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Can anyone recommend a Windows 7 Slate that supports inking for OneNote?

- by Click Ahead

Hi All, I've been looking for a Windows 7 Slate for many months now that supports inking so I can use Microsoft OneNote. The slate is going to be used specifically to replace my notepad in meetings and I would like to be able to read and ink Word Documents, Excel spreadsheets, and use OneNote as my note taking application. I will also be doing the odd powerpoint presentation on it. I would like a 10" screen and very important is the ability to use a stylus with a fine tip (like a pen). I have been using the HP TC1100 with Windows XP tablet for a few years and even though it's served me well it's time to change. I've seen a few new tablets announced as CES 2011 but they all seem to be capacitive touch (movement with fingers). I'd like something I can use a stylus with a fine tip (like a pen). Any one got any idea on what's out there or what's due in the next month or two?

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Localization of DisplayNameAttribute

- by PowerKiKi

Hi, I am looking for a way to localize properties names displayed in a PropertyGrid. The property's name may be "overriden" using the DisplayNameAttribute attribute. Unfortunately attributes can not have non constant expressions. So I can not use strongly typed resources such as: class Foo { [DisplayAttribute(Resources.MyPropertyNameLocalized)] // do not compile string MyProperty {get; set;} } I had a look around and found some suggestion to inherit from DisplayNameAttribute to be able to use resource. I would end up up with code like: class Foo { [MyLocalizedDisplayAttribute("MyPropertyNameLocalized")] // not strongly typed string MyProperty {get; set;} } However I lose strongly typed resource benefits which is definitely not a good thing. Then I came across DisplayNameResourceAttribute which may be what I'm looking for. But it's supposed to be in Microsoft.VisualStudio.Modeling.Design namespace and I can't find what reference I am supposed to add for this namespace. Anybody know if there's a easier way to achieve DisplayName localization in a good way ? or if there is as way to use what Microsoft seems to be using for Visual Studio ?

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"This program might not have installed correctly" message in Windows 7 RC

- by kliu

I have an installer that works perfectly under NT 5.x, Vista, and Windows 7. It contains the proper manifest for UAC on NT 6.x. But starting with Windows 7 RC, every time the setup program closes, Windows produces an erroneous "This program might not have installed correctly" message, even though the program did install correctly with no problems whatsoever. I never got these spurious messages in Vista or in Windows 7 beta. I sent a bug report to Microsoft, but have not heard back. I thought that this might just be a glitch in the Windows 7 RC, but the problem is still there on a fresh install of one of the very recent RTM-escrow builds that was leaked. Microsoft has no documentation whatsoever about this--not even a hint to what might possibly be triggering it. Even more frustrating is that I get this "This program might not have installed correctly" message even if I cancel the install on the very first are-you-sure-you-want-to-proceed screen before any of the installation code (creating a temp dir, extracting files, copying, registry, etc.) is ever run. Has anyone figured this one out?

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Use AttachedProperty in Style in ControlTemplate

- by Andrey

Here is my simple app: <Window x:Class="WpfApplication1.Window1" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation" xmlns:x="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml" xmlns:app="clr-namespace:WpfApplication1" Title="Window1" Height="300" Width="300"> <Window.Resources> <Style x:Key="Test"> <Setter Property="Button.Template"> <Setter.Value> <ControlTemplate> <Border BorderBrush="Blue" BorderThickness="3" Background="Black" CornerRadius="{Binding app:Extras.CornerRadius}" > </Border> </ControlTemplate> </Setter.Value> </Setter> </Style> </Window.Resources> <Grid> <Button Height="23" HorizontalAlignment="Left" Margin="29,26,0,0" Name="button1" VerticalAlignment="Top" Width="75" app:Extras.CornerRadius="10" Style="{StaticResource Test}" >Button</Button> </Grid> </Window> Here is my AttachedPropery: namespace WpfApplication1 { public class Extras { public static readonly DependencyProperty CornerRadiusProperty = DependencyProperty.RegisterAttached( "CornerRadius", typeof(double), typeof(Button), new FrameworkPropertyMetadata(1.0d, FrameworkPropertyMetadataOptions.AffectsRender) ); public static void SetCornerRadius(UIElement element, double value) { element.SetValue(CornerRadiusProperty, value); } public static double GetCornerRadius(UIElement element) { return (double)element.GetValue(CornerRadiusProperty); } } } CornerRadius="{Binding app:Extras.CornerRadius}" this of course doesn't work. so how can I get value from here app:Extras.CornerRadius="10" thanks in advance!

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Windows Server: Do I really need servers in remote locations?

- by IMAbev

I have one main site with several servers an a 2008/2012 environment. I have 4 remote sites that are physically close (a few miles apart) and are all connected to the main site by 20meg fiber on a private network. At each of the remote locations I have a windows server that users log in to and where their files and apps are located. There are many considerations to answering this question. But the first thing I am wondering is do I really need a server at each location? Users are just logging in to this server for permissions and a vast majority of my users are only using word, excel and email. I am really interested in figuring out if I need servers at these locations. $3,000 to $4,000 per server every 3-5 years, licensing, administration... I know there are other considerations - speed, redundancy, if my link to the main site goes down the users have nothing. But I just am not convinced I need servers at these locations.

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Batch Inserts And Prepared Query Error

- by ircmaxell

Ok, so I need to populate a MS Access database table with results from a MySQL query. That's not hard at all. I've got the program written to where it copies a template .mdb file to a temp name and opens it via odbc. No problem so far. I've noticed that Access does not support batch inserting (VALUES (foo, bar), (second, query), (third query)). So that means I need to execute one query per row (there are potentially hundreds of thousands of rows). Initial performance tests show a rate of around 900 inserts/sec into Access. With our largest data sets, that could mean execution times of minutes (Which isn't the end of the world, but obviously the faster the better). So, I tried testing a prepared statement. But I keep getting an error (Warning: odbc_execute() [function.odbc-execute]: SQL error: [Microsoft][ODBC Microsoft Access Driver]COUNT field incorrect , SQL state 07001 in SQLExecute in D:\....php on line 30). Here's the code I'm using (Line 30 is odbc_execute): $sql = 'INSERT INTO table ([field0], [field1], [field2], [field3], [field4], [field5]) VALUES (?, ?, ?, ?, ?, ?)'; $stmt = odbc_prepare($conn, $sql); for ($i = 200001; $i < 300001; $i++) { $a = array($i, "Field1 $", "Field2 $i", "Field3 $i", "Field4 $i", $i); odbc_execute($stmt, $a); } So my question is two fold. First, is there any idea on why I'm getting that error (I've checked, and the number in the array matches the field list which matches the number of parameter ? markers)? And second, should I even bother with this or just use the straight INSERT statements? Like I said, time isn't critical, but if it's possible, I'd like to get that time as low as possible (Then again, I may be limited by disk throughput, since 900 operations/sec is high already)... Thanks

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Center <div> vertically within another <div>

- by sab

I am trying to setup something that looks like this with the arrow that is centered vertically: CSS: #arrowdiv { width:282px; height:61px; background-image:url('http://i.imgur.com/RV80I.png'); margin: 0 auto; } #optin { height:110px; width:960px; background-color:#FFFFBF; border:1px solid black; -moz-border-radius: 15px; border-radius: 15px; -moz-box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000; -webkit-box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000; box-shadow: 3px 3px 4px #000; /* For IE 8 */ -ms-filter: "progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(Strength=4, Direction=135, Color='#000000')"; /* For IE 5.5 - 7 */ filter: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.Shadow(Strength=4, Direction=135, Color='#000000'); margin: 0 auto; } #leftdiv { width:340px; height:108px; } ? HTML: <div id="optin"> <div id="leftdiv"> <div id="arrowdiv"></div> </div> </div>? http://jsfiddle.net/NzMLd/1/ Right now, it is only centered horizontally, as you can see in my jsFiddle.

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How come this relative positioned div is displayed differently in IE?

- by Camran

What is with these microsoft browsers? Does microsoft ever do a good job at anything... Anyways, I have a relative positioned div inside another div. The inside-div is positioned with percentage (left: 0%; top:13%). My problem is that in all IE versions the div is displayed some pixels further down than where it is displayed in Chrome, or FF... Anybody recognize this? <div class="nav_container" id="nav_container"> <div id="nav_container2" style="position: relative; left: 0%; top: 13%;"></div> </div> Also, I am just about to browser adjust my website so some article about most common problems with IE is appreciated. Thanks UPDATE: Here is the style for the primary div. .nav_container { background-image: url(../Graphics/menu_lvl1.gif); height: 101px; width: 720px; }

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Windows service (hosting WCF service) stops immediately on start up

- by Thr33Dii

My Question: I cannot navigate to the base address once the service is installed because the service won't remain running (stops immediately). Is there anything I need to do on the server or my machine to make the baseAddress valid? Background: I'm trying to learn how to use WCF services hosted in Windows Services. I have read several tutorials on how to accomplish this and it seems very straight forward. I've looked at this MSDN article and built it step-by-step. I can install the service on my machine and on a server, but when I start the service, it stops immediately. I then found this tutorial, which is essentially the same thing, but it contains some clients that consume the WCF service. I downloaded the source code, compiled, installed, but when I started the service, it stopped immediately. Searching SO, I found a possible solution that said to define the baseAddress when instantiating the ServiceHost, but that didnt help either. My serviceHost is defined as: serviceHost = new ServiceHost( typeof( CalculatorService ), new Uri( "http://localhost:8000/ServiceModelSamples/service" ) ); My service name, base address, and endpoint: <service name="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples.CalculatorService" behaviorConfiguration="CalculatorServiceBehavior"> <host> <baseAddresses> <add baseAddress="http://localhost:8000/ServiceModelSamples/service"/> </baseAddresses> </host> <endpoint address="" binding="wsHttpBinding" contract="Microsoft.ServiceModel.Samples.ICalculator"/> <endpoint address="mex" binding="mexHttpBinding" contract="IMetadataExchange"/> </service> I've verified the namespaces are identical. It's just getting frustrating that the tutorials seem to assume that the Windows service will start as long as all the stated steps are followed. I'm missing something and it's probably right in front of me. Please help!

