062) StyleCop conformance (more or less)Json.NET: Json.NET 4.0 Release 4: Change - JsonTextReader.Culture is now CultureInfo.InvariantCulture by default Change - KeyValurPairConverter no longer cares about the order of the key and value properties Change - Time zone conversions now use new TimeZoneInfo instead of TimeZone Fix - Fixed boolean values sometimes being capitalized when converting to XML Fix - Fixed error when deserializing ConcurrentDictionary Fix - Fixed serializing some Uris returning the incorrect value Fix - Fixed occasional error when...Media Companion: MC 3.423b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Replaced 'Rebuild' with 'Refresh' throughout entire code. Rebuild will now be known as Refresh. mc_com.exe has been fully updated TV Show Resolutions... Resolved issue #206 - having to hit save twice when updating runtime manually Shrunk cache size and lowered loading times f...Delta Engine: Delta Engine Beta Preview v0.9.1: v0.9.1 beta release with lots of refactoring, fixes, new samples and support for iOS, Android and WP7 (you need a Marketplace account however). If you want a binary release for the games (like v0.9.0), just say so in the Forum or here and we will quickly prepare one. It is just not much different from v0.9.0, so I left it out this time. See http://DeltaEngine.net/Wiki.Roadmap for details.SharpMap - Geospatial Application Framework for the CLR: SharpMap-0.9-AnyCPU-Trunk-2011.11.17: This is a build of SharpMap from the 0.9 development trunk as per 2011-11-17 For most applications the AnyCPU release is the recommended, but in case you need an x86 build that is included to. For some dataproviders (GDAL/OGR, SqLite, PostGis) you need to also referense the SharpMap.Extensions assembly For SqlServer Spatial you need to reference the SharpMap.SqlServerSpatial assemblyAJAX Control Toolkit: November 2011 Release: AJAX Control Toolkit Release Notes - November 2011 Release Version 51116November 2011 release of the AJAX Control Toolkit. AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 4 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 4 and sample site (Recommended). AJAX Control Toolkit .NET 3.5 - Binary – AJAX Control Toolkit for .NET 3.5 and sample site (Recommended). Notes: - The current version of the AJAX Control Toolkit is not compatible with ASP.NET 2.0. The latest version that is compatible with ASP.NET 2.0 can be found h...Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.36: Fix for issue #16908: string literals containing ASP.NET replacement syntax fail if the ASP.NET code contains the same character as the string literal delimiter. Also, we shouldn't be changing the delimiter for those literals or combining them with other literals; the developer may have specifically chosen the delimiter used because of possible content inserted by ASP.NET code. This logic is normally off; turn it on via the -aspnet command-line flag (or the Code.Settings.AllowEmbeddedAspNetBl...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 1.5.5: Added: Now the DateRanteAttribute accepts complex expressions containing "Now" and "Today" as static minimum and maximum. Menu, MenuFor helpers capable of handling a "currently selected element". The developer can choose between using a standard nested menu based on a standard SimpleMenuItem class or specifying an item template based on a custom class. Added also helpers to build the tree structure containing all data items the menu takes infos from. Improved the pager. Now the developer ...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.7: Reworked API to be more consistent. See Supported formats table. Added some more helper methods - e.g. OpenEntryStream (RarArchive/RarReader does not support this) Fixed up testsSilverlight Toolkit: Windows Phone Toolkit - Nov 2011 (7.1 SDK): This release is coming soon! What's new ListPicker once again works in a ScrollViewer LongListSelector bug fixes around OutOfRange exceptions, wrong ordering of items, grouping issues, and scrolling events. ItemTuple is now refactored to be the public type LongListSelectorItem to provide users better access to the values in selection changed handlers. PerformanceProgressBar binding fix for IsIndeterminate (item 9767 and others) There is no longer a GestureListener dependency with the C...New ProjectsAndrecorder: Andrecorder???Android???????,???????????????????,????????????????,????????!Android Tree Bulletin: Android bulletin reader in tree format.Bài t?p l?p môn HCI: Name: Ph?n m?m qu?n lý thu h?c phí tru?ng d?i h?c Công Nghi?p Hà N?i Basic Grid Collision sample in XNA: This project shows how to implement a basic grid collision in XNA. The project uses the XNA 4.0 framework and C#Club Manager: Club Manager is a web site for managing sport clubs / teams.Create email with encrypt text implement TEA encryption and Web Service: RahaTEA Mail is an application to send messages in secret. These applications implement TEA encryption and web serviceCRM 2011 Layers: Several .net layers to customize CRM 2011CTEF: China Tomorrow Education Foundation websitedns?????: ??c#???dns?????。????????，???????，??????。EAF: Extensibility Application FrameworkEnergy SBA: In order to compete with large companies for Federal contracts, small business need information. This application seeks to show standard methods of using remote APIs to integrate information into a Metro interface using services provided by the Small Business Administration (SBA)EPiOptimiser - Scan your EPiServer configuration to optimise start up times: EPiScanner scans your EPiServer configuration to optimise start ups by generating a recommended exclude list of assemblies to include in EPiServer framework config. It can be used on command line, as a custom build task or integrated into Visual Studio as an external tool.FreeIDS - Free Intrusion Detection System: Don't want someone to use your computer? Don't want to use a system password? Want to see when someone accessed your computer? Time/Date? FreeIDS is it!FtpServerAdministrator: FtpServerAdministrator makes it easier to administer some ftp server by code, although it can only be used for FileZilla server now. It's developed in C#.GreenPoint Online: Tools and components that help you customize an Office 365 / SharePoint Online Environment.HCC C# Workshop: This project contains the code for the exercises of the HCC C# WorkshopKsigDo - Real time view model syncing across user screens: KsigDo show real time view model syncing across user screens - using ASP.NET, Knockout and SignalR. Real time data syncing across user views *was* hard, especially in web applications. Most of the time, the second user needs to refresh the screen, to see the changes made by first user, or we need to implement some long polling that fetches the data and does the update manually. Now, with SignalR and Knockout, ASP.NET developers can take advantage of view model syncing across users, that...lineseven: ???????????????。Mail Size Labeler for GMail: A small utility that labels large e-mails on your gmail account. This utility scan you gmail account, and adds labels to large e-mail so you can clean your mailbox and free space. The labels this utility adds are: Size 1M-2M Size 2M-5M Size 5M-10M Size 10M-15M Size 15M plus Note: a single e-mail thread may get multiple labels if different e-mails of the thread fit different filters.MathService: Complex digits, standart class extentions etc.MyGameProject: gamesMySQL Connect 2 ASP.NET: Example project to show how to connect MySQL database to ASP.NET web project. IDE: Visual Studio 2010 Pro Programming language: C# Detailed information in the article here: http://epavlov.net/blog/2011/11/13/connect-to-mysql-in-visual-studio/ nl: Nutri Leaf Devomr.event.js: Simple js event injecterPastebin4DotNet: This project is an example of how to consume an API, in this case I consummed the Pastebin API.Pomelo: Pomelo is a website example.QuickDevFrameWork: ????????,??,??,????,ioc ?????postsharp?aopReadable Passphrase Generator: Generates passphrases which are (mostly) grammatically correct but nonsensical. These are easy to remember but difficult to guess (for humans or computers). Developed in C# with a KeePass plugin, console app and public API.Rosyama.ru for Windows Phone 7: ?????????? Windows Phone 7 ??? ???????? ???????? ?? ???? rosyama.ru. ?????????? ??????? ?????????? ? ???????? ????????? ???????. SimpleBatch: As the name suggests, this is a simple batch framework allowing you to define batch jobs in XML format. Thus far, contains a basic selection of processors such as the following; File Email SQL (SQL Server Client) SharePoint Document Library Custom ProcessorSite de Notícias: Projeto de faculdade que consiste na criação de um site de notícias.SPWikiProvisioning: Create update and delete SharePoint wiki pages using feature activation and deactivation handlers.SVN Automated Control With C#: I Created this libaray because I need to control Tortoise SVN automactically with out an interface for my own build server and could not find any resuilts on google to achive this task so I went about creating this libaray which dos most of the task's that I needed. I round that you could control SVN by command line so using that as my basic idear I went about coding the most common commands for SVN most of the commads are done but not all. if you like this libaray then please use it we...TremplinCMS: TremplinCMS is a CMS framework for ASP .NET 4.vlu0206sms: SMSMaker by team0206 developingWCF DataService RequestStream Access on webInvoke HTTP POST: This library provides access to the message body request stream of a WCF Data Service (formerly ADO.NET Data Service), which is not possible with the original WCF Data Service class. You are enabled passing data (e.g. Json, files) via HTTP POST to the request body. It uses the operation context (DbContext) provided by the DataService<T> class to get access to the resquest stream.WebOS: Welcome to join us to build our os projectWp7StarterDantas: Iniciando com Wp7WpfCollaborative3D: WpfCollaborative3DXNA Content Preprocessor: The XNA Content Preprocessor allows you to compile all of your XNA assets outside of your normal XNA project. This means more time building your game or app instead of your content.

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• Issue 15: Oracle Exadata Marketing Campaigns

