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• Guide to Downloading Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g Products

  - by Daniel Mortimer

  IntroductionThe idea of writing a blog about downloading software seems a bit strange .. right? After all, surely just give me the web download link and away I go!? Unfortunately, life is not so simple if you are a DBA or Systems Administrator tasked with staging Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g products for your chosen business technology stack. Here are the challenges: Oracle Fusion Middleware is not a single product, it is a family of products - a media pack with many many "disks" - which ones do I pick? Are the products I pick certified / supported on my chosen platform? Which download site do I use? I need to be on the latest and greatest - how do I get hold of the latest product patch set? The purpose of this blog is to give you a roadmap to get you through these challenges. Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g - A Product SuiteThe first thing to appreciate is that Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g is not a single product. It is a product suite, an umbrella label for many products. Typically you don't download the whole media pack - well not unless you want to stage 124 Parts - a total of 68 Gig  - instead you pick the pieces that are required for your chosen Middleware solution. Therefore, you need to research / understand which products are required to build your solution. In this respect, before you go looking for the software pick and persue the product guide from the table below which matches your situation:  Installing a New / Vanilla FMW 11g architecture Oracle Fusion Middleware Installation Planning Guide 11g  Upgrading Oracle Application Server 10g to FMW 11g Oracle Fusion Middleware Upgrade Planning Guide 11g  Patching an existing FMW 11g architecture Oracle Fusion Middleware Patching Guide 11g Certification Information Ok, so now you have an idea of what Fusion Middleware products you need. It's time to check whether these products are certified against your chosen platform. There are two places to find this information:My Oracle Support Certification Tab PageFigure 1.1 My Oracle Support Certification Tab Page - "Search on SOA Suite" Figure 1.2 My Oracle Support Certification Tab Page - "SOA Suite Search Result" The FMW 11g Certification Central Hub (in the format of xls spreadsheet)Figure 2: Screenshot of FMW 11g Release 1 Certification xls spreadsheet Hints / Tips: Fusion Middleware 11g certification information has only recently been added into the Certification Tab page and I think it is the more friendly way to access the information. However, due to some restrictions with the Certification Tab page interface some of the more, let's say obscure certification information, is still to be only found in the Certification spreadsheet. Be aware that to find certification information via the My Oracle Support Certification Tab page you must enter the FMW 11g product name e.g. "Oracle SOA Suite". Do NOT enter "Oracle Fusion Middleware". The certification information does not exist at this product suite level.  For example, if you are building a solution which includes Oracle SOA Suite Oracle WebCenter then you will have to look up the certification information for each product in turn.After choosing the product name, select the latest patch set version. This will not only tell you whether your chosen product is available at that patch set version but provide the certification information relevant to that version.  If the product is not available under the latest patch set version, seek the information under previous patch set versions. Important: Make a careful note of the Oracle WebLogic Server version which is certified with your chosen product and patch set version. Oracle WebLogic Server is the core component of a Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g home. It is important therefore to ensure later on that you download the version of Oracle WebLogic Server which is compatible and certified with your chosen product and patch set version.Also - sorry to state the obvious, but please do not take certification information from the screenshots above. The screenshots are only good for the time they were entered into the blog. To ensure you have the latest information, interactively look up the certification details. For more information about finding certification information, bookmark and readMy Oracle Support Certification Tool for Oracle Fusion Middleware Products [Doc ID 1368736.1]How to Find Certification Details for Oracle Application Server 10g and Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g [Doc ID 431578.1] Downloading the Software Now you should be ready to download the software. There are two download locations Oracle Software Delivery Cloud (formerly known as E-Delivery)Figure 3 - Screenshot of Fusion Middleware Download from Delivery CloudOracle Fusion Middleware Download Page on Oracle Technology NetworkFigure 4 - Screenshot of OTN Product Download Screen Hints / Tips: Your choice of download location should be primarily driven by your licensing needs. Take note of the wording on the OTN site - to quote:"The downloads below are provided for evaluators under the OTN License Agreement. Licensed customers should download their software via our Oracle Software Delivery Cloud site, which offers different license terms."However, it has to be said that the presentation of the most of the product download pages on OTN does make the job easier. The Software Delivery Cloud provides you with a flat list of the Oracle Fusion Middleware 11g media pack. You have to know what you are looking for and pick out the right pieces :-( The OTN product download pages present not only the download for the product you want but also its dependencies such as WebLogic Server and Repository Creation Utility. So, even if your licensing requirements drive you towards the cloud, it is still worthwhile checking the OTN pages if only as a guide to what you need to pick out from the flat list found on the cloud site. Latest Patch Set This is an area which may cause you confusion - especially if you are more familiar with the Oracle Application Server 10g patching story. From Patch Set 11.1.1.6 and higher, the majority of FMW 11g products (N.B there are exceptions) provide installers which can be used both to update existing FMW 11g product installs or build brand new ones. This is good news because, unless you are dealing with one of the exceptions, it means you do not have to download base software and a patch set. At the time of the writing, the two significant exceptions are: Portal/Forms/Reports/Discoverer 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.x) Identity Access Management 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.x) The other key message here is ensure you are grabbing a version of Oracle WebLogic Server which is compatible with your chosen product patch set version. Get this wrong and you will hit errors / problems at AS Instance Configuration Time.The go to place is this document - Oracle Fusion Middleware Download, Installation, and Configuration Readme FilesIn fact, this README document pretty much takes you through what I have blogged above. The only thing is you need to know which README to choose, and that's why planning your FMW 11g technology stack and viewing certification information comes into play beforehand. And Finally As the Oracle Fusion Middleware Download, Installation, and Configuration Readme Files states don't forget to check FMW 11g System Requirements FMW 11g Product Interoperability

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• Is Social Media The Vital Skill You Aren’t Tracking?

  - by HCM-Oracle

  By Mark Bennett - Originally featured in Talent Management Excellence The ever-increasing presence of the workforce on social media presents opportunities as well as risks for organizations. While on the one hand, we read about social media embarrassments happening to organizations, on the other we see that social media activities by workers and candidates can enhance a company’s brand and provide insight into what individuals are, or can become, influencers in the social media sphere. HR can play a key role in helping organizations make the most value out of the activities and presence of workers and candidates, while at the same time also helping to manage the risks that come with the permanence and viral nature of social media. What is Missing from Understanding Our Workforce? “If only HP knew what HP knows, we would be three-times more productive.”  Lew Platt, Former Chairman, President, CEO, Hewlett-Packard  What Lew Platt recognized was that organizations only have a partial understanding of what their workforce is capable of. This lack of understanding impacts the company in several negative ways: 1. A particular skill that the company needs to access in one part of the organization might exist somewhere else, but there is no record that the skill exists, so the need is unfulfilled. 2. As market conditions change rapidly, the company needs to know strategic options, but some options are missed entirely because the company doesn’t know that sufficient capability already exists to enable those options. 3. Employees may miss out on opportunities to demonstrate how their hidden skills could create new value to the company. Why don’t companies have that more complete picture of their workforce capabilities – that is, not know what they know? One very good explanation is that companies put most of their efforts into rating their workforce according to the jobs and roles they are filling today. This is the essence of two important talent management processes: recruiting and performance appraisals.  In recruiting, a set of requirements is put together for a job, either explicitly or indirectly through a job description. During the recruiting process, much of the attention is paid towards whether the candidate has the qualifications, the skills, the experience and the cultural fit to be successful in the role. This makes a lot of sense.  In the performance appraisal process, an employee is measured on how well they performed the functions of their role and in an effort to help the employee do even better next time, they are also measured on proficiency in the competencies that are deemed to be key in doing that job. Again, the logic is impeccable.  But in both these cases, two adages come to mind: 1. What gets measured is what gets managed. 2. You only see what you are looking for. In other words, the fact that the current roles the workforce are performing are the basis for measuring which capabilities the workforce has, makes them the only capabilities to be measured. What was initially meant to be a positive, i.e. identify what is needed to perform well and measure it, in order that it can be managed, comes with the unintended negative consequence of overshadowing the other capabilities the workforce has. This also comes with an employee engagement price, for the measurements and management of workforce capabilities is to typically focus on where the workforce comes up short. Again, it makes sense to do this, since improving a capability that appears to result in improved performance benefits, both the individual through improved performance ratings and the company through improved productivity. But this is based on the assumption that the capabilities identified and their required proficiencies are the only attributes of the individual that matter. Anything else the individual brings that results in high performance, while resulting in a desired performance outcome, often goes unrecognized or underappreciated at best. As social media begins to occupy a more important part in current and future roles in organizations, businesses must incorporate social media savvy and innovation into job descriptions and expectations. These new measures could provide insight into how well someone can use social media tools to influence communities and decision makers; keep abreast of trends in fast-moving industries; present a positive brand image for the organization around thought leadership, customer focus, social responsibility; and coordinate and collaborate with partners. These measures should demonstrate the “social capital” the individual has invested in and developed over time. Without this dimension, “short cut” methods may generate a narrow set of positive metrics that do not have real, long-lasting benefits to the organization. How Workforce Reputation Management Helps HR Harness Social Media With hundreds of petabytes of social media data flowing across Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, businesses are tapping technology solutions to effectively leverage social for HR. Workforce reputation management technology helps organizations discover, mobilize and retain talent by providing insight into the social reputation and influence of the workforce while also helping organizations monitor employee social media policy compliance and mitigate social media risk.  There are three major ways that workforce reputation management technology can play a strategic role to support HR: 1. Improve Awareness and Decisions on Talent Many organizations measure the skills and competencies that they know they need today, but are unaware of what other skills and competencies their workforce has that could be essential tomorrow. How about whether your workforce has the reputation and influence to make their skills and competencies more effective? Many organizations don’t have insight into the social media “reach” their workforce has, which is becoming more critical to business performance. These features help organizations, managers, and employees improve many talent processes and decision making, including the following: Hiring and Assignments. People and teams with higher reputations are considered more valuable and effective workers. Someone with high reputation who refers a candidate also can have high credibility as a source for hires.   Training and Development. Reputation trend analysis can impact program decisions regarding training offerings by showing how reputation and influence across the workforce changes in concert with training. Worker reputation impacts development plans and goal choices by helping the individual see which development efforts result in improved reputation and influence.   Finding Hidden Talent. Managers can discover hidden talent and skills amongst employees based on a combination of social profile information and social media reputation. Employees can improve their personal brand and accelerate their career development.  2. Talent Search and Discovery The right technology helps organizations find information on people that might otherwise be hidden. By leveraging access to candidate and worker social profiles as well as their social relationships, workforce reputation management provides companies with a more complete picture of what their knowledge, skills, and attributes are and what they can in turn access. This more complete information helps to find the right talent both outside the organization as well as the right, perhaps previously hidden talent, within the organization to fill roles and staff projects, particularly those roles and projects that are required in reaction to fast-changing opportunities and circumstances. 3. Reputation Brings Credibility Workforce reputation management technology provides a clearer picture of how candidates and workers are viewed by their peers and communities across a wide range of social reputation and influence metrics. This information is less subject to individual bias and can impact critical decision-making. Knowing the individual’s reputation and influence enables the organization to predict how well their capabilities and behaviors will have a positive effect on desired business outcomes. Many roles that have the highest impact on overall business performance are dependent on the individual’s influence and reputation. In addition, reputation and influence measures offer a very tangible source of feedback for workers, providing them with insight that helps them develop themselves and their careers and see the effectiveness of those efforts by tracking changes over time in their reputation and influence. The following are some examples of the different reputation and influence measures of the workforce that Workforce Reputation Management could gather and analyze: Generosity – How often the user reposts other’s posts. Influence – How often the user’s material is reposted by others.  Engagement – The ratio of recent posts with references (e.g. links to other posts) to the total number of posts.  Activity – How frequently the user posts. (e.g. number per day)  Impact – The size of the users’ social networks, which indicates their ability to reach unique followers, friends, or users.   Clout – The number of references and citations of the user’s material in others’ posts.  The Vital Ingredient of Workforce Reputation Management: Employee Participation “Nothing about me, without me.” Valerie Billingham, “Through the Patient’s Eyes”, Salzburg Seminar Session 356, 1998 Since data resides primarily in social media, a question arises: what manner is used to collect that data? While much of social media activity is publicly accessible (as many who wished otherwise have learned to their chagrin), the social norms of social media have developed to put some restrictions on what is acceptable behavior and by whom. Disregarding these norms risks a repercussion firestorm. One of the more recognized norms is that while individuals can follow and engage with other individual’s public social activity (e.g. Twitter updates) fairly freely, the more an organization does this unprompted and without getting permission from the individual beforehand, the more likely the organization risks a totally opposite outcome from the one desired. Instead, the organization must look for permission from the individual, which can be met with resistance. That resistance comes from not knowing how the information will be used, how it will be shared with others, and not receiving enough benefit in return for granting permission. As the quote above about patient concerns and rights succinctly states, no one likes not feeling in control of the information about themselves, or the uncertainty about where it will be used. This is well understood in consumer social media (i.e. permission-based marketing) and is applicable to workforce reputation management. However, asking permission leaves open the very real possibility that no one, or so few, will grant permission, resulting in a small set of data with little usefulness for the company. Connecting Individual Motivation to Organization Needs So what is it that makes an individual decide to grant an organization access to the data it wants? It is when the individual’s own motivations are in alignment with the organization’s objectives. In the case of workforce reputation management, when the individual is motivated by a desire for increased visibility and career growth opportunities to advertise their skills and level of influence and reputation, they are aligned with the organizations’ objectives; to fill resource needs or strategically build better awareness of what skills are present in the workforce, as well as levels of influence and reputation. Individuals can see the benefit of granting access permission to the company through multiple means. One is through simple social awareness; they begin to discover that peers who are getting more career opportunities are those who are signed up for workforce reputation management. Another is where companies take the message directly to the individual; we think you would benefit from signing up with our workforce reputation management solution. Another, more strategic approach is to make reputation management part of a larger Career Development effort by the company; providing a wide set of tools to help the workforce find ways to plan and take action to achieve their career aspirations in the organization. An effective mechanism, that facilitates connecting the visibility and career growth motivations of the workforce with the larger context of the organization’s business objectives, is to use game mechanics to help individuals transform their career goals into concrete, actionable steps, such as signing up for reputation management. This works in favor of companies looking to use workforce reputation because the workforce is more apt to see how it fits into achieving their overall career goals, as well as seeing how other participation brings additional benefits.  Once an individual has signed up with reputation management, not only have they made themselves more visible within the organization and increased their career growth opportunities, they have also enabled a tool that they can use to better understand how their actions and behaviors impact their influence and reputation. Since they will be able to see their reputation and influence measurements change over time, they will gain better insight into how reputation and influence impacts their effectiveness in a role, as well as how their behaviors and skill levels in turn affect their influence and reputation. This insight can trigger much more directed, and effective, efforts by the individual to improve their ability to perform at a higher level and become more productive. The increased sense of autonomy the individual experiences, in linking the insight they gain to the actions and behavior changes they make, greatly enhances their engagement with their role as well as their career prospects within the company. Workforce reputation management takes the wide range of disparate data about the workforce being produced across various social media platforms and transforms it into accessible, relevant, and actionable information that helps the organization achieve its desired business objectives. Social media holds untapped insights about your talent, brand and business, and workforce reputation management can help unlock them. Imagine - if you could find the hidden secrets of your businesses, how much more productive and efficient would your organization be? Mark Bennett is a Director of Product Strategy at Oracle. Mark focuses on setting the strategic vision and direction for tools that help organizations understand, shape, and leverage the capabilities of their workforce to achieve business objectives, as well as help individuals work effectively to achieve their goals and navigate their own growth. His combination of a deep technical background in software design and development, coupled with a broad knowledge of business challenges and thinking in today’s globalized, rapidly changing, technology accelerated economy, has enabled him to identify and incorporate key innovations that are central to Oracle Fusion’s unique value proposition. Mark has over the course of his career been in charge of the design, development, and strategy of Talent Management products and the design and development of cutting edge software that is better equipped to handle the increasingly complex demands of users while also remaining easy to use. Follow him @mpbennett

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• Why won't xattr PECL extension build on 12.10?