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SQL Server 2008, Books Online, and old documentation...

- by Chris J

[I have no idea if stackoverflow really is right right place for this, but don't know how many devs on here run into msi issues with SQL Server; suggest SuperUser or ServerFault if folk think it's better on either of those] About a year ago, when we were looking at moving our codebase forward and migrating to SQL Server 2008, I pulled down a copy of Books Online from the MSDN. Reviewed, did background research, fed results upstream, grabbed Express and tinkered with that. Then we got the nod to move forward (hurrah!) this past couple of weeks. So armed with Developer Edition, and running through the install, I've since found out I've zapped the Books Online MSI, no-ones got a copy of it, and Microsoft only have a later version (Oct 2009) available, so damned if I can update my SQL Server fully and properly... {mutter grumble}. Does anyone know if old versions of Books Online are available for download anywhere? Poking around the Microsoft download centre can't find it, neither is my google-fu finding it. For reference, I'm looking for SQLServer2008_BOL_August2008_ENU.msi ... This may just be a case of good ol' manual delete the files and (try) and clean up the registry :-(

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Download Canvas Image Png Chome/Safari

- by user2639176

Works in Firefox, and won't work in Safari, or Chrome. function loadimage() { var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); if (window.XMLHttpRequest) {// code for IE7+, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, Safari xmlhttp=new XMLHttpRequest(); xmlhttp2=new XMLHttpRequest(); } else {// code for IE6, IE5 xmlhttp=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); xmlhttp2=new ActiveXObject("Microsoft.XMLHTTP"); } xmlhttp.onreadystatechange=function() { if (xmlhttp.readyState==4 && xmlhttp.status==200) { rasterizeHTML.drawHTML(xmlhttp.responseText, canvas); var t=setTimeout(function(){copy()},3000) } } xmlhttp.open("GET","/sm/<?=$sm[0];?>",true); xmlhttp.send(); } function copy() { var canvas = document.getElementById("canvas"); var img = canvas.toDataURL("image/png"); document.getElementById('dl').href = img; document.getElementById('dl').innerHTML = "Download"; } Now I didn't write this, so I don't know too much javascript. But the script works in Firefox. In Chrome, getting: Uncaught Security Error: An attempt was made to break through the security policy of the user-agent. For toDataURL("image/png")

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MS Ajax Libraries and Configured Assemblies

- by smehaffie

Use Case You have a brand new IIS servers that has .Net 3.5 installed and are migrating sites to the new servers. In the process of migrating sites you come across some sites that get an error about the version of AJAX libraries being references in the web.config. In the web.config all the entries reference 1.0.61025.0, but the older version of the AJAX libraries are not installed on the new servers, only the latest version is installed that comes with .Net 3.5. So what are the options to fix this issue. Solutions 1) Install the older version of the AJAX Libraries: Although this works, IMO it is never a great idea to install an older version of a library after a newer version has been installed. Plus, if all new application use the latest versions, is it worth the effort of installing the older version for a few legacy applications? 2) Update the web.config files so all references use latest version (3.5.0.0): This option is very time consuming and error prone. In addition, you will also have to update any pages where there is a register tag for the older libraries as well. This would require you to redeploy any application that have this issue. 3) Use the Configured Assembly capabilities of .Net (aka: Assembly Bindings) to make any application that uses the older AJAX libraries to use the new AJAX libraries. IMO, this is the easiest, quickest and least invasive way to fix the issue. Below are the steps to implement this fix. Solution #3 Do the following steps on the IIS servers that the issue is occurring. The 2 assemblies that need assemblies bindings created are: System.Web.Extension & System.Web.Extensions.Design 1) Go to Start - > All Program -> Administrative Tools -> Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration. 2) Right click on "Configured Assemblies" to view list of configured assemblies. 3) Left Click on right pane to bring up menu and choose "Add". 4) Make sure "Choose and assembly from the assembly cache is checked" and click the "Choose Assembly" button. 5) Choose System.Web.Extension (does not matter what version). 6) Click the "Finish" button. 7) Binding Policy Tab - Enter Requested Version = 1.0.61025.0 - Enter New Version = 3.5.0.0 8) Repeat steps 2-7 for the System.Web.Extensions.Design assembly. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Note: If "Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0 Configuration does not exist under Admin tools use mmc to access it (see below) 1) Start -> Run -> Enter MMC 2) File - > Add/Remove Snap-In then Click "Add" button 3) Choose ".Net 2.0 Configuration" then click "Add" button and then the "Close" Button. 4) On "Add/Remove Snapin" windows click the "OK" Button. 5) Expand the tree on the right and you can start following the directions above for adding the configured assemblies. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

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Dynamic JSON Parsing in .NET with JsonValue

- by Rick Strahl

So System.Json has been around for a while in Silverlight, but it's relatively new for the desktop .NET framework and now moving into the lime-light with the pending release of ASP.NET Web API which is bringing a ton of attention to server side JSON usage. The JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray objects are going to be pretty useful for Web API applications as they allow you dynamically create and parse JSON values without explicit .NET types to serialize from or into. But even more so I think JsonValue et al. are going to be very useful when consuming JSON APIs from various services. Yes I know C# is strongly typed, why in the world would you want to use dynamic values? So many times I've needed to retrieve a small morsel of information from a large service JSON response and rather than having to map the entire type structure of what that service returns, JsonValue actually allows me to cherry pick and only work with the values I'm interested in, without having to explicitly create everything up front. With JavaScriptSerializer or DataContractJsonSerializer you always need to have a strong type to de-serialize JSON data into. Wouldn't it be nice if no explicit type was required and you could just parse the JSON directly using a very easy to use object syntax? That's exactly what JsonValue, JsonObject and JsonArray accomplish using a JSON parser and some sweet use of dynamic sauce to make it easy to access in code. Creating JSON on the fly with JsonValue Let's start with creating JSON on the fly. It's super easy to create a dynamic object structure. JsonValue uses the dynamic keyword extensively to make it intuitive to create object structures and turn them into JSON via dynamic object syntax. Here's an example of creating a music album structure with child songs using JsonValue:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueOutputTest() { // strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // dynamic expando instance you can add properties to dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; album.Artist = "AC/DC"; album.YearReleased = 1977; album.Songs = new JsonArray() as dynamic; dynamic song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; song.SongLength = "4:11"; album.Songs.Add(song); song = new JsonObject(); song.SongName = "Love at First Feel"; song.SongLength = "3:10"; album.Songs.Add(song); Console.WriteLine(album.ToString()); } This produces proper JSON just as you would expect: {"AlbumName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","Artist":"AC\/DC","YearReleased":1977,"Songs":[{"SongName":"Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap","SongLength":"4:11"},{"SongName":"Love at First Feel","SongLength":"3:10"}]} The important thing about this code is that there's no explicitly type that is used for holding the values to serialize to JSON. I am essentially creating this value structure on the fly by adding properties and then serialize it to JSON. This means this code can be entirely driven at runtime without compile time restraints of structure for the JSON output. Here I use JsonObject() to create a new object and immediately cast it to dynamic. JsonObject() is kind of similar in behavior to ExpandoObject in that it allows you to add properties by simply assigning to them. Internally, JsonValue/JsonObject these values are stored in pseudo collections of key value pairs that are exposed as properties through the DynamicObject functionality in .NET. The syntax gets a little tedious only if you need to create child objects or arrays that have to be explicitly defined first. Other than that the syntax looks like normal object access sytnax. Always remember though these values are dynamic - which means no Intellisense and no compiler type checking. It's up to you to ensure that the values you create are accessed consistently and without typos in your code. Note that you can also access the JsonValue instance directly and get access to the underlying type. This means you can assign properties by string, which can be useful for fully data driven JSON generation from other structures. Below you can see both styles of access next to each other:// strong type instance var jsonObject = new JsonObject(); // you can explicitly add values here jsonObject.Add("Entered", DateTime.Now); // expando style instance you can just 'use' properties dynamic album = jsonObject; album.AlbumName = "Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"; JsonValue internally stores properties keys and values in collections and you can iterate over them at runtime. You can also manipulate the collections if you need to to get the object structure to look exactly like you want. Again, if you've used ExpandoObject before JsonObject/Value are very similar in the behavior of the structure. Reading JSON strings into JsonValue The JsonValue structure supports importing JSON via the Parse() and Load() methods which can read JSON data from a string or various streams respectively. Essentially JsonValue includes the core JSON parsing to turn a JSON string into a collection of JsonValue objects that can be then referenced using familiar dynamic object syntax. Here's a simple example:[TestMethod] public void JsonValueParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"{""Name"":""Rick"",""Company"":""West Wind"",""Entered"":""2012-03-16T00:03:33.245-10:00""}"; dynamic json = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); // values require casting string name = json.Name; string company = json.Company; DateTime entered = json.Entered; Assert.AreEqual(name, "Rick"); Assert.AreEqual(company, "West Wind"); } The JSON string represents an object with three properties which is parsed into a JsonValue object and cast to dynamic. Once cast to dynamic I can then go ahead and access the object using familiar object syntax. Note that the actual values - json.Name, json.Company, json.Entered - are actually of type JsonPrimitive and I have to assign them to their appropriate types first before I can do type comparisons. The dynamic properties will automatically cast to the right type expected as long as the compiler can resolve the type of the assignment or usage. The AreEqual() method oesn't as it expects two object instances and comparing json.Company to "West Wind" is comparing two different types (JsonPrimitive to String) which fails. So the intermediary assignment is required to make the test pass. The JSON structure can be much more complex than this simple example. Here's another example of an array of albums serialized to JSON and then parsed through with JsonValue():[TestMethod] public void JsonArrayParsingTest() { var jsonString = @"[ { ""Id"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""AlbumName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""Artist"": ""AC/DC"", ""YearReleased"": 1977, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61kTaH-uZBL._AA115_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008BXJ4/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B00008BXJ4"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap"", ""SongLength"": ""4:11"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Love at First Feel"", ""SongLength"": ""3:10"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""b3ec4e5c"", ""SongName"": ""Big Balls"", ""SongLength"": ""2:38"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""67280fb8"", ""AlbumName"": ""Echoes, Silence, Patience & Grace"", ""Artist"": ""Foo Fighters"", ""YearReleased"": 2007, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2810521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41mtlesQPVL._SL500_AA280_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000UFAURI/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=westwindtechn-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B000UFAURI"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""The Pretender"", ""SongLength"": ""4:29"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Let it Die"", ""SongLength"": ""4:05"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""67280fb8"", ""SongName"": ""Erase/Replay"", ""SongLength"": ""4:13"" } ] }, { ""Id"": ""7b919432"", ""AlbumName"": ""End of the Silence"", ""Artist"": ""Henry Rollins Band"", ""YearReleased"": 1992, ""Entered"": ""2012-03-16T00:13:12.2800521-10:00"", ""AlbumImageUrl"": ""http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51FO3rb1tuL._SL160_AA160_.jpg"", ""AmazonUrl"": ""http://www.amazon.com/End-Silence-Rollins-Band/dp/B0000040OX/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1302232195&sr=8-5"", ""Songs"": [ { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Low Self Opinion"", ""SongLength"": ""5:24"" }, { ""AlbumId"": ""7b919432"", ""SongName"": ""Grip"", ""SongLength"": ""4:51"" } ] } ]"; dynamic albums = JsonValue.Parse(jsonString); foreach (dynamic album in albums) { Console.WriteLine(album.AlbumName + " (" + album.YearReleased.ToString() + ")"); foreach (dynamic song in album.Songs) { Console.WriteLine("\t" + song.SongName ); } } Console.WriteLine(albums[0].AlbumName); Console.WriteLine(albums[0].Songs[1].SongName);} It's pretty sweet how easy it becomes to parse even complex JSON and then just run through the object using object syntax, yet without an explicit type in the mix. In fact it looks and feels a lot like if you were using JavaScript to parse through this data, doesn't it? And that's the point…© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in .NET Web Api JSON Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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SQL SERVER – Generate Report for Index Physical Statistics – SSMS