  - by rituchhibber

       PARTNER FOCUS Oracle ExadataMarketing Campaign Steve McNickleVP Europe, cVidya Steve McNickle is VP Europe for cVidya, an innovative provider of revenue intelligence solutions for telecom, media and entertainment service providers including AT&T, BT, Deutsche Telecom and Vodafone. The company's product portfolio helps operators and service providers maximise margins, improve customer experience and optimise ecosystem relationships through revenue assurance, fraud and security management, sales performance management, pricing analytics, and inter-carrier services. cVidya has partnered with Oracle for more than a decade. RESOURCES -- Oracle PartnerNetwork (OPN) Oracle Exastack Program Oracle Exastack Optimized Oracle Exastack Labs and Enablement Resources Oracle Engineered Systems Oracle Communications cVidya SUBSCRIBE FEEDBACK PREVIOUS ISSUES Are you ready for Oracle OpenWorld this October? -- -- Please could you tell us a little about cVidya's partnering history with Oracle, and expand on your Oracle Exastack accreditations? "cVidya was established just over ten years ago and we've had a strong relationship with Oracle almost since the very beginning. Through our Revenue Intelligence work with some of the world's largest service providers we collect tremendous amounts of information, amounting to billions of records per day. We help our clients to collect, store and analyse that data to ensure that their end customers are getting the best levels of service, are billed correctly, and are happy that they are on the correct price plan. We have been an Oracle Gold level partner for seven years, and crucially just two months ago we were also accredited as Oracle Exastack Optimized for MoneyMap, our core Revenue Assurance solution. Very soon we also expect to be Oracle Exastack Optimized DRMap, our Data Retention solution." What unique capabilities and customer benefits does Oracle Exastack add to your applications? "Oracle Exastack enables us to deliver radical benefits to our customers. A typical mobile operator in the UK might handle between 500 million and two billion call data record details daily. Each transaction needs to be validated, billed correctly and fraud checked. Because of the enormous volumes involved, our clients demand scalable infrastructure that allows them to efficiently acquire, store and process all that data within controlled cost, space and environmental constraints. We have proved that the Oracle Exadata system can process data up to seven times faster and load it as much as 20 times faster than other standard best-of-breed server approaches. With the Oracle Exadata Database Machine they can reduce their datacentre equipment from say, the six or seven cabinets that they needed in the past, down to just one. This dramatic simplification delivers incredible value to the customer by cutting down enormously on all of their significant cost, space, energy, cooling and maintenance overheads." "The Oracle Exastack Program has given our clients the ability to switch their focus from reactive to proactive. Traditionally they may have spent 80 percent of their day processing, and just 20 percent enabling end customers to see advanced analytics, and avoiding issues before they occur. With our solutions and Oracle Exadata they can now switch that balance around entirely, resulting not only in reduced revenue leakage, but a far higher focus on proactive leakage prevention. How has the Oracle Exastack Program transformed your customer business? "We can already see the impact. Oracle solutions allow our delivery teams to achieve successful deployments, happy customers and self-satisfaction, and the power of Oracle's Exa solutions is easy to measure in terms of their transformational ability. We gained our first sale into a major European telco by demonstrating the major performance gains that would transform their business. Clients can measure the ease of organisational change, the early prevention of business issues, the reduction in manpower required to provide protection and coverage across all their products and services, plus of course end customer satisfaction. If customers know that that service is provided accurately and that their bills are calculated correctly, then over time this satisfaction can be attributed to revenue intelligence and the underlying systems which provide it. Combine this with the further integration we have with the other layers of the Oracle stack, including the telecommunications offerings such as NCC, OCDM and BRM, and the result is even greater customer value—not to mention the increased speed to market and the reduced project risk." What does the Oracle Exastack community bring to cVidya, both in terms of general benefits, and also tangible new opportunities and partnerships? "A great deal. We have participated in the Oracle Exastack community heavily over the past year, and have had lots of meetings with Oracle and our peers around the globe. It brings us into contact with like-minded, innovative partners, who like us are not happy to just stand still and want to take fresh technology to their customer base in order to gain enhanced value. We identified three new partnerships in each of two recent meetings, and hope these will open up new opportunities, not only in areas that exactly match where we operate today, but also in some new associative areas that will expand our reach into new business sectors. Notably, thanks to the Exastack community we were invited on stage at last year's Oracle OpenWorld conference. Appearing so publically with Oracle senior VP Judson Althoff elevated awareness and visibility of cVidya and has enabled us to participate in a number of other events with Oracle over the past eight months. We've been involved in speaking opportunities, forums and exhibitions, providing us with invaluable opportunities that we wouldn't otherwise have got close to." How has Exastack differentiated cVidya as an ISV, and helped you to evolve your business to the next level? "When we are selling to our core customer base of Tier 1 telecommunications providers, we know that they want more than just software. They want an enduring partnership that will last many years, they want innovation, and a forward thinking partner who knows how to guide them on where they need to be to meet market demand three, five or seven years down the line. Membership of respected global bodies, such as the Telemanagement Forum enables us to lead standard adherence in our area of business, giving us a lot of credibility, but Oracle is also involved in this forum with its own telecommunications portfolio, strengthening our position still further. When we approach CEOs, CTOs and CIOs at the very largest Tier 1 operators, not only can we easily show them that our technology is fantastic, we can also talk about our strong partnership with Oracle, and our joint embracing of today's standards and tomorrow's innovation." Where would you like cVidya to be in one year's time? "We want to get all of our relevant products Oracle Exastack Optimized. Our MoneyMap Revenue Assurance solution is already Exastack Optimised, our DRMAP Data Retention Solution should be Exastack Optimised within the next month, and our FraudView Fraud Management solution within the next two to three months. We'd then like to extend our Oracle accreditation out to include other members of the Oracle Engineered Systems family. We are moving into the 'Big Data' space, and so we're obviously very keen to work closely with Oracle to conduct pilots, map new technologies onto Oracle Big Data platforms, and embrace and measure the benefits of other Oracle systems, namely Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud, the Oracle Exalytics In-Memory Machine and the Oracle SPARC SuperCluster. We would also like to examine how the Oracle Database Appliance might benefit our Tier 2 service provider customers. Finally, we'd also like to continue working with the Oracle Communications Global Business Unit (CGBU), furthering our integration with Oracle billing products so that we are able to quickly deploy fraud solutions into Oracle's Engineered System stack, give operational benefits to our clients that are pre-integrated, more cost-effective, and can be rapidly deployed rapidly and producing benefits in three months, not nine months." Chris Baker ,Senior Vice President, Oracle Worldwide ISV-OEM-Java Sales Chris Baker is the Global Head of ISV/OEM Sales responsible for working with ISV/OEM partners to maximise Oracle's business through those partners, whilst maximising those partners' business to their end users. Chris works with partners, customers, innovators, investors and employees to develop innovative business solutions using Oracle products, services and skills. Firstly, could you please explain Oracle's current strategy for ISV partners, globally and in EMEA? "Oracle customers use independent software vendor (ISV) applications to run their businesses. They use them to generate revenue and to fulfil obligations to their own customers. Our strategy is very straight-forward. We want all of our ISV partners and OEMs to concentrate on the things that they do the best – building applications to meet the unique industry and functional requirements of their customer. We want to ensure that we deliver a best in class application platform so the ISV is free to concentrate their effort on their application functionality and user experience We invest over four billion dollars in research and development every year, and we want our ISVs to benefit from all of that investment in operating systems, virtualisation, databases, middleware, engineered systems, and other hardware. By doing this, we help them to reduce their costs, gain more consistency and agility for quicker implementations, and also rapidly differentiate themselves from other application vendors. It's all about simplification because we believe that around 25 to 30 percent of the development costs incurred by many ISVs are caused by customising infrastructure and have nothing to do with their applications. Our strategy is to enable our ISV partners to standardise their application platform using engineered architecture, so they can write once to the Oracle stack and deploy seamlessly in the cloud, on-premise, or in hybrid deployments. It's really important that architecture is the same in order to keep cost and time overheads at a minimum, so we provide standardisation and an environment that enables our ISVs to concentrate on the core business that makes them the most money and brings them success." How do you believe this strategy is helping the ISVs to work hand-in-hand with Oracle to ensure that end customers get the industry-leading solutions that they need? "We work with our ISVs not just to help them be successful, but also to help them market themselves. We have something called the 'Oracle Exastack Ready Program', which enables ISVs to publicise themselves as 'Ready' to run the core software platforms that run on Oracle's engineered systems including Exadata and Exalogic. So, for example, they can become 'Database Ready' which means that they use the latest version of Oracle Database and therefore can run their application without modification on Exadata or the Oracle Database Appliance. Alternatively, they can become WebLogic Ready, Oracle Linux Ready and Oracle Solaris Ready which means they run on the latest release and therefore can run their application, with no new porting work, on Oracle Exalogic. Those 'Ready' logos are important in helping ISVs advertise to their customers that they are using the latest technologies which have been fully tested. We now also have Exadata Ready and Exalogic Ready programmes which allow ISVs to promote the certification of their applications on these platforms. This highlights these partners to Oracle customers as having solutions that run fluently on the Oracle Exadata Database Machine, the Oracle Exalogic Elastic Cloud or one of our other engineered systems. This makes it easy for customers to identify solutions and provides ISVs with an avenue to connect with Oracle customers who are rapidly adopting engineered systems. We have also taken this programme to the next level in the shape of 'Oracle Exastack Optimized' for partners whose applications run best on the Oracle stack and have invested the time to fully optimise application performance. We ensure that Exastack Optimized partner status is promoted and supported by press releases, and we help our ISVs go to market and differentiate themselves through the use our technology and the standardisation it delivers. To date we have had several hundred organisations successfully work through our Exastack Optimized programme." How does Oracle's strategy of offering pre-integrated open platform software and hardware allow ISVs to bring their products to market more quickly? "One of the problems for many ISVs is that they have to think very carefully about the technology on which their solutions will be deployed, particularly in the cloud or hosted environments. They have to think hard about how they secure these environments, whether the concern is, for example, middleware, identity management, or securing personal data. If they don't use the technology that we build-in to our products to help them to fulfil these roles, they then have to build it themselves. This takes time, requires testing, and must be maintained. By taking advantage of our technology, partners will now know that they have a standard platform. They will know that they can confidently talk about implementation being the same every time they do it. Very large ISV applications could once take a year or two to be implemented at an on-premise environment. But it wasn't just the configuration of the application that took the time, it was actually the infrastructure - the different hardware configurations, operating systems and configurations of databases and middleware. Now we strongly believe that it's all about standardisation and repeatability. It's about making sure that our partners can do it once and are then able to roll it out many different times using standard componentry." What actions would you recommend for existing ISV partners that are looking to do more business with Oracle and its customer base, not only to maximise benefits, but also to maximise partner relationships? "My team, around the world and in the EMEA region, is available and ready to talk to any of our ISVs and to explore the possibilities together. We run programmes like 'Excite' and 'Insight' to help us to understand how we can help ISVs with architecture and widen their environments. But we also want to work with, and look at, new opportunities - for example, the Machine-to-Machine (M2M) market or 'The Internet of Things'. Over the next few years, many millions, indeed billions of devices will be collecting massive amounts of data and communicating it back to the central systems where ISVs will be running their applications. The only way that our partners will be able to provide a single vendor 'end-to-end' solution is to use Oracle integrated systems at the back end and Java on the 'smart' devices collecting the data – a complete solution from device to data centre. So there are huge opportunities to work closely with our ISVs, using Oracle's complete M2M platform, to provide the infrastructure that enables them to extract maximum value from the data collected. If any partners don't know where to start or who to contact, then they can contact me directly at [email protected] or indeed any of our teams across the EMEA region. We want to work with ISVs to help them to be as successful as they possibly can through simplification and speed to market, and we also want all of the top ISVs in the world based on Oracle." What opportunities are immediately opened to new ISV partners joining the OPN? "As you know OPN is very, very important. New members will discover a huge amount of content that instantly becomes accessible to them. They can access a wealth of no-cost training and enablement materials to build their expertise in Oracle technology. They can download Oracle software and use it for development projects. They can help themselves become more competent by becoming part of a true community and uncovering new opportunities by working with Oracle and their peers in the Oracle Partner Network. As well as publishing massive amounts of information on OPN, we also hold our global Oracle OpenWorld event, at which partners play a huge role. This takes place at the end of September and the beginning of October in San Francisco. Attending ISV partners have an unrivalled opportunity to contribute to elements such as the OpenWorld / OPN Exchange, at which they can talk to other partners and really begin thinking about how they can move their businesses on and play key roles in a very large ecosystem which revolves around technology and standardisation." Finally, are there any other messages that you would like to share with the Oracle ISV community? "The crucial message that I always like to reinforce is architecture, architecture and architecture! The key opportunities that ISVs have today revolve around standardising their architectures so that they can confidently think: “I will I be able to do exactly the same thing whenever a customer is looking to deploy on-premise, hosted or in the cloud”. The right architecture is critical to being competitive and to really start changing the game. We want to help our ISV partners to do just that; to establish standard architecture and to seize the opportunities it opens up for them. New market opportunities like M2M are enormous - just look at how many devices are all around you right now. We can help our partners to interface with these devices more effectively while thinking about their entire ecosystem, rather than just the piece that they have traditionally focused upon. With standardised architecture, we can help people dramatically improve their speed, reach, agility and delivery of enhanced customer satisfaction and value all the way from the Java side to their centralised systems. All Oracle ISV partners must take advantage of these opportunities, which is why Oracle will continue to invest in and support them." -- Gergely Strbik is Oracle Hardware and Software Product Manager for Avnet in Hungary. Avnet Technology Solutions is an OracleValue Added Distributor focused on the development of the existing Oracle channel. This includes the recruitment and enablement of Oracle partners as well as driving deeper adoption of Oracle's technology and application products within the IT channel. "The main business benefits of ODA for our customers and partners are scalability, flexibility, a great price point for the high performance delivered, and the easily configurable embedded Linux operating system. People welcome a lower point of entry and the ability to grow capacity on demand as their business expands." "Marketing and selling the ODA requires another way of thinking because it is an appliance. We have to transform the ways in which our partners and customers think from buying hardware and software independently to buying complete solutions. Successful early adopters and satisfied customer reactions will certainly help us to sell the ODA. We will have more experience with the product after the first deliveries and installations—end users need to see the power and benefits for themselves." "Our typical ODA customers will be those looking for complete solutions from a single reseller partner who is also able to manage the appliance. They will have enjoyed using Oracle Database but now want a new product that is able to unlock new levels of performance. A higher proportion of potential customers will come from our existing Oracle base, with around 30% from new business, but we intend to evangelise the ODA on the market to see how we can change this balance as all our customers adjust to the concept of 'Hardware and Software, Engineered to Work Together'. -- Back to the welcome page

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• Microsoft Introduces WebMatrix