  - by Dan Jones

  I was using the xattr pecl extension in 12.04 (in fact, I think since 10.04) without problem. Not surprisingly, I had to reinstall it after upgrading to 12.10 because of the new version of PHP. But now it fails to build, and I can't figure out why. Other PECL extensions have built fine. And I have libattr1 and libattr1-dev installed. Here's the output from the build: downloading xattr-1.1.0.tgz ... Starting to download xattr-1.1.0.tgz (5,204 bytes) .....done: 5,204 bytes 3 source files, building running: phpize Configuring for: PHP Api Version: 20100412 Zend Module Api No: 20100525 Zend Extension Api No: 220100525 libattr library installation dir? [autodetect] : building in /tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootdSMx0G/xattr-1.1.0 running: /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/configure --with-xattr checking for grep that handles long lines and -e... /bin/grep checking for egrep... /bin/grep -E checking for a sed that does not truncate output... /bin/sed checking for cc... cc checking whether the C compiler works... yes checking for C compiler default output file name... a.out checking for suffix of executables... checking whether we are cross compiling... no checking for suffix of object files... o checking whether we are using the GNU C compiler... yes checking whether cc accepts -g... yes checking for cc option to accept ISO C89... none needed checking how to run the C preprocessor... cc -E checking for icc... no checking for suncc... no checking whether cc understands -c and -o together... yes checking for system library directory... lib checking if compiler supports -R... no checking if compiler supports -Wl,-rpath,... yes checking build system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu checking host system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu checking target system type... x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu checking for PHP prefix... /usr checking for PHP includes... -I/usr/include/php5 -I/usr/include/php5/main -I/usr/include/php5/TSRM -I/usr/include/php5/Zend -I/usr/include/php5/ext -I/usr/include/php5/ext/date/lib checking for PHP extension directory... /usr/lib/php5/20100525 checking for PHP installed headers prefix... /usr/include/php5 checking if debug is enabled... no checking if zts is enabled... no checking for re2c... re2c checking for re2c version... 0.13.5 (ok) checking for gawk... gawk checking for xattr support... yes, shared checking for xattr files in default path... found in /usr checking for attr_get in -lattr... yes checking how to print strings... printf checking for a sed that does not truncate output... (cached) /bin/sed checking for fgrep... /bin/grep -F checking for ld used by cc... /usr/bin/ld checking if the linker (/usr/bin/ld) is GNU ld... yes checking for BSD- or MS-compatible name lister (nm)... /usr/bin/nm -B checking the name lister (/usr/bin/nm -B) interface... BSD nm checking whether ln -s works... yes checking the maximum length of command line arguments... 1572864 checking whether the shell understands some XSI constructs... yes checking whether the shell understands "+="... yes checking how to convert x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu file names to x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu format... func_convert_file_noop checking how to convert x86_64-unknown-linux-gnu file names to toolchain format... func_convert_file_noop checking for /usr/bin/ld option to reload object files... -r checking for objdump... objdump checking how to recognize dependent libraries... pass_all checking for dlltool... no checking how to associate runtime and link libraries... printf %s\n checking for ar... ar checking for archiver @FILE support... @ checking for strip... strip checking for ranlib... ranlib checking for gawk... (cached) gawk checking command to parse /usr/bin/nm -B output from cc object... ok checking for sysroot... no checking for mt... mt checking if mt is a manifest tool... no checking for ANSI C header files... yes checking for sys/types.h... yes checking for sys/stat.h... yes checking for stdlib.h... yes checking for string.h... yes checking for memory.h... yes checking for strings.h... yes checking for inttypes.h... yes checking for stdint.h... yes checking for unistd.h... yes checking for dlfcn.h... yes checking for objdir... .libs checking if cc supports -fno-rtti -fno-exceptions... no checking for cc option to produce PIC... -fPIC -DPIC checking if cc PIC flag -fPIC -DPIC works... yes checking if cc static flag -static works... yes checking if cc supports -c -o file.o... yes checking if cc supports -c -o file.o... (cached) yes checking whether the cc linker (/usr/bin/ld -m elf_x86_64) supports shared libraries... yes checking whether -lc should be explicitly linked in... no checking dynamic linker characteristics... GNU/Linux ld.so checking how to hardcode library paths into programs... immediate checking whether stripping libraries is possible... yes checking if libtool supports shared libraries... yes checking whether to build shared libraries... yes checking whether to build static libraries... no configure: creating ./config.status config.status: creating config.h config.status: executing libtool commands running: make /bin/bash /tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootdSMx0G/xattr-1.1.0/libtool --mode=compile cc -I. -I/tmp/pear/temp/xattr -DPHP_ATOM_INC -I/tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootdSMx0G/xattr-1.1.0/include -I/tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootdSMx0G/xattr-1.1.0/main -I/tmp/pear/temp/xattr -I/usr/include/php5 -I/usr/include/php5/main -I/usr/include/php5/TSRM -I/usr/include/php5/Zend -I/usr/include/php5/ext -I/usr/include/php5/ext/date/lib -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -g -O2 -c /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c -o xattr.lo libtool: compile: cc -I. -I/tmp/pear/temp/xattr -DPHP_ATOM_INC -I/tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootdSMx0G/xattr-1.1.0/include -I/tmp/pear/temp/pear-build-rootdSMx0G/xattr-1.1.0/main -I/tmp/pear/temp/xattr -I/usr/include/php5 -I/usr/include/php5/main -I/usr/include/php5/TSRM -I/usr/include/php5/Zend -I/usr/include/php5/ext -I/usr/include/php5/ext/date/lib -DHAVE_CONFIG_H -g -O2 -c /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c -fPIC -DPIC -o .libs/xattr.o /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:50:1: error: unknown type name 'function_entry' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: braces around scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: error: initializer element is not computable at load time /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: error: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:51:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[0]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: braces around scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: error: initializer element is not computable at load time /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: error: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:52:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[1]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: braces around scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: error: initializer element is not computable at load time /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: error: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:53:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[2]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: braces around scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: error: initializer element is not computable at load time /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: error: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:54:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[3]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: braces around scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: error: initializer element is not computable at load time /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: error: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:55:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[4]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: braces around scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[5]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: initialization makes integer from pointer without a cast [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[5]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[5]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: excess elements in scalar initializer [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:56:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_functions[5]') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:67:2: warning: initialization from incompatible pointer type [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:67:2: warning: (near initialization for 'xattr_module_entry.functions') [enabled by default] /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c: In function 'zif_xattr_set': /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:122:49: error: 'struct _php_core_globals' has no member named 'safe_mode' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:122:92: error: 'CHECKUID_DISALLOW_FILE_NOT_EXISTS' undeclared (first use in this function) /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:122:92: note: each undeclared identifier is reported only once for each function it appears in /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c: In function 'zif_xattr_get': /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:171:49: error: 'struct _php_core_globals' has no member named 'safe_mode' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:171:92: error: 'CHECKUID_DISALLOW_FILE_NOT_EXISTS' undeclared (first use in this function) /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:187:2: warning: passing argument 4 of 'attr_get' from incompatible pointer type [enabled by default] In file included from /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:37:0: /usr/include/attr/attributes.h:122:12: note: expected 'int *' but argument is of type 'size_t *' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:198:3: warning: passing argument 4 of 'attr_get' from incompatible pointer type [enabled by default] In file included from /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:37:0: /usr/include/attr/attributes.h:122:12: note: expected 'int *' but argument is of type 'size_t *' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c: In function 'zif_xattr_supported': /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:243:49: error: 'struct _php_core_globals' has no member named 'safe_mode' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:243:92: error: 'CHECKUID_DISALLOW_FILE_NOT_EXISTS' undeclared (first use in this function) /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c: In function 'zif_xattr_remove': /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:288:49: error: 'struct _php_core_globals' has no member named 'safe_mode' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:288:92: error: 'CHECKUID_DISALLOW_FILE_NOT_EXISTS' undeclared (first use in this function) /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c: In function 'zif_xattr_list': /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:337:49: error: 'struct _php_core_globals' has no member named 'safe_mode' /tmp/pear/temp/xattr/xattr.c:337:92: error: 'CHECKUID_DISALLOW_FILE_NOT_EXISTS' undeclared (first use in this function) make: *** [xattr.lo] Error 1 ERROR: `make' failed There seem to be a few errors, but I can't make heads or tails of them. Does this just not work properly in 12.10? That would be a big problem for me.

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• Robotic Arm &ndash; Hardware

  - by Szymon Kobalczyk

  This is first in series of articles about project I've been building  in my spare time since last Summer. Actually it all began when I was researching a topic of modeling human motion kinematics in order to create gesture recognition library for Kinect. This ties heavily into motion theory of robotic manipulators so I also glanced at some designs of robotic arms. Somehow I stumbled upon this cool looking open source robotic arm: It was featured on Thingiverse and published by user jjshortcut (Jan-Jaap). Since for some time I got hooked on toying with microcontrollers, robots and other electronics, I decided to give it a try and build it myself. In this post I will describe the hardware build of the arm and in later posts I will be writing about the software to control it. Another reason to build the arm myself was the cost factor. Even small commercial robotic arms are quite expensive – products from Lynxmotion and Dagu look great but both cost around USD $300 (actually there is one cheap arm available but it looks more like a toy to me). In comparison this design is quite cheap. It uses seven hobby grade servos and even the cheapest ones should work fine. The structure is build from a set of laser cut parts connected with few metal spacers (15mm and 47mm) and lots of M3 screws. Other than that you’d only need a microcontroller board to drive the servos. So in total it comes a lot cheaper to build it yourself than buy an of the shelf robotic arm. Oh, and if you don’t like this one there are few more robotic arm projects at Thingiverse (including one by oomlout). Laser cut parts Some time ago I’ve build another robot using laser cut parts so I knew the process already. You can grab the design files in both DXF and EPS format from Thingiverse, and there are also 3D models of each part in STL. Actually the design is split into a second project for the mini servo gripper (there is also a standard servo version available but it won’t fit this arm).  I wanted to make some small adjustments, layout, and add measurements to the parts before sending it for cutting. I’ve looked at some free 2D CAD programs, and finally did all this work using QCad 3 Beta with worked great for me (I also tried LibreCAD but it didn’t work that well). All parts are cut from 4 mm thick material. Because I was worried that acrylic is too fragile and might break, I also ordered another set cut from plywood. In the end I build it from plywood because it was easier to glue (I was told acrylic requires a special glue). Btw. I found a great laser cutter service in Kraków and highly recommend it (www.ebbox.com.pl). It cost me only USD $26 for both sets ($16 acrylic + $10 plywood). Metal parts I bought all the M3 screws and nuts at local hardware store. Make sure to look for nylon lock (nyloc) nuts for the gripper because otherwise it unscrews and comes apart quickly. I couldn’t find local store with metal spacers and had to order them online (you’d need 11 x 47mm and 3 x 15mm). I think I paid less than USD $10 for all metal parts. Servos This arm uses five standards size servos to drive the arm itself, and two micro servos are used on the gripper. Author of the project used Modelcraft RS-2 Servo and Modelcraft ES-05 HT Servo. I had two Futaba S3001 servos laying around, and ordered additional TowerPro SG-5010 standard size servos and TowerPro SG90 micro servos. However it turned out that the SG90 won’t fit in the gripper so I had to replace it with a slightly smaller E-Sky EK2-0508 micro servo. Later it also turned out that Futaba servos make some strange noise while working so I swapped one with TowerPro SG-5010 which has higher torque (8kg / cm). I’ve also bought three servo extension cables. All servos cost me USD $45. Assembly The build process is not difficult but you need to think carefully about order of assembling it. You can do the base and upper arm first. Because two servos in the base are close together you need to put first with one piece of lower arm already connected before you put the second servo. Then you connect the upper arm and finally put the second piece of lower arm to hold it together. Gripper and base require some gluing so think it through too. Make sure to look closely at all the photos on Thingiverse (also other people copies) and read additional posts on jjshortcust’s blog: My mini servo grippers and completed robotic arm  Multiply the robotic arm and electronics Here is also Rob’s copy cut from aluminum My assembled arm looks like this – I think it turned out really nice: Servo controller board The last piece of hardware I needed was an electronic board that would take command from PC and drive all seven servos. I could probably use Arduino for this task, and in fact there are several Arduino servo shields available (for example from Adafruit or Renbotics).  However one problem is that most support only up to six servos, and second that their accuracy is limited by Arduino’s timer frequency. So instead I looked for dedicated servo controller and found a series of Maestro boards from Pololu. I picked the Pololu Mini Maestro 12-Channel USB Servo Controller. It has many nice features including native USB connection, high resolution pulses (0.25µs) with no jitter, built-in speed and acceleration control, and even scripting capability. Another cool feature is that besides servo control, each channel can be configured as either general input or output. So far I’m using seven channels so I still have five available to connect some sensors (for example distance sensor mounted on gripper might be useful). And last but important factor was that they have SDK in .NET – what more I could wish for! The board itself is very small – half of the size of Tic-Tac box. I picked one for about USD $35 in this store. Perhaps another good alternative would be the Phidgets Advanced Servo 8-Motor – but it is significantly more expensive at USD $87.30. The Maestro Controller Driver and Software package includes Maestro Control Center program with lets you immediately configure the board. For each servo I first figured out their move range and set the min/max limits. I played with setting the speed an acceleration values as well. Big issue for me was that there are two servos that control position of lower arm (shoulder joint), and both have to be moved at the same time. This is where the scripting feature of Pololu board turned out very helpful. I wrote a script that synchronizes position of second servo with first one – so now I only need to move one servo and other will follow automatically. This turned out tricky because I couldn’t find simple offset mapping of the move range for each servo – I had to divide it into several sub-ranges and map each individually. The scripting language is bit assembler-like but gets the job done. And there is even a runtime debugging and stack view available. Altogether I’m very happy with the Pololu Mini Maestro Servo Controller, and with this final piece I completed the build and was able to move my arm from the Meastro Control program.   The total cost of my robotic arm was: $10 laser cut parts $10 metal parts $45 servos $35 servo controller ----------------------- $100 total So here you have all the information about the hardware. In next post I’ll start talking about the software that I wrote in Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio 4. Stay tuned!

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• The Inkremental Architect&acute;s Napkin - #4 - Make increments tangible

  - by Ralf Westphal

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/theArchitectsNapkin/archive/2014/06/12/the-inkremental-architectacutes-napkin---4---make-increments-tangible.aspxThe driver of software development are increments, small increments, tiny increments. With an increment being a slice of the overall requirement scope thin enough to implement and get feedback from a product owner within 2 days max. Such an increment might concern Functionality or Quality.[1] To make such high frequency delivery of increments possible, the transition from talking to coding needs to be as easy as possible. A user story or some other documentation of what´s supposed to get implemented until tomorrow evening at latest is one side of the medal. The other is where to put the logic in all of the code base. To implement an increment, only logic statements are needed. Functionality like Quality are just about expressions and control flow statements. Think of Assembler code without the CALL/RET instructions. That´s all is needed. Forget about functions, forget about classes. To make a user happy none of that is really needed. It´s just about the right expressions and conditional executions paths plus some memory allocation. Automatic function inlining of compilers which makes it clear how unimportant functions are for delivering value to users at runtime. But why then are there functions? Because they were invented for optimization purposes. We need them for better Evolvability and Production Efficiency. Nothing more, nothing less. No software has become faster, more secure, more scalable, more functional because we gathered logic under the roof of a function or two or a thousand. Functions make logic easier to understand. Functions make us faster in producing logic. Functions make it easier to keep logic consistent. Functions help to conserve memory. That said, functions are important. They are even the pivotal element of software development. We can´t code without them - whether you write a function yourself or not. Because there´s always at least one function in play: the Entry Point of a program. In Ruby the simplest program looks like this:puts "Hello, world!" In C# more is necessary:class Program { public static void Main () { System.Console.Write("Hello, world!"); } } C# makes the Entry Point function explicit, not so Ruby. But still it´s there. So you can think of logic always running in some function. Which brings me back to increments: In order to make the transition from talking to code as easy as possible, it has to be crystal clear into which function you should put the logic. Product owners might be content once there is a sticky note a user story on the Scrum or Kanban board. But developers need an idea of what that sticky note means in term of functions. Because with a function in hand, with a signature to run tests against, they have something to focus on. All´s well once there is a function behind whose signature logic can be piled up. Then testing frameworks can be used to check if the logic is correct. Then practices like TDD can help to drive the implementation. That´s why most code katas define exactly how the API of a solution should look like. It´s a function, maybe two or three, not more. A requirement like “Write a function f which takes this as parameters and produces such and such output by doing x” makes a developer comfortable. Yes, there are all kinds of details to think about, like which algorithm or technology to use, or what kind of state and side effects to consider. Even a single function not only must deliver on Functionality, but also on Quality and Evolvability. Nevertheless, once it´s clear which function to put logic in, you have a tangible starting point. So, yes, what I´m suggesting is to find a single function to put all the logic in that´s necessary to deliver on a the requirements of an increment. Or to put it the other way around: Slice requirements in a way that each increment´s logic can be located under the roof of a single function. Entry points Of course, the logic of a software will always be spread across many, many functions. But there´s always an Entry Point. That´s the most important function for each increment, because that´s the root to put integration or even acceptance tests on. A batch program like the above hello-world application only has a single Entry Point. All logic is reached from there, regardless how deep it´s nested in classes. But a program with a user interface like this has at least two Entry Points: One is the main function called upon startup. The other is the button click event handler for “Show my score”. But maybe there are even more, like another Entry Point being a handler for the event fired when one of the choices gets selected; because then some logic could check if the button should be enabled because all questions got answered. Or another Entry Point for the logic to be executed when the program is close; because then the choices made should be persisted. You see, an Entry Point to me is a function which gets triggered by the user of a software. With batch programs that´s the main function. With GUI programs on the desktop that´s event handlers. With web programs that´s handlers for URL routes. And my basic suggestion to help you with slicing requirements for Spinning is: Slice them in a way so that each increment is related to only one Entry Point function.[2] Entry Points are the “outer functions” of a program. That´s where the environment triggers behavior. That´s where hardware meets software. Entry points always get called because something happened to hardware state, e.g. a key was pressed, a mouse button clicked, the system timer ticked, data arrived over a wire.[3] Viewed from the outside, software is just a collection of Entry Point functions made accessible via buttons to press, menu items to click, gestures, URLs to open, keys to enter. Collections of batch processors I´d thus say, we haven´t moved forward since the early days of software development. We´re still writing batch programs. Forget about “event-driven programming” with its fancy GUI applications. Software is just a collection of batch processors. Earlier it was just one per program, today it´s hundreds we bundle up into applications. Each batch processor is represented by an Entry Point as its root that works on a number of resources from which it reads data to process and to which it writes results. These resources can be the keyboard or main memory or a hard disk or a communication line or a display. Together many batch processors - large and small - form applications the user perceives as a single whole: Software development that way becomes quite simple: just implement one batch processor after another. Well, at least in principle ;-) Features Each batch processor entered through an Entry Point delivers value to the user. It´s an increment. Sometimes its logic is trivial, sometimes it´s very complex. Regardless, each Entry Point represents an increment. An Entry Point implemented thus is a step forward in terms of Agility. At the same time it´s a tangible unit for developers. Therefore, identifying the more or less numerous batch processors in a software system is a rewarding task for product owners and developers alike. That´s where user stories meet code. In this example the user story translates to the Entry Point triggered by clicking the login button on a dialog like this: The batch then retrieves what has been entered via keyboard, loads data from a user store, and finally outputs some kind of response on the screen, e.g. by displaying an error message or showing the next dialog. This is all very simple, but you see, there is not just one thing happening, but several. Get input (email address, password) Load user for email address If user not found report error Check password Hash password Compare hash to hash stored in user Show next dialog Viewed from 10,000 feet it´s all done by the Entry Point function. And of course that´s technically possible. It´s just a bunch of logic and calling a couple of API functions. However, I suggest to take these steps as distinct aspects of the overall requirement described by the user story. Such aspects of requirements I call Features. Features too are increments. Each provides some (small) value of its own to the user. Each can be checked individually by a product owner. Instead of implementing all the logic behind the Login() entry point at once you can move forward increment by increment, e.g. First implement the dialog, let the user enter any credentials, and log him/her in without any checks. Features 1 and 4. Then hard code a single user and check the email address. Features 2 and 2.1. Then check password without hashing it (or use a very simple hash like the length of the password). Features 3. and 3.2 Replace hard coded user with a persistent user directoy, but a very simple one, e.g. a CSV file. Refinement of feature 2. Calculate the real hash for the password. Feature 3.1. Switch to the final user directory technology. Each feature provides an opportunity to deliver results in a short amount of time and get feedback. If you´re in doubt whether you can implement the whole entry point function until tomorrow night, then just go for a couple of features or even just one. That´s also why I think, you should strive for wrapping feature logic into a function of its own. It´s a matter of Evolvability and Production Efficiency. A function per feature makes the code more readable, since the language of requirements analysis and design is carried over into implementation. It makes it easier to apply changes to features because it´s clear where their logic is located. And finally, of course, it lets you re-use features in different context (read: increments). Feature functions make it easier for you to think of features as Spinning increments, to implement them independently, to let the product owner check them for acceptance individually. Increments consist of features, entry point functions consist of feature functions. So you can view software as a hierarchy of requirements from broad to thin which map to a hierarchy of functions - with entry points at the top.   I like this image of software as a self-similar structure on many levels of abstraction where requirements and code match each other. That to me is true agile design: the core tenet of Agility to move forward in increments is carried over into implementation. Increments on paper are retained in code. This way developers can easily relate to product owners. Elusive and fuzzy requirements are not tangible. Software production is moving forward through requirements one increment at a time, and one function at a time. In closing Product owners and developers are different - but they need to work together towards a shared goal: working software. So their notions of software need to be made compatible, they need to be connected. The increments of the product owner - user stories and features - need to be mapped straightforwardly to something which is relevant to developers. To me that´s functions. Yes, functions, not classes nor components nor micro services. We´re talking about behavior, actions, activities, processes. Their natural representation is a function. Something has to be done. Logic has to be executed. That´s the purpose of functions. Later, classes and other containers are needed to stay on top of a growing amount of logic. But to connect developers and product owners functions are the appropriate glue. Functions which represent increments. Can there always be such a small increment be found to deliver until tomorrow evening? I boldly say yes. Yes, it´s always possible. But maybe you´ve to start thinking differently. Maybe the product owner needs to start thinking differently. Completion is not the goal anymore. Neither is checking the delivery of an increment through the user interface of a software. Product owners need to become comfortable using test beds for certain features. If it´s hard to slice requirements thin enough for Spinning the reason is too little knowledge of something. Maybe you don´t yet understand the problem domain well enough? Maybe you don´t yet feel comfortable with some tool or technology? Then it´s time to acknowledge this fact. Be honest about your not knowing. And instead of trying to deliver as a craftsman officially become a researcher. Research an check back with the product owner every day - until your understanding has grown to a level where you are able to define the next Spinning increment. ? Sometimes even thin requirement slices will cover several Entry Points, like “Add validation of email addresses to all relevant dialogs.” Validation then will it put into a dozen functons. Still, though, it´s important to determine which Entry Points exactly get affected. That´s much easier, if strive for keeping the number of Entry Points per increment to 1. ? If you like call Entry Point functions event handlers, because that´s what they are. They all handle events of some kind, whether that´s palpable in your code or note. A public void btnSave_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) {…} might look like an event handler to you, but public static void Main() {…} is one also - for then event “program started”. ?