- by pinaldave

Few days ago, I wrote about SQL SERVER – Out of the Box – Activity and Performance Reports from SSSMS (Link). A user asked me a question regarding if we can use similar reports to get the detail about Indexes. Yes, it is possible to do the same. There are similar type of reports are available at Database level, just like those available at the Server Instance level. You can right click on Database name and click Reports. Under Standard Reports, you will find following reports. Disk Usage Disk Usage by Top Tables Disk Usage by Table Disk Usage by Partition Backup and Restore Events All Transactions All Blocking Transactions Top Transactions by Age Top Transactions by Blocked Transactions Count Top Transactions by Locks Count Resource Locking Statistics by Objects Object Execute Statistics Database Consistency history Index Usage Statistics Index Physical Statistics Schema Change history User Statistics Select the Reports with name Index Physical Statistics. Once click, a report containing all the index names along with other information related to index will be visible, e.g. Index Type and number of partitions. One column that caught my interest was Operation Recommended. In some place, it suggested that index needs to be rebuilt. It is also possible to click and expand the column of partitions and see additional details about index as well. DBA and Developers who just want to have idea about how your index is and its physical statistics can use this tool. Click to Enlarge Note: Please note that I will rebuild my indexes just because this report is recommending it. There are many other parameters you need to consider before rebuilding indexes. However, this tool gives you the accurate stats of your index and it can be right away exported to Excel or PDF writing by clicking on the report. Reference : Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQL Utility, T SQL, Technology

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SQL SERVER – History of SQL Server Database Encryption

- by pinaldave

I recently met Michael Coles and Rodeney Landrum the author of one of the kind book Expert SQL Server 2008 Encryption at SQLPASS in Seattle. During the conversation we ended up how Microsoft is evolving encryption technology. The same discussion lead to talking about history of encryption tools in SQL Server. Michale pointed me to page 18 of his book of encryption. He explicitly give me permission to re-produce relevant part of history from his book. Encryption in SQL Server 2000 Built-in cryptographic encryption functionality was nonexistent in SQL Server 2000 and prior versions. In order to get server-side encryption in SQL Server you had to resort to purchasing or creating your own SQL Server XPs. Creating your own cryptographic XPs could be a daunting task owing to the fact that XPs had to be compiled as native DLLs (using a language like C or C++) and the XP application programming interface (API) was poorly documented. In addition there were always concerns around creating wellbehaved XPs that “played nicely” with the SQL Server process. Encryption in SQL Server 2005 Prior to the release of SQL Server 2005 there was a flurry of regulatory activity in response to accounting scandals and attacks on repositories of confidential consumer data. Much of this regulation centered onthe need for protecting and controlling access to sensitive financial and consumer information. With the release of SQL Server 2005 Microsoft responded to the increasing demand for built-in encryption byproviding the necessary tools to encrypt data at the column level. This functionality prominently featured the following: Support for column-level encryption of data using symmetric keys or passphrases. Built-in access to a variety of symmetric and asymmetric encryption algorithms, including AES, DES, Triple DES, RC2, RC4, and RSA. Capability to create and manage symmetric keys. Key creation and management. Ability to generate asymmetric keys and self-signed certificates, or to install external asymmetric keys and certificates. Implementation of hierarchical model for encryption key management, similar to the ANSI X9.17 standard model. SQL functions to generate one-way hash codes and digital signatures, including SHA-1 and MD5 hashes. Additional SQL functions to encrypt and decrypt data. Extensions to the SQL language to support creation, use, and administration of encryption keys and certificates. SQL CLR extensions that provide access to .NET-based encryption functionality. Encryption in SQL Server 2008 Encryption demands have increased over the past few years. For instance, there has been a demand for the ability to store encryption keys “off-the-box,” physically separate from the database and the data it contains. Also there is a recognized requirement for legacy databases and applications to take advantage of encryption without changing the existing code base. To address these needs SQL Server 2008 adds the following features to its encryption arsenal: Transparent Data Encryption (TDE): Allows you to encrypt an entire database, including log files and the tempdb database, in such a way that it is transparent to client applications. Extensible Key Management (EKM): Allows you to store and manage your encryption keys on an external device known as a hardware security module (HSM). Cryptographic random number generation functionality. Additional cryptography-related catalog views and dynamic management views. SQL language extensions to support the new encryption functionality. The encryption book covers all the tools in its various chapter in one simple story. If you are interested how encryption evolved and reached to the stage where it is today, this book is must for everyone. You can read my earlier review of the book over here. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Book Review, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Encryption, SQL Server Encryption, SQLPASS

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Installing the Updated XP Mode which Requires no Hardware Virtualization

- by Mysticgeek

Good news for those of you who have a computer without Hardware Virtualization, Microsoft had dropped the requirement so you can now run XP Mode on your machine. Here we take a look at how to install it and getting working on your PC. Microsoft has dropped the requirement that your CPU supports Hardware Virtualization for XP Mode in Windows 7. Before this requirement was dropped, we showed you how to use SecureAble to find out if your machine would run XP Mode. If it couldn’t, you might have gotten lucky with turning Hardware Virtualization on in your BIOS, or getting an update that would enable it. If not, you were out of luck or would need a different machine. Note: Although you no longer need Hardware Virtualization, you still need Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate version of Windows 7. Download Correct Version of XP Mode For this article we’re installing it on a Dell machine that doesn’t support Hardware Virtualization on Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit version. The first thing you’ll want to do is go to the XP Mode website and select your edition of Windows 7 and language. Then there are three downloads you’ll need to get from the page. Windows XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC, and the Windows XP Mode Update (All Links Below). Windows genuine validation is required before you can download the XP Mode files. To make the validation process easier you might want to use IE when downloading these files and validating your version of Windows. Installing XP Mode After validation is successful the first thing to download and install is XP Mode, which is easy following the wizard and accepting the defaults. The second step is to install KB958559 which is Windows Virtual PC. After it’s installed, a reboot is required. After you’ve come back from the restart, you’ll need to install KB977206 which is the Windows XP Mode Update. After that’s installed, yet another restart of your system is required. After the update is configured and you return from the second reboot, you’ll find XP Mode in the Start menu under the Windows Virtual PC folder. When it launches accept the license agreement and click Next. Enter in your log in credentials… Choose if you want Automatic Updates or not… Then you’re given a message saying setup will share the hardware on your computer, then click Start Setup. While setup completes, you’re shown a display of what XP Mode does and how to use it. XP Mode launches and you can now begin using it to run older applications that are not compatible with Windows 7. Conclusion This is a welcome news for many who want the ability to use XP Mode but didn’t have the proper hardware to do it. The bad news is users of Home versions of Windows still don’t get to enjoy the XP Mode feature officially. However, we have an article that shows a great workaround – Create an XP Mode for Windows 7 Home Versions & Vista. Download XP Mode, Windows Virtual PC, and Windows XP Mode Update Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Our Look at XP Mode in Windows 7Run XP Mode on Windows 7 Machines Without Hardware VirtualizationInstall XP Mode with VirtualBox Using the VMLite PluginUnderstanding the New Hyper-V Feature in Windows Server 2008How To Run XP Mode in VirtualBox on Windows 7 (sort of) TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional Ben & Jerry’s Free Cone Day, 3/23/10 New Stinger from McAfee Helps Remove ‘FakeAlert’ Threats Google Apps Marketplace: Tools & Services For Google Apps Users Get News Quick and Precise With Newser Scan for Viruses in Ubuntu using ClamAV Replace Your Windows Task Manager With System Explorer