  - by Rick Strahl

  originally published in CoDe Magazine Editorial Microsoft recently released the first CTP of a new development environment called WebMatrix, which along with some of its supporting technologies are squarely aimed at making the Microsoft Web Platform more approachable for first-time developers and hobbyists. But in the process, it also provides some updated technologies that can make life easier for existing .NET developers. Let’s face it: ASP.NET development isn’t exactly trivial unless you already have a fair bit of familiarity with sophisticated development practices. Stick a non-developer in front of Visual Studio .NET or even the Visual Web Developer Express edition and it’s not likely that the person in front of the screen will be very productive or feel inspired. Yet other technologies like PHP and even classic ASP did provide the ability for non-developers and hobbyists to become reasonably proficient in creating basic web content quickly and efficiently. WebMatrix appears to be Microsoft’s attempt to bring back some of that simplicity with a number of technologies and tools. The key is to provide a friendly and fully self-contained development environment that provides all the tools needed to build an application in one place, as well as tools that allow publishing of content and databases easily to the web server. WebMatrix is made up of several components and technologies: IIS Developer Express IIS Developer Express is a new, self-contained development web server that is fully compatible with IIS 7.5 and based on the same codebase that IIS 7.5 uses. This new development server replaces the much less compatible Cassini web server that’s been used in Visual Studio and the Express editions. IIS Express addresses a few shortcomings of the Cassini server such as the inability to serve custom ISAPI extensions (i.e., things like PHP or ASP classic for example), as well as not supporting advanced authentication. IIS Developer Express provides most of the IIS 7.5 feature set providing much better compatibility between development and live deployment scenarios. SQL Server Compact 4.0 Database access is a key component for most web-driven applications, but on the Microsoft stack this has mostly meant you have to use SQL Server or SQL Server Express. SQL Server Compact is not new-it’s been around for a few years, but it’s been severely hobbled in the past by terrible tool support and the inability to support more than a single connection in Microsoft’s attempt to avoid losing SQL Server licensing. The new release of SQL Server Compact 4.0 supports multiple connections and you can run it in ASP.NET web applications simply by installing an assembly into the bin folder of the web application. In effect, you don’t have to install a special system configuration to run SQL Compact as it is a drop-in database engine: Copy the small assembly into your BIN folder (or from the GAC if installed fully), create a connection string against a local file-based database file, and then start firing SQL requests. Additionally WebMatrix includes nice tools to edit the database tables and files, along with tools to easily upsize (and hopefully downsize in the future) to full SQL Server. This is a big win, pending compatibility and performance limits. In my simple testing the data engine performed well enough for small data sets. This is not only useful for web applications, but also for desktop applications for which a fully installed SQL engine like SQL Server would be overkill. Having a local data store in those applications that can potentially be accessed by multiple users is a welcome feature. ASP.NET Razor View Engine What? Yet another native ASP.NET view engine? We already have Web Forms and various different flavors of using that view engine with Web Forms and MVC. Do we really need another? Microsoft thinks so, and Razor is an implementation of a lightweight, script-only view engine. Unlike the Web Forms view engine, Razor works only with inline code, snippets, and markup; therefore, it is more in line with current thinking of what a view engine should represent. There’s no support for a “page model” or any of the other Web Forms features of the full-page framework, but just a lightweight scripting engine that works with plain markup plus embedded expressions and code. The markup syntax for Razor is geared for minimal typing, plus some progressive detection of where a script block/expression starts and ends. This results in a much leaner syntax than the typical ASP.NET Web Forms alligator (<% %>) tags. Razor uses the @ sign plus standard C# (or Visual Basic) block syntax to delineate code snippets and expressions. Here’s a very simple example of what Razor markup looks like along with some comment annotations: <!DOCTYPE html> <html>     <head>         <title></title>     </head>     <body>     <h1>Razor Test</h1>          <!-- simple expressions -->     @DateTime.Now     <hr />     <!-- method expressions -->     @DateTime.Now.ToString("T")          <!-- code blocks -->     @{         List<string> names = new List<string>();         names.Add("Rick");         names.Add("Markus");         names.Add("Claudio");         names.Add("Kevin");     }          <!-- structured block statements -->     <ul>     @foreach(string name in names){             <li>@name</li>     }     </ul>           <!-- Conditional code -->        @if(true) {                        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->        <text>         true        </text>;    }    else    {        <!-- Literal Text embedding in code -->       <text>       false       </text>;    }    </body> </html> Like the Web Forms view engine, Razor parses pages into code, and then executes that run-time compiled code. Effectively a “page” becomes a code file with markup becoming literal text written into the Response stream, code snippets becoming raw code, and expressions being written out with Response.Write(). The code generated from Razor doesn’t look much different from similar Web Forms code that only uses script tags; so although the syntax may look different, the operational model is fairly similar to the Web Forms engine minus the overhead of the large Page object model. However, there are differences: -Razor pages are based on a new base class, Microsoft.WebPages.WebPage, which is hosted in the Microsoft.WebPages assembly that houses all the Razor engine parsing and processing logic. Browsing through the assembly (in the generated ASP.NET Temporary Files folder or GAC) will give you a good idea of the functionality that Razor provides. If you look closely, a lot of the feature set matches ASP.NET MVC’s view implementation as well as many of the helper classes found in MVC. It’s not hard to guess the motivation for this sort of view engine: For beginning developers the simple markup syntax is easier to work with, although you obviously still need to have some understanding of the .NET Framework in order to create dynamic content. The syntax is easier to read and grok and much shorter to type than ASP.NET alligator tags (<% %>) and also easier to understand aesthetically what’s happening in the markup code. Razor also is a better fit for Microsoft’s vision of ASP.NET MVC: It’s a new view engine without the baggage of Web Forms attached to it. The engine is more lightweight since it doesn’t carry all the features and object model of Web Forms with it and it can be instantiated directly outside of the HTTP environment, which has been rather tricky to do for the Web Forms view engine. Having a standalone script parser is a huge win for other applications as well – it makes it much easier to create script or meta driven output generators for many types of applications from code/screen generators, to simple form letters to data merging applications with user customizability. For me personally this is very useful side effect and who knows maybe Microsoft will actually standardize they’re scripting engines (die T4 die!) on this engine. Razor also better fits the “view-based” approach where the view is supposed to be mostly a visual representation that doesn’t hold much, if any, code. While you can still use code, the code you do write has to be self-contained. Overall I wouldn’t be surprised if Razor will become the new standard view engine for MVC in the future – and in fact there have been announcements recently that Razor will become the default script engine in ASP.NET MVC 3.0. Razor can also be used in existing Web Forms and MVC applications, although that’s not working currently unless you manually configure the script mappings and add the appropriate assemblies. It’s possible to do it, but it’s probably better to wait until Microsoft releases official support for Razor scripts in Visual Studio. Once that happens, you can simply drop .cshtml and .vbhtml pages into an existing ASP.NET project and they will work side by side with classic ASP.NET pages. WebMatrix Development Environment To tie all of these three technologies together, Microsoft is shipping WebMatrix with an integrated development environment. An integrated gallery manager makes it easy to download and load existing projects, and then extend them with custom functionality. It seems to be a prominent goal to provide community-oriented content that can act as a starting point, be it via a custom templates or a complete standard application. The IDE includes a project manager that works with a single project and provides an integrated IDE/editor for editing the .cshtml and .vbhtml pages. A run button allows you to quickly run pages in the project manager in a variety of browsers. There’s no debugging support for code at this time. Note that Razor pages don’t require explicit compilation, so making a change, saving, and then refreshing your page in the browser is all that’s needed to see changes while testing an application locally. It’s essentially using the auto-compiling Web Project that was introduced with .NET 2.0. All code is compiled during run time into dynamically created assemblies in the ASP.NET temp folder. WebMatrix also has PHP Editing support with syntax highlighting. You can load various PHP-based applications from the WebMatrix Web Gallery directly into the IDE. Most of the Web Gallery applications are ready to install and run without further configuration, with Wizards taking you through installation of tools, dependencies, and configuration of the database as needed. WebMatrix leverages the Web Platform installer to pull the pieces down from websites in a tight integration of tools that worked nicely for the four or five applications I tried this out on. Click a couple of check boxes and fill in a few simple configuration options and you end up with a running application that’s ready to be customized. Nice! You can easily deploy completed applications via WebDeploy (to an IIS server) or FTP directly from within the development environment. The deploy tool also can handle automatically uploading and installing the database and all related assemblies required, making deployment a simple one-click install step. Simplified Database Access The IDE contains a database editor that can edit SQL Compact and SQL Server databases. There is also a Database helper class that facilitates database access by providing easy-to-use, high-level query execution and iteration methods: @{       var db = Database.OpenFile("FirstApp.sdf");     string sql = "select * from customers where Id > @0"; } <ul> @foreach(var row in db.Query(sql,1)){         <li>@row.FirstName @row.LastName</li> } </ul> The query function takes a SQL statement plus any number of positional (@0,@1 etc.) SQL parameters by simple values. The result is returned as a collection of rows which in turn have a row object with dynamic properties for each of the columns giving easy (though untyped) access to each of the fields. Likewise Execute and ExecuteNonQuery allow execution of more complex queries using similar parameter passing schemes. Note these queries use string-based queries rather than LINQ or Entity Framework’s strongly typed LINQ queries. While this may seem like a step back, it’s also in line with the expectations of non .NET script developers who are quite used to writing and using SQL strings in code rather than using OR/M frameworks. The only question is why was something not included from the beginning in .NET and Microsoft made developers build custom implementations of these basic building blocks. The implementation looks a lot like a DataTable-style data access mechanism, but to be fair, this is a common approach in scripting languages. This type of syntax that uses simple, static, data object methods to perform simple data tasks with one line of code are common in scripting languages and are a good match for folks working in PHP/Python, etc. Seems like Microsoft has taken great advantage of .NET 4.0’s dynamic typing to provide this sort of interface for row iteration where each row has properties for each field. FWIW, all the examples demonstrate using local SQL Compact files - I was unable to get a SQL Server connection string to work with the Database class (the connection string wasn’t accepted). However, since the code in the page is still plain old .NET, you can easily use standard ADO.NET code or even LINQ or Entity Framework models that are created outside of WebMatrix in separate assemblies as required. The good the bad the obnoxious - It’s still .NET The beauty (or curse depending on how you look at it :)) of Razor and the compilation model is that, behind it all, it’s still .NET. Although the syntax may look foreign, it’s still all .NET behind the scenes. You can easily access existing tools, helpers, and utilities simply by adding them to the project as references or to the bin folder. Razor automatically recognizes any assembly reference from assemblies in the bin folder. In the default configuration, Microsoft provides a host of helper functions in a Microsoft.WebPages assembly (check it out in the ASP.NET temp folder for your application), which includes a host of HTML Helpers. If you’ve used ASP.NET MVC before, a lot of the helpers should look familiar. Documentation at the moment is sketchy-there’s a very rough API reference you can check out here: http://www.asp.net/webmatrix/tutorials/asp-net-web-pages-api-reference Who needs WebMatrix? Uhm… good Question Clearly Microsoft is trying hard to create an environment with WebMatrix that is easy to use for newbie developers. The goal seems to be simplicity in providing a minimal development environment and an easy-to-use script engine/language that makes it easy to get started with. There’s also some focus on community features that can be used as starting points, such as Web Gallery applications and templates. The community features in particular are very nice and something that would be nice to eventually see in Visual Studio as well. The question is whether this is too little too late. Developers who have been clamoring for a simpler development environment on the .NET stack have mostly left for other simpler platforms like PHP or Python which are catering to the down and dirty developer. Microsoft will be hard pressed to win those folks-and other hardcore PHP developers-back. Regardless of how much you dress up a script engine fronted by the .NET Framework, it’s still the .NET Framework and all the complexity that drives it. While .NET is a fine solution in its breadth and features once you get a basic handle on the core features, the bar of entry to being productive with the .NET Framework is still pretty high. The MVC style helpers Microsoft provides are a good step in the right direction, but I suspect it’s not enough to shield new developers from having to delve much deeper into the Framework to get even basic applications built. Razor and its helpers is trying to make .NET more accessible but the reality is that in order to do useful stuff that goes beyond the handful of simple helpers you still are going to have to write some C# or VB or other .NET code. If the target is a hobby/amateur/non-programmer the learning curve isn’t made any easier by WebMatrix it’s just been shifted a tad bit further along in your development endeavor when you run out of canned components that are supplied either by Microsoft or the community. The database helpers are interesting and actually I’ve heard a lot of discussion from various developers who’ve been resisting .NET for a really long time perking up at the prospect of easier data access in .NET than the ridiculous amount of code it takes to do even simple data access with raw ADO.NET. It seems sad that such a simple concept and implementation should trigger this sort of response (especially since it’s practically trivial to create helpers like these or pick them up from countless libraries available), but there it is. It also shows that there are plenty of developers out there who are more interested in ‘getting stuff done’ easily than necessarily following the latest and greatest practices which are overkill for many development scenarios. Sometimes it seems that all of .NET is focused on the big life changing issues of development, rather than the bread and butter scenarios that many developers are interested in to get their work accomplished. And that in the end may be WebMatrix’s main raison d'être: To bring some focus back at Microsoft that simpler and more high level solutions are actually needed to appeal to the non-high end developers as well as providing the necessary tools for the high end developers who want to follow the latest and greatest trends. The current version of WebMatrix hits many sweet spots, but it also feels like it has a long way to go before it really can be a tool that a beginning developer or an accomplished developer can feel comfortable with. Although there are some really good ideas in the environment (like the gallery for downloading apps and components) which would be a great addition for Visual Studio as well, the rest of the development environment just feels like crippleware with required functionality missing especially debugging and Intellisense, but also general editor support. It’s not clear whether these are because the product is still in an early alpha release or whether it’s simply designed that way to be a really limited development environment. While simple can be good, nobody wants to feel left out when it comes to necessary tool support and WebMatrix just has that left out feeling to it. If anything WebMatrix’s technology pieces (which are really independent of the WebMatrix product) are what are interesting to developers in general. The compact IIS implementation is a nice improvement for development scenarios and SQL Compact 4.0 seems to address a lot of concerns that people have had and have complained about for some time with previous SQL Compact implementations. By far the most interesting and useful technology though seems to be the Razor view engine for its light weight implementation and it’s decoupling from the ASP.NET/HTTP pipeline to provide a standalone scripting/view engine that is pluggable. The first winner of this is going to be ASP.NET MVC which can now have a cleaner view model that isn’t inconsistent due to the baggage of non-implemented WebForms features that don’t work in MVC. But I expect that Razor will end up in many other applications as a scripting and code generation engine eventually. Visual Studio integration for Razor is currently missing, but is promised for a later release. The ASP.NET MVC team has already mentioned that Razor will eventually become the default MVC view engine, which will guarantee continued growth and development of this tool along those lines. And the Razor engine and support tools actually inherit many of the features that MVC pioneered, so there’s some synergy flowing both ways between Razor and MVC. As an existing ASP.NET developer who’s already familiar with Visual Studio and ASP.NET development, the WebMatrix IDE doesn’t give you anything that you want. The tools provided are minimal and provide nothing that you can’t get in Visual Studio today, except the minimal Razor syntax highlighting, so there’s little need to take a step back. With Visual Studio integration coming later there’s little reason to look at WebMatrix for tooling. It’s good to see that Microsoft is giving some thought about the ease of use of .NET as a platform For so many years, we’ve been piling on more and more new features without trying to take a step back and see how complicated the development/configuration/deployment process has become. Sometimes it’s good to take a step - or several steps - back and take another look and realize just how far we’ve come. WebMatrix is one of those reminders and one that likely will result in some positive changes on the platform as a whole. © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2010Posted in ASP.NET   IIS7  