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• Customize the Five Windows Folder Templates

  - by Mark Virtue

  Are you’re particular about the way Windows Explorer presents each folder’s contents? Here we show you how to take advantage of Explorer’s built-in templates, which cuts down the time it takes to do customizations. Note: The techniques in this article apply to Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7. When opening a folder for the first time in Windows Explorer, we are presented with a standard default view of the files and folders in that folder. It may be that the items are presented are perfectly fine, but on the other hand, we may want to customize the view.  The aspects of it that we can customize are the following: The display type (list view, details, tiles, thumbnails, etc) Which columns are displayed, and in which order The widths of the visible columns The order in which the files and folders are sorted Any file groupings Thankfully, Windows offers us a shortcut.  A particular folder’s settings can be used as a “template” for other, similar folders.  In fact, we can store up to five separate sets of folder presentation configurations.  Once we save the settings for a particular template, that template can then be applied to other folders. Customize Your First Folder We’ll start by setting up the first of our templates – the default one.  Once we create this template and apply it, the vast majority of the folders in our file system will change to match it, so it’s important that we set it up very carefully.  The first step in creating and applying the template is to customize one folder with the settings that all the rest will have. Choose a folder that is typical of the folders that you wish to have this default template.  Select it in Windows Explorer.  To ensure that it is a suitable candidate, right-click the folder name and select Properties, then go to the Customize tab.  Ensure that this folder is marked as General Items.  If it is not, either choose a different folder or select General Items from the list. Click OK.  Now we’re ready to customize our first folder. Changing the way one single folder is presented is straightforward.  We start with the folder’s display type.  Click the Change your view button in the top-right corner of every Explorer window. Each time you click the button, the folder’s view cycles to the next view type.  Alternatively you can click the little down-arrow next to the button to see all the display types at once, and select the one you want. Click the view you want, or drag the slider next to the one you want. If you have chosen Details, then the next thing you may wish to change is which columns are displayed, and the order of these.  To choose which columns are displayed, simply right-click on any column heading.  A list of the columns currently being display appears. Simply uncheck a column if you don’t want it displayed, and check the columns that you want displayed.  If you want some information displayed about your files that is not listed here, then click the More… button for a full list of file attributes. There’s a lot of them! To change the order of the columns that are currently being displayed, simply click on a column heading and drag it to where you think it should be.  To change the width of a column, click the line that represents the right-hand edge of the column and drag it left or right. To sort by a column, click once on that column.  To reverse the sort-order, click that same column again. To change the groupings of the files in the folder, right-click in a blank area of the folder, select Group by, and select the appropriate column. Apply This Default Template to All Similar Folders Once you have the folder exactly the way you want it, we now use this folder as our default template for most of the folders in our file system.  To do this, ensure that you are still in the folder you just customized, and then, from the Organize menu in Explorer, click on Folder and search options. Then select the View tab and click the Apply to Folders button. After you’ve clicked OK, visit some of the other folders in your file system.  You should see that most have taken on these new settings. What we’ve just done, in effect, is we have customized the General Items template.  This is one of five templates that Windows Explorer uses to display folder contents.  The five templates are called (in Windows 7): General Items Documents Pictures Music Videos When a folder is opened, Windows Explorer examines the contents to see if it can automatically determine which folder template to use to display the folder contents.  If it is not obvious that the folder contents falls into any of the last four templates, then Windows Explorer chooses the General Items template.  That’s why most of the folders in your file system are shown using the General Items template. Changing the Other Four Templates If you want to adjust the other four templates, the process is very similar to what we’ve just done.  If you wanted to change the “Music” template, for example, the steps would be as follows: Select a folder that contains music items Apply the existing Music template to the folder (even if it doesn’t look like you want it to) Customize the folder to your personal preferences Apply the new template to all “Music” folders A fifth step would be:  When you open a folder that contains music items but is not automatically displayed using the Music template, you manually select the Music template for that folder. First, select a folder that contains music items.  It will probably be displayed using the existing Music template: Next, ensure that it is using the Music template.  If it’s not, then manually select the Music template. Next, customize the folder to suit your personal preferences (here we’ve added a couple of columns, and sorted by Artist). Now we can set this view to be our Music template.  Choose Organize, then the View tab, and click the Apply to Folders button. Note: The only folders that will inherit these settings are the ones that are currently (or will soon be) using the Music template. Now, if you have any folder that contains music items, and you want it to inherit all of these settings, then right-click the folder name, choose Properties, and select that this folder should use the Music template.  You can also cehck the box entitled Also apply this template to all subfolders if you want to save yourself even more time with all the sub-folders. Conclusion It’s neat to be able to set up templates for your folder views like this.  It’s a shame that Microsoft didn’t take the concept just a little further and allow you to create as many templates as you want. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Fix For When Windows Explorer in Vista Stops Showing File NamesCustomize the Windows 7 or Vista Send To MenuFix for New Contact Group Button Not Displaying in VistaWhy Did Windows Vista’s Music Folder Icon Turn Yellow?Make Your Last Minute Holiday Cards with Microsoft Word 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 DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Office 2010 reviewed in depth by Ed Bott FoxClocks adds World Times in your Statusbar (Firefox) Have Fun Editing Photo Editing with Citrify Outlook Connector Upgrade Error Gadfly is a cool Twitter/Silverlight app Enable DreamScene in Windows 7

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• How to deal with a poor team leader and a tester manager from hell? [closed]

  - by Google

  Let me begin by explaining my situation and give a little context to the situation. My company has around 15 developers but we're split up on two different areas. We have a fresh product team and the old product team. The old product team does mostly bug fixes/maintenance and a feature here and there. The fresh product had never been released and was new from the ground up. I am on the fresh product team. The team consists of three developers (myself, another developer and a senior developer). The senior is also our team leader. Our roles are as follows: Myself: building the administration client as well as build/release stuff Other dev: building the primary client Team lead: building the server In addition to the dev team, we interact with the test manager often. By "we" I mean me since I do the build stuff and give him the builds to test. Trial 1: The other developer on my team and I have both tried to talk to our manager about our team leader. About two weeks before release we went in his office and had a closed door meeting before our team lead got to work. We expressed our concerns about the product, its release date and our team leader. We expressed our team leader had a "rosey" image of the product's state. Our manager seemed to listen to what we said and thanked us for taking the initiative to speak with him about it. He got us an extra two weeks before release. The situation with the leader didn't change. In fact, it got a little worse. While we were using the two weeks to fix issues he was slacking off quite a bit. Just to name a few things, he installed Windows 8 on his dev machine during this time (claimed him machine was broke), he wrote a plugin for our office messenger that turned turned messages into speech, and one time when I went in his office he was making a 3D model in Blender (for "fun"). He felt the product was "pretty good" and ready for release. During this time I dealt with the test manager on a daily basis. Every bug or issue that popped up he would pretty much attack me personally (regardless of which component the bug was in). The test manager would often push his "views" of what needed to be done with the product. He virtually ordered me to change text on our installer and to add features to the installer and administration client. I tried to express how his suggestions were "valid ideas" but it was too close to release to do those kinds of things and to make matters worse, our technical writer had already finished documentation and such a change would not only affect the dev team but would affect the technical writer and marketing as well. I expressed I wasn't going to make those changes without marketing's consent as well as the technical writer and my manager's. He pretty much said I don't care about the product and said I don't do my job. I would like to take a moment to say I take my job seriously and I do my best. I am the kind of person that goes to work 30-40 mins early and usually leaves 30 minutes later than everyone else. Saying I don't care or do my job is just insulting. His "attacks" on me grew from day to day. Every bug that popped up he would usually comment on in some manner that jabbed me and the other developer. "Oh that bug! Yeah that should have been fixed by now, figures! If someone would do their job!" and other similar kinds of comments. Keep in mind 8 out of 10 bugs were in the server and had nothing to do with me and the other developer. That didn't seem to matter.. On one occasion they got pretty bad and we almost got into a yelling match so I decided to stop talking to him all together. I carried all communication through office email (with my manager cc'd). He never attacked me via email. He still attempted to get aggressive with me in person but I completely ignore him and my only response to any question is, "Ask my team leader." or "Ask a product manager." The product launched after our two week extension. Trial 2: The day after the product launch our team leader went on vacation (thanks....). At this time we got a lot of questions from the tech support... major issues with the product. All of these issues were bugs marked "resolved" by our lovely team leader (a typical situation that often popped up). This is where we currently are. The other developer has been with the company for about three years (I've been there only five months) and told me he was going to speak with our manager alone and hoped it would help get our concerns across a little better in a one-on-one. He spoke with the manager and directly addressed all of our concerns regarding our team leader and the test manager giving us (mostly me) hell. Our manager basically said he understood how hard we work and said he noticed it and there's no doubt about it. He said he spoke with the test manager about his temper. Regarding the team leader, he didn't say a whole lot. He suggested we sit down with the team leader and address our concerns (isn't that the manager's job?). We're still waiting to see if anything has changed but we doubt it. What can we do next? 1) Talk to the team leader (may stress relationship and make work awkward) I admit the team leader is generally a nice guy. He is just a horrible leader and working closely with him is painful. I still don't believe bringing this directly to the team leader would help at all and may negatively impact the situation. 2) I could quit. Other than this situation the job is pretty fantastic. I really like my other coworkers and we have quite a bit of freedom. 3) I could take the situation with the team leader to one of the owners. I would then be throwing my manager under the bus. 4) I could take the situation with the test manager to HR. Any suggestions? Comments?

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• Life Technologies: Making Life Easier to Manage

  - by Michael Snow

  12.00 Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";} When we’re thinking about customer engagement, we’re acutely aware of all the forces at play competing for our customer’s attention. Solutions that make life easier for our customers draw attention to themselves. We tend to engage more when there is a distinct benefit and we can take a deep breath and accept that there is hope in the world and everything isn’t designed to frustrate us and make our lives miserable. (sigh…) When products are designed to automate processes that were consuming hours of our time with no relief in sight, they deserve to be recognized. One of our recent Oracle Fusion Middleware Innovation Award Winners in the WebCenter category, Life Technologies, has recently posted a video promoting their “award winning” solution. The Oracle Innovation Awards are part of the overall Oracle Excellence awards given to customers for innovation with Oracle products. More info here. Their award nomination included this description: Life Technologies delivered the My Life Service Portal as part of a larger Digital Hub strategy. This Portal is the first of its kind in the biotechnology service providing industry. The Portal provides access to Life Technologies cloud based service monitoring system where all customer deployed instruments can be remotely monitored and proactively repaired. The portal provides alerts from these cloud based monitoring services directly to the customer and to Life Technologies Field Engineers. The Portal provides insight into the instruments and services customers purchased for the purpose of analyzing and anticipating future customer needs and creating targeted sales and service programs. This portal not only provides benefits for Life Technologies internal sales and service teams but provides customers a central place to track all pertinent instrument information including: instrument service history instrument status and previous activities instrument performance analytics planned service visits warranty/contract information discussion forums social networks for lab management and collaboration alerts and notifications on all of the above team scheduling for instrument usage promote optional reagents required to keep instruments performing From their website The Life Technologies Instruments & Services Portal Helps You Save Time and Gain Peace of Mind Introducing the new, award-winning, free online tool that enables easier management of your instrument use and care, faster response to requests for service or service quotes, and instant sharing of key instrument and service information with your colleagues. Now – this unto itself is obviously beneficial for their customers who were previously burdened with having to do all of these tasks separately, manually and inconsistently by nature. Now – all in one place and free to their customers – a portal that ties it all together. They now have built the platform to give their customers yet another reason to do business with them – Their headline on their product page says it all: “Life is now easier to manage - All your instrument use and care in one place – the no-cost, no-hassle Instruments and Services Portal.” Of course – it’s very convenient that the company name includes “Life” and now can also promote to their clients and prospects that doing business with them is easy and their sophisticated lab equipment is easy to manage. In an industry full of PhD’s – “Easy” isn’t usually the first word that comes to mind, but Life Technologies has now tied the word to their brand in a very eloquent way. Between our work lives and family or personal lives, getting any mono-focused minutes of dedicated attention has become such a rare occurrence in our current era of multi-tasking that those moments of focus are highly prized. So – when something is done really well – so well that it becomes captivating and urges sharing impulses – I take notice and dig deeper and most of the time I discover other gems not so hidden below the surface. And then I share with those I know would enjoy and understand. In the spirit of full disclosure, I must admit here that the first person I shared the videos below with was my daughter. She’s in her senior year of high school in the midst of her college search. She’s passionate about her academics and has already decided that she wants to study Neuroscience in college and like her mother will be in for the long haul to a PhD eventually. In a summer science program at Smith College 2 summers ago – she sent the family famous text to me – “I just dissected a sheep’s brain – wicked cool!” – This was followed by an equally memorable text this past summer in a research mentorship in Neuroscience at UConn – “Just sliced up some rat brain. Reminded me of a deli slicer at the supermarket… sorry I forgot to call last night…” So… needless to say – I knew I had an audience that would enjoy and understand these videos below and are now being shared among her science classmates and faculty. And evidently - so does Life Technologies! They’ve done a great job on these making them fun and something that will easily be shared among their customers social networks. They’ve created a neuro-archetypal character, “Ph.Diddy” and know that their world of clients in academics, research, and other institutions would understand and enjoy the “edutainment” value in this series of videos on their YouTube channel that pokes fun at the stereotypes while also promoting their products at the same time. They use their Facebook page for additional engagement with their clients and as another venue to promote these videos. Enjoy this one as well! More to be found here: http://www.youtube.com/lifetechnologies Stay tuned to this Oracle WebCenter blog channel. Tomorrow we'll be taking a look at another winner of the Innovation Awards, LADWP - helping to keep the citizens of Los Angeles engaged with their Water and Power provider.