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NoSQL with MongoDB, NoRM and ASP.NET MVC

- by shiju

In this post, I will give an introduction to how to work on NoSQL and document database with MongoDB , NoRM and ASP.Net MVC 2. NoSQL and Document Database The NoSQL movement is getting big attention in this year and people are widely talking about document databases and NoSQL along with web application scalability. According to Wikipedia, "NoSQL is a movement promoting a loosely defined class of non-relational data stores that break with a long history of relational databases. These data stores may not require fixed table schemas, usually avoid join operations and typically scale horizontally. Academics and papers typically refer to these databases as structured storage". Document databases are schema free so that you can focus on the problem domain and don't have to worry about updating the schema when your domain is evolving. This enables truly a domain driven development. One key pain point of relational database is the synchronization of database schema with your domain entities when your domain is evolving.There are lots of NoSQL implementations are available and both CouchDB and MongoDB got my attention. While evaluating both CouchDB and MongoDB, I found that CouchDB can’t perform dynamic queries and later I picked MongoDB over CouchDB. There are many .Net drivers available for MongoDB document database. MongoDB MongoDB is an open source, scalable, high-performance, schema-free, document-oriented database written in the C++ programming language. It has been developed since October 2007 by 10gen. MongoDB stores your data as binary JSON (BSON) format . MongoDB has been getting a lot of attention and you can see the some of the list of production deployments from here - http://www.mongodb.org/display/DOCS/Production+Deployments NoRM – C# driver for MongoDB NoRM is a C# driver for MongoDB with LINQ support. NoRM project is available on Github at http://github.com/atheken/NoRM. Demo with ASP.NET MVC I will show a simple demo with MongoDB, NoRM and ASP.NET MVC. To work with MongoDB and NoRM, do the following steps Download the MongoDB databse For Windows 32 bit, download from http://downloads.mongodb.org/win32/mongodb-win32-i386-1.4.1.zip and for Windows 64 bit, download from http://downloads.mongodb.org/win32/mongodb-win32-x86_64-1.4.1.zip . The zip contains the mongod.exe for run the server and mongo.exe for the client Download the NorM driver for MongoDB at http://github.com/atheken/NoRM Create a directory call C:\data\db. This is the default location of MongoDB database. You can override the behavior. Run C:\Mongo\bin\mongod.exe. This will start the MongoDb server Now I am going to demonstrate how to program with MongoDb and NoRM in an ASP.NET MVC application.Let’s write a domain class public class Category { [MongoIdentifier]public ObjectId Id { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Name Required")][StringLength(25, ErrorMessage = "Must be less than 25 characters")]public string Name { get; set;}public string Description { get; set; }} ObjectId is a NoRM type that represents a MongoDB ObjectId. NoRM will automatically update the Id becasue it is decorated by the MongoIdentifier attribute. The next step is to create a mongosession class. This will do the all interactions to the MongoDB. internal class MongoSession<TEntity> : IDisposable{ private readonly MongoQueryProvider provider; public MongoSession() { this.provider = new MongoQueryProvider("Expense"); } public IQueryable<TEntity> Queryable { get { return new MongoQuery<TEntity>(this.provider); } } public MongoQueryProvider Provider { get { return this.provider; } } public void Add<T>(T item) where T : class, new() { this.provider.DB.GetCollection<T>().Insert(item); } public void Dispose() { this.provider.Server.Dispose(); } public void Delete<T>(T item) where T : class, new() { this.provider.DB.GetCollection<T>().Delete(item); } public void Drop<T>() { this.provider.DB.DropCollection(typeof(T).Name); } public void Save<T>(T item) where T : class,new() { this.provider.DB.GetCollection<T>().Save(item); } } The MongoSession constrcutor will create an instance of MongoQueryProvider that supports the LINQ expression and also create a database with name "Expense". If database is exists, it will use existing database, otherwise it will create a new databse with name "Expense". The Save method can be used for both Insert and Update operations. If the object is new one, it will create a new record and otherwise it will update the document with given ObjectId. Let’s create ASP.NET MVC controller actions for CRUD operations for the domain class Category public class CategoryController : Controller{ //Index - Get the category listpublic ActionResult Index(){ using (var session = new MongoSession<Category>()) { var categories = session.Queryable.AsEnumerable<Category>(); return View(categories); }} //edit a single category[HttpGet]public ActionResult Edit(ObjectId id) { using (var session = new MongoSession<Category>()) { var category = session.Queryable .Where(c => c.Id == id) .FirstOrDefault(); return View("Save",category); } }// GET: /Category/Create[HttpGet]public ActionResult Create(){ var category = new Category(); return View("Save", category);}//insert or update a category[HttpPost]public ActionResult Save(Category category){ if (!ModelState.IsValid) { return View("Save", category); } using (var session = new MongoSession<Category>()) { session.Save(category); return RedirectToAction("Index"); } }//Delete category[HttpPost]public ActionResult Delete(ObjectId Id){ using (var session = new MongoSession<Category>()) { var category = session.Queryable .Where(c => c.Id == Id) .FirstOrDefault(); session.Delete(category); var categories = session.Queryable.AsEnumerable<Category>(); return PartialView("CategoryList", categories); } } } You can easily work on MongoDB with NoRM and can use with ASP.NET MVC applications. I have created a repository on CodePlex at http://mongomvc.codeplex.com and you can download the source code of the ASP.NET MVC application from here

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Tip/Trick: Fix Common SEO Problems Using the URL Rewrite Extension