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 11, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, December 11, 2010Popular ReleasesEnhSim: EnhSim 2.2.1 ALPHA: 2.2.1 ALPHAThis release adds in the changes for 4.03a. at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Updated th...NuGet (formerly NuPack): NuGet 1.0 Release Candidate: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog. This new build targets the newer feed (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=206669) and package format. See http://nupack.codeplex.com/documentation?title=Nuspe...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire Silverlight, WPF Charts v3.6.5 Released: Hi, Today we are releasing final version of Visifire, v3.6.5 with the following new feature: * New property AutoFitToPlotArea has been introduced in DataSeries. AutoFitToPlotArea will bring bubbles inside the PlotArea in order to avoid clipping of bubbles in bubble chart. You can visit Visifire documentation to know more. http://www.visifire.com/visifirechartsdocumentation.php Also this release includes few bug fixes: * Chart threw exception while adding new Axis in Chart using Vi...PHPExcel: PHPExcel 1.7.5 Production: DonationsDonate via PayPal via PayPal. If you want to, we can also add your name / company on our Donation Acknowledgements page. PEAR channelWe now also have a full PEAR channel! Here's how to use it: New installation: pear channel-discover pear.pearplex.net pear install pearplex/PHPExcel Or if you've already installed PHPExcel before: pear upgrade pearplex/PHPExcel The official page can be found at http://pearplex.net. Want to contribute?Please refer the Contribute page.DNN Simple Article: DNNSimpleArticle Module V00.00.03: The initial release of the DNNSimpleArticle module (labelled V00.00.03) There are C# and VB versions of this module for this initial release. No promises that going forward there will be packages for both languages provided for future releases. This module provides the following functionality Create and display articles Display a paged list of articles Articles get created as DNN ContentItems Categorization provided through DNN Taxonomy SEO functionality for article display providi...UOB & ME: UOB_ME 2.5: latest versionAutoLoL: AutoLoL v1.4.3: AutoLoL now supports importing the build pages from Mobafire.com as well! Just insert the url to the build and voila. (For example: http://www.mobafire.com/league-of-legends/build/unforgivens-guide-how-to-build-a-successful-mordekaiser-24061) Stable release of AutoChat (It is still recommended to use with caution and to read the documentation) It is now possible to associate *.lolm files with AutoLoL to quickly open them The selected spells are now displayed in the masteries tab for qu...SubtitleTools: SubtitleTools 1.2: - Added auto insertion of RLE (RIGHT-TO-LEFT EMBEDDING) Unicode character for the RTL languages. - Fixed delete rows issue.PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.1 for IIS 7: This is a final stable release of PHP Manager 1.1 for IIS 7. This is a minor incremental release that contains all the functionality available in 53121 plus additional features listed below: Improved detection logic for existing PHP installations. Now PHP Manager detects the location to php.ini file in accordance to the PHP specifications Configuring date.timezone. PHP Manager can automatically set the date.timezone directive which is required to be set starting from PHP 5.3 Ability to ...Algorithmia: Algorithmia 1.1: Algorithmia v1.1, released on December 8th, 2010.SuperSocket, an extensible socket application framework: SuperSocket 1.0 SP1: Fixed bugs: fixed a potential bug that the running state hadn't been updated after socket server stopped fixed a synchronization issue when clearing timeout session fixed a bug in ArraySegmentList fixed a bug on getting configuration valueMy Web Pages Starter Kit: 1.3.1 Production Release (Security HOTFIX): Due to a critical security issue, it's strongly advised to update the My Web Pages Starter Kit to this version. Possible attackers could misuse the image upload to transmit any type of file to the website. If you already have a running version of My Web Pages Starter Kit 1.3.0, you can just replace the ftb.imagegallery.aspx file in the root directory with the one attached to this release.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome (jQuery Ajax helpers): 1.4: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager new stuff: popup WhiteSpaceFilterAttribute tested on mozilla, safari, chrome, opera, ie 9b/8/7/6nopCommerce. ASP.NET open source shopping cart: nopCommerce 1.90: To see the full list of fixes and changes please visit the release notes page (http://www.nopCommerce.com/releasenotes.aspx).TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 4: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 4 ChangesReintroduced fluent interface support via satellite assembly Added entities support, entity segmentation, and ITweetable/ITweeter interfaces for client development Numerous fixes reported by preview users Preview 3 ChangesNumerous fixes and improvements to core engine Twitter API coverage: a...myCollections: Version 1.2: New in version 1.2: Big performance improvement. New Design (Added Outlook style View, New detail view, New Groub By...) Added Sort by Media Added Manage Movie Studio Zoom preference is now saved. Media name are now editable. Added Portuguese version You can now Hide details panel Add support for FLAC tags You can now imports books from BibTex Xml file BugFixingmytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta: mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta web Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta src System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net 6.3.4, MVC3 RC WARNING For run and debug mytrip.mvc 1.0.49.0 beta src download and ...Power Assert .NET: Power Assert 1.0.1: Minor bugfixes, added PAssert.Throws method to ensure that an operation throws an exceptionExcelLite: Lite Excel Binaries: "Lite Excel Binaries" contains two required Silverlight DLLs Following samples require reference of the "Excel Lite Binaries" , "Writing Image to Excel" is an example silverlight application for writing silverlight image to excel "Writing Data to Excel" is example application of how to write/export silverlight data to an excel file using Excel Lite "Reading Excel file" is sample application demonstrating excel reading with ExcelLiteMenu and Context Menu for Silverlight 4.0: Silverlight Menu and Context Menu v2.3 Beta: - Added keyboard navigation support with access keys - Shortcuts like Ctrl-Alt-A are now supported(where the browser permits it) - The PopupMenuSeparator is now completely based on the PopupMenuItem class - Moved item manipulation code to a partial class in PopupMenuItemsControl.cs - Moved menu management and keyboard navigation code to the new PopupMenuManager class - Simplified the layout by removing the RootGrid element(all content is now placed in OverlayCanvas and is accessed by the new ...New Projectsbuildandrelease: SCM continuous intergration cruisecontrol.net buildandrelease installer automation testing virtual machine infrastructureContent Link Web Part: The ContentLink webpart works like the ContentEditor webpart in ContentLink mode, but does not require you to configure anonymous access. ContentLink is useful for showing common content stored in a central document library for use across different site-collections.CoralCube: Dieses Projekt hat das Ziel eine gute Core zu entwickeln.CRM_Contabil: Criado para uso em escritórios de contabilidade, onde o cliente faz chamadas p/empresa ou chamadas entre funcionários da própria empresa.A empresa manterá um banco de dados com soluções em respeito a dúvidas do cliente e saberá qual cliente utiliza mais seus serviços.CsvImporter: Csv importer is a robust application to make bulk imports to a MSSQL Database. I'm looking forward to add oracle support. This importer works like many web admin importers,except this let you know the register is inserting in a determinate moment, successful and failed query's.CWS - Client Web Services Framework: Client Web Service is a different concept for script reference at client-side. The idea behind client web services is to abstract the concept of client scripts behind the concept of client services. The script reference process is fully encapsulated inside CWS api. Enjoy!DirectDraw APIs Usage in WinCE and WinMobile: DDrawTest application shows how to use the Hardware layers of display controller of different application processor in WinCE and Windows Mobile devices.EasyMapping: EasyMapping makes OR Mapping Configuration easy, writing code easy The first version only support SQLSever Framework version: 3.5 Language: C# ExcelLite: ExcelLite is a C#/Silverlight library for Silverlight applications that can read and write MS Excel files without COM interaction. You can manipulate MS Excel files totally on client side as this library using Binary excel format to read and write data to excel files.Frozen Bubble XNA: A port of the well known Linux game Frozen Bubble from Perl to c# and XNA. The ported game runs on Windows and Windows Phone 7.GetThatList: With GetThatList people will find an easy way to copy a music playlist and its songs to another location, being another folder or a remote computer. It is designed so that it can be exposed to the final user as an standalone application or a Shell extension for playlist files.lightsurfer: Generate and smooth terrain landshaft easily. C++, DirectX 10 and UI in WPF in perspective.microstockUploader: Uploads multiple JPEG images with additional files (RAW, EPS) to multiple microstocks. Supports FTP resume. Supports buggy routers which drop FTP connection after some timeout.Network Monopolizer: Network Monopolizer is a simple program that monopolizes your network. when run, it will overrun your current network with requests, thus it won't work correctly anymore. It contacts five sites a millisecond. This can be used mainly at an airport.niensiesta: No naps!QScript: QScript is a contract-oriented language that supports runtime contract inference, on-fly object construction, lambdas. The main idea of QScript is to provide maximum functionality with minimum efforts.Sequin Sequence Mining Library: Sequin is an open source sequence mining library written in C#.Sitefinity Controls: Sitefinity Controls is a collection of custom controls developed for Sitefinity that I thought might be useful for others. It is developed in C#.Surfix: Surfix is an open source framework built on top of .net Framework. It Provide a set of capabilities and modules such as: Logging, Extension methods for ado.net entity framework, Localization Module, Security Module and so on. This framework is built on top a database Sql Server,.Umbraco AD and Default Membership Provider: This is a Membership provider for Umbraco. It support AD authentication, but only if the user account is already created by the admin in Umbraco. It also support the default Umbraco user authentication at the same time if desired.Wayne's Financial Tracker: Track your finances with this simple to use tool.Weople: Weople is game developed in XNA by a team of students of the "Politecnico di Milano". Our group will participate with Weople to Imagine Cup 2011.WorldListening: This app is able to get news and blog from websites ,and read it with MS SAPI.WPF Diagramming: Tool for draw diagramsYakeen Network Applications Framework: This project is Network Application Server Simulator and Benchmark for modeling networks applications servers, I'm working on this project right now, any help will be appreciated.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 27, 2013