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• Using Radio Button in GridView with Validation

  - by Vincent Maverick Durano

  A developer is asking how to select one radio button at a time if the radio button is inside the GridView.  As you may know setting the group name attribute of radio button will not work if the radio button is located within a Data Representation control like GridView. This because the radio button inside the gridview bahaves differentely. Since a gridview is rendered as table element , at run time it will assign different "name" to each radio button. Hence you are able to select multiple rows. In this post I'm going to demonstrate how select one radio button at a time in gridview and add a simple validation on it. To get started let's go ahead and fire up visual studio and the create a new web application / website project. Add a WebForm and then add gridview. The mark up would look something like this: <asp:GridView ID="GridView1" runat="server" AutoGenerateColumns="false" > <Columns> <asp:TemplateField> <ItemTemplate> <asp:RadioButton ID="rb" runat="server" /> </ItemTemplate> </asp:TemplateField> <asp:BoundField DataField="RowNumber" HeaderText="Row Number" /> <asp:BoundField DataField="Col1" HeaderText="First Column" /> <asp:BoundField DataField="Col2" HeaderText="Second Column" /> </Columns> </asp:GridView> Noticed that I've added a templatefield column so that we can add the radio button there. Also I have set up some BoundField columns and set the DataFields as RowNumber, Col1 and Col2. These columns are just dummy columns and i used it for the simplicity of this example. Now where these columns came from? These columns are created by hand at the code behind file of the ASPX. Here's the code below: private DataTable FillData() { DataTable dt = new DataTable(); DataRow dr = null; //Create DataTable columns dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("RowNumber", typeof(string))); dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("Col1", typeof(string))); dt.Columns.Add(new DataColumn("Col2", typeof(string))); //Create Row for each columns dr = dt.NewRow(); dr["RowNumber"] = 1; dr["Col1"] = "A"; dr["Col2"] = "B"; dt.Rows.Add(dr); dr = dt.NewRow(); dr["RowNumber"] = 2; dr["Col1"] = "AA"; dr["Col2"] = "BB"; dt.Rows.Add(dr); dr = dt.NewRow(); dr["RowNumber"] = 3; dr["Col1"] = "A"; dr["Col2"] = "B"; dt.Rows.Add(dr); dr = dt.NewRow(); dr["RowNumber"] = 4; dr["Col1"] = "A"; dr["Col2"] = "B"; dt.Rows.Add(dr); dr = dt.NewRow(); dr["RowNumber"] = 5; dr["Col1"] = "A"; dr["Col2"] = "B"; dt.Rows.Add(dr); return dt; } And here's the code for binding the GridView with the dummy data above. protected void Page_Load(object sender, EventArgs e) { if (!IsPostBack) { GridView1.DataSource = FillData(); GridView1.DataBind(); } } Okay we have now a GridView data with a radio button on each row. Now lets go ahead and switch back to ASPX mark up. In this example I'm going to use a JavaScript for validating the radio button to select one radio button at a time. Here's the javascript code below: function CheckOtherIsCheckedByGVID(rb) { var isChecked = rb.checked; var row = rb.parentNode.parentNode; if (isChecked) { row.style.backgroundColor = '#B6C4DE'; row.style.color = 'black'; } var currentRdbID = rb.id; parent = document.getElementById("<%= GridView1.ClientID %>"); var items = parent.getElementsByTagName('input'); for (i = 0; i < items.length; i++) { if (items[i].id != currentRdbID && items[i].type == "radio") { if (items[i].checked) { items[i].checked = false; items[i].parentNode.parentNode.style.backgroundColor = 'white'; items[i].parentNode.parentNode.style.color = '#696969'; } } } } The function above sets the row of the current selected radio button's style to determine that the row is selected and then loops through the radio buttons in the gridview and then de-select the previous selected radio button and set the row style back to its default. You can then call the javascript function above at onlick event of radio button like below: <asp:RadioButton ID="rb" runat="server" onclick="javascript:CheckOtherIsCheckedByGVID(this);" /> Here's the output below: On Load: After Selecting a Radio Button: As you have noticed, on initial load there's no default selected radio in the GridView. Now let's add a simple validation for that. We will basically display an error message if a user clicks a button that triggers a postback without selecting  a radio button in the GridView. Here's the javascript for the validation: function ValidateRadioButton(sender, args) { var gv = document.getElementById("<%= GridView1.ClientID %>"); var items = gv.getElementsByTagName('input'); for (var i = 0; i < items.length ; i++) { if (items[i].type == "radio") { if (items[i].checked) { args.IsValid = true; return; } else { args.IsValid = false; } } } } The function above loops through the rows in gridview and find all the radio buttons within it. It will then check each radio button checked property. If a radio is checked then set IsValid to true else set it to false.  The reason why I'm using IsValid is because I'm using the ASP validator control for validation. Now add the following mark up below under the GridView declaration: <br /> <asp:Label ID="lblMessage" runat="server" /> <br /> <asp:Button ID="btn" runat="server" Text="POST" onclick="btn_Click" ValidationGroup="GroupA" /> <asp:CustomValidator ID="CustomValidator1" runat="server" ErrorMessage="Please select row in the grid." ClientValidationFunction="ValidateRadioButton" ValidationGroup="GroupA" style="display:none"></asp:CustomValidator> <asp:ValidationSummary ID="ValidationSummary1" runat="server" ValidationGroup="GroupA" HeaderText="Error List:" DisplayMode="BulletList" ForeColor="Red" /> And then at Button Click event add this simple code below just to test if  the validation works: protected void btn_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { lblMessage.Text = "Postback at: " + DateTime.Now.ToString("hh:mm:ss tt"); } Here's the output below that you can see in the browser:   That's it! I hope someone find this post useful! Technorati Tags: ASP.NET,JavaScript,GridView

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• Fragmented Log files could be slowing down your database

  - by Fatherjack

  Something that is sometimes forgotten by a lot of DBAs is the fact that database log files get fragmented in the same way that you get fragmentation in a data file. The cause is very different but the effect is the same – too much effort reading and writing data. Data files get fragmented as data is changed through normal system activity, INSERTs, UPDATEs and DELETEs cause fragmentation and most experienced DBAs are monitoring their indexes for fragmentation and dealing with it accordingly. However, you don’t hear about so many working on their log files. How can a log file get fragmented? I’m glad you asked. When you create a database there are at least two files created on the disk storage; an mdf for the data and an ldf for the log file (you can also have ndf files for extra data storage but that’s off topic for now). It is wholly possible to have more than one log file but in most cases there is little point in creating more than one as the log file is written to in a ‘wrap-around’ method (more on that later). When a log file is created at the time that a database is created the file is actually sub divided into a number of virtual log files (VLFs). The number and size of these VLFs depends on the size chosen for the log file. VLFs are also created in the space added to a log file when a log file growth event takes place. Do you have your log files set to auto grow? Then you have potentially been introducing many VLFs into your log file. Let’s get to see how many VLFs we have in a brand new database. USE master GO CREATE DATABASE VLF_Test ON ( NAME = VLF_Test, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test.mdf', SIZE = 100, MAXSIZE = 500, FILEGROWTH = 50 ) LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5MB, MAXSIZE = 250MB, FILEGROWTH = 5MB ); go USE VLF_Test go DBCC LOGINFO; The results of this are firstly a new database is created with specified files sizes and the the DBCC LOGINFO results are returned to the script editor. The DBCC LOGINFO results have plenty of interesting information in them but lets first note there are 4 rows of information, this relates to the fact that 4 VLFs have been created in the log file. The values in the FileSize column are the sizes of each VLF in bytes, you will see that the last one to be created is slightly larger than the others. So, a 5MB log file has 4 VLFs of roughly 1.25 MB. Lets alter the CREATE DATABASE script to create a log file that’s a bit bigger and see what happens. Alter the code above so that the log file details are replaced by LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 1GB, MAXSIZE = 25GB, FILEGROWTH = 1GB ); With a bigger log file specified we get more VLFs What if we make it bigger again? LOG ON ( NAME = VLF_Test_Log, FILENAME = 'C:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Server\MSSQL10.ROCK_2008\MSSQL\DATA\VLF_Test_log.ldf', SIZE = 5GB, MAXSIZE = 250GB, FILEGROWTH = 5GB ); This time we see more VLFs are created within our log file. We now have our 5GB log file comprised of 16 files of 320MB each. In fact these sizes fall into all the ranges that control the VLF creation criteria – what a coincidence! The rules that are followed when a log file is created or has it’s size increased are pretty basic. If the file growth is lower than 64MB then 4 VLFs are created If the growth is between 64MB and 1GB then 8 VLFs are created If the growth is greater than 1GB then 16 VLFs are created. Now the potential for chaos comes if the default values and settings for log file growth are used. By default a database log file gets a 1MB log file with unlimited growth in steps of 10%. The database we just created is 6 MB, let’s add some data and see what happens. USE vlf_test go -- we need somewhere to put the data so, a table is in order IF OBJECT_ID('A_Table') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE A_Table go CREATE TABLE A_Table ( Col_A int IDENTITY, Col_B CHAR(8000) ) GO -- Let's check the state of the log file -- 4 VLFs found EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- We can go ahead and insert some data and then check the state of the log file again INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 500 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO -- insert 500 rows and we get 22 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); go -- Let's insert more rows INSERT A_Table (col_b) SELECT TOP 2000 REPLICATE('a',2000) FROM sys.columns AS sc, sys.columns AS sc2 GO 10 -- insert 2000 rows, in 10 batches and we suddenly have 107 VLFs EXECUTE ('DBCC LOGINFO'); Well, that escalated quickly! Our log file is split, internally, into 107 fragments after a few thousand inserts. The same happens with any logged transactions, I just chose to illustrate this with INSERTs. Having too many VLFs can cause performance degradation at times of database start up, log backup and log restore operations so it’s well worth keeping a check on this property. How do we prevent excessive VLF creation? Creating the database with larger files and also with larger growth steps and actively choosing to grow your databases rather than leaving it to the Auto Grow event can make sure that the growths are made with a size that is optimal. How do we resolve a situation of a database with too many VLFs? This process needs to be done when the database is under little or no stress so that you don’t affect system users. The steps are: BACKUP LOG YourDBName TO YourBackupDestinationOfChoice Shrink the log file to its smallest possible size DBCC SHRINKFILE(FileNameOfTLogHere, TRUNCATEONLY) * Re-size the log file to the size you want it to, taking in to account your expected needs for the coming months or year. ALTER DATABASE YourDBName MODIFY FILE ( NAME = FileNameOfTLogHere, SIZE = TheSizeYouWantItToBeIn_MB) * – If you don’t know the file name of your log file then run sp_helpfile while you are connected to the database that you want to work on and you will get the details you need. The resize step can take quite a while This is already detailed far better than I can explain it by Kimberley Tripp in her blog 8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx. The result of this will be a log file with a VLF count according to the bullet list above. Knowing when VLFs are being created By complete coincidence while I have been writing this blog (it’s been quite some time from it’s inception to going live) Jonathan Kehayias from SQLSkills.com has written a great article on how to track database file growth using Event Notifications and Service Broker. I strongly recommend taking a look at it as this is going to catch any sneaky auto grows that take place and let you know about them right away. Hassle free monitoring of VLFs If you are lucky or wise enough to be using SQL Monitor or another monitoring tool that let’s you write your own custom metrics then you can keep an eye on this very easily. There is a custom metric for VLFs (written by Stuart Ainsworth) already on the site and there are some others there are very useful so take a moment or two to look around while you are there. Resources MSDN – http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms179355(v=sql.105).aspx Kimberly Tripp from SQLSkills.com – http://www.sqlskills.com/BLOGS/KIMBERLY/post/8-Steps-to-better-Transaction-Log-throughput.aspx Thomas LaRock at Simple-Talk.com – http://www.simple-talk.com/sql/database-administration/monitoring-sql-server-virtual-log-file-fragmentation/ Disclosure I am a Friend of Red Gate. This means that I am more than likely to say good things about Red Gate DBA and Developer tools. No matter how awesome I make them sound, take the time to compare them with other products before you contact the Red Gate sales team to make your order.

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• Career development as a Software Developer without becoming a manager.

  - by albertpascual

  I’m a developer, I like to write new exciting code everyday, my perfect day at work is a day that when I wake up, I know that I have to write some code that I haven’t done before or to use a new framework/language/platform that is unknown to me. The best days in the office is when a project is waiting for me to architect or write. In my 15 years in the development field, I had to in order to get a better salary to manage people, not just to lead developers, to actually manage people. Something that I found out when I get into a management position is that I’m not that good at managing people, and not afraid to say it. I do not enjoy that part of the job, the worse one, takes time away from what I really like. Leading developers and managing people are very different things. I do like teaching and leading developers in a project. Yet most people believe, and is true in most companies, the way to get a better salary is to be promoted to a manager position. In order to advance in your career you need to let go of the everyday writing code and become a supervisor or manager. This is the path for developers after they become senior developers. As you get older and your family grows, the only way to hit your salary requirements is to advance your career to become a manager and get that manager salary. That path is the common in most companies, the most intelligent companies out there, have learned that promoting good developers mean getting a crappy manager and losing a good resource. Now scratch everything I said, because as I previously stated, I don’t see myself going to the office everyday and just managing people until is time to go home. I like to spend hours working in some code to accomplish a task, learning new platforms and languages or patterns to existing languages. Being interrupted every 15 minutes by emails or people stopping by my office to resolve their problems, is not something I could enjoy. All the sudden riding my motorcycle to work one cold morning over the Redlands Canyon and listening to .NET Rocks podcast, Michael “Doc” Norton explaining how to take control of your development career without necessary going to the manager’s track. I know, I should not have headphones under my helmet when riding a motorcycle in California. His conversation with Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell was just confirming everything I have ever did with actually more details and assuring that there are other paths. His method was simple yet most of us, already do many of those steps, Mr. Michael “Doc” Norton believe that it pays off on the long run, that finally companies prefer to pay higher salaries to those developers, yet I would actually think that many companies do not see developers that way, this is not true for bigger companies. However I do believe the value of those developers increase and most of the time, changing companies could increase their salary instead of staying in the same one. In short without even trying to get into the shadow of Mr. Norton and without following the steps in the order; you should love to learn new technologies, and then teach them to other geeks. I personally have learn many technologies and I haven’t stop doing that, I am a professor at UCR where I teach ASP.NET and Silverlight. Mr Norton continues that after than, you want to be involve in the development community, user groups, online forums, open source projects. I personally talk to user groups, I’m very active in forums asking and answering questions as well as for those I got awarded the Microsoft MVP for ASP.NET. After you accomplish all those, you should also expose yourself for what you know and what you do not know, learning a new language will make you humble again as well as extremely happy. There is no better feeling that learning a new language or pattern in your daily job. If you love your job everyday and what you do, I really recommend you to follow Michael’s presentation that he kindly share it on the link below. His confirmation is a refreshing, knowing that my future is not behind a desk where the computer screen is on my right hand side instead of in front of me. Where I don’t have to spent the days filling up performance forms for people and the new platforms that I haven’t been using yet are just at my fingertips. Presentation here. http://www.slideshare.net/LeanDog/take-control-of-your-development-career-michael-doc-norton?from=share_email_logout3 Take Control of Your Development Career Welcome! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] Recovering Post Technical I love to learn I love to teach I love to work in teams I love to write code I really love to write code What about YOU? Do you love your job? Do you love your Employer? Do you love your Boss? What do you love? What do you really love? Take Control Take Control • Get Noticed • Get Together • Get Your Mojo • Get Naked • Get Schooled Get Noticed Get Noticed Know Your Business Get Noticed Get Noticed Understand Management Get Noticed Get Noticed Do Your Existing Job Get Noticed Get Noticed Make Yourself Expendable Get Together Get Together Join a User Group Get Together Help Run a User Group Get Together Start a User Group Get Your Mojo Get Your Mojo Kata Get Your Mojo Koans Get Your Mojo Breakable Toys Get Your Mojo Open Source Get Naked Get Naked Run with Group A Get Naked Do Something Different Get Naked Own Your Mistakes Get Naked Admit You Don’t Know Get Schooled Get Schooled Choose a Mentor Get Schooled Attend Conferences Get Schooled Teach a New Subject Get Started Read These (Again) Take Control of Your Development Career Thank You! Michael “Doc” Norton @DocOnDev http://docondev.blogspot.com/ [email protected] In a short summary, I recommend any developer to check his blog and more important his presentation, I haven’t been lucky enough to watch him live, I’m looking forward the day I have the opportunity. He is giving us hope in the future of developers, when I see some of my geek friends moving to position that in short years they begin to regret, I get more unsure of my future doing what I love. I would say that now is looking at the spectrum of companies that understand and appreciate developers. There are a few there, hopefully with time code sweat shops will start disappearing and being a developer will feed a family of 4. Cheers Al tweetmeme_url = 'http://weblogs.asp.net/albertpascual/archive/2010/12/07/career-development-as-a-software-developer-without-becoming-a-manager.aspx'; tweetmeme_source = 'alpascual';