- by ScottGu

Search engine optimization (SEO) is important for any publically facing web-site. A large % of traffic to sites now comes directly from search engines, and improving your site’s search relevancy will lead to more users visiting your site from search engine queries. This can directly or indirectly increase the money you make through your site. This blog post covers how you can use the free Microsoft URL Rewrite Extension to fix a bunch of common SEO problems that your site might have. It takes less than 15 minutes (and no code changes) to apply 4 simple URL Rewrite rules to your site, and in doing so cause search engines to drive more visitors and traffic to your site. The techniques below work equally well with both ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET MVC based sites. They also works with all versions of ASP.NET (and even work with non-ASP.NET content). [In addition to blogging, I am also now using Twitter for quick updates and to share links. Follow me at: twitter.com/scottgu] Measuring the SEO of your website with the Microsoft SEO Toolkit A few months ago I blogged about the free SEO Toolkit that we’ve shipped. This useful tool enables you to automatically crawl/scan your site for SEO correctness, and it then flags any SEO issues it finds. I highly recommend downloading and using the tool against any public site you work on. It makes it easy to spot SEO issues you might have in your site, and pinpoint ways to optimize it further. Below is a simple example of a report I ran against one of my sites (www.scottgu.com) prior to applying the URL Rewrite rules I’ll cover later in this blog post: Search Relevancy and URL Splitting Two of the important things that search engines evaluate when assessing your site’s “search relevancy” are: How many other sites link to your content. Search engines assume that if a lot of people around the web are linking to your content, then it is likely useful and so weight it higher in relevancy. The uniqueness of the content it finds on your site. If search engines find that the content is duplicated in multiple places around the Internet (or on multiple URLs on your site) then it is likely to drop the relevancy of the content. One of the things you want to be very careful to avoid when building public facing sites is to not allow different URLs to retrieve the same content within your site. Doing so will hurt with both of the situations above. In particular, allowing external sites to link to the same content with multiple URLs will cause your link-count and page-ranking to be split up across those different URLs (and so give you a smaller page rank than what it would otherwise be if it was just one URL). Not allowing external sites to link to you in different ways sounds easy in theory – but you might wonder what exactly this means in practice and how you avoid it. 4 Really Common SEO Problems Your Sites Might Have Below are 4 really common scenarios that can cause your site to inadvertently expose multiple URLs for the same content. When this happens external sites linking to yours will end up splitting their page links across multiple URLs - and as a result cause you to have a lower page ranking with search engines than you deserve. SEO Problem #1: Default Document IIS (and other web servers) supports the concept of a “default document”. This allows you to avoid having to explicitly specify the page you want to serve at either the root of the web-site/application, or within a sub-directory. This is convenient – but means that by default this content is available via two different publically exposed URLs (which is bad). For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx SEO Problem #2: Different URL Casings Web developers often don’t realize URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web. This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx SEO Problem #3: Trailing Slashes Consider the below two URLs – they might look the same at first, but they are subtly different. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ SEO Problem #4: Canonical Host Names Sometimes sites support scenarios where they support a web-site with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself. This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx/ How to Easily Fix these SEO Problems in 10 minutes (or less) using IIS Rewrite If you haven’t been careful when coding your sites, chances are you are suffering from one (or more) of the above SEO problems. Addressing these issues will improve your search engine relevancy ranking and drive more traffic to your site. The “good news” is that fixing the above 4 issues is really easy using the URL Rewrite Extension. This is a completely free Microsoft extension available for IIS 7.x (on Windows Server 2008, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows 7 and Windows Vista). The great thing about using the IIS Rewrite extension is that it allows you to fix the above problems *without* having to change any code within your applications. You can easily install the URL Rewrite Extension in under 3 minutes using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (a free tool we ship that automates setting up web servers and development machines). Just click the green “Install Now” button on the URL Rewrite Spotlight page to install it on your Windows Server 2008, Windows 7 or Windows Vista machine: Once installed you’ll find that a new “URL Rewrite” icon is available within the IIS 7 Admin Tool: Double-clicking the icon will open up the URL Rewrite admin panel – which will display the list of URL Rewrite rules configured for a particular application or site: Notice that our rewrite rule list above is currently empty (which is the default when you first install the extension). We can click the “Add Rule…” link button in the top-right of the panel to add and enable new URL Rewriting logic for our site. Scenario 1: Handling Default Document Scenarios One of the SEO problems I discussed earlier in this post was the scenario where the “default document” feature of IIS causes you to inadvertently expose two URLs for the same content on your site. For example: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the second URL to instead go to the first one. We will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. Let’s look at how we can create such a rule. We’ll begin by clicking the “Add Rule” link in the screenshot above. This will cause the below dialog to display: We’ll select the “Blank Rule” template within the “Inbound rules” section to create a new custom URL Rewriting rule. This will display an empty pane like below: Don’t worry – setting up the above rule is easy. The following 4 steps explain how to do so: Step 1: Name the Rule Our first step will be to name the rule we are creating. Naming it with a descriptive name will make it easier to find and understand later. Let’s name this rule our “Default Document URL Rewrite” rule: Step 2: Setup the Regular Expression that Matches this Rule Our second step will be to specify a regular expression filter that will cause this rule to execute when an incoming URL matches the regex pattern. Don’t worry if you aren’t good with regular expressions - I suck at them too. The trick is to know someone who is good at them or copy/paste them from a web-site. Below we are going to specify the following regular expression as our pattern rule: (.*?)/?Default\.aspx$ This pattern will match any URL string that ends with Default.aspx. The "(.*?)" matches any preceding character zero or more times. The "/?" part says to match the slash symbol zero or one times. The "$" symbol at the end will ensure that the pattern will only match strings that end with Default.aspx. Combining all these regex elements allows this rule to work not only for the root of your web site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/default.aspx) but also for any application or subdirectory within the site (e.g. http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx. Because the “ignore case” checkbox is selected it will match both “Default.aspx” as well as “default.aspx” within the URL. One nice feature built-into the rule editor is a “Test pattern” button that you can click to bring up a dialog that allows you to test out a few URLs with the rule you are configuring: Above I've added a “products/default.aspx” URL and clicked the “Test” button. This will give me immediate feedback on whether the rule will execute for it. Step 3: Setup a Permanent Redirect Action We’ll then setup an action to occur when our regular expression pattern matches the incoming URL: In the dialog above I’ve changed the “Action Type” drop down to be a “Redirect” action. The “Redirect Type” will be a HTTP 301 Permanent redirect – which means search engines will follow it. I’ve also set the “Redirect URL” property to be: {R:1}/ This indicates that we want to redirect the web client requesting the original URL to a new URL that has the originally requested URL path - minus the "Default.aspx" in it. For example, requests for http://scottgu.com/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/, and requests for http://scottgu.com/photos/default.aspx will be redirected to http://scottgu.com/photos/ The "{R:N}" regex construct, where N >= 0, is called a back-reference and N is the back-reference index. In the case of our pattern "(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$", if the input URL is "products/Default.aspx" then {R:0} will contain "products/Default.aspx" and {R:1} will contain "products". We are going to use this {R:1}/ value to be the URL we redirect users to. Step 4: Apply and Save the Rule Our final step is to click the “Apply” button in the top right hand of the IIS admin tool – which will cause the tool to persist the URL Rewrite rule into our application’s root web.config file (under a <system.webServer/rewrite> configuration section): <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Because IIS 7.x and ASP.NET share the same web.config files, you can actually just copy/paste the above code into your web.config files using Visual Studio and skip the need to run the admin tool entirely. This also makes adding/deploying URL Rewrite rules with your ASP.NET applications really easy. Step 5: Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/ http://scottgu.com/default.aspx Notice that the second URL automatically redirects to the first one. Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and should update the page ranking of http://scottgu.com to include links to http://scottgu.com/default.aspx as well. Scenario 2: Different URL Casing Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is that URLs are case sensitive to search engines on the web. This means that search engines will treat the following links as two completely different URLs: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL to instead go to the second (all lower-case) one. Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again. This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: Unlike the previous scenario (where we created a “Blank Rule”), with this scenario we can take advantage of a built-in “Enforce lowercase URLs” rule template. When we click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that enforces the use of lowercase letters in URLs: When we click the “Yes” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if an incoming URL has upper-case characters in it – and automatically send users to a lower-case version of the URL: We can click the “Apply” button to use this rule “as-is” and have it apply to all incoming URLs to our site. Because my www.scottgu.com site uses ASP.NET Web Forms, I’m going to make one small change to the rule we generated above – which is to add a condition that will ensure that URLs to ASP.NET’s built-in “WebResource.axd” handler are excluded from our case-sensitivity URL Rewrite logic. URLs to the WebResource.axd handler will only come from server-controls emitted from my pages – and will never be linked to from external sites. While my site will continue to function fine if we redirect these URLs to automatically be lower-case – doing so isn’t necessary and will add an extra HTTP redirect to many of my pages. The good news is that adding a condition that prevents my URL Rewriting rule from happening with certain URLs is easy. We simply need to expand the “Conditions” section of the form above We can then click the “Add” button to add a condition clause. This will bring up the “Add Condition” dialog: Above I’ve entered {URL} as the Condition input – and said that this rule should only execute if the URL does not match a regex pattern which contains the string “WebResource.axd”. This will ensure that WebResource.axd URLs to my site will be allowed to execute just fine without having the URL be re-written to be all lower-case. Note: If you have static resources (like references to .jpg, .css, and .js files) within your site that currently use upper-case characters you’ll probably want to add additional condition filter clauses so that URLs to them also don’t get redirected to be lower-case (just add rules for patterns like .jpg, .gif, .js, etc). Your site will continue to work fine if these URLs get redirected to be lower case (meaning the site won’t break) – but it will cause an extra HTTP redirect to happen on your site for URLs that don’t need to be redirected for SEO reasons. So setting up a condition clause makes sense to add. When I click the “ok” button above and apply our lower-case rewriting rule the admin tool will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com/Albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has a capital “A”) automatically does a redirect to a lower-case version of the URL. Scenario 3: Trailing Slashes Another common SEO problem I discussed earlier in this post is the scenario of trailing slashes within URLs. The trailing slash creates yet another situation that causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and so split search rankings: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that does not have a trailing slash) to instead go to the second one that does. Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again. This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Append or remove the trailing slash symbol” rule template. When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a rule that automatically redirects users to a URL with a trailing slash if one isn’t present: Like within our previous lower-casing rewrite rule we’ll add one additional condition clause that will exclude WebResource.axd URLs from being processed by this rule. This will avoid an unnecessary redirect for happening for those URLs. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL doesn’t have a trailing slash – and if the URL is not processed by either a directory or a file. This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /> </rule> <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*[^/])$" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://scottgu.com http://scottgu.com/ Notice that the first URL (which has no trailing slash) automatically does a redirect to a URL with the trailing slash. Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. Scenario 4: Canonical Host Names The final SEO problem I discussed earlier are scenarios where a site works with both a leading “www” hostname prefix as well as just the hostname itself. This causes search engines to treat the URLs as different and split search rankling: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx We can fix this by adding a new IIS Rewrite rule that automatically redirects anyone who navigates to the first URL (that has a www prefix) to instead go to the second URL. Like before, we will setup the HTTP redirect to be a “permanent redirect” – which will indicate to search engines that they should follow the redirect and use the new URL they are redirected to as the identifier of the content they retrieve. To create such a rule we’ll click the “Add Rule” link in the URL Rewrite admin tool again. This will cause the “Add Rule” dialog to appear again: The URL Rewrite admin tool has a built-in “Canonical domain name” rule template. When we select it and click the “ok” button we’ll see the following dialog which asks us if we want to create a redirect rule that automatically redirects users to a primary host name URL: Above I’m entering the primary URL address I want to expose to the web: scottgu.com. When we click the “OK” button we’ll get a pre-written rule that automatically performs a permanent redirect if the URL has another leading domain name prefix. This will save the following additional rule to our web.config file: <configuration> <system.webServer> <rewrite> <rules> <rule name="Cannonical Hostname"> <match url="(.*)" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{HTTP_HOST}" pattern="^scottgu\.com$" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="http://scottgu.com/{R:1}" /> </rule> <rule name="Default Document" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*?)/?Default\.aspx$" /> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> <rule name="Lower Case URLs" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="[A-Z]" ignoreCase="false" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{ToLower:{URL}}" /> </rule> <rule name="Trailing Slash" stopProcessing="true"> <match url="(.*[^/])$" /> <conditions logicalGrouping="MatchAll" trackAllCaptures="false"> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsDirectory" negate="true" /> <add input="{REQUEST_FILENAME}" matchType="IsFile" negate="true" /> <add input="{URL}" pattern="WebResource.axd" negate="true" /> </conditions> <action type="Redirect" url="{R:1}/" /> </rule> </rules> </rewrite> </system.webServer> </configuration> Try the Rule Out Now that we’ve saved the rule, let’s try it out on our site. Try the following two URLs on my site: http://www.scottgu.com/albums.aspx http://scottgu.com/albums.aspx Notice that the first URL (which has the “www” prefix) now automatically does a redirect to the second URL which does not have the www prefix. Because it is a permanent redirect, search engines will follow the URL and update the page ranking. 4 Simple Rules for Improved SEO The above 4 rules are pretty easy to setup and should take less than 15 minutes to configure on existing sites you already have. The beauty of using a solution like the URL Rewrite Extension is that you can take advantage of it without having to change code within your web-site – and without having to break any existing links already pointing at your site. Users who follow existing links will be automatically redirected to the new URLs you wish to publish. And search engines will start to give your site a higher search relevancy ranking – which will list your site higher in search results and drive more traffic to it. Customizing your URL Rewriting rules further is easy to-do either by editing the web.config file directly, or alternatively, just double click the URL Rewrite icon within the IIS 7.x admin tool and it will list all the active rules for your web-site or application: Clicking any of the rules above will open the rules editor back up and allow you to tweak/customize/save them further. Summary Measuring and improving SEO is something every developer building a public-facing web-site needs to think about and focus on. If you haven’t already, download and use the SEO Toolkit to analyze the SEO of your sites today. New URL Routing features in ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms 4 make it much easier to build applications that have more control over the URLs that are published. Tools like the URL Rewrite Extension that I’ve talked about in this blog post make it much easier to improve the URLs that are published from sites you already have built today – without requiring you to change a lot of code. The URL Rewrite Extension provides a bunch of additional great capabilities – far beyond just SEO - as well. I’ll be covering these additional capabilities more in future blog posts. Hope this helps, Scott