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, October 27, 2013Popular ReleasesASP.net MVC Awesome - jQuery Ajax Helpers: 3.5.3 (mvc5): version 3.5.3 - support for mvc5 version 3.5.2 - fix for setting single value to multivalue controls - datepicker min max date offset fix - html encoding for keys fix - enable Column.ClientFormatFunc to be a function call that will return a function version 3.5.1 ========================== - fixed html attributes rendering - fixed loading animation rendering - css improvements version 3.5 ========================== - autosize for all popups ( can be turned off by calling in js...Media Companion: Media Companion MC3.585b: IMDB plot scraping Fixed. New* Movie - Rename Folder using Movie Set, option to move ignored articles to end of Movie Set, only for folder renaming. Fixed* Media Companion - Fixed if using profiles, config files would blown up in size due to some settings duplicating. * Ignore Article of An was cutting of last character of movie title. * If Rescraping title, sort title changed depending on 'Move article to end of Sort Title' setting. * Movie - If changing Poster source order, list would beco...MoreTerra (Terraria World Viewer): MoreTerra 1.11.4: Release 1.11.4 =========== = Compatibility = =========== Updated to add the new tiles/walls in 1.2.1Gac Library -- C++ Utilities for GPU Accelerated GUI and Script: Gaclib 0.5.5.0: Gaclib.zip contains the following content GacUIDemo Demo solution and projects Public Source GacUI library Document HTML document. Please start at reference_gacui.html Content Necessary CSS/JPG files for document. Improvements to the previous release Add 1 demos Editor.Toolstrip.Document Added new features GuiDocumentViewer and GuiDocumentLabel is editable like an RichTextEdit control.BlackJumboDog: Ver5.9.7: 2013.10.24 Ver5.9.7 (1)FTP???????、２?????????????shift-jis????????????? (2)????HTTP????、???????POST??????????????????Fluent Validation for .NET: 5.0: If you find FluentValidation useful, please consider making a donation. Donate to FluentValidation Changes in this release: Display name is now lazily-loaded by default (as a result, localization via DisplayAttribute now works correctly) Added WebApi integration (contributed by dmorganb) Support for MVC 5 (package names are FluentValidation.Mvc5 and FluentValidation.Mvc5-signed) Remove support for partial trustAdder: Adder 1.0: First and I hope last version.TFS Workspaces Cleaner: TFS Workspaces Cleaner v1.0.5045: This is v1.0 of TFS Workspaces Cleaner, a tool that deletes Team Foundation Server workspaces that have not been accessed in a number of days, along with their files locally on disk.Config Transformation Tool: Config Transformation Tool v1.5: [+] Add encoding parameter to specify default encoding. [!] Default encoding has been changed to utf8 (Unicode before). [b] If you use set of parameters where last of parameter uses quotes - tool trims last quote, which changes parameter value. [b] If 'indent' was specified, but not 'indentchars' - tool fails with ArgumentNullException. [b] If verbose flag is not specified tool does not output any error logs to console.CtrlAltStudio Viewer: CtrlAltStudio Viewer 1.1.0.34322 Alpha 4: This experimental release of the CtrlAltStudio Viewer includes the following significant features: Oculus Rift support. Stereoscopic 3D display support. Based on Firestorm viewer 4.4.2 codebase. For more details, see the release notes linked to below. Release notes: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/release-notes/1-1-0-34322-alpha-4 Support info: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/support Privacy policy: http://ctrlaltstudio.com/viewer/privacy Disclaimer: This software is not provided or sup...VsTortoise - a TortoiseSVN add-in for Microsoft Visual Studio: VsTortoise Build 32 Beta: Note: This release does not work with custom VsTortoise toolbars. These get removed every time when you shutdown Visual Studio. (#7940) This release has been tested with Visual Studio 2008, 2010, 2012 and 2013, using TortoiseSVN 1.6, 1.7 and 1.8. It should also still work with Visual Studio 2005, but I couldn't find anyone to test it in VS2005. Build 32 (beta) changelogNew: Added Visual Studio 2013 support New: Added Visual Studio 2012 support New: Added SVN 1.8 support New: Added 'Ch...ABCat: ABCat v.2.0.1a: ?????????? ???????? ? ?????????? ?????? ???? ??? Win7. ????????? ?????? ????????? ?? ???????. ????? ?????, ???? ????? ???????? ????????? ?????????? ????????? "?? ??????? ????? ???????????? ?????????? ??????...", ?? ?????????? ??????? ? ?????????? ?????? Microsoft SQL Ce ?? ????????? ??????: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=17876. ???????? ?????? x64 ??? x86 ? ??????????? ?? ?????? ???????????? ???????. ??? ??????? ????????? ?? ?????????? ?????? Entity Framework, ? ???? ...patterns & practices: Data Access Guidance: Data Access Guidance 2013: This is the 2013 release of Data Access Guidance. The documentation for this RI is also available on MSDN: Data Access for Highly-Scalable Solutions: Using SQL, NoSQL, and Polyglot Persistence: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn271399.aspxLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter v2.1.10: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, .NET 4.5, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Windows Phone 8, Client Profile, Windows 8, and Windows Azure. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also supports Twitter API v1.1! Also on NuGet.TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v7.2 [Terraria Inventory Editor]: Added "Check for Update" button Hopefully fixed Windows XP issue You can now backspace in Item stack fieldsSimple Injector: Simple Injector v2.3.6: This patch releases fixes one bug concerning resolving open generic types that contain nested generic type arguments. Nested generic types were handled incorrectly in certain cases. This affects RegisterOpenGeneric and RegisterDecorator. (work item 20332)Virtual Wifi Hotspot for Windows 7 & 8: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0: Virtual Router Plus 2.6.0Fast YouTube Downloader: Fast YouTube Downloader 2.3.0: Fast YouTube DownloaderMagick.NET: Magick.NET 6.8.7.101: Magick.NET linked with ImageMagick 6.8.7.1. Breaking changes: - Renamed Matrix classes: MatrixColor = ColorMatrix and MatrixConvolve = ConvolveMatrix. - Renamed Depth method with Channels parameter to BitDepth and changed the other method into a property.VidCoder: 1.5.9 Beta: Added Rip DVD and Rip Blu-ray AutoPlay actions for Windows: now you can have VidCoder start up and scan a disc when you insert it. Go to Start -> AutoPlay to set it up. Added error message for Windows XP users rather than letting it crash. Removed "quality" preset from list for QSV as it currently doesn't offer much improvement. Changed installer to ignore version number when copying files over. Should reduce the chances of a bug from me forgetting to increment a version number. Fixed ...New ProjectsC# In A Nutshell: TestDNN (DotNetNuke) Farsi - ?? ?? ?? (??? ?? ????) ?????: ?????? ????? ?????? ??? ?? ?? ?? ?? (??? ?? ????).examquestions: This is a uni projectFishing in Grenada Website: This project is to show progress in developing a Community Site for the Web Application Development Course at the University of Hertfordshire.HashTag Enterprise Library Logging Application Block Extensions: This library allows development teams using EntLib to deliver consistent log messages by using greatly simplified methods for writing messages to Logging Block.Ivion OS: Ivion OS adalah sistem operasi asli buatan anak Indonesia yang ditulis dengan bahasa Assembly.MVC4 Samples: You can easily develope an application in MVC Framework by the code samples provided by Microsoft Requirements:VS 2012My Journal Tracker - a DayOne Snapshot Client for Microsoft Windows: write your DayOne journal (a iOS and Mac OSX journal app) on your Windows PC. Make nice snapshots and view your journal on your iPad.Nigerian food lovers: This site attends to the needs of people who love Nigerian food. It brings them together and helps them answer basic questions.Online Radio 3.1: Software for listening online radio streams.OpenAntrag: Über das Portal OpenAntrag können Bürger über Fraktionen oder Einzelabgeordnete der Piratenpartei ihre Ideen und Wünsche einbringen. ORI_T1_2013_2: ORI, UFSCar, Dicionario, Tesauro, Hash, TabelaPiGest: Gestionale Open Source per piccole imprese.The Barter Website: The aim is to create a Web 2.0 Page which will allow it´s users to share goods they don´t need anymore in exchange for goods they currently need.Web Scripting - Assignment 1 - Simple Addition Project: Assignment 1 - Initial web 2.0 site idea and Subversion * Module - Web Application Development * University of HertfordshireWinPath Manager: The program is a utility to help users to perform the edits the window path variable and auto shorten it .

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 30, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, November 30, 2011Popular ReleasesLINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.22: New support for Windows Phone 7.1, 100% Twitter API coverage.Anno 2070 Assistant: Anno 2070 Assistant v1.1: Anno 2070 Assistant v1.1 Released! Features Included: Building Layouts for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Production Chains for Ecos, Tycoons & Techs Supply Calculator New Features: The new supply calculator will tell you how many of each production chain you need to sustain the current population. Simply plot in your total inhabitants of each type and calculate! Coming in v2.0: Population Calculator Port from hard coded data to XML data Calculate by Residence Feature and some more secret ...Rawr: Rawr 4.3.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...BugNET Issue Tracker: BugNET 0.9.131: This is a bug fix release for 0.9 that fixes a number of pressing issues. FixesBGN-1989 - User verification is not working on the latest release BGN-1988 - Send password notification does not include the actual password and throws an error BGN-1987 - Issues revisions stop being updated BGN-1985 - Search by issue id no longer works Fixed issue when user is not authenticated and clicks on the Vote link the user is redirected to page not found (wrong location for the Login.aspx page) N...QuickStart Engine (3D Game Engine for XNA): QuickStart Engine v0.23: Main FeaturesXNA 4.0 compatible Clean engine architecture Makes it easy to make your own game using the engine. Messaging system allows you to communicate between systems and other entities without coupling your code in ways you wouldn't want to. Entity/Component system allows you to make your own objects and customize them very easily. Terrain engine Quad-tree culling Multi-texture splatting Multi-texture normal mapping Smoothing and scaling Physics engine integration Uses Ji...Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.2: Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure SDK for .NET – November 2011. Updated BabelCam, CRUDSqlAzure, WPCloud.ACS, and WPCloud.SQL.ACS samples to include default ACS configuration to allow developers running the samples without owning an ACS namespace.VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF & Silverlight 5: VideoLan DotNet for WinForm, WPF, SL5 - 2011.11.29: The new version add and correct many features : Add Medias list property to VlcControl Correction to implement Medias list property Add PlaybackMode property to VlcControl (Loop/Repeat/Default) Remove "--play-and-pause" option in WPF sample Add MediaList Interops Add MediaListPlayer Interops Correction on Interops (error) Add MediaSubItemAdded event on MediaBaseMFCMAPI: November 2011 Release: Build: 15.0.0.1029 Full release notes at SGriffin's blog. If you just want to run the MFCMAPI or MrMAPI, get the executables. If you want to debug them, get the symbol files and the source. The 64 bit builds will only work on a machine with Outlook 2010 64 bit installed. All other machines should use the 32 bit builds, regardless of the operating system. Facebook BadgeWCF Community Site: WCF Web API Preview 6: Welcome to the sixth preview release of WCF Web API on Codeplex! Install WCF Web API Preview 6 using NuGet New Features/EnhancementsURL form encoding - Http request bodies sent as application/x-www-form-urlencoded can now deserialize into objects and participate in content negotiation. Custom OData entity keys - The ODataFormatter now supports custom conventions for determining which properties identify an entity key. [ServiceContract] is no longer required on the Web API class definiti...Devpad: 4.11: Whats new for Devpad 4.11: New Import Archive Improved Save Dialog Improved Replace Dialog Improved Go To Dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsHome Access Plus+: v7.7: v7.7.1128.2200Added: ShowTo Option on Resources Added: Basic Authentication Logon Method Added: Button on the Live Tracker page to clear logons in the database but not do a remote logoff Updated: jquery from v1.6.2 to v1.7.1 Fixed: Another attempt at fixing the SIMS import in the booking system Fixed: JSON Issues with the Setup Added: More DEBUG Events to the Event Log (note DEBUG not RELEASE) Added: Support for Week A Week B instead of Week 1 and Week 2 Updated: The My Files ...CommonLibrary.NET: CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 - Alpha: A collection of very reusable code and components in C# 4.0 ranging from ActiveRecord, Csv, Command Line Parsing, Configuration, Holiday Calendars, Logging, Authentication, and much more. Samples in <root>\src\Lib\CommonLibrary.NET\Samples CommonLibrary.NET 0.9.8 AlphaNew Dynamic Scripting Language : workitem : 7493 Fixes 1622 6803Widget Suite for DotNetNuke: 01.04.00: The following features/enhancements are associated with this release: Bug: Removed the empty box/white space created by some widgets New Widget: FlexSlider New Widget: Google+ Button New Widget: Klout Badge Sample Widget Script FileFxCop Integrator for Visual Studio 2010: FxCop Integrator 2.0.0 RC: Replaced the MSBuild Tasks installer to fix the bug of the targets file. FxCop Integrator is not affected by this bug. (Nov 28 2011) New FeatureSupported calculating code metrics with Code Metrics PowerTool. (Work Item #6568: 6568). Provided MSBuild tasks. #7454: 7454 Supported to filter out auto-generated code from code analysis result. #7485: 7485 Supported exporting report of code analysis result. Supported multi-project analysis. Supported file level analysis. Added the featu...Terminals: Version 2 - Beta 4 Release: Beta 4 Refresh Build Dont forget to backup your config files BEFORE upgrading! As usual, please take time to use and abuse this release. We left logging in place, and this is a debug build so be sure to submit your logs on each bug reported, and please do report all bugs! Updated the About form to include the date and time of the build. Useful for CI builds to ensure we have the correct version "Favourites" and "History" save their expanded states after app restarts Code cleanup, secu...MiniTwitter: 1.76: MiniTwitter 1.76 ???? ?? ?????????? User Streams ???????????? User Streams ???????????、??????????????? REST ?????????? ?????????????????????????????? ??????????????????????????????Media Companion: MC 3.424b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) Movie Show Resolutions... Resolved issue when reverting multiselection of movies to "-none-" Added movie rename support for subtitle files '.srt' & '.sub' Finalised code for '-1' fix - radiobutton to choose either filename or title Fixed issue with Movie Batch Wizard Fanart - ...Advanced Windows Phone Enginering Tool: WPE Downloads: This version of WPE gives you basic updating, restoring, and, erasing for your Windows Phone device.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.37: Fix for issue #16936 - CSS strings containing ASP.NET replacement blocks that contain the same delimiter character(s) as the CSS string cause the CSS parser to barf. Need to use the -aspnet:1 flag to treat the ASP.NET blocks as single entities. Added support for CSS3 @keyframes syntax. Added NuGet package support to the DLL project. Expand the -line switch to also optionally specify the multiline/single line mode, and the spaces-per-tab for multiline mode. Tweak the -pretty switch to be more ...Get simpler, simpler, and simpler: UI 0.1 Binary: Inklude: you can use it with lib, header and dlls. Uzing: you can use it by adding it to your project.New ProjectsArchiveBytes: ArchiveBytes is an archiving solution with rolling archive capabilities. Arduino Controller: Arduino Controller is a GUI to control and arduino wirelessly using: - XBEES - WIFI - Bluetooth All that is required is: - Arduino Controller - Your wireless technology - And an Arduino If you would like info I'm trying to put together sets that include: - Software - Arduino - And a wireless technology (your choice)Artesis - Studiegids MVC: Artesis StudiegidsAzureHost: AzureHost is a synchronization framework that makes it easy to deploy web application files to Windows Azure and keep them synchronized between Web Roles and Blob Storage. AzureHost is a fork of the Windows Azure Accelerator for Umbraco made more simple and generic.Codes Of My ACE Study: Activity-based Center ExpansionCoreGallery.NET: An extensible .NET-based photo gallery. Project has been inactive for some time and currently in very early planning/prototyping stages. Help is definitely welcome!Custom SharePoint Designer Activities for SharePoint 2010: This project adds to the power of SharePoint Designer workflows by adding additional activities that previously were not available including sending emails with attachments, custom from addresses, and much more. Created with visual studio 2010 for SharePoint 2010.Declarative command line parser: A powerful, declarative command-line parsing system in a single .cs file. This file is available as a nuget package (package id: declcmdparser) and can be easily included or excluded in your project.DevCow: This is a location for all of the community projects that help support DevCow.comejg: ejgFibo.Authority: a authority system based on nhibernate,autofac,asp.net MVC,jquery easyui and so on.Georgia Southern House Control: This is a semester project for a group of students at Georgia Southern university.JSAnalyse - Javascript Analyser and Dependency Checker: JSAnalyse - Javascript Analyser and Dependency CheckerLogger - logging for your .NET project using file, mail, debug output: A light weight yet competent logger for .NET with configurable output modules, such as log file, e-mail and debug log. Easy to add your own output module if needed.MetaEdit+ extension for Visual Studio: Visual Studio extension for integrating MetaEdit+ and Visual Studio. This extension allows you to browse MetaEdit+ models and use the main MetaEdit+ functions from Visual Studio. It can also automatically import into Visual Studio the source code generated from MetaEdit+. MonopolyPatrones: Proyecto de patrones de software universidad Javeriana ColombiaMulti-threaded simple Reversi game: XNA Reversi game supporting multi-core processors. NDuplicate: Finds duplicate code (methods) across a C# solution.Netduino-compatible embedded webserver: Embedded Webserver is a small footprint, multi-platform webserver implementation exposing IIS-like API to web enable your hobby project in four easy steps.Orchard UserReviewedItems: An Orchard module extension of the Contrib.Reviews module. Includes a orchard content part for showing the reviews that are written by the user of the current context.PivotViewer Extensions: PivotViewer Extensions is a collection of add-ons to the Silverlight 5 PivotViewer. PowerShell TFS Build Server CmdLets: A set of CmdLets for managing a Team Foundation Server (TFS) Build server through PowerShell. SABON: Simple Access Business Object Network. This is a JavaScript Library that provides quickest way on accessing HTML elements, and DOM this includes Object/Class Creator, Table Effects, Message Box, Object Pop-up, Email Notification, and caseed: Seed creates complete ASP.NET website from object oriented business model definitions. Programers serves programs? No... Programs serves programers, Yep! "Firstly, I think I will build a system with 90% solid functions, and 10% dynamiic functions, the dynamic functions is the flower blossoming from top of it."Sharpshooter: ????OOP??????，??????。Silverlight Front end calling WCF Service in Azure Web Role: I recently written a sample which has Windows Azure Web Role with Silverlight front end, calling to WCF service which is hosted in the same Windows Azure Web Role. SPWikiDialogFix: For SharePoint 2010: Fix to prevent users from receiving ‘The Ribbon Tab with id: "Ribbon.Read" has not been made available for this page or does not exist. Use Ribbon.MakeTabAvailable()’ when viewing wiki pages in dialog mode. For explanation and details, read the blog post at http://blog.furuknap.net/solving-the-ribbon-tab-with-id-ribbon-read-has-not-been-made-available-for-this-page-or-does-not-exist-use-ribbon-maketabavailable Written in C#, because you deserve it.Trinity Christian School Lunches: This is a semester project for a group of students at Georgia Southern University creating a software packages that allows a school to keep track of the lunch orders of students.wp7project: We`re just training...Zavida: C# learning curve.??: fff