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 29, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Wednesday, June 29, 2011Popular ReleasesCandescent NUI: Candescent NUI (8263): This is the binary version of the source code in change set 8263.Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.4.4: Fix for http://coding4fun.codeplex.com/workitem/6869 was incomplete. Back button wouldn't return app bar. Corrected now. High impact bugSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.0.528.279): Added keyboard shortcuts: - Cut (CTRL+X) - Copy (CTRL+C) - Paste (CTRL+V) - Delete (CTRL+D) - Move up (CTRL+UP ARROW) - Move down (CTRL+DOWN ARROW) Added ability to save/load SiteMap from/to a Xml file on disk Bug fix: - Connect to a server through the status bar was throwing error "Object Reference not set to an instance of an object" - Rename TreeNode.Name after changing TreeNode.TextMicrosoft - Domain Oriented N-Layered .NET 4.0 App Sample: V2.01 ALPHA N-Layered SampleApp .NET 4.0 and EF4.1: V2.0.01 - ALPHARequired Software (Microsoft Base Software needed for Development environment) Visual Studio 2010 RTM & .NET 4.0 RTM (Final Versions) Expression Blend 4 SQL Server 2008 R2 Express/Standard/Enterprise Unity Application Block 2.0 - Published May 5th 2010 http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=2D24F179-E0A6-49D7-89C4-5B67D939F91B&displaylang=en http://unity.codeplex.com/releases/view/31277 PEX & MOLES 0.94.51023.0, 29/Oct/2010 - Visual Studio 2010 Power ...Mosaic Project: Mosaic Alpha build 261: - Fixed crash when pinning applications in x64 OS - Added Hub to video widget. It shows videos from Video library (only .wmv and .avi). Can work slow if there are too much files. - Fixed some issues with scrolling - Fixed bug with html widgets - Fixed bug in Gmail widget - Added html today widget missed in previous release - Now Mosaic saves running widgets if you restarting from optionsEnhSim: EnhSim 2.4.9 BETA: 2.4.9 BETAThis release supports WoW patch 4.2 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Added in some of th....NET Reflector Add-Ins: Reflector V7 Add-Ins: All the add-ins compiled for Reflector V7TerrariViewer: TerrariViewer v4.1 [4.0 Bug Fixes]: Version 4.1 ChangelogChanged how users will Open Player files (This change makes it much easier) This allowed me to remove the "Current player file" labels that were present Changed file control icons Added submit bug button Various Bug Fixes Fixed crashes related to clicking on buffs before a character is loaded Fixed crashes related to selecting "No Buff" when choosing a new buff Fixed crashes related to clicking on a "Max" button on the buff tab before a character is loaded Cor...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.0 Beta8: ??AcDown???????????????，?????????????????????。????????????????????，??Acfun、Bilibili、???、???、?????，???????????、???????。 AcDown???????????????????????????，???，???????????????????。 AcDown???????C#??，?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7 ????????????? ??：????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86)?.NET Framework 2.0???(x64)，?????"?????????"??? ??????????????，??????????： ??"AcDown?????"????????? ??v3.0 Beta8 ?? ??????????????? ???????????????(??????????) ???????...BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.5: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info 3 Months FREE – BlogEngine.NET Hosting – Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take a look at the Upgrading to BlogEngine.NET 2.5 instructions. To get started, be sure to check out our installatio...PHP Manager for IIS: PHP Manager 1.2 for IIS 7: This release contains all the functionality available in 62183 plus the following additions: Command Line Support via PowerShell - now it is possible to manage and script PHP installations on IIS by using Windows PowerShell. More information is available at Managing PHP installations with PHP Manager command line. Detection and alert when using local PHP handler - if a web site or a directory has a local copy of PHP handler mapping then the configuration changes made on upper configuration ...MiniTwitter: 1.71: MiniTwitter 1.71 ???? ?? OAuth ???????????? ????????、??????????????????? ???????????????????????SizeOnDisk: 1.0.10.0: Fix: issue 327: size format error when save settings Fix: some UI bindings trouble (sorting, refresh) Fix: user settings file deletion when corrupted Feature: TreeView virtualization (better speed with many folders) Feature: New file type DataGrid column Feature: In KByte view, show size of file < 1024B and > 0 with 3 decimal Feature: New language: Italian Task: Cleanup for speedRawr: Rawr 4.2.0: This is the Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!For web-based version see http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.php You can find the version notes at: http://rawr.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=VersionNotes Rawr AddonWe now have a Rawr Official Addon for in-game exporting and importing of character data hosted on Curse. The Addon does not perform calculations like Rawr, it simply shows your exported Rawr data in wow tooltips and lets you export your character to Rawr (including bag and bank items) like Char...N2 CMS: 2.2: * Web platform installer support available ** Nuget support available What's newDinamico Templates (beta) - an MVC3 & Razor based template pack using the template-first! development paradigm Boilerplate CSS & HTML5 Advanced theming with css comipilation (concrete, dark, roadwork, terracotta) Template-first! development style Content, news, listing, slider, image sizes, search, sitemap, globalization, youtube, google map Display Tokens - replaces text tokens with rendered content (usag...KinectNUI: Jun 25 Alpha Release: Initial public version. No installer needed, just run the EXE.Terraria World Viewer: Version 1.5: Update June 24th Made compatible with the new tiles found in Terraria 1.0.5Kinect Earth Move: KinectEarthMove sample code: Sample code releasedThis is a sample code for Kinect for Windows SDK beta, which was demonstrated on Channel 9 Kinect for Windows SKD beta launch event on June 17 2011. Using color image and skeleton data from Kinect and user in front of Kinect can manipulate the earth between his/her hands.NetOffice - The easiest way to use Office in .NET: NetOffice Release 0.9b: Changes: - fix critical issue 262334 (AccessViolationException while using events in a COMAddin) - remove x64 Assemblies (not necessary) Includes: - Runtime Binaries and Source Code for .NET Framework:......v2.0, v3.0, v3.5, v4.0 - Tutorials in C# and VB.Net:..............................................................COM Proxy Management, Events, etc. - Examples in C# and VB.Net:............................................................Excel, Word, Outlook, PowerPoint, Access - COMAddi...patterns & practices: Project Silk: Project Silk Community Drop 12 - June 22, 2011: Changes from previous drop: Minor code changes. New "Introduction" chapter. New "Modularity" chapter. Updated "Architecture" chapter. Updated "Server-Side Implementation" chapter. Updated "Client Data Management and Caching" chapter. Guidance Chapters Ready for Review The Word documents for the chapters are included with the source code in addition to the CHM to help you provide feedback. The PDF is provided as a separate download for your convenience. Installation Overview To ins...New ProjectsA web interface for data search and download to CUAHSI HIS: Hydroweb is an innovative user interface (GUI) created for web driven hydrology data search and download from CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System (HIS). The project has been developed in c#/Silverlight programming environment by leveraging the Bing map Silverlight tools.AcesUp: It's a desktop game developed using Windows Forms. The Game can currently run only if the screen resolution is 1024 x 786. It's a modern implementation of the classic cards game Aces Up. The version that is currently available is called AcesUp Ultimate. Enjoy!AES Encryptor: AES Encryptor (AES.E) is an simple, user-friendly text file encryption program using the Advanced Encryption System (AES). Encryption keys are based on the password that is registered with the program. AES.E is written in Visual Basic.AML Studio: AML Studio makes it easier for developers who are extending Aras Innovator to develop AML queries. Queries can be developed and run using a smart editor with syntax highlighting, code folding, and Intellisense. It's developed in C#.Arca4: Arca4 is a chat server for the Ares Galaxy File Sharing Network. It's developed in C# 4.0.Basic SharePoint-Google-Maps-WebPart for SharePoint-Lists: This JavaScript-Solution improves the standard-functionality of SharePoint-Lists. It displays a new Menu-Link in the standard Menu-Toolbar of a SharePoint-List (which contains addresses / coordinates). By clicking this link Google-Maps will be displayed under the SharePoint-List.BikeBouncer, bike protection for all: Bike registration and protection for free! BikeBouncer helps cyclists keeping their bikes away from thieves. Website: http://bikebouncer.com. The source is now open so people can contribute with new ideas.Cli: General purpose commandline interface for c# projects. Inherit this class and get cli for free. Plan for other languages in the future.CLIRES-3 Clinical Study/Trial Research (MVC3 - Web Application) by Tateeda.com: Clinical Study/trials research application to track subjects and their medication, visits. Dynamically create questioners/survey forms, visits, manage medications, sites, visit schedules and so on. Application is pre loaded with forms for Bipolar disorder study and 2500 related medications. Full administrative functionality HIPPA and CFR part 11 implementation. Easy to adopt for any other type of clinical study research. Technology: MVC3, C3 4.0, EF 4.0, jQuery 1.6, MS SQL 2008 R2CloudShot: CloudShot is a simple application to create screenshots and automatically upload it to your dropbox.CodingWheels.DataTypes: DataTypes tries to make it easier for developers to have concrete typesafe objects for working with many common forms of data. Many times these data objects are just doubles or ints floating through your code with abbreviations on them describing what they represent.CommonLibrary.NET Extensions: Highly re-usable code and components that are extensions to CommonLibrary.NET.CommonLibrary.NET Web: Highly re-usable web based code and components that are extensions to the CommonLibrary.NET.CRM 2011 Maintenance Job Editor: This utility is to be used for editing the CRM 2011 maintenance jobs which are automatically scheduled by the installation of CRM. This utility provides similar functionality to CRM 4.0's Scale Group Job Editor [url:http://archive.msdn.microsoft.com/ScaleGroupJobEditor]. Due to the changes in CRM 2011 many modifications had to be made and the functionality has been altered slightly. I look forward to your thoughts and comments on the changes. Excel add-in for BLAS routines: summaryExcel add-in for floating point numbers: Excel add-in for floating point number routines and utilities.Excel add-in for LAPACK routines: LAPACKExcel add-in for market aware date and time routines.: Date and time functions for Excel that know about market conventions such as day count and roll conventions.F# Math Visualizer: MathVisualizer, scirtto in F#, permette di visualizzare espressioni matematiche. Le espressioni devo essere scritte dall'utente seguendo una determinata sintassi. In particolare un espressione puo' essere scritta in maniera estesa, contratta o ibrida.FSharp Toolkit: Contents for build applications on F#.HiFreamWork: Hi,FreamWork C# Custom Library Used Microsoft.Practices.EnterpriseLibrary. ruiyuxing MSN/Mail:ryx1984ryx#hotmail.com QQ:120897051 http://www.cnfield.comhozoroghiab: hozoroghiab is absent o present systemHtml Parametric Web Part: A Web Part to build html with parameters taken from the context of SharePoint 2007ios-framework: ios framework projectITextSharp Sample: ????IText Sharp????，????????PDF??，????flash,????LinGoRoom: Language lab technology-based "thin client". NAudio used for audio capture and playback. The project was developed in C #.Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Customization Editor: Visual Studio 2010 and stand-alone tool that will allow the Customizations.xml to be viewed in a tree structure, with custom editors for each component. Initially editors for the supported Ribbon Editor, Sitemap and ISV.config will be included, with Read-only views for Forms.Modbus for .NET: C# implementation of Modbus communication protocol.Multi-Server MVC Elmah Log Viewer: An Elmah Log viewer for multiple elmah logs.MVC Scaffolding for WCF Data Services: This project contains a set of custom templates for MVC Scaffolding that will allow you to scaffold against a WCF Data Service (oData). Using these templates you can scaffold your client side DataServiceContext, Controller and Views using MVC Scaffolding, allowing you to quickly get a milti tiered MVC application up and running. You can use pretty much any oData feed as long as you have the entities for your ADO .NET Data Service defined in your solution these templates should work. OABValidate: This tool is for tracking down unresolvable DNs on directory objects when you have an Exchange server where Offline Address List generation (oabgen) is failing with event 9339 and error code 8004010e.onForms: Weekly fresh this is deletedOpenNETCF Calendar Controls: OpenNETCF Calendar Controls provide a Month View, Week View and Agenda View similar to what is used in the Pocket Outlook Calendar application. Pedal Architecture: Pedal Architecture allows you to quickly build enteprise applications. It currently supports building and hosting composable Windows Communication Foundation services using MEF.powerdown: ?????。rl: rlRooBooks: RooBooks - Books management tool for students and such. (circa 2004)SciFun: simple playground..SIGPRO Desktop: FUNCERNSistema De Tallet: Vehicles tallerSiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 helps developer and customizers to configure the Site Map in a graphical way. You'll no longer have to create solution, add component, export, update Xml and reimport the solution to update the SiteMap.The Electrolytes Website: The Electrolytes Band WebsiteThe Professions: The Professions work items are generalised for professional use. The professions are for highly skilled professionals who have earned their place in society through education, dedication, and specialization in some cases. The associations for particular professions are encouragedUpdateTool: A tool used to update client This project is for personal use. Please do not download in now.WcfFront: Automatic publisher of WCF ServicesWolfpack.Contrib: Contrib project for WolfPack monitoring

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• SQL Server Master class winner

  - by Testas

   The winner of the SQL Server MasterClass competition courtesy of the UK SQL Server User Group and SQL Server Magazine!    Steve Hindmarsh     There is still time to register for the seminar yourself at:  www.regonline.co.uk/kimtrippsql     More information about the seminar     Where: Radisson Edwardian Heathrow Hotel, London  When: Thursday 17th June 2010  This one-day MasterClass will focus on many of the top issues companies face when implementing and maintaining a SQL Server-based solution. In the case where a company has no dedicated DBA, IT managers sometimes struggle to keep the data tier performing well and the data available. This can be especially troublesome when the development team is unfamiliar with the affect application design choices have on database performance. The Microsoft SQL Server MasterClass 2010 is presented by Paul S. Randal and Kimberly L. Tripp, two of the most experienced and respected people in the SQL Server world. Together they have over 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server in the field, and on the SQL Server product team itself. This is a unique opportunity to hear them present at a UK event which will: Debunk many of the ingrained misconceptions around SQL Server's behaviour    Show you disaster recovery techniques critical to preserving your company's life-blood - the data    Explain how a common application design pattern can wreak havoc in the database Walk through the top-10 points to follow around operations and maintenance for a well-performing and available data tier! Please Note: Agenda may be subject to change  Sessions Abstracts  KEYNOTE: Bridging the Gap Between Development and Production    Applications are commonly developed with little regard for how design choices will affect performance in production. This is often because developers don't realize the implications of their design on how SQL Server will be able to handle a high workload (e.g. blocking, fragmentation) and/or because there's no full-time trained DBA that can recognize production problems and help educate developers. The keynote sets the stage for the rest of the day. Discussing some of the issues that can arise, explaining how some can be avoided and highlighting some of the features in SQL 2008 that can help developers and DBAs make better use of SQL Server, and troubleshoot when things go wrong.   SESSION ONE: SQL Server Mythbusters  It's amazing how many myths and misconceptions have sprung up and persisted over the years about SQL Server - after many years helping people out on forums, newsgroups, and customer engagements, Paul and Kimberly have heard it all. Are there really non-logged operations? Can interrupting shrinks or rebuilds cause corruption? Can you override the server's MAXDOP setting? Will the server always do a table-scan to get a row count? Many myths lead to poor design choices and inappropriate maintenance practices so these are just a few of many, many myths that Paul and Kimberly will debunk in this fast-paced session on how SQL Server operates and should be managed and maintained.   SESSION TWO: Database Recovery Techniques Demo-Fest  Even if a company has a disaster recovery strategy in place, they need to practice to make sure that the plan will work when a disaster does strike. In this fast-paced demo session Paul and Kimberly will repeatedly do nasty things to databases and then show how they are recovered - demonstrating many techniques that can be used in production for disaster recovery. Not for the faint-hearted!   SESSION THREE: GUIDs: Use, Abuse, and How To Move Forward   Since the addition of the GUID (Microsoft’s implementation of the UUID), my life as a consultant and "tuner" has been busy. I’ve seen databases designed with GUID keys run fairly well with small workloads but completely fall over and fail because they just cannot scale. And, I know why GUIDs are chosen - it simplifies the handling of parent/child rows in your batches so you can reduce round-trips or avoid dealing with identity values. And, yes, sometimes it's even for distributed databases and/or security that GUIDs are chosen. I'm not entirely against ever using a GUID but overusing and abusing GUIDs just has to be stopped! Please, please, please let me give you better solutions and explanations on how to deal with your parent/child rows, round-trips and clustering keys!   SESSION 4: Essential Database Maintenance  In this session, Paul and Kimberly will run you through their top-ten database maintenance recommendations, with a lot of tips and tricks along the way. These are distilled from almost 30 years combined experience working with SQL Server customers and are geared towards making your databases more performant, more available, and more easily managed (to save you time!). Everything in this session will be practical and applicable to a wide variety of databases. Topics covered include: backups, shrinks, fragmentation, statistics, and much more! Focus will be on 2005 but we'll explain some of the key differences for 2000 and 2008 as well. Speaker Biographies     Kimberley L. Tripp Paul and Kimberly are a husband-and-wife team who own and run SQLskills.com, a world-renowned SQL Server consulting and training company. They are both SQL Server MVPs and Microsoft Regional Directors, with over 30 years of combined experience on SQL Server. Paul worked on the SQL Server team for nine years in development and management roles, writing many of the DBCC commands, and ultimately with responsibility for core Storage Engine for SQL Server 2008. Paul writes extensively on his blog (SQLskills.com/blogs/Paul) and for TechNet Magazine, for which he is also a Contributing Editor. Kimberly worked on the SQL Server team in the early 1990s as a tester and writer before leaving to found SQLskills and embrace her passion for teaching and consulting. Kimberly has been a staple at worldwide conferences since she first presented at TechEd in 1996, and she blogs at SQLskills.com/blogs/Kimberly. They have written Microsoft whitepapers and books for SQL Server 2000, 2005 and 2008, and are regular, top-rated presenters worldwide on database maintenance, high availability, disaster recovery, performance tuning, and SQL Server internals. Together they teach the SQL MCM certification and throughout Microsoft.In their spare time, they like to find frogfish in remote corners of the world.   Speaker Testimonials  "To call them good trainers is an epic understatement. They know how to deliver technical material in ways that illustrate it well. I had to stop Paul at one point and ask him how long it took to build a particular slide because the animations were so good at conveying a hard-to-describe process." "These are not beginner presenters, and they put an extreme amount of preparation and attention to detail into everything that they do. Completely, utterly professional." "When it comes to the instructors themselves, Kimberly and Paul simply have no equal. Not only are they both ultimate authorities, but they have endless enthusiasm about the material, and spot on delivery. If either ever got tired they never showed it, even after going all day and all week. We witnessed countless demos over the course of the week, some extremely involved, multi-step processes, and I can’t recall one that didn’t go the way it was supposed to." "You might think that with this extreme level of skill comes extreme levels of egotism and lack of patience. Nothing could be further from the truth. ... They simply know how to teach, and are approachable, humble, and patient." "The experience Paul and Kimberly have had with real live customers yields a lot more information and things to watch out for than you'd ever get from documentation alone." “Kimberly, I just wanted to send you an email to let you know how awesome you are! I have applied some of your indexing strategies to our website’s homegrown CMS and we are experiencing a significant performance increase. WOW....amazing tips delivered in an exciting way!  Thanks again” 

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• Blogging tips for SQL Server professionals