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Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community

There we go! I finally managed to push myself forward and pick up an old, actually too old, idea since I ever arrived here in Mauritius more than six years ago. I'm talking about a community for all kind of ICT connected people. In the past (back in Germany), I used to be involved in various community activities. For example, I was part of the Microsoft Community Leader/Influencer Program (CLIP) in Germany due to an FAQ on Visual FoxPro, actually Active FoxPro Pages (AFP) to be more precise. Then in 2003/2004 I addressed the responsible person of the dFPUG user group in Speyer in order to assist him in organising monthly user group meetings. Well, he handed over management completely, and attended our meetings regularly. Why did it take you so long? Well, I don't want to bother you with the details but short version is that I was too busy on either job (building up new companies) or private life (got married and we have two lovely children, eh 'monsters') or even both. But now is the time where I was starting to look for new fields given the fact that I gained some spare time. My businesses are up and running, the kids are in school, and I am finally in a position where I can commit myself again to community activities. And I love to do that! Why a new user group? Good question... And 'easy' to answer. Since back in 2007 I did my usual research, eh Google searches, to see whether there existing user groups in Mauritius and in which field of interest. And yes, there are! If I recall this correctly, then there are communities for PHP, Drupal, Python (just recently), Oracle, and Linux (which used to be even two). But... either they do not exist anymore, they are dormant, or there is only a low heart-beat, frankly speaking. And yes, I went to meetings of the Linux User Group Meta (Mauritius) back in 2010/2011 and just recently. I really like the setup and the way the LUGM is organised. It's just that I have a slightly different point of view on how a user group or community should organise itself and how to approach future members. Don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing others doing a very good job, I'm only saying that I'd like to do it differently. The last meeting of the LUGM was awesome; read my feedback about it. Ok, so what's up with 'Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community' or short: MSCC? As I've already written in my article on 'Communities - The importance of exchange and discussion' I think it is essential in a world of IT to stay 'connected' with a good number of other people in the same field. There is so much dynamic and every day's news that it is almost impossible to keep on track with all of them. The MSCC is going to provide a common platform to exchange experience and share knowledge between each other. You might be a newbie and want to know what to expect working as a software developer, or as a database administrator, or maybe as an IT systems administrator, or you're an experienced geek that loves to share your ideas or solutions that you implemented to solve a specific problem, or you're the business (or HR) guy that is looking for 'fresh' blood to enforce your existing team. Or... you're just interested and you'd like to communicate with like-minded people. Meetup of 26.06.2013 @ L'arabica: Of course there are laptops around. Free WiFi, power outlet, coffee, code and Linux in one go. The MSCC is technology-agnostic and spans an umbrella over any kind of technology. Simply because you can't ignore other technologies anymore in a connected IT world as we have. A front-end developer for iOS applications should have the chance to connect with a Python back-end coder and eventually with a DBA for MySQL or PostgreSQL and exchange their experience. Furthermore, I'm a huge fan of cross-platform development, and it is very pleasant to have pure Web developers - with all that HTML5, CSS3, JavaScript and JS libraries stuff - and passionate C# or Java coders at the same table. This diversity of knowledge can assist and boost your personal situation. And last but not least, there are projects and open positions 'flying' around... People might like to hear others opinion about an employer or get new impulses on how to tackle down an issue at their workspace, etc. This is about community. And that's how I see the MSCC in general - free of any limitations be it by programming language or technology. Having the chance to exchange experience and to discuss certain aspects of technology saves you time and money, and it's a pleasure to enjoy. Compared to dusty books and remote online resources. It's human! Organising meetups (meetings, get-together, gatherings - you name it!) As of writing this article, the MSCC is currently meeting every Wednesday for the weekly 'Code & Coffee' session at various locations (suggestions are welcome!) in Mauritius. This might change in the future eventually but especially at the beginning I think it is very important to create awareness in the Mauritian IT world. Yes, we are here! Come and join us! ;-) The MSCC's main online presence is located at Meetup.com because it allows me to handle the organisation of events and meeting appointments very easily, and any member can have a look who else is involved so that an exchange of contacts is given at any time. In combination with the other entities (G+ Communities, FB Pages or in Groups) I advertise and manage all future activities here: Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community This is a community for those who care and are proud of what they do. For those developers, regardless how experienced they are, who want to improve and master their craft. This is a community for those who believe that being average is just not good enough. I know, there are not many 'craftsmen' yet but it's a start... Let's see how it looks like by the end of the year. There are free smartphone apps for Android and iOS from Meetup.com that allow you to keep track of meetings and to stay informed on latest updates. And last but not least, there is a Trello workspace to collect and share ideas and provide downloads of slides, etc. Trello is also available as free smartphone app. Sharing is caring! As mentioned, the #MSCC is present in various social media networks in order to cover as many people as possible here in Mauritius. Following is an overview of the current networks: Twitter - Latest updates and quickies Google+ - Community channel Facebook - Community Page LinkedIn - Community Group Trello - Collaboration workspace to share and develop ideas Hopefully, this covers the majority of computer-related people in Mauritius. Please spread the word about the #MSCC between your colleagues, your friends and other interested 'geeks'. Your future looks bright Running and participating in a user group or any kind of community usually provides quite a number of advantages for anyone. On the one side it is very joyful for me to organise appointments and get in touch with people that might be interested to present a little demo of their projects or their recent problems they had to tackle down, and on the other side there are lots of companies that have various support programs or sponsorships especially tailored for user groups. At the moment, I already have a couple of gimmicks that I would like to hand out in small contests or raffles during one of the upcoming meetings, and as said, companies provide all kind of goodies, books free of charge, or sometimes even licenses for communities. Meeting other software developers or IT guys also opens up your point of view on the local market and there might be interesting projects or job offers available, too. A community like the Mauritius Software Craftsmanship Community is great for freelancers, self-employed, students and of course employees. Meetings will be organised on a regular basis, and I'm open to all kind of suggestions from you. Please leave a comment here in blog or join the conversations in the above mentioned social networks. Let's get this community up and running, my fellow Mauritians! Recent updates The MSCC is now officially participating in the O'Reilly UK User Group programm and we are allowed to request review or recension copies of recent titles. Additionally, we have a discount code for any books or ebooks that you might like to order on shop.oreilly.com. More applications for user group sponsorship programms are pending and I'm looking forward to a couple of announcement very soon. And... we need some kind of 'corporate identity' - Over at the MSCC website there is a call for action (or better said a contest with prizes) to create a unique design for the MSCC. This would include a decent colour palette, a logo, graphical banners for Meetup, Google+, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. and of course badges for our craftsmen to add to their personal blogs and websites. Please spread the word and contribute. Thanks!