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 13, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Sunday, November 13, 2011Popular ReleasesT.S.T. the T-SQL Test Tool: Version 1.8: Implement the Assert.Ignore API. Fix a bug: A test session is reported as passing if only the test session setup or test session teardown failed. Improve the text and xml output when test session setup/teardown are present. Allow users to customize the prefix "SQLTest_".VidCoder: 1.2.2: Updated Handbrake core to svn 4344. Fixed the 6-channel discrete mixdown option not appearing for AAC encoders. Added handling for possible exceptions when copying to the clipboard, added retries and message when it fails. Fixed issue with audio bitrate UI not appearing sometimes when switching audio encoders. Added extra checks to protect against reported crashes. Added code to upgrade encoding profiles on old queued items.Dynamic PagedCollection (Silverlight / WPF Pagination): PagedCollection: All classes which facilitate your dynamic pagination in Silverlight or WPF !Media Companion: MC 3.422b Weekly: Ensure .NET 4.0 Full Framework is installed. (Available from http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?id=17718) Ensure the NFO ID fix is applied when transitioning from versions prior to 3.416b. (Details here) TV Show Resolutions... Made the TV Shows folder list sorted. Re-visibled 'Manually Add Path' in Root Folders. Sorted list to process during new tv episode search Rebuild Movies now processes thru folders alphabetically Fix for issue #208 - Display Missing Episodes is not popu...DotSpatial: DotSpatial Release Candidate 1 (1.0.823): Supports loading extensions using System.ComponentModel.Composition. DemoMap compiled as x86 so that GDAL runs on x64 machines. How to: Use an Assembly from the WebBe aware that your browser may add an identifier to downloaded files which results in "blocked" dll files. You can follow the following link to learn how to "Unblock" files. Right click on the zip file before unzipping, choose properties, go to the general tab and click the unblock button. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library...XPath Visualizer: XPathVisualizer v1.3 Latest: This is v1.3.0.6 of XpathVisualizer. This is an update release for v1.3. These workitems have been fixed since v1.3.0.5: 7429 7432 7427MSBuild Extension Pack: November 2011: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack November 2011 release provides a collection of over 415 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GU...CODE Framework: 4.0.11110.0: Various minor fixes and tweaks.Extensions for Reactive Extensions (Rxx): Rxx 1.2: What's NewRelated Work Items Please read the latest release notes for details about what's new. Content SummaryRxx provides the following features. See the Documentation for details. Many IObservable<T> extension methods and IEnumerable<T> extension methods. Many useful types such as ViewModel, CommandSubject, ListSubject, DictionarySubject, ObservableDynamicObject, Either<TLeft, TRight>, Maybe<T> and others. Various interactive labs that illustrate the runtime behavior of the extensio...Player Framework by Microsoft: HTML5 Player Framework 1.0: Additional DownloadsHTML5 Player Framework Examples - This is a set of examples showing how to setup and initialize the HTML5 Player Framework. This includes examples of how to use the Player Framework with both the HTML5 video tag and Silverlight player. Note: Be sure to unblock the zip file before using. Note: In order to test Silverlight fallback in the included sample app, you need to run the html and xap files over http (e.g. over localhost). Silverlight Players - Visit the Silverlig...MapWindow 4: MapWindow GIS v4.8.6 - Final release - 64Bit: What’s New in 4.8.6 (Final release)A few minor issues have been fixed What’s New in 4.8.5 (Beta release)Assign projection tool. (Sergei Leschinsky) Projection dialects. (Sergei Leschinsky) Projections database converted to SQLite format. (Sergei Leschinsky) Basic code for database support - will be developed further (ShapefileDataClient class, IDataProvider interface). (Sergei Leschinsky) 'Export shapefile to database' tool. (Sergei Leschinsky) Made the GEOS library static. geos.dl...Facebook C# SDK: v5.3.2: This is a RTW release which adds new features and bug fixes to v5.2.1. Query/QueryAsync methods uses graph api instead of legacy rest api. removed dependency from Code Contracts enabled Task Parallel Support in .NET 4.0+ (experimental) added support for early preview for .NET 4.5 (binaries not distributed in codeplex nor nuget.org, will need to manually build from Facebook-Net45.sln) added additional method overloads for .NET 4.5 to support IProgress<T> for upload progress added ne...Delete Inactive TS Ports: List and delete the Inactive TS Ports: UPDATEAdded support for windows 2003 servers and removed some null reference errors when the registry key was not present List and delete the Inactive TS Ports - The InactiveTSPortList.EXE accepts command line arguments The InactiveTSPortList.Standalone.WithoutPrompt.exe runs as a standalone exe without the need for any command line arguments.ClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.60.0: Added almost full support for auto filters (missing custom date filters). See examples Filter Values, Custom Filters Fixed issues 7016, 7391, 7388, 7389, 7198, 7196, 7194, 7186, 7067, 7115, 7144Microsoft Research Boogie: Nightly builds: This download category contains automatically released nightly builds, reflecting the current state of Boogie's development. We try to make sure each nightly build passes the test suite. If you suspect that was not the case, please try the previous nightly build to see if that really is the problem. Also, please see the installation instructions.GoogleMap Control: GoogleMap Control 6.0: Major design changes to the control in order to achieve better scalability and extensibility for the new features comming with GoogleMaps API. GoogleMap control switched to GoogleMaps API v3 and .NET 4.0. GoogleMap control is 100% ScriptControl now, it requires ScriptManager to be registered on the pages where and before it is used. Markers, polylines, polygons and directions were implemented as ExtenderControl, instead of being inner properties of GoogleMap control. Better perfomance. Better...WabbitStudio Z80 Software Tools: WabbitCode Mac 2.1: WabbitCode for the Mac version 2.1. You need 10.7 (Lion) to run this. There won't be any further releases for older versions of OS X.Shell Sort Web service and Application: Shell sort Web service and application: Shell Sort WebserviceSharePoint Backup Augmentation Cmdlets: SharePointBAC Technology Preview: This release is purely an opportunity for administrators who live on the bleeding-edge to "kick the tires." Only two cmdlets are available: Get-SPBackupCatalog and Remove-SPBackupCatalog. Both of these cmdlets are fully functional and documented in their current form, but the cmdlets have seen little testing and real-world use thus far. The code, capabilities, and reliability of this project will evolve in the weeks and months ahead, but for now you should avoid deploying these cmdlets to pro...WDTVHubGen - Adds Metadata, thumbnails and subtitles to WDTV Live Hubs: V2.1: Version 2.1 (click on the right) this uses V4.0 of .net Version 2.1 adds the following features: (apologize if I forget some, added a lot of little things) Manual Lookup with TV or Movie (finally huh!), you can look up a movie or TV episode directly, you can right click on anythign, and choose manual lookup, then will allow you to type anything you want to look up and it will assign it to the file you right clicked. No Rename: a very popular request, this is an option you can set so that t...New ProjectsBTG - Bilateral Tower Guardians: BIEN TA GROTTEc# Extended Link List: The ExtendedLinkList Graffiti CMS Widget is a C# port of an existing widget by Curt C at http://www.codeplex.com/ExtendedLinkListCodePubs: codepubs DegradingLoad: DegradingLoad will attempt to load a process serverside async; if it takes too long it will "degrade" to using clientside ajax to retrieve the result without blocking the main page contentDino: Dino is a simple ORM wrapper framework that provides a consistent set of interfaces for working with a variety of ORMs in a single Unit of Work. Dino is built to be extremely lightweight, with built in support for abstracting away some of the intricicies of using various ORMs.Elenoire: Elenoire is a live bot assistant for everyday that takes a appointment and note for you, the bot work when you are not present on messenger. Fontus: Fontus è un sistema centralizzato per l’erogazione di contenuti informativi. Il sistema Fontus si basa su un meccanismo di plug-in per rendere l’insieme delle fonti estendibile. FoolFish.CodeBase: implement your especial ideas...FullonSMS Desktop Client: Send free sms using fullonsms by this software to anywhere in India, supports grouping and contacts feature. Developed by Ayush PateriaInterface Interceptor: Allows you to filter and intercept interface methods.NBouncer: NBouncer is a Context Aware Validation framework without attributes for .NET 3.5 Winforms, WPF, Silverlight or Asp.NET MVCNetShips: Simple network battleship game for 2 players.Nhung Nai Website: phát tri?n Nhung Nai WebisteOpenCV2.2 Project template For Visual Studio 2010: The intension of the project is to make your life little easier if you use OpenCV2.2. As i couldn't find a project template for OpenCV, I decided to publish it on codeplex. Hope it will help at least some of you.Projeto de Compiladores: Projeto de Compiladores da Unicap 2011.2sejce2008: jce se course wiki and projects linksSharpener: Sharpener is a simple optimizer for .NET and Mono.Simple Live Screen: Simple Live Screen's target is to fasten screen transmits by using it's own protocol. This program is being developed in C#.Simple Note XML - ASP.NET User Control: Simple Note XML makes it easier for ASP.NET Developers to build lists. You'll no longer have to write things down. It's developed in ASP.NET 2.0 C#. SquadLead for Tasks - Community Edition: SquadLead Tasks Community Edition is a PostGreSQL based Task Management software for teams, with wonderful time and resource allocation abilities. Unlinke Gannt charting and dependency abilities, SquadLead gives a flexibility to create ad-hoc tasks with no dependencies and hence suits many different kind of projects in a versatile way. If you take care of dependencies, it takes care of helping you with identifying allocation loads, reports and graphs. Features Task Management and...Stanford db-class algorithms: The algorithms of the relational db theory, described in the introduction to databases Stanford class (www.db-class.org).tfsProjectInitialiser: After creating a Team Project, load the initial state of the project - complete with Areas, Iterations, Work Items - quickly and easily. I am on my one on this so far, so any help or contribution would be appreciated.