  - by jamiet

  For some time now I have been intending to put some material together relating my blogging experiences since I began blogging in 2004 and that led to me submitting a session for SQLBits recently where I intended to do just that. That didn’t get enough votes to allow me to present however so instead I resolved to write a blog post about it and Simon Sabin’s recent post Blogging – how do you do it? has prompted me to get around to completing it. So, here I present a compendium of tips that I’ve picked up from authoring a fair few blog posts over the past 6 years. Feedburner Feedburner.com is a service that can consume your blog’s default RSS feed and provide another, replacement, feed that has exactly the same content. You can then supply that replacement feed on your blog site for other people to consume in their RSS readers. Why would you want to do this? Well, two reasons actually: It makes your blog portable. If you ever want to move your blog to a different URL you don’t have to tell your subscribers to move to a different feed. The feedburner feed is a pointer to your blog content rather than being a copy of it. Feedburner will collect stats telling you how many people are subscribed to your feed, which RSS readers they use, stuff like that. Here’s a sample screenshot for http://sqlblog.com/blogs/jamie_thomson/: It also tells you what your most viewed posts are: Web stats like these are notoriously inaccurate but then again the method of measurement here is not important, what IS important is that it gives you a trustworthy ranking of your blog posts and (in my opinion) knowing which are your most popular posts is more important than knowing exactly how many views each post has had. This is just the tip of the iceberg of what Feedburner provides and I recommend every new blogger to try it! Monitor subscribers using Google Reader If for some reason Feedburner is not to your taste or (more likely) you already have an established RSS feed that you do not want to change then Google provide another way in which you can monitor your readership in the shape of their online RSS reader, Google Reader. It provides, for every RSS feed, a collection of stats including the number of Google Reader users that have subscribed to that RSS feed. This is really valuable information and in fact I have been recording this statistic for mine and a number of other blogs for a few years now and as such I can produce the following chart that indicates how readership is trending for those blogs over time: [Good news for my fellow SQLBlog bloggers.] As Stephen Few readily points out, its not the numbers that are important but the trend. Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) SEO (or “How do I get my blog to show up in Google”) is a massive area of expertise which I don’t want (and am unable) to cover in much detail here but there are some simple rules of thumb that will help: Tags – If your blog engine offers the ability to add tags to your blog post, use them. Invariably those tags go into the meta section of the page HTML and search engines lap that stuff up. For example, from my recent post Microsoft publish Visual Studio 2010 Database Project Guidance: Title – Search engines take notice of web page titles as well so make them specific and descriptive (e.g. “Configuring dtsConfig connection strings”) rather than esoteric and meaningless in a vain attempt to be humorous (e.g. “Last night a DJ saved my ETL batch”)! Title(2) – Make your title even more search engine friendly by mentioning high level subject areas, not dissimilar to Twitter hashtags. For example, if you look at all of my posts related to SSIS you will notice that nearly all contain the word “SSIS” in the title even if I had to shoehorn it in there by putting it in square brackets or similar. Another tip, if you ARE putting words into your titles in this artificial manner then put them at the end so that they’re not that prominent in search engine results; they’re there for the search engines to consume, not for human beings. Images – Always add titles and alternate text (ALT attribute) to images in your blog post. If you use Windows 7 or Windows Vista then you can use Live Writer (which Simon recommended) makes this easy for you. Headings – If you want to highlight section headings use heading tags (e.g. <H1>, <H2>, <H3> etc…) rather than just formatting the text appropriately – again, Live makes this easy. These tags give your blog posts structure that is understood by search engines and RSS readers alike. (I believe it makes them more amenable to CSS as well – though that’s not something I know too much about). If you check the HTML source for the blog post you’re reading right now you’ll be able to scan through and see where I have used heading tags. Microsoft provide a free tool called the SEO Toolkit that will analyse your blog site (for free) and tell you what things you should change to improve SEO. Go read more and download for free at Search Engine Optimization Toolkit. Did I mention that it was free? Miscellaneous Tips If you are including code in your blog post then ensure it is formatted correctly. Use SQL Server Central’s T-SQL prettifier for formatting T-SQL code. Use images and videos. Personally speaking there’s nothing I like less when reading a blog than paragraph after paragraph of text. Images make your blog more appealing which means people are more likely to read what you have written. Be original. Don’t plagiarise other people’s content and don’t simply rewrite the contents of Books Online. Every time you publish a blog post tweet a link to it. Include hashtags in your tweet that are more likely to grab people’s attention. That’s probably enough for now - I hope this blog post proves useful to someone out there. If you would appreciate a related session at a forthcoming SQLBits conference then please let me know. This will likely be my last blog post for 2010 so I would like to take this opportunity to thank everyone that has commented on, linked to or read any of my blog posts in that time. 2011 is shaping up to be a very interesting for SQL Server observers with the impending release of SQL Server code-named Denali and I promise I’ll have lots more content on that as the year progresses. Happy New Year. @Jamiet

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• Sell good Dumps, track 1&2, CVV, Paypal, WU TRANSFER Service

  - by gOOD dUMPS cvv

  my products for sale: Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers I am here to sell, supply good and quality CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;... In last 5 years my Job Is This. PRESTIGE is my first motto. Not easy to build the good PRESTIGE. My motto is Always make customers satisfied & happy ! I have unlocked many softwares make good money, example: -Software to make the bug and crack MTCN of the Western Union. Version : 2.0.1.1 ( new update ) -Software to open balance in PayPal and Bank Login -Software hacking credit card, debit card Version 1.0 **I only sell it for my good customers, and my familiarity ***I update more than 200 CC + CVV everyday. Fresh + good valid + Strong,private + high balance with best price Our products are checked by a partner who works in a bank. Our products are better than 5-7 days after they are dead. They are raised mainly for money atm. Can be used in most countries. ** If you are a serious buyer, let contact via : Yahoo ID: goodcvv_dumps Mail: [email protected] ICQ: 667686221 * Sell CVV; Dumps,track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers. CVV for shipping;booking airline ticket;shopping online;ordering Laptop,Iphone;... I promise CC of mine are good,high balance and fresh all with good price. PRESTIGE is my first motto. 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Do WU Transfer and Bank Transfers] [Sell CVV; Dumps, track1&2; Bank logins; Paypal Accounts;Ebay Accounts Mailpass; SMTP;RDP;VPS;CCN;SSN; Sell Amazon gift card & itunes gift card; Game Cards, ATM Card; MSR, ATM SKIMMERS. Do WU Transfers and Bank Transfers] ------------------------------ CONTACT via Y!H: goodcvv_dumps or ICQ: 667686221 or Mail: [email protected] ------------------------------------ * WARNING!!! BEFORE MAKE BUSINESS or add my ID, let read carefull my rule because i really hate Spammers,Rippers and Scammers - Dont trust, dont talk more - Don't Spamm And Don't Scam! I very hate do spam or rip and I don't want who spam me. - All my CVV are tested before sell, that's sure - I accept LR; WU or MoneyGram. - I only work with reliable buyers. 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• Prioritizing Product Features

  - by Robert May

  A very common task in Agile Environments is prioritization.  Teams that are functioning well will prioritize new features, old features, the backlog, and any other source of stories for the team, and they’ll do it regularly. Not all teams are good at prioritizing according to the real return on investment that building stories will yield to the company.  This is unfortunate.  Too often, teams end up building features that are less valuable, and everyone seems to know it except perhaps the product owner!  Most features built into software are never even used.  Clearly, not much return for features that go unused. So how does a company avoid building features that add little value to the company?  This is a tough question to answer, but usually, this prioritization starts at the top with the executives of the company.  After all, they’re responsible for the overall vision of the company. Here’s what I recommend: Know your market. Know your customers and users. Know where you’re going and what you want to achieve. Implement the Vision Know Your Market We often see companies that don’t know their market.  Personally, I’m surprised by this.  These companies don’t know who their competitors are, don’t know what features make their product desirable in the market, and in many cases, get by with saying, “I’ve been doing this for XX years.  I know what the market wants!”  In many cases, they equate “marketing” with “advertising” and don’t understand the difference. This is almost never true.  Good companies will spend significant amounts of time and money finding out who they’re competing against and what makes their competitors successful in the marketplace.  Good companies understand that marketing involves more than just advertising.  Often, marketing is mostly research and analysis, not sales.  Until you understand your market, you cannot know what features will give you the best return on your investment dollar. Good companies have a marketing department and can answer the next important step which is to know your customers and your users. Know your Customers and Users First, note that I included both customers and users.  They’re often not the same thing.  Users use the product that you build.  Customers buy the product that you build.  It’s a subtle difference, but too often, I’ve seen companies that focus exclusively on one or the other and are not successful simply because they ignore an important part of the group. If your company is doing appropriate marketing, you know that these are two different aspects of your product and that both deserve attention to have a product that is successful in your target market.  Your marketing department should be spending a lot of time understanding these personas and then conveying that information to the company. I’m always surprised when development teams think that they can build a product that people want to use without understanding the users of that product.  Developers think differently than most people in the world.  They know what the computer is doing.  The computer isn’t magic to them.  So when they assume that they know how to build something, they bring with them quite a bit of baggage.  Never assume that you know your customer unless you’re regularly having interaction with them.  Also, don’t just leave this to Marketing or Product Management.  Take them time to get your developers out with the customers as well.  Developers are very smart people, and often, seeing how someone uses their software inspires them to make a much better product. Very often, because the users and customers aren’t know, teams will spend a significant amount of time building apps that are super flexible and configurable so that any possible combination of feature can be used.  This demonstrates a clear lack of understanding of the customer.  Most configuration questions can quickly be answered by talking to the customer.  In most cases, if your software requires significant setup and configuration before its usable, you probably don’t know your customers and users very well. Until you know your customers, you cannot know what features will be most valuable to your customers and you cannot build those features in a way that your customers can use. Know Where You’re Going and What You Want to Achieve Many companies suffer from not having a plan.  Executives will tell the team to make them a plan.  The team, not knowing their market and customers and users, will come up with a plan that doesn’t reflect reality and doesn’t consider ROI.  Management then wonders why the product is doing poorly in the market place. Instead of leaving this up to the teams, as executives, work with Marketing to understand what broad categories of features will sell the most product in the marketplace.  Then, once you’ve determined that, give this vision to the team and let them run with it.  Revise the vision as needed, but avoid changing streams frequently.  Sure, sometimes you need to, but often, executives will change priorities many times a month, leading to nothing more than confusion.  If the team has a vision, they’ll be able to execute that vision far better than they could otherwise. By knowing what products are most important, you can set budgetary goals and guidelines that will help you achieve the vision that was created. Implement the Vision Creating the vision is often where the general executives stop participating in the plan.  The team is responsible for implementing that vision.  Executives should attend showcases and and should remain aware of the progress that the team is making towards meeting the vision, however. Once a broad vision has been created, the team should break that vision down into minimal market features (MMF).  These MMFs should be sized using story points so that, using the team’s velocity, an estimated cost can be determined for each feature.  The product management team should then try to quantify the relative value of the MMFs based on customer feedback and interviews.  Once the value and cost of creating the feature is understood, a return on investment can be calculated.  The features should then be prioritized with the MMF’s that have the highest value and lowest cost rising to the top of features to implement.  Don’t let politics get in the way! Once the MMF’s have been prioritized, they should go through release planning to schedule them for implementation. Conclusion By having a good grasp on the strategy of the company, your Agile teams can be much more effective.  Each and every story the team is implementing will roll up into features that matter to the company and provide ROI to them.  The steps outlined in this post should be repeated on a regular basis.  I recommend reviewing them at least once per quarter to make sure that the vision hasn’t shifted and that the teams are still working on what matters most to the company. Technorati Tags: Agile,Product Owner,ROI

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• Designing for the future

  - by Dennis Vroegop

  User interfaces and user experience design is a fast moving field. It’s something that changes pretty quick: what feels fresh today will look outdated tomorrow. I remember the day I first got a beta version of Windows 95 and I felt swept away by the user interface of the OS. It felt so modern! If I look back now, it feels old. Well, it should: the design is 17 years old which is an eternity in our field. Of course, this is not limited to UI. Same goes for many industries. I want you to think back of the cars that amazed you when you were in your teens (if you are in your teens then this may not apply to you). Didn’t they feel like part of the future? Didn’t you think that this was the ultimate in designs? And aren’t those designs hopelessly outdated today (again, depending on your age, it may just be me)? Let’s review the Win95 design: And let’s compare that to Windows 7: There are so many differences here, I wouldn’t even know where to start explaining them. The general feeling however is one of more usability: studies have shown Windows 7 is much easier to understand for new users than the older versions of Windows did. Of course, experienced Windows users didn’t like it: people are usually afraid of changes and like to stick to what they know. But for new users this was a huge improvement. And that is what UX design is all about: make a product easier to use, with less training required and make users feel more productive. Still, there are areas where this doesn’t hold up. There are plenty examples of designs from the past that are still fresh today. But if you look closely at them, you’ll notice some subtle differences. This differences are what keep the designs fresh. A good example is the signs you’ll find on the road. They haven’t changed much over the years (otherwise people wouldn’t recognize them anymore) but they have been changing gradually to reflect changes in traffic. The same goes for computer interfaces. With each new product or version of a product, the UI and UX is changed gradually. Every now and then however, a bigger change is needed. Just think about the introduction of the Ribbon in Microsoft Office 2007: the whole UI was redesigned. A lot of old users (not in age, but in times of using older versions) didn’t like it a bit, but new users or casual users seem to be more efficient using the product. Which, of course, is exactly the reason behind the changes. I believe that a big engine behind the changes in User Experience design has been the web. In the old days (i.e. before the explosion of the internet) user interface design in Windows applications was limited to choosing the margins between your battleship gray buttons. When the web came along, and especially the web 2.0 where the browsers started to act more and more as application platforms, designers stepped in and made a huge impact. In the browser, they could do whatever they wanted. In the beginning this was limited to the darn blink tag but gradually people really started to think about UX. Even more so: the design of the UI and the whole experience was taken away from the developers and put into the hands of people who knew what they were doing: UX designers. This caused some problems. Everyone who has done a web project in the early 2000’s must have had the same experience: the designers give you a set of Photoshop files and tell you to translate it to HTML. Which, of course, is very hard to do. However, with new tooling and new standards this became much easier. The latest version of HTML and CSS has taken the responsibility for the design away from the developers and placed them in the capable hands of the designers. And that’s where that responsibility belongs, after all, I don’t want a designer to muck around in my c# code just as much as he or she doesn’t want me to poke in the sites style definitions. This change in responsibilities resulted in good looking but more important: better thought out user interfaces in websites. And when websites became more and more interactive, people started to expect the same sort of look and feel from their desktop applications. But that didn’t really happen. Most business applications still have that battleship gray look and feel. Ok, they may use a different color but we’re not talking colors here but usability. Now, you may not be able to read the Dutch captions, but even if you did you wouldn’t understand what was going on. At least, not when you first see it. You have to scan the screen, read all the labels, see how they are related to the other elements on the screen and then figure out what they do. If you’re an experienced user of this application however, this might be a good thing: you know what to do and you get all the information you need in one single screen. But for most applications this isn’t the case. A lot of people only use their computer for a limited time a day (a weird concept for me, but it happens) and need it to get something done and then get on with their lives. For them, a user interface experience like the above isn’t working. (disclaimer: I just picked a screenshot, I am not saying this is bad software but it is an example of about 95% of the Windows applications out there). For the knowledge worker, this isn’t a problem. They use one or two systems and they know exactly what they need to do to achieve their goal. They don’t want any clutter on their screen that distracts them from their task, they just want to be as efficient as possible. When they know the systems they are very productive. The point is, how long does it take to become productive? And: could they be even more productive if the UX was better? Are there things missing that they don’t know about? Are there better ways to achieve what they want to achieve? Also: could a system be designed in such a way that it is not only much more easy to work with but also less tiring? in the example above you need to switch between the keyboard and mouse a lot, something that we now know can be very tiring. The goal of most applications (being client apps or websites on any kind of device) is to provide information. Information is data that when given to the right people, on the right time, in the right place and when it is correct adds value for that person (please, remember that definition: I still hear the statement “the information was wrong” which doesn’t make sense: data can be wrong, information cannot be). So if a system provides data, how can we make sure the chances of becoming information is as high as possible? A good example of a well thought-out system that attempts this is the Zune client. It is a very good application, and I think the UX is much better than it’s main competitor iTunes. Have a look at both: On the left you see the iTunes screenshot, on the right the Zune. As you notice, the Zune screen has more images but less chrome (chrome being visuals not part of the data you want to show, i.e. edges around buttons). The whole thing is text oriented or image oriented, where that text or image is part of the information you need. What is important is big, what’s less important is smaller. Yet, everything you need to know at that point is present and your attention is drawn immediately to what you’re trying to achieve: information about music. You can easily switch between the content on your machine and content on your Zune player but clicking on the image of the player. But if you didn’t know that, you’d find out soon enough: the whole UX is designed in such a way that it invites you to play around. So sooner or later (probably sooner) you’d click on that image and you would see what it does. In the iTunes version it’s harder to find: the discoverability is a lot lower. For inexperienced people the Zune player feels much more natural than the iTunes player, and they get up to speed a lot faster. How does this all work? Why is this UX better? The answer lies in a project from Microsoft with the codename (it seems to be becoming the official name though) “Metro”. Metro is a design language, based on certain principles. When they thought about UX they took a good long look around them and went out in search of metaphors. And they found them. The team noticed that signage in streets, airports, roads, buildings and so on are usually very clear and very precise. These signs give you the information you need and nothing more. It’s simple, clearly understood and fast to understand. A good example are airport signs. Airports can be intimidating places, especially for the non-experienced traveler. In the early 1990’s Amsterdam Airport Schiphol decided to redesign all the signage to make the traveller feel less disoriented. They developed a set of guidelines for signs and implemented those. Soon, most airports around the world adopted these ideas and you see variations of the Dutch signs everywhere on the globe. The signs are text-oriented. Yes, there are icons explaining what it all means for the people who can’t read or don’t understand the language, but the basic sign language is text. It’s clear, it’s high-contrast and it’s easy to understand. One look at the sign and you know where to go. The only thing I don’t like is the green sign pointing to the emergency exit, but since this is the default style for emergency exits I understand why they did this. If you look at the Zune UI again, you’ll notice the similarities. Text oriented, little or no icons, clear usage of fonts and all the information you need. This design language has a set of principles: Clean, light, open and fast Content, not chrome Soulful and alive These are just a couple of the principles, you can read the whole philosophy behind Metro for Windows Phone 7 here. These ideas seem to work. I love my Windows Phone 7. It’s easy to use, it’s clear, there’s no clutter that I do not need. It works for me. And I noticed it works for a lot of other people as well, especially people who aren’t as proficient with computers as I am. You see these ideas in a lot other places. Corning, a manufacturer of glass, has made a video of possible usages of their products. It’s their glimpse into the future. You’ll notice that a lot of the UI in the screens look a lot like what Microsoft is doing with Metro (not coincidentally Corning is the supplier for the Gorilla glass display surface on the new SUR40 device (or Surface v2.0 as a lot of people call it)). The idea behind this vision is that data should be available everywhere where you it. Systems should be available at all times and data is presented in a clear and light manner so that you can turn that data into information. You don’t need a lot of fancy animations that only distract from the data. You want the data and you want it fast. Have a look at this truly inspiring video that made: This is what I believe the future will look like. Of course, not everything is possible, or even desirable. But it is a nice way to think about the future . I feel very strongly about designing applications in such a way that they add value to the user. Designing applications that turn data into information. Applications that make the user feel happy to use them. So… when are you going to drop the battleship-gray designs? Tags van Technorati: surface,design,windows phone 7,wp7,metro