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SQL SERVER – What is Spatial Database? – Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spati

- by pinaldave

What is Spatial Database? A spatial database is a database that is optimized to store and query data related to objects in space, including points, lines and polygons. While typical databases can understand various numeric and character types of data, additional functionality needs to be added for databases to process spatial data types. (Source: Wikipedia) Today I will be talking about the same subject at Microsoft TechEd India. If you want to learn about how to spatial aspect of data and how to integrate them with SQL Server this is the perfect session for you. Spatial is very special concept of SQL Server and I really like how it is implemented in SQL Server. In general Performance Tuning and Query Optimization is something I always have enjoyed in my professional life. Index are my best friends and many time, by implementing and many time by removing I have improved the performance of the system. In this session, I will be talking about Index along with Spatial Data. As Spatial Database is very interesting concept, I will cover super short but very interesting 10 quick slides about this subject. I will make sure in very first 20 mins, you will understand following topics Introduction to Spatial Database One line definition Understanding Spatial Indexing Index Internals Query/Performance Tuning Query Hinting/Cost Analysis Spatial Index Catalog Views Performance Troubleshooting Finding Optimal Index using Spatial Index SP Common Errors Index Maintenance This slides decks will be followed by around 30 mins demo which will have story of geometry, geography, index internals and performance tuning. If you are interested in learning how GIS works and how SQL Server out of the box supports this wonderful tools, you will really like how the story is told. I am sure all people who attend the event will know how the Bangalore is positioned on the map of India. I will take example of Bangalore and Hyderabad and demonstrate how index can improve the performance. Well there are lots of story to tell in the session, and I will be opening this session with the beautiful script of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus created by Michael J. Swart. I will also demonstrate few real life scenario where I will be talking about Spatial Database and its usage. Do not miss this session. At the end of session there will be book awarded to best participant. My session details: Session 3: Developing with SQL Server Spatial and Deep Dive into Spatial Indexing Date: April 14, 2010 Time: 5:00pm-6:00pm Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers new spatial data types that enable you to consume, use, and extend location-based data through spatial-enabled applications. Attend this session to learn how to use spatial functionality in next version of SQL Server to build and optimize spatial queries. This session outlines the new geography data type to store geodetic spatial data and perform operations on it, use the new geometry data type to store planar spatial data and perform operations on it, take advantage of new spatial indexes for high performance queries, use the new spatial results tab to quickly and easily view spatial query results directly from within Management Studio, extend spatial data capabilities by building or integrating location-enabled applications through support for spatial standards and specifications and much more. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Index, SQL Optimization, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority Author Visit, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Spatial Database

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Interview questions about ASP.NET Web services.

- by Jalpesh P. Vadgama

I have seen there are lots of myth’s about asp.net web services in fresher level asp.net developers. So I decided to write a blog post about asp.net web services interview questions. Because I think this is the best way to reach fresher asp.net developers. Followings are few questions about asp.net web services. 1) What is asp.net web services? Ans: Web services are used to support http requests that formatted using xml,http and SOAP syntax. They interact with through standards xml messages through Soap. They are used to support interoperability. It has .asmx extension and .NET framework contains http handlers for web services to support http requested directly. 2) What kind of data can be returned web services web methods? Ans: It supports all the primitive data types and custom data types that can be encoded and serialized by xml. You can find more information about that from the following link. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb552900.aspx 3) Is web services are only written in asp.net? Ans: No, It can be written by Java and PHP languages also. 4) Explain web method attributes in web services Ans: Web method attributes are added to a public class method to indicate that this method is exposed as a part of XML web services. You can have multiple web methods in a class. But it should be having public attributes as it will be exposed as xml web service part. You can find more information about web method attributes from following link. http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/byxd99hx(v=vs.71).aspx 5) What is SOA? Ans: SOA stands for “Services Oriented Architecture”. It is kind of service oriented architecture used to support different kind of computing platforms and applications. Web services in asp.net are one of the technologies that supports that kind of architecture. You can call asp.net web services from any computing platforms and applications. 6) What is SOAP,WDSL and UDDI? Ans: SOAP stands “Simple Object Access protocol”. Web services will be interact with SOAP messages written in XML. SOAP is sometimes referred as “data wrapper” or “data envelope”.Its contains different xml tag that creates a whole SOAP message. WSDL stand for “Web services Description Language”. It is an xml document which is written according to standard specified by W3c. It is a kind of manual or document that describes how we can use and consume web service. Web services development software processes the WSDL document and generates SOAP messages that are needed for specific web service. UDDI stand for “Universal Discovery, Description and Integration”. Its is used for web services registries. You can find addresses of web services from UDDI.

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ASP.NET AJAX, jQuery and AJAX Control Toolkit–the roadmap

- by Harish Ranganathan

The opinions mentioned herein are solely mine and do not reflect those of my employer Wanted to post this for a long time but couldn’t. I have been an ASP.NET Developer for quite sometime and have worked with version 1.1, 2.0, 3.5 as well as the latest 4.0. With ASP.NET 2.0 and Visual Studio 2005, came the era of AJAX and rich UI style web applications. So, ASP.NET AJAX (codenamed “ATLAS”) was released almost an year later. This was called as ASP.NET 2.0 AJAX Extensions. This release was supported further with Visual Studio 2005 Service Pack 1. The initial release of ASP.NET AJAX had 3 components ASP.NET AJAX Library – Client library that is used internally by the server controls as well as scripts that can be used to write hand coded ajax style pages ASP.NET AJAX Extensions – Server controls i.e. ScriptManager,Proxy, UpdatePanel, UpdateProgress and Timer server controls. Works pretty much like other server controls in terms of development and render client side behavior automatically AJAX Control Toolkit – Set of server controls that extend a behavior or a capability. Ex.- AutoCompleteExtender The AJAX Control Toolkit was a separate download from CodePlex while the first two get installed when you install ASP.NET AJAX Extensions. With Visual Studio 2008, ASP.NET AJAX made its way into the runtime. So one doesn’t need to separately install the AJAX Extensions. However, the AJAX Control Toolkit still remained as a community project that can be downloaded from CodePlex. By then, the toolkit had close to 30 controls. So, the approach was clear viz., client side programming using ASP.NET AJAX Library and server side model using built-in controls (UpdatePanel) and/or AJAX Control Toolkit. However, with Visual Studio 2008 Service Pack 1, we also added support for the ever increasing popular jQuery library. That is, you can use jQuery along with ASP.NET and would also get intellisense for jQuery in Visual Studio 2008. Some of you who have played with Visual Studio 2010 Beta and .NET Framework 4 Beta, would also have explored the new AJAX Library which had a lot of templates, live bindings etc., But, overall, the road map ahead makes it much simplified. For client side programming using JavaScript for implementing AJAX in ASP.NET, the recommendation is to use jQuery which will be shipped along with Visual Studio and provides intellisense as well. For server side programming one you can use the server controls like UpdatePanel etc., and also the AJAX Control Toolkit which has close to 40 controls now. The AJAX Control Toolkit still remains as a separate download at CodePlex. You can download the different versions for different versions of ASP.NET at http://ajaxcontroltoolkit.codeplex.com/ The Microsoft AJAX Library will still be available through the CDN (Content Delivery Network) channels. You can view the CDN resources at http://www.asp.net/ajaxlibrary/CDN.ashx Similarly even jQuery and the toolkit would be available as CDN resources in case you chose not to download and have them as a part of your application. I think this makes AJAX development pretty simple. Earlier, having Microsoft AJAX Library as well as jQuery for client side scripting was kind of confusing on which one to use. With this roadmap, it makes it simple and clear. You can read more on this at http://ajax.asp.net I hope this post provided some clarity on the AJAX roadmap as I could decipher from various product teams. Cheers!!!

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Visual Studio App.config XML Transformation

- by João Angelo

Visual Studio 2010 introduced a much-anticipated feature, Web configuration transformations. This feature allows to configure a web application project to transform the web.config file during deployment based on the current build configuration (Debug, Release, etc). If you haven’t already tried it there is a nice step-by-step introduction post to XML transformations on the Visual Web Developer Team Blog and for a quick reference on the supported syntax you have this MSDN entry. Unfortunately there are some bad news, this new feature is specific to web application projects since it resides in the Web Publishing Pipeline (WPP) and therefore is not officially supported in other project types like such as a Windows applications. The keyword here is officially because Vishal Joshi has a nice blog post on how to extend it’s support to app.config transformations. However, the proposed workaround requires that the build action for the app.config file be changed to Content instead of the default None. Also from the comments to the said post it also seems that the workaround will not work for a ClickOnce deployment. Working around this I tried to remove the build action change requirement and at the same time add ClickOnce support. This effort resulted in a single MSBuild project file (AppConfig.Transformation.targets) available for download from GitHub. It integrates itself in the build process so in order to add app.config transformation support to an existing Windows Application Project you just need to import this targets file after all the other import directives that already exist in the *.csproj file. Before – Without App.config transformation support ... <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" /> <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> </Target> <Target Name="AfterBuild"> </Target> </Project> After – With App.config transformation support ... <Import Project="$(MSBuildToolsPath)\Microsoft.CSharp.targets" /> <Import Project="C:\MyExtensions\AppConfig.Transformation.targets" /> <Target Name="BeforeBuild"> </Target> <Target Name="AfterBuild"> </Target> </Project> As a final disclaimer, the testing time was limited so any problem that you find let me know. The MSBuild project invokes the mage tool so the Framework SDK must be installed. Update: I finally had some spare time and was able to check the problem reported by Geoff Smith and believe the problem is solved. The Publish command inside Visual Studio triggers a build workflow different than through MSBuild command line and this was causing problems. I posted a new version in GitHub that should now support ClickOnce deployment with app.config tranformation from within Visual Studio and MSBuild command line. Also here is a link for the sample application used to test the new version using the Publish command with the install location set to be from a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM and selected that the application will not check for updates. Thanks to Geoff for spotting the problem.