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• Laissez les bon temps rouler! (Microsoft BI Conference 2010)

  - by smisner

  Laissez les bons temps rouler" is a Cajun phrase that I heard frequently when I lived in New Orleans in the mid-1990s. It means "Let the good times roll!" and encapsulates a feeling of happy expectation. As I met with many of my peers and new acquaintances at the Microsoft BI Conference last week, this phrase kept running through my mind as people spoke about their plans in their respective businesses, the benefits and opportunities that the recent releases in the BI stack are providing, and their expectations about the future of the BI stack.Notwithstanding some jabs here and there to point out the platform is neither perfect now nor will be anytime soon (along with admissions that the competitors are also not perfect), and notwithstanding several missteps by the event organizers (which I don't care to enumerate), the overarching mood at the conference was positive. It was a refreshing change from the doom and gloom hovering over several conferences that I attended in 2009. Although many people expect economic hardships to continue over the coming year or so, everyone I know in the BI field is busier than ever and expects to stay busy for quite a while.Self-Service BISelf-service was definitely a theme of the BI conference. In the keynote, Ted Kummert opened with a look back to a fairy tale vision of self-service BI that he told in 2008. At that time, the fairy tale future was a time when "every end user was able to use BI technologies within their job in order to move forward more effectively" and transitioned to the present time in which SQL Server 2008 R2, Office 2010, and SharePoint 2010 are available to deliver managed self-service BI.This set of technologies is presumably poised to address the needs of the 80% of users that Kummert said do not use BI today. He proceeded to outline a series of activities that users ought to be able to do themselves--from simple changes to a report like formatting or an addtional data visualization to integration of an additional data source. The keynote then continued with a series of demonstrations of both current and future technology in support of self-service BI. Some highlights that interested me:PowerPivot, of course, is the flagship product for self-service BI in the Microsoft BI stack. In the TechEd keynote, which was open to the BI conference attendees, Amir Netz (twitter) impressed the audience by demonstrating interactivity with a workbook containing 100 million rows. He upped the ante at the BI keynote with his demonstration of a future-state PowerPivot workbook containing over 2 billion records. It's important to note that this volume of data is being processed by a server engine, and not in the PowerPivot client engine. (Yes, I think it's impressive, but none of my clients are typically wrangling with 2 billion records at a time. Maybe they're thinking too small. This ability to work quickly with large data sets has greater implications for BI solutions than for self-service BI, in my opinion.)Amir also demonstrated KPIs for the future PowerPivot, which appeared to be easier to implement than in any other Microsoft product that supports KPIs, apart from simple KPIs in SharePoint. (My initial reaction is that we have one more place to build KPIs. Great. It's confusing enough. I haven't seen how well those KPIs integrate with other BI tools, which will be important for adoption.)One more PowerPivot feature that Amir showed was a graphical display of the lineage for calculations. (This is hugely practical, especially if you build up calculations incrementally. You can more easily follow the logic from calculation to calculation. Furthermore, if you need to make a change to one calculation, you can assess the impact on other calculations.)Another product demonstration will be available within the next 30 days--Pivot for Reporting Services. If you haven't seen this technology yet, check it out at www.getpivot.com. (It definitely has a wow factor, but I'm skeptical about its practicality. However, I'm looking forward to trying it out with data that I understand.)Michael Tejedor (twitter) demonstrated a feature that I think is really interesting and not emphasized nearly enough--overshadowed by PowerPivot, no doubt. That feature is the Microsoft Business Intelligence Indexing Connector, which enables search of the content of Excel workbooks and Reporting Services reports. (This capability existed in MOSS 2007, but was more cumbersome to implement. The search results in SharePoint 2010 are not only cooler, but more useful by describing whether the content is found in a table or a chart, for example.)This may yet be the dawning of the age of self-service BI - a phrase I've heard repeated from time to time over the last decade - but I think BI professionals are likely to stay busy for a long while, and need not start looking for a new line of work. Kummert repeatedly referenced strategic BI solutions in contrast to self-service BI to emphasize that self-service BI is not a replacement for the services that BI professionals provide. After all, self-service BI does not appear magically on user desktops (or whatever device they want to use). A supporting infrastructure is necessary, and grows in complexity in proportion to the need to simplify BI for users.It's one thing to hear the party line touted by Microsoft employees at the BI keynote, but it's another to hear from the people who are responsible for implementing and supporting it within an organization. Rob Collie (blog | twitter), Kasper de Jonge (blog | twitter), Vidas Matelis (site | twitter), and I were invited to join Andrew Brust (blog | twitter) as he led a Birds of a Feather session at TechEd entitled "PowerPivot: Is It the BI Deal-Changer for Developers and IT Pros?" I would single out the prevailing concern in this session as the issue of control. On one side of this issue were those who were concerned that they would lose control once PowerPivot is implemented. On the other side were those who believed that data should be freely accessible to users in PowerPivot, and even acknowledgment that users would get the data they want even if it meant they would have to manually enter into a workbook to have it ready for analysis. For another viewpoint on how PowerPivot played out at the conference, see Rob Collie's observations.Collaborative BII have been intrigued by the notion of collaborative BI for a very long time. Before I discovered BI, I was a Lotus Notes developer and later a manager of developers, working in a software company that enabled collaboration in the legal industry. Not only did I help create collaborative systems for our clients, I created a complete project management from the ground up to collaboratively manage our custom development work. In that case, collaboration involved my team, my client contacts, and me. I was also able to produce my own BI from that system as well, but didn't know that's what I was doing at the time. Only in recent years has SharePoint begun to catch up with the capabilities that I had with Lotus Notes more than a decade ago. Eventually, I had the opportunity at that job to formally investigate BI as another product offering for our software, and the rest - as they say - is history. I built my first data warehouse with Scott Cameron (who has also ventured into the authoring world by writing Analysis Services 2008 Step by Step and was at the BI Conference last week where I got to reminisce with him for a bit) and that began a career that I never imagined at the time.Fast forward to 2010, and I'm still lauding the virtues of collaborative BI, if only the tools will catch up to my vision! Thus, I was anxious to see what Donald Farmer (blog | twitter) and Rita Sallam of Gartner had to say on the subject in their session "Collaborative Decision Making." As I suspected, the tools aren't quite there yet, but the vendors are moving in the right direction. One thing I liked about this session was a non-Microsoft perspective of the state of the industry with regard to collaborative BI. In addition, this session included a better demonstration of SharePoint collaborative BI capabilities than appeared in the BI keynote. Check out the video in the link to the session to see the demonstration. One of the use cases that was demonstrated was linking from information to a person, because, as Donald put it, "People don't trust data, they trust people."The Microsoft BI Stack in GeneralA question I hear all the time from students when I'm teaching is how to know what tools to use when there is overlap between products in the BI stack. I've never taken the time to codify my thoughts on the subject, but saw that my friend Dan Bulos provided good insight on this topic from a variety of perspectives in his session, "So Many BI Tools, So Little Time." I thought one of his best points was that ideally you should be able to design in your tool of choice, and then deploy to your tool of choice. Unfortunately, the ideal is yet to become real across the platform. The closest we come is with the RDL in Reporting Services which can be produced from two different tools (Report Builder or Business Intelligence Development Studio's Report Designer), manually, or by a third-party or custom application. I have touted the idea for years (and publicly said so about 5 years ago) that eventually more products would be RDL producers or consumers, but we aren't there yet. Maybe in another 5 years.Another interesting session that covered the BI stack against a backdrop of competitive products was delivered by Andrew Brust. Andrew did a marvelous job of consolidating a lot of information in a way that clearly communicated how various vendors' offerings compared to the Microsoft BI stack. He also made a particularly compelling argument about how the existence of an ecosystem around the Microsoft BI stack provided innovation and opportunities lacking for other vendors. Check out his presentation, "How Does the Microsoft BI Stack...Stack Up?"Expo HallI had planned to spend more time in the Expo Hall to see who was doing new things with the BI stack, but didn't manage to get very far. Each time I set out on an exploratory mission, I got caught up in some fascinating conversations with one or more of my peers. I find interacting with people that I meet at conferences just as important as attending sessions to learn something new. There were a couple of items that really caught me eye, however, that I'll share here.Pragmatic Works. Whether you develop SSIS packages, build SSAS cubes, or author SSRS reports (or all of the above), you really must take a look at BI Documenter. Brian Knight (twitter) walked me through the key features, and I must say I was impressed. Once you've seen what this product can do, you won't want to document your BI projects any other way. You can download a free single-user database edition, or choose from more feature-rich standard or professional editions.Microsoft Press ebooks. I also stopped by the O'Reilly Media booth to meet some folks that one of my acquisitions editors at Microsoft Press recommended. In case you haven't heard, Microsoft Press has partnered with O'Reilly Media for distribution and publishing. Apart from my interest in learning more about O'Reilly Media as an author, an advertisement in their booth caught me eye which I think is a really great move. When you buy Microsoft Press ebooks through the O'Reilly web site, you can receive it in any (or all) of the following formats where possible: PDF, epub, .mobi for Kindle and .apk for Android. You also have lifetime DRM-free access to the ebooks. As someone who is an avid collector of books, I fnd myself running out of room for storage. In addition, I travel a lot, and it's hard to lug my reference library with me. Today's e-reader options make the move to digital books a more viable way to grow my library. Having a variety of formats means I am not limited to a single device, and lifetime access means I don't have to worry about keeping track of where I've stored my files. Because the e-books are DRM-free, I can copy and paste when I'm compiling notes, and I can print pages when necessary. That's a winning combination in my mind!Overall, I was pleased with the BI conference. There were many more sessions that I couldn't attend, either because the room was full when I got there or there were multiple sessions running concurrently that I wanted to see. Fortunately, many of the sessions are accessible for viewing online at http://www.msteched.com/2010/NorthAmerica along with the TechEd sessions. You can spot the BI sessions by the yellow skyline on the title slide of the presentation as shown below. 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• Sorting and Filtering By Model-Based LOV Display Value