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• Using Table-Valued Parameters in SQL Server

  - by Jesse

  I work with stored procedures in SQL Server pretty frequently and have often found myself with a need to pass in a list of values at run-time. Quite often this list contains a set of ids on which the stored procedure needs to operate the size and contents of which are not known at design time. In the past I’ve taken the collection of ids (which are usually integers), converted them to a string representation where each value is separated by a comma and passed that string into a VARCHAR parameter of a stored procedure. The body of the stored procedure would then need to parse that string into a table variable which could be easily consumed with set-based logic within the rest of the stored procedure. This approach works pretty well but the VARCHAR variable has always felt like an un-wanted “middle man” in this scenario. Of course, I could use a BULK INSERT operation to load the list of ids into a temporary table that the stored procedure could use, but that approach seems heavy-handed in situations where the list of values is usually going to contain only a few dozen values. Fortunately SQL Server 2008 introduced the concept of table-valued parameters which effectively eliminates the need for the clumsy middle man VARCHAR parameter. Example: Customer Transaction Summary Report Let’s say we have a report that can summarize the the transactions that we’ve conducted with customers over a period of time. The report returns a pretty simple dataset containing one row per customer with some key metrics about how much business that customer has conducted over the date range for which the report is being run. Sometimes the report is run for a single customer, sometimes it’s run for all customers, and sometimes it’s run for a handful of customers (i.e. a salesman runs it for the customers that fall into his sales territory). This report can be invoked from a website on-demand, or it can be scheduled for periodic delivery to certain users via SQL Server Reporting Services. Because the report can be created from different places and the query to generate the report is complex it’s been packed into a stored procedure that accepts three parameters: @startDate – The beginning of the date range for which the report should be run. @endDate – The end of the date range for which the report should be run. @customerIds – The customer Ids for which the report should be run. Obviously, the @startDate and @endDate parameters are DATETIME variables. The @customerIds parameter, however, needs to contain a list of the identity values (primary key) from the Customers table representing the customers that were selected for this particular run of the report. In prior versions of SQL Server we might have made this parameter a VARCHAR variable, but with SQL Server 2008 we can make it into a table-valued parameter. Defining And Using The Table Type In order to use a table-valued parameter, we first need to tell SQL Server about what the table will look like. We do this by creating a user defined type. For the purposes of this stored procedure we need a very simple type to model a table variable with a single integer column. We can create a generic type called ‘IntegerListTableType’ like this: CREATE TYPE IntegerListTableType AS TABLE (Value INT NOT NULL) Once defined, we can use this new type to define the @customerIds parameter in the signature of our stored procedure. The parameter list for the stored procedure definition might look like: 1: CREATE PROCEDURE dbo.rpt_CustomerTransactionSummary 2: @starDate datetime, 3: @endDate datetime, 4: @customerIds IntegerListTableTableType READONLY   Note the ‘READONLY’ statement following the declaration of the @customerIds parameter. SQL Server requires any table-valued parameter be marked as ‘READONLY’ and no DML (INSERT/UPDATE/DELETE) statements can be performed on a table-valued parameter within the routine in which it’s used. Aside from the DML restriction, however, you can do pretty much anything with a table-valued parameter as you could with a normal TABLE variable. With the user defined type and stored procedure defined as above, we could invoke like this: 1: DECLARE @cusomterIdList IntegerListTableType 2: INSERT @customerIdList VALUES (1) 3: INSERT @customerIdList VALUES (2) 4: INSERT @customerIdList VALUES (3) 5:  6: EXEC dbo.rpt_CustomerTransationSummary 7: @startDate = '2012-05-01', 8: @endDate = '2012-06-01' 9: @customerIds = @customerIdList   Note that we can simply declare a variable of type ‘IntegerListTableType’ just like any other normal variable and insert values into it just like a TABLE variable. We could also populate the variable with a SELECT … INTO or INSERT … SELECT statement if desired. Using The Table-Valued Parameter With ADO .NET Invoking a stored procedure with a table-valued parameter from ADO .NET is as simple as building a DataTable and passing it in as the Value of a SqlParameter. Here’s some example code for how we would construct the SqlParameter for the @customerIds parameter in our stored procedure: 1: var customerIdsParameter = new SqlParameter(); 2: customerIdParameter.Direction = ParameterDirection.Input; 3: customerIdParameter.TypeName = "IntegerListTableType"; 4: customerIdParameter.Value = selectedCustomerIds.ToIntegerListDataTable("Value");   All we’re doing here is new’ing up an instance of SqlParameter, setting the pamameters direction, specifying the name of the User Defined Type that this parameter uses, and setting its value. We’re assuming here that we have an IEnumerable<int> variable called ‘selectedCustomerIds’ containing all of the customer Ids for which the report should be run. The ‘ToIntegerListDataTable’ method is an extension method of the IEnumerable<int> type that looks like this: 1: public static DataTable ToIntegerListDataTable(this IEnumerable<int> intValues, string columnName) 2: { 3: var intergerListDataTable = new DataTable(); 4: intergerListDataTable.Columns.Add(columnName); 5: foreach(var intValue in intValues) 6: { 7: var nextRow = intergerListDataTable.NewRow(); 8: nextRow[columnName] = intValue; 9: intergerListDataTable.Rows.Add(nextRow); 10: } 11:  12: return intergerListDataTable; 13: }   Since the ‘IntegerListTableType’ has a single int column called ‘Value’, we pass that in for the ‘columnName’ parameter to the extension method. The method creates a new single-columned DataTable using the provided column name then iterates over the items in the IEnumerable<int> instance adding one row for each value. We can then use this SqlParameter instance when invoking the stored procedure just like we would use any other parameter. Advanced Functionality Using passing a list of integers into a stored procedure is a very simple usage scenario for the table-valued parameters feature, but I’ve found that it covers the majority of situations where I’ve needed to pass a collection of data for use in a query at run-time. I should note that BULK INSERT feature still makes sense for passing large amounts of data to SQL Server for processing. MSDN seems to suggest that 1000 rows of data is the tipping point where the overhead of a BULK INSERT operation can pay dividends. I should also note here that table-valued parameters can be used to deal with more complex data structures than single-columned tables of integers. A User Defined Type that backs a table-valued parameter can use things like identities and computed columns. That said, using some of these more advanced features might require the use the SqlDataRecord and SqlMetaData classes instead of a simple DataTable. Erland Sommarskog has a great article on his website that describes when and how to use these classes for table-valued parameters. What About Reporting Services? Earlier in the post I referenced the fact that our example stored procedure would be called from both a web application and a SQL Server Reporting Services report. Unfortunately, using table-valued parameters from SSRS reports can be a bit tricky and warrants its own blog post which I’ll be putting together and posting sometime in the near future.

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• Generating EF Code First model classes from an existing database

  - by Jon Galloway

  Entity Framework Code First is a lightweight way to "turn on" data access for a simple CLR class. As the name implies, the intended use is that you're writing the code first and thinking about the database later. However, I really like the Entity Framework Code First works, and I want to use it in existing projects and projects with pre-existing databases. For example, MVC Music Store comes with a SQL Express database that's pre-loaded with a catalog of music (including genres, artists, and songs), and while it may eventually make sense to load that seed data from a different source, for the MVC 3 release we wanted to keep using the existing database. While I'm not getting the full benefit of Code First - writing code which drives the database schema - I can still benefit from the simplicity of the lightweight code approach. Scott Guthrie blogged about how to use entity framework with an existing database, looking at how you can override the Entity Framework Code First conventions so that it can work with a database which was created following other conventions. That gives you the information you need to create the model classes manually. However, it turns out that with Entity Framework 4 CTP 5, there's a way to generate the model classes from the database schema. Once the grunt work is done, of course, you can go in and modify the model classes as you'd like, but you can save the time and frustration of figuring out things like mapping SQL database types to .NET types. Note that this template requires Entity Framework 4 CTP 5 or later. You can install EF 4 CTP 5 here. Step One: Generate an EF Model from your existing database The code generation system in Entity Framework works from a model. You can add a model to your existing project and delete it when you're done, but I think it's simpler to just spin up a separate project to generate the model classes. When you're done, you can delete the project without affecting your application, or you may choose to keep it around in case you have other database schema updates which require model changes. I chose to add the Model classes to the Models folder of a new MVC 3 application. Right-click the folder and select "Add / New Item..."   Next, select ADO.NET Entity Data Model from the Data Templates list, and name it whatever you want (the name is unimportant).   Next, select "Generate from database." This is important - it's what kicks off the next few steps, which read your database's schema.   Now it's time to point the Entity Data Model Wizard at your existing database. I'll assume you know how to find your database - if not, I covered that a bit in the MVC Music Store tutorial section on Models and Data. Select your database, uncheck the "Save entity connection settings in Web.config" (since we won't be using them within the application), and click Next.   Now you can select the database objects you'd like modeled. I just selected all tables and clicked Finish.   And there's your model. If you want, you can make additional changes here before going on to generate the code.   Step Two: Add the DbContext Generator Like most code generation systems in Visual Studio lately, Entity Framework uses T4 templates which allow for some control over how the code is generated. K Scott Allen wrote a detailed article on T4 Templates and the Entity Framework on MSDN recently, if you'd like to know more. Fortunately for us, there's already a template that does just what we need without any customization. Right-click a blank space in the Entity Framework model surface and select "Add Code Generation Item..." Select the Code groupt in the Installed Templates section and pick the ADO.NET DbContext Generator. If you don't see this listed, make sure you've got EF 4 CTP 5 installed and that you're looking at the Code templates group. Note that the DbContext Generator template is similar to the EF POCO template which came out last year, but with "fix up" code (unnecessary in EF Code First) removed.   As soon as you do this, you'll two terrifying Security Warnings - unless you click the "Do not show this message again" checkbox the first time. It will also be displayed (twice) every time you rebuild the project, so I checked the box and no immediate harm befell my computer (fingers crossed!).   Here's the payoff: two templates (filenames ending with .tt) have been added to the project, and they've generated the code I needed.   The "MusicStoreEntities.Context.tt" template built a DbContext class which holds the entity collections, and the "MusicStoreEntities.tt" template build a separate class for each table I selected earlier. We'll customize them in the next step. I recommend copying all the generated .cs files into your application at this point, since accidentally rebuilding the generation project will overwrite your changes if you leave them there. Step Three: Modify and use your POCO entity classes Note: I made a bunch of tweaks to my POCO classes after they were generated. You don't have to do any of this, but I think it's important that you can - they're your classes, and EF Code First respects that. Modify them as you need for your application, or don't. The Context class derives from DbContext, which is what turns on the EF Code First features. It holds a DbSet for each entity. Think of DbSet as a simple List, but with Entity Framework features turned on.   //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // <auto-generated> // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // </auto-generated> //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Data.Entity; public partial class Entities : DbContext { public Entities() : base("name=Entities") { } public DbSet<Album> Albums { get; set; } public DbSet<Artist> Artists { get; set; } public DbSet<Cart> Carts { get; set; } public DbSet<Genre> Genres { get; set; } public DbSet<OrderDetail> OrderDetails { get; set; } public DbSet<Order> Orders { get; set; } } } It's a pretty lightweight class as generated, so I just took out the comments, set the namespace, removed the constructor, and formatted it a bit. Done. If I wanted, though, I could have added or removed DbSets, overridden conventions, etc. using System.Data.Entity; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { public class MusicStoreEntities : DbContext { public DbSet Albums { get; set; } public DbSet Genres { get; set; } public DbSet Artists { get; set; } public DbSet Carts { get; set; } public DbSet Orders { get; set; } public DbSet OrderDetails { get; set; } } } Next, it's time to look at the individual classes. Some of mine were pretty simple - for the Cart class, I just need to remove the header and clean up the namespace. //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; public partial class Cart { // Primitive properties public int RecordId { get; set; } public string CartId { get; set; } public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int Count { get; set; } public System.DateTime DateCreated { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Album Album { get; set; } } } I did a bit more customization on the Album class. Here's what was generated: //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ // // This code was generated from a template. // // Changes to this file may cause incorrect behavior and will be lost if // the code is regenerated. // //------------------------------------------------------------------------------ namespace EF_CodeFirst_From_Existing_Database.Models { using System; using System.Collections.Generic; public partial class Album { public Album() { this.Carts = new HashSet(); this.OrderDetails = new HashSet(); } // Primitive properties public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int GenreId { get; set; } public int ArtistId { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } // Navigation properties public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual ICollection Carts { get; set; } public virtual ICollection OrderDetails { get; set; } } } I removed the header, changed the namespace, and removed some of the navigation properties. One nice thing about EF Code First is that you don't have to have a property for each database column or foreign key. In the Music Store sample, for instance, we build the app up using code first and start with just a few columns, adding in fields and navigation properties as the application needs them. EF Code First handles the columsn we've told it about and doesn't complain about the others. Here's the basic class: using System.ComponentModel; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { public class Album { public int AlbumId { get; set; } public int GenreId { get; set; } public int ArtistId { get; set; } public string Title { get; set; } public decimal Price { get; set; } public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual List OrderDetails { get; set; } } } It's my class, not Entity Framework's, so I'm free to do what I want with it. I added a bunch of MVC 3 annotations for scaffolding and validation support, as shown below: using System.ComponentModel; using System.ComponentModel.DataAnnotations; using System.Web.Mvc; using System.Collections.Generic; namespace MvcMusicStore.Models { [Bind(Exclude = "AlbumId")] public class Album { [ScaffoldColumn(false)] public int AlbumId { get; set; } [DisplayName("Genre")] public int GenreId { get; set; } [DisplayName("Artist")] public int ArtistId { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "An Album Title is required")] [StringLength(160)] public string Title { get; set; } [Required(ErrorMessage = "Price is required")] [Range(0.01, 100.00, ErrorMessage = "Price must be between 0.01 and 100.00")] public decimal Price { get; set; } [DisplayName("Album Art URL")] [StringLength(1024)] public string AlbumArtUrl { get; set; } public virtual Genre Genre { get; set; } public virtual Artist Artist { get; set; } public virtual List<OrderDetail> OrderDetails { get; set; } } } The end result was that I had working EF Code First model code for the finished application. You can follow along through the tutorial to see how I built up to the finished model classes, starting with simple 2-3 property classes and building up to the full working schema. Thanks to Diego Vega (on the Entity Framework team) for pointing me to the DbContext template.

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• Product Development Investment: A Measure of Vendor Performance

  - by Jim Mcglothlin

  The relationship between a large, complex organization and its key suppliers of information technology is normally more than just "strategic". Expectations about the duration of the relationship typically exceed 20 years. Enterprise applications and technology infrastructure are not expected to be changed out like petunias. So how would you rate the due diligence processes as performed in Higher Education when selecting critical, transformational information technology? My observation: I see a lot of effort put into elaborate demonstration of basic software functionality. I see a lot of attention paid to the cost element of technology acquisition, including the contracted cost of implementation consulting services. But the factor that receives only cursory analysis and due diligence is long-term performance--the ability of a vendor to grow, expand, and develop, and bring its customers along with it. So what should you look for in a long-term IT supplier? Oracle has a public track record for product development. The annual investment has been on a run rate of almost $3 Billion organic product development. Oracle's well-publicized acquisitions and mergers have been supplemental to its R&D. This is important for Higher Education. Another meaningful way to evaluate a company is to look at the tangible track record of enhancement. Consider the Oracle-PeopleSoft enterprise business platform since acquired by Oracle 6 years ago: Product or Technology Enhancement Customer or User Impact Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) 300+ new web services delivered in versions 9.0 & 9.1 provide flexibility, so that customers can integrate PeopleSoft with other applications. Campus Solutions has added Admissions and Constituent Web Services. Constituent Relationship Management PeopleSoft CRM 9.1 for Higher Education introduced new process flows for student recruiting and retention to support "Student Success" initiatives. A 360 view of the constituent is now delivered, and the concept of a single-stop Student Services Center is now in CRM 9.1 with tight integration to PeopleSoft Campus Solutions. Human Capital Management Contract Pay for Education, with flexibility for configuration and calculation, has been extended in HCM 9.1. New chartfield integration among Project Costing - Time & Labor - Payroll to serve the labor distribution requirements for Grants / Sponsored Research. Talent Management PeopleSoft 9.0 and 9.1 feature an integrated talent management approach centered on definitions in "Profile Manager", with all new usability improvements. Internal and external candidate pools, and the entire recruitment process, are driven by delivered configurable selection and on-boarding processes. Interview scheduling, and online job offers are newly delivered processes. Performance Management PeopleSoft HCM ePerformance 9.1 will include significant new functionality designed to help organizations more effectively align business objectives with employee goals. Using an Organization Chart view, your business goals can flow down to become tangible objectives per employee. Succession Planning / Workforce Development New in HCM 9.0, enhanced in 9.1, is a planning capability for regular or unusual (major organizational change) succession of internal or external candidates. PeopleSoft supports employee-based career planning, which ultimately increases the integrity of the succession planning process (identify their career needs, plans, preferences, and interests). Dashboards / Oracle Business Intelligence Application Suite Oracle Human Resources Analytics provides the workforce information foundation that integrates data from HR functional areas and Finance. Oracle Human Resources Analytics delivers 9 dashboards and over 200 reports. Provide your HR professionals and front-line managers the tools to analyze workforce staffing, retention, productivity, to better source high-quality applicants, and to reduce absence costs. Multi-year Planning and Commitment Control External funding sources, especially Grants, require a multi-year encumbrance business process. PeopleSoft HCM 9.1 adds multi-year funding and commitment control, including budget checking. The newly designed Real Time Budget Checking will provide the customer with an updated snapshot of their budget and encumbrances at any given time. Position Budgeting with Hyperion Hyperion Planning world-class products now include delivered integration to PeopleSoft HCM. Position Budgeting is available in the new Public Sector Planning module of Hyperion. Web 2.0 features for the latest in usability PeopleSoft 9.1 features a contemporary internet user experience: Partial-page refreshing Drag and drop pagelets New menu structure Navigation pagelets Modal popup message windows Favorites & recently used links Type-ahead Drag and drop grid columns, pop-out grids Portal Workspaces Enterprise 2.0 for your collaborative web communities, using new content management, along with Wikis, blogs, and discussion forums in PeopleSoft Portal 9.1. PeopleTools enhanced by Oracle Fusion Middleware Standards-based tools have been added to the PeopleTools application infrastructure: BI (XML) Publisher, Java tools. Certified for use with PeopleSoft: Oracle Business Intelligence (OBIEE), Oracle Enterprise Manager, Oracle Weblogic Server, Oracle SOA Suite. Hosting for PeopleSoft applications A solid new deployment option: Oracle On Demand remote hosting center for high scalability, security, and continuity of operations. Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) for HCM / Payroll functions Partnership with AT&T provides hosting of HR/Payroll application along with payroll business process operations, and subscription-based service fees (SaaS). AT&T BPO full service includes pay sheet processing, bank and 3rd party file transfer, payroll tax handling, etc. Continuous Delivery Model Feature Packs provide faster time-to-benefit; new features become available in PeopleSoft 9.1 (or Campus Solutions 9.0) without need to perform upgrade. Golden person data model across all campus applications Oracle Higher Education Constituent Hub provides synchronization and data governance of person data across any application, e.g. HR/ Payroll, Student Information System, Housing, Emergency Contact, LMS, CRM. Oracle's aggressive enhancement plans within the "Applications Unlimited" program continue, as new functionality is under development for a new version of a PeopleSoft release planned for 2012. Meanwhile, new capabilities are planned on an annual basis in Feature Packs. PeopleSoft just delivered the HCM 2010 Feature Pack and another is planned for 2011. In February we plan to have over 100 customers from our Customer Advisory Boards at our PeopleSoft Development Center in California to review designs for all of these releases. For those of you near New York City The investment and progressive development story described above is the subject of an Oracle road show event on February 9, 2011. Charting Your Course with Oracle Applications is a global event series designed to help business and IT executives assess the impact of new inflection points on their business and applications roadmap: changing workforces, shifting customer and constituent bases, and increased volatility. Learn how innovations ranging from new deployment models like cloud computing to the introduction of social applications and smart devices are delivering results across all areas of business and industry. THIS DOCUMENT IS FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES ONLY AND MAY NOT BE INCORPORATED INTO A CONTRACT OR AGREEMENT.

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• how to get 12 for joel test working in a small team of 3-4 on php website?

  - by keisimone

  Hi i read this inspired, i am asking for specific help to achieve a 12 for my current project. i am working in a team of 3-4 on a php project that is based on cakephp. i only have a dedicated server running on linux which i intend to have the website live on. and i have a plan with assembla where i am using its svn repository. that's it. i like to hear a major, impactful step towards answering each point raised by the joel test. by impactful i mean doing just this one thing would raise my project to scoring or close to scoring on that area of the joel test. lets begin: 1) do you have a source control system? I am very proud to say learning how to use svn even though we know nuts about branch/release policies made the biggest impact to our programming lives. and the svn repos is on assembla paid plan. Feel free to add if anyone thinks we can do more in this area. 2) Can you make a build in one step? i think the issue is how do i define as a build? i think we are going to define it as if tomorrow my dedicated server crashed and we found another server from another normal hosting provider and all my team's machines all destroyed, how are we going to get the website up again? my code is in svn on assembla. 1 step means as close to 1 button to push as possible. 3)Do you make daily builds? i know nothing about this. please help. i googled and came across this phpundercontrol. but i am not sure if we can get that to work with assembla. are there easier ways? 4)Do you have a bug database? we have not used the assembla features on bug tracking. ashamed to say. i think i will sort this out myself. 5)Do you fix bugs before writing new code? policy issue. i will sort it out myself. 6)Do you have an up-to-date schedule? Working on it. Same as above. estimates have historically been overly optimistic. having spent too much time using all sorts of funny project management tools, i think this time i am going to use just paper and pen. please dont tell me scrum. i need to keep things even simpler than that. 7)Do you have a spec? We do, but its in paper and pen. what would be a good template? 8)Do programmers have quiet working conditions? Well we work at home and in distributed manner. so .. 9)Do you use the best tools money can buy? We use cheap tools. we are not big. 10)Do you have testers? NO testers. Since we have a team of 3, i think i should go get 1 tester. even on a part time basis. so i should get this 1 part time tester test in what manner to extract maximum effects? should i get him to write out the test scenarios and expected outcomes and then test it? or i write the test scenarios and then ask him to do it? we will be writing the test cases ourselves using simpletest. i came across selenium. how useful is that? 11)Do new candidates write code during their interview? Not applicable. But i will do it next time i try to hire anyone else. hires or contractors alike. 12)Do you do hallway usability testing? Will do so on a per month or per milestone basis. i will grab my friends who are not net-savvy. they will be the best testers of this type. Thank you.

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• SQL Server Split() Function

  - by HighAltitudeCoder

  Title goes here   Ever wanted a dbo.Split() function, but not had the time to debug it completely?  Let me guess - you are probably working on a stored procedure with 50 or more parameters; two or three of them are parameters of differing types, while the other 47 or so all of the same type (id1, id2, id3, id4, id5...).  Worse, you've found several other similar stored procedures with the ONLY DIFFERENCE being the number of like parameters taped to the end of the parameter list. If this is the situation you find yourself in now, you may be wondering, "why am I working with three different copies of what is basically the same stored procedure, and why am I having to maintain changes in three different places?  Can't I have one stored procedure that accomplishes the job of all three? My answer to you: YES!  Here is the Split() function I've created.    /******************************************************************************                                       Split.sql   ******************************************************************************/ /******************************************************************************   Split a delimited string into sub-components and return them as a table.   Parameter 1: Input string which is to be split into parts. Parameter 2: Delimiter which determines the split points in input string. Works with space or spaces as delimiter. Split() is apostrophe-safe.   SYNTAX: SELECT * FROM Split('Dvorak,Debussy,Chopin,Holst', ',') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver|Seattle|San Diego|New York', '|') SELECT * FROM Split('Denver is the super-awesomest city of them all.', ' ')   ******************************************************************************/ USE AdventureWorks GO   IF EXISTS       (SELECT *       FROM sysobjects       WHERE xtype = 'TF'       AND name = 'Split'       ) BEGIN       DROP FUNCTION Split END GO   CREATE FUNCTION Split (       @InputString                  VARCHAR(8000),       @Delimiter                    VARCHAR(50) )   RETURNS @Items TABLE (       Item                          VARCHAR(8000) )   AS BEGIN       IF @Delimiter = ' '       BEGIN             SET @Delimiter = ','             SET @InputString = REPLACE(@InputString, ' ', @Delimiter)       END         IF (@Delimiter IS NULL OR @Delimiter = '')             SET @Delimiter = ','   --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Delimiter) -- Diagnostic --INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString) -- Diagnostic         DECLARE @Item                 VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @ItemList       VARCHAR(8000)       DECLARE @DelimIndex     INT         SET @ItemList = @InputString       SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       WHILE (@DelimIndex != 0)       BEGIN             SET @Item = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, 0, @DelimIndex)             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)               -- Set @ItemList = @ItemList minus one less item             SET @ItemList = SUBSTRING(@ItemList, @DelimIndex+1, LEN(@ItemList)-@DelimIndex)             SET @DelimIndex = CHARINDEX(@Delimiter, @ItemList, 0)       END -- End WHILE         IF @Item IS NOT NULL -- At least one delimiter was encountered in @InputString       BEGIN             SET @Item = @ItemList             INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@Item)       END         -- No delimiters were encountered in @InputString, so just return @InputString       ELSE INSERT INTO @Items VALUES (@InputString)         RETURN   END -- End Function GO   ---- Set Permissions --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole1 --GRANT SELECT ON Split TO UserRole2 --GO   The syntax is basically as follows: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C AND TABLE2.Id IN (SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',')) @IdList is a parameter passed into the stored procedure, and the comma (',') is the delimiter you have chosen to split the parameter list on. You can also use it like this: SELECT <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C HAVING COUNT(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ',') Similarly, it can be used in other aggregate functions at run-time: SELECT MIN(SELECT * FROM Split(@IdList, ','), <fields> FROM Table 1 JOIN Table 2 ON ... JOIN Table 3 ON ... WHERE LOGICAL CONDITION A AND LOGICAL CONDITION B AND LOGICAL CONDITION C GROUP BY <fields> Now that I've (hopefully effectively) explained the benefits to using this function and implementing it in one or more of your database objects, let me warn you of a caveat that you are likely to encounter.  You may have a team member who waits until the right moment to ask you a pointed question: "Doesn't this function just do the same thing as using the IN function?  Why didn't you just use that instead?  In other words, why bother with this function?" What's happening is, one or more team members has failed to understand the reason for implementing this kind of function in the first place.  (Note: this is THE MOST IMPORTANT ASPECT OF THIS POST). Allow me to outline a few pros to implementing this function, so you may effectively parry this question.  Touche. 1) Code consolidation.  You don't have to maintain what is basically the same code and logic, but with varying numbers of the same parameter in several SQL objects.  I'm not going to go into the cons related to using this function, because the afore mentioned team member is probably more than adept at pointing these out.  Remember, the real positive contribution is ou are decreasing the liklihood that your team fails to update all (x) duplicate copies of what are basically the same stored procedure, and so on...  This is the classic downside to duplicate code.  It is a virus, and you should kill it. You might be better off rejecting your team member's question, and responding with your own: "Would you rather maintain the same logic in multiple different stored procedures, and hope that the team doesn't forget to always update all of them at the same time?".  In his head, he might be thinking "yes, I would like to maintain several different copies of the same stored procedure", although you probably will not get such a direct response.  2) Added flexibility - you can use the Split function elsewhere, and for splitting your data in different ways.  Plus, you can use any kind of delimiter you wish.  How can you know today the ways in which you might want to examine your data tomorrow?  Segue to my next point. 3) Because the function takes a delimiter parameter, you can split the data in any number of ways.  This greatly increases the utility of such a function and enables your team to work with the data in a variety of different ways in the future.  You can split on a single char, symbol, word, or group of words.  You can split on spaces.  (The list goes on... test it out). Finally, you can dynamically define the behavior of a stored procedure (or other SQL object) at run time, through the use of this function.  Rather than have several objects that accomplish almost the same thing, why not have only one instead?

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 17, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, May 17, 2012Popular ReleasesWatchersNET.UrlShorty: WatchersNET.UrlShorty 01.03.03: changes Fixed Url & Error History when urls contain line breaksAspxCommerce: AspxCommerce1.1: AspxCommerce - 'Flexible and easy eCommerce platform' offers a complete e-Commerce solution that allows you to build and run your fully functional online store in minutes. You can create your storefront; manage the products through categories and subcategories, accept payments through credit cards and ship the ordered products to the customers. We have everything set up for you, so that you can only focus on building your own online store. Note: To login as a superuser, the username and pass...SiteMap Editor for Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011: SiteMap Editor (1.1.1616.403): BUG FIX Hide save button when Titles or Descriptions element is selectedVisual C++ 2010 Directories Editor: Visual C++ 2010 Directories Editor (x32_x64): release v1.3MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS: MapWindow 6.1.2: Looking for a .Net GIS Map Application?MapWindow 6 Desktop GIS is an open source desktop GIS for Microsoft Windows that is built upon the DotSpatial Library. This release requires .Net 4 (Client Profile). Are you a software developer?Instead of downloading MapWindow for development purposes, get started with with the DotSpatial template. The extensions you create from the template can be loaded in MapWindow.DotSpatial: DotSpatial 1.2: This is a Minor Release. See the changes in the issue tracker. Minimal -- includes DotSpatial core and essential extensions Extended -- includes debugging symbols and additional extensions Tutorials are available. Just want to run the software? End user (non-programmer) version available branded as MapWindow Want to add your own feature? Develop a plugin, using the template and contribute to the extension feed (you can also write extensions that you distribute in other ways). Components ...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection 2.2.1 (WinRT supported): Added ManagedScopeLifecycle. Increase performance. Added support for resolve 'params'.Microsoft Ajax Minifier: Microsoft Ajax Minifier 4.52: Make preprocessor comment-statements nestable; add the ///#IFNDEF statement. (Discussion #355785) Don't throw an error for old-school JScript event handlers, and don't rename them if they aren't global functions.DotNetNuke® Events: 06.00.00: This is a serious release of Events. DNN 6 form pattern - We have take the full route towards DNN6: most notably the incorporation of the DNN6 form pattern with streamlined UX/UI. We have also tried to change all formatting to a div based structure. A daunting task, since the Events module contains a lot of forms. Roger has done a splendid job by going through all the forms in great detail, replacing all table style layouts into the new DNN6 div class="dnnForm XXX" type of layout with chang...LogicCircuit: LogicCircuit 2.12.5.15: Logic Circuit - is educational software for designing and simulating logic circuits. Intuitive graphical user interface, allows you to create unrestricted circuit hierarchy with multi bit buses, debug circuits behavior with oscilloscope, and navigate running circuits hierarchy. Changes of this versionThis release is fixing one but nasty bug. Two functions XOR and XNOR when used with 3 or more inputs were incorrectly evaluating their results. If you have a circuit that is using these functions...SharpCompress - a fully native C# library for RAR, 7Zip, Zip, Tar, GZip, BZip2: SharpCompress 0.8.1: Two fixes: Rar Decompression bug fixed. Error only occurred on some files Rar Decompression will throw an exception when another volume isn't found but one is expected.?????????? - ????????: All-In-One Code Framework ??? 2012-05-14: http://download.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1codechs&DownloadId=216140 ???OneCode??????，??????????6????Microsoft OneCode Sample，????2?Data Platform Sample?4?WPF Sample。???????????。 ????，?????。http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=128165 Data Platform Sample CSUseADO CppUseADO WPF Sample CSWPFMasterDetailBinding VBWPFMasterDetailBinding CSWPFThreading VBWPFThreading ....... ???????????blog： http://blog.csd...LINQ to Twitter: LINQ to Twitter Beta v2.0.25: Supports .NET 3.5, .NET 4.0, Silverlight 4.0, Windows Phone 7.1, Client Profile, and Windows 8. 100% Twitter API coverage. Also available via NuGet! Follow @JoeMayo.BlogEngine.NET: BlogEngine.NET 2.6: Get DotNetBlogEngine for 3 Months Free! Click Here for More Info BlogEngine.NET Hosting - 3 months free! Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here!! Click Here for More Info Cheap ASP.NET Hosting - $4.95/Month - Click Here! If you want to set up and start using BlogEngine.NET right away, you should download the Web project. If you want to extend or modify BlogEngine.NET, you should download the source code. If you are upgrading from a previous version of BlogEngine.NET, please take...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.2: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.2 (1)　Web???????、????????·????????? (2)　Web???????、?????????? COMSPEC PATHEXT WINDIR SERVERADDR SERVERPORT DOCUMENTROOT SERVERADMIN REMOTE_PORT HTTPACCEPTCHRSET HTTPACCEPTLANGUAGE HTTPACCEPTEXCODINGGardens Point Parser Generator: Gardens Point Parser Generator version 1.5.0: ChangesVersion 1.5.0 contains a number of changes. Error messages are now MSBuild and VS-friendly. The default encoding of the *.y file is Unicode, with an automatic fallback to the previous raw-byte interpretation. The /report option has been improved, as has the automaton tracing facility. New facilities are included that allow multiple parsers to share a common token type. A complete change-log is available as a separate documentation file. The source project has been upgraded to Visual...Media Companion: Media Companion 3.502b: It has been a slow week, but this release addresses a couple of recent bugs: Movies Multi-part Movies - Existing .nfo files that differed in name from the first part, were missed and scraped again. Trailers - MC attempted to scrape info for existing trailers. TV Shows Show Scraping - shows available only in the non-default language would not show up in the main browser. The correct language can now be selected using the TV Show Selector for a single show. General Will no longer prompt for ...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.5.2012.0508、XCoder v4.7.2012.0320: X????： 1，????For .Net 4.0?? XCoder????： 1，???????，????X????，?????? XCode????： 1，Insert/Update/Delete???????????????，???SQL???? 2，IEntityOperate?????? 3，????????IEntityTree 4，????????????????? 5，?????????? 6，??????????????Google Book Downloader: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports Cpython, IronPython, Jython and Pypy • Python editor with advanced member, signature intellisense and refactoring • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging...New ProjectsAmlak: Amlak projectApparat: An Open Source Game/Simulation Engine made with C# and SlimDX.CarShop emulator: carshopDynaMaxx Server Backend: DynaMaxx Server BackendEntry-Level C# Password Generator: The Entry-Level C# Password Generator is a piece of software written for two purposes. To be kept as simple as possible for newcomers to the langauge to understand how to use the language and to help people make a new secure password for themselves.faccipractica: ESTA ES LA CAPA DE DATOSFACCIULEAM: ESTE ES UN PROYECTO DE PRACTICAFast C++ Math Expression Parser: The C++ Mathematical Expression Library (ExprTk) is a simple to use, easy to integrate and extremely efficient and fast mathematical expression parsing and evaluation engine. The parsing engine supports various kinds of functional and