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500 Metro Style WP7 Icons

- by Bil Simser

I was inspired by The Noun Project, a project that offers up “Metro-style” icons in SVG format. The project is licensed under a public domain license and while it’s a great project, all of the content is in SVG format. Jon Galloway has a great post (from 2007) talking about the differences between SVG and XAML so I highly recommend that for some background. I thought it would be helpful to the WPF/Windows Phone 7/Silverlight community to provide the content in alternative formats for use in your applications. The Goods I’ve put together a package of the 500 icons (502 actually) in PNG, XAML and the original SVG format along with a couple of sample projects so you can see them in action. There’s a WPF desktop app: And a Windows Phone 7 app: Building It To get all the content first I wrote up a quick program to suck the original SVG files. Luckily they’re all in a common path just named 1.SVG, 2.SVG, and so on. Easy sleazy to grab the contents. Once I had 500 SVG files I used the latest copy of XamlTune, an open source CodePlex project that has a command line conversion tool to convert the directory of SVG files into XAML (the tool also created a PNG file of each SVG so that’s just icing on the cake). Conversions The conversion from SVG to XAML isn’t 100%. While you can just drop the content into a WPF app, it doesn’t work that way for WP7. There are just some small adjustments I made to each format so you’ll have to do the same. Follow the information below or refer to the sample applications. As a sample, here’s an icon we want to use: Here’s the original SVG file: <svg version="1.0" id="Layer_1" xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2000/svg" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" x="0px" y="0px" width="100px" height="94.616px" viewBox="0 0 100 94.616" enable-background="new 0 0 100 94.616" xml:space="preserve"> <path d="M25.076,15.639c4.324,0.009,7.824-3.488,7.82-7.82C32.9,3.512,29.4,0.012,25.076,0c-4.313,0.012-7.814,3.512-7.821,7.819 C17.262,12.15,20.763,15.648,25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z"/> <path d="M4.593,43.388h6.861l4.137-15.135h1.716L13.22,43.388h24.318l-4.389-15.135h1.817l2.32,7.415 c1.08,3.131,3.852,3.851,6.003,1.162l8.375-10.142c2.651-3.42-2.104-7.021-4.844-4.035l-4.993,5.952 c0.007,0.095-0.96-3.278-0.96-3.278c-1.135-3.978-4.918-7.903-10.595-7.922H19.576c-5.071,0.019-9.043,4.434-9.888,7.214 L4.593,43.388L4.593,43.388z"/> <polygon points="56.206,22.753 56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753 "/> <path d="M79.87,15.738c4.332-0.014,7.831-3.516,7.82-7.82c0.011-4.332-3.488-7.833-7.82-7.82c-4.306-0.013-7.806,3.488-7.821,7.82 C72.064,12.222,75.564,15.725,79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z"/> <path d="M89.759,89.556v-43.19h5.751V22.804c0.007-3.079-2.757-5.448-6.71-5.449H70.436c-3.65,0.001-4.539,1.186-5.551,2.168 L49.597,37.889c-3.098,3.848,2.428,8.333,5.55,4.743L69.88,25.226v64.43c-0.019,6.475,9.06,6.686,9.081,0.201v-36.58h1.765v36.379 C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z"/> <polygon points="100,54.035 100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035 "/> </svg> Here’s the XAML that XamlTune created. It can be used in any WPF app without any changes: <Canvas Name="Layer_1" Width="100" Height="94.616" ClipToBounds="True" xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/winfx/2006/xaml/presentation"> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M25.076,15.639C29.4,15.648 32.9,12.151 32.896,7.819 32.9,3.512 29.4,0.012 25.076,0 20.763,0.012 17.262,3.512 17.255,7.819 17.262,12.15 20.763,15.648 25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M4.593,43.388L11.454,43.388 15.591,28.253 17.307,28.253 13.22,43.388 37.538,43.388 33.149,28.253 34.966,28.253 37.286,35.668C38.366,38.799,41.138,39.519,43.289,36.83L51.664,26.688C54.315,23.268,49.56,19.667,46.82,22.653L41.827,28.605C41.834,28.7 40.867,25.327 40.867,25.327 39.732,21.349 35.949,17.424 30.272,17.405L19.576,17.405C14.505,17.424,10.533,21.839,9.688,24.619L4.593,43.388 4.593,43.388z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M56.206,22.753L56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M79.87,15.738C84.202,15.724 87.701,12.222 87.69,7.918 87.701,3.586 84.202,0.0849999999999991 79.87,0.097999999999999 75.564,0.084999999999999 72.064,3.586 72.049,7.918 72.064,12.222 75.564,15.725 79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M89.759,89.556L89.759,46.366 95.51,46.366 95.51,22.804C95.517,19.725,92.753,17.356,88.8,17.355L70.436,17.355C66.786,17.356,65.897,18.541,64.885,19.523L49.597,37.889C46.499,41.737,52.025,46.222,55.147,42.632L69.88,25.226 69.88,89.656C69.861,96.131,78.94,96.342,78.961,89.857L78.961,53.277 80.726,53.277 80.726,89.656C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000"> <Path.Data> <PathGeometry FillRule="Nonzero" Figures="M100,54.035L100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035z" /> </Path.Data> </Path> </Canvas> The XAML works AS-IS in a WPF application but there are some changes I did to get it to work in a WP7 app. Here’s the modified XAML in a WP7 application: <Canvas Grid.Row="0" Grid.Column="0" Name="Icon_1" Width="100" Height="94.616"> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M25.076,15.639C29.4,15.648 32.9,12.151 32.896,7.819 32.9,3.512 29.4,0.012 25.076,0 20.763,0.012 17.262,3.512 17.255,7.819 17.262,12.15 20.763,15.648 25.076,15.639L25.076,15.639z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M4.593,43.388L11.454,43.388 15.591,28.253 17.307,28.253 13.22,43.388 37.538,43.388 33.149,28.253 34.966,28.253 37.286,35.668C38.366,38.799,41.138,39.519,43.289,36.83L51.664,26.688C54.315,23.268,49.56,19.667,46.82,22.653L41.827,28.605C41.834,28.7 40.867,25.327 40.867,25.327 39.732,21.349 35.949,17.424 30.272,17.405L19.576,17.405C14.505,17.424,10.533,21.839,9.688,24.619L4.593,43.388 4.593,43.388z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M56.206,22.753L56.206,7.163 49.192,7.163 49.192,22.753 56.206,22.753z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M79.87,15.738C84.202,15.724 87.701,12.222 87.69,7.918 87.701,3.586 84.202,0.0849999999999991 79.87,0.097999999999999 75.564,0.084999999999999 72.064,3.586 72.049,7.918 72.064,12.222 75.564,15.725 79.87,15.738L79.87,15.738z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M89.759,89.556L89.759,46.366 95.51,46.366 95.51,22.804C95.517,19.725,92.753,17.356,88.8,17.355L70.436,17.355C66.786,17.356,65.897,18.541,64.885,19.523L49.597,37.889C46.499,41.737,52.025,46.222,55.147,42.632L69.88,25.226 69.88,89.656C69.861,96.131,78.94,96.342,78.961,89.857L78.961,53.277 80.726,53.277 80.726,89.656C80.748,96.109,89.772,96.13,89.759,89.556L89.759,89.556z"> </Path> <Path Fill="#FF000000" Data="M100,54.035L100,45.155 0,45.155 0,54.035 100,54.035z"> </Path> </Canvas> All I did was take the data portion and put it directly into a Data attribute on the Path. Note that while it does show up in the app (on the emulator or device) it wouldn’t show up in Visual Studio for me. Maybe some XAML guru out there can tell me why. You can just as easily use the PNG files in WP7 but if you want the crispness of vector graphics, go for the XAML version. Of course with XamlTune being open source you could always modify the output of that program to cater it to your app. If you do make a change that’s worthy please consider submitting a patch to the project so everyone can benefit. Hope this helps and happy programming! Resources and Links Sample Project and Icons XamlTune an open source project to convert SVG to XAML The Noun Project source of the original files Jon Galloways post on SVG and XAML StackOverflow question on converting SVG to XAML

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SQL SERVER – Configure Management Data Collection in Quick Steps – T-SQL Tuesday #005

- by pinaldave

This article was written as a response to T-SQL Tuesday #005 – Reporting. The three most important components of any computer and server are the CPU, Memory, and Hard disk specification. This post talks about how to get more details about these three most important components using the Management Data Collection. Management Data Collection generates the reports for the three said components by default. Configuring Data Collection is a very easy task and can be done very quickly. Please note: There are many different ways to get reports generated for CPU, Memory and IO. You can use DMVs, Extended Events as well Perfmon to trace the data. Keeping the T-SQL Tuesday subject of reporting this post is created to give visual tutorial to quickly configure Data Collection and generate Reports. From Book On-Line: The data collector is a core component of the Data Collection platform for SQL Server 2008 and the tools that are provided by SQL Server. The data collector provides one central point for data collection across your database servers and applications. This collection point can obtain data from a variety of sources and is not limited to performance data, unlike SQL Trace. Let us go over the visual tutorial on how quickly Data Collection can be configured. Expand the management node under the main server node and follow the direction in the pictures. This reports can be exported to PDF as well Excel by writing clicking on reports. Now let us see more additional screenshots of the reports. The reports are very self-explanatory but can be drilled down to get further details. Click on the image to make it larger. Well, as we can see, it is very easy to configure and utilize this tool. Do you use this tool in your organization? Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: SQL Reporting, SQL Reports

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