  - by Steven Davelaar

  If you use a model-based LOV and you use display type "choice", then ADF nicely displays the display value, even if the table is read-only. In the screen shot below, you see the RegionName attribute displayed instead of the RegionId. This is accomplished by the model-based LOV, I did not modify the Countries view object to include a join with Regions.  Also note the sort icon, the table is sorted by RegionId. This sorting typically results in a bug reported by your test team. Europe really shouldn't come before America when sorting ascending, right? To fix this, we could of course change the Countries view object query and add a join with the Regions table to include the RegionName attribute. If the table is updateable, we still need the choice list, so we need to move the model-based LOV from the RegionId attribute to the RegionName attribute and hide the RegionId attribute in the table. But that is a lot of work for such a simple requirement, in particular if we have lots of model-based choice lists in our view object. Fortunately, there is an easier way to do this, with some generic code in your view object base class that fixes this at once for all model-based choice lists that we have defined in our application. The trick is to override the method getSortCriteria() in the base view object class. By default, this method returns null because the sorting is done in the database through a SQL Order By clause. However, if the getSortCriteria method does return a sort criteria the framework will perform in memory sorting which is what we need to achieve sorting by region name. So, inside this method we need to evaluate the Order By clause, and if the order by column matches an attribute that has a model-based LOV choicelist defined with a display attribute that is different from the value attribute, we need to return a sort criterria. Here is the complete code of this method: public SortCriteria[] getSortCriteria() {   String orderBy = getOrderByClause();          if (orderBy!=null )   {     boolean descending = false;     if (orderBy.endsWith(" DESC"))      {       descending = true;       orderBy = orderBy.substring(0,orderBy.length()-5);     }     // extract column name, is part after the dot     int dotpos = orderBy.lastIndexOf(".");     String columnName = orderBy.substring(dotpos+1);     // loop over attributes and find matching attribute     AttributeDef orderByAttrDef = null;     for (AttributeDef attrDef : getAttributeDefs())     {       if (columnName.equals(attrDef.getColumnName()))       {         orderByAttrDef = attrDef;         break;       }     }     if (orderByAttrDef!=null && "choice".equals(orderByAttrDef.getProperty("CONTROLTYPE"))          && orderByAttrDef.getListBindingDef()!=null)     {       String orderbyAttr = orderByAttrDef.getName();       String[] displayAttrs = orderByAttrDef.getListBindingDef().getListDisplayAttrNames();       String[] listAttrs = orderByAttrDef.getListBindingDef().getListAttrNames();       // if first list display attributes is not the same as first list attribute, than the value       // displayed is different from the value copied back to the order by attribute, in which case we need to       // use our custom comparator       if (displayAttrs!=null && listAttrs!=null && displayAttrs.length>0 && !displayAttrs[0].equals(listAttrs[0]))       {                  SortCriteriaImpl sc1 = new SortCriteriaImpl(orderbyAttr, descending);         SortCriteria[] sc = new SortCriteriaImpl[]{sc1};         return sc;                           }     }     }   return super.getSortCriteria(); } If this method returns a sort criteria, then the framework will call the sort method on the view object. The sort method uses a Comparator object to determine the sequence in which the rows should be returned. This comparator is retrieved by calling the getRowComparator method on the view object. So, to ensure sorting by our display value, we need to override this method to return our custom comparator: public Comparator getRowComparator() {   return new LovDisplayAttributeRowComparator(getSortCriteria()); } The custom comparator class extends the default RowComparator class and overrides the method compareRows and looks up the choice display value to compare the two rows. The complete code of this class is included in the sample application.  With this code in place, clicking on the Region sort icon nicely sorts the countries by RegionName, as you can see below. When using the Query-By-Example table filter at the top of the table, you typically want to use the same choice list to filter the rows. One way to do that is documented in ADF code corner sample 16 - How To Customize the ADF Faces Table Filter.The solution in this sample is perfectly fine to use. This sample requires you to define a separate iterator binding and associated tree binding to populate the choice list in the table filter area using the af:iterator tag. You might be able to reuse the same LOV view object instance in this iterator binding that is used as view accessor for the model-bassed LOV. However, I have seen quite a few customers who have a generic LOV view object (mapped to one "refcodes" table) with the bind variable values set in the LOV view accessor. In such a scenario, some duplicate work is needed to get a dedicated view object instance with the correct bind variables that can be used in the iterator binding. Looking for ways to maximize reuse, wouldn't it be nice if we could just reuse our model-based LOV to populate this filter choice list? Well we can. Here are the basic steps: 1. Create an attribute list binding in the page definition that we can use to retrieve the list of SelectItems needed to populate the choice list <list StaticList="false" Uses="LOV_RegionId"               IterBinding="CountriesView1Iterator" id="RegionId"/>  We need this "current row" list binding because the implicit list binding used by the item in the table is not accessible outside a table row, we cannot use the expression #{row.bindings.RegionId} in the table filter facet. 2. Create a Map-style managed bean with the get method retrieving the list binding as key, and returning the list of SelectItems. To return this list, we take the list of selectItems contained by the list binding and replace the index number that is normally used as key value with the actual attribute value that is set by the choice list. Here is the code of the get method:  public Object get(Object key) {   if (key instanceof FacesCtrlListBinding)   {     // we need to cast to internal class FacesCtrlListBinding rather than JUCtrlListBinding to     // be able to call getItems method. To prevent this import, we could evaluate an EL expression     // to get the list of items     FacesCtrlListBinding lb = (FacesCtrlListBinding) key;     if (cachedFilterLists.containsKey(lb.getName()))     {       return cachedFilterLists.get(lb.getName());     }     List<SelectItem> items = (List<SelectItem>)lb.getItems();     if (items==null || items.size()==0)     {       return items;     }     List<SelectItem> newItems = new ArrayList<SelectItem>();     JUCtrlValueDef def = ((JUCtrlValueDef)lb.getDef());     String valueAttr = def.getFirstAttrName();     // the items list has an index number as value, we need to replace this with the actual     // value of the attribute that is copied back by the choice list     for (int i = 0; i < items.size(); i++)     {       SelectItem si = (SelectItem) items.get(i);       Object value = lb.getValueFromList(i);       if (value instanceof Row)       {         Row row = (Row) value;         si.setValue(row.getAttribute(valueAttr));                 }       else       {         // this is the "empty" row, set value to empty string so all rows will be returned         // as user no longer wants to filter on this attribute         si.setValue("");       }       newItems.add(si);     }     cachedFilterLists.put(lb.getName(), newItems);     return newItems;   }   return null; } Note that we added caching to speed up performance, and to handle the situation where table filters or search criteria are set such that no rows are retrieved in the table. When there are no rows, there is no current row and the getItems method on the list binding will return no items.  An alternative approach to create the list of SelectItems would be to retrieve the iterator binding from the list binding and loop over the rows in the iterator binding rowset. Then we wouldn't need the import of the ADF internal oracle.adfinternal.view.faces.model.binding.FacesCtrlListBinding class, but then we need to figure out the display attributes from the list binding definition, and possible separate them with a dash if multiple display attributes are defined in the LOV. Doable but less reuse and more work. 3. Inside the filter facet for the column create an af:selectOneChoice with the value property of the f:selectItems tag referencing the get method of the managed bean:  <f:facet name="filter">   <af:selectOneChoice id="soc0" autoSubmit="true"                       value="#{vs.filterCriteria.RegionId}">     <!-- attention: the RegionId list binding must be created manually in the page definition! -->                       <f:selectItems id="si0"                    value="#{viewScope.TableFilterChoiceList[bindings.RegionId]}"/>   </af:selectOneChoice> </f:facet> Note that the managed bean is defined in viewScope for the caching to take effect. Here is a screen shot of the tabe filter in action: You can download the sample application here. 

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, January 18, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Tuesday, January 18, 2011Popular ReleasesThe Open Source Phasor Data Concentrator: January 2011 openPDC v1.4 Release: Planned version of the January 2011, version 1.4 release of the openPDC. This is a functional BETA version of the January 2011 openPDC. The final release of this version will include integrated system user authentication in the openPDC Manager along with detailed configuration change logging. Update notes: Real-time data access / subscription based API available supporting full resolution as well as down-sampled data Improved UDP_T support (control channel failure monitoring independent...mytrip.mvc (CMS & e-Commerce): mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 beta 2: New MVC3 RTM fix bug: Dropdown select fix bug: Add Store/Department and Add Store/Produser WEB.mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 Web for install hosting System Requirements: NET 4.0, MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) SRC.mytrip.mvc 1.0.52.1 System Requirements: Visual Studio 2010 or Web Deweloper 2010 MSSQL 2008 or MySql (auto creation table to database) if .\SQLEXPRESS auto creation database (App_Data folder) Connector/Net...Windows 7 Werkbank: PixelShader in WPF: Dieses Beispiel demonstriert wie man Pixelshader in bestehende WPF-Anwendungen integrieren kann, um mit grafische "Spielereien" die Oberfläche aufzuwerten.QRCode Helper: ver.1.0.0: This is first release.ASP.NET MVC Project Awesome, jQuery Ajax helpers (controls): 1.6.1: A rich set of helpers (controls) that you can use to build highly responsive and interactive Ajax-enabled Web applications. These helpers include Autocomplete, AjaxDropdown, Lookup, Confirm Dialog, Popup Form, Popup and Pager changes: RenderView controller extension works for razor also live demo switched to razorBloodSim: BloodSim - 1.3.3.1: - Priority update to resolve a bug that was causing Boss damage to ignore Blood Shields entirelyRawr: Rawr 4.0.16 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of this release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Tracker. W...MvcContrib: an Outer Curve Foundation project: MVC 3 - 3.0.51.0: Please see the Change Log for a complete list of changes. 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Cl...NuGet: NuGet 1.0 RTM: NuGet is a free, open source developer focused package management system for the .NET platform intent on simplifying the process of incorporating third party libraries into a .NET application during development. This release is a Visual Studio 2010 extension and contains the the Package Manager Console and the Add Package Dialog.MVC Music Store: MVC Music Store v2.0: This is the 2.0 release of the MVC Music Store Tutorial. This tutorial is updated for ASP.NET MVC 3 and Entity Framework Code-First, and contains fixes and improvements based on feedback and common questions from previous releases. The main download, MvcMusicStore-v2.0.zip, contains everything you need to build the sample application, including A detailed tutorial document in PDF format Assets you will need to build the project, including images, a stylesheet, and a pre-populated databas...Free Silverlight & WPF Chart Control - Visifire: Visifire SL and WPF Charts v3.6.7 GA Released: Hi, Today we are releasing Visifire 3.6.7 GA with the following feature: * Inlines property has been implemented in Title. Also, this release contains fix for the following bugs: * In Column and Bar chart DataPoint’s label properties were not working as expected at real-time if marker enabled was set to true. * 3D Column and Bar chart were not rendered properly if AxisMinimum property was set in x-axis. You can download Visifire v3.6.7 here. 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Getting Started A great place to start is with our Getting Started Guide: Getting Started Guide: http://umbraco.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?DownloadId=197051 Make sure to check the free foundation videos on how to get started building Umbraco sites. They're ...StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.14986.000: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Features: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new ObjectBasedEnvironment object does not resolve the StyleCop installation path, thus it does not return the ...Facebook C# SDK: 4.2.1: - Authentication bug fixes - Updated Json.Net to version 4.0.0 - BREAKING CHANGE: Removed cookieSupport config setting, now automatic. This download is also availible on NuGet: Facebook FacebookWeb FacebookWebMvcNew ProjectsAmazon Clone MVC: Amazon CloneBogglex: Bogglex is a single player Boggle game written using C# and WPF.ClomibepASP: ClomibepASPCommandLineHelp: CommandLineHelp is a framework for simplifying the automated execution of command-line programs and saving their output.DistriLog: This is set of libraries that allow you to handle distributed logging. This is aimed at applications that are installed on multiple machines and instead of having a central log server(that may slow down the application due to network latency), a local log is created. A synchronization process then unifies these logs into a central SQL database. 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The project is written in C#, using Visual Studio 2010.NUnit Windows Phone 7: Project to run NUnit Tests on Windows Phone 7 with a list of results shown and drill down detail view.Pratiques: Endroit pour gérer les Pratiques.Project-Cena2: Project-Cena2ReportEngine: The is report platform, it' can be extend to export reportSharepoint DeepZoom Search: This project demonstrates using A Silverlight DeepZoom app to query the SharePoint search api and show those results as deep zoom tiles. This project is based upon or uses components from the Eventr and SuperDeepZoom projects.SilverDesktop: SDSixport: Sixport is the C# port of the hexter DSSI software synthesizer plugin created by Sean Bolton and others. hexter is an open source emulation of the legendary Yamaha DX7 synthesizer. Changes done: OOP structure, algorithm specific rendering, LADSPA removal, speed improvements.Smug: Is your time writing code too valuable to spend writing tests? Are you too good for test code; too smug? Smug is a Studs and Mocks Uber Generator; a factory for creating proxy objects to simplify testing.sptest: one of the projectSQL Azure Demos: Home for Microsoft SQL Azure screencasts and demo applications.StaffPenalties: Staff Penalties... simple silverlight appTFS Global Alerts: A web service to notify any number of users when any work item in TFS changes. Notification logic is easily customisable to suit your environment. XNA SfxrSynth: Using settings from as3sfxr, SfxrSynth generates audio in the form of XNA SoundEffects for using in Windows or Xbox 360 games.???: ???????。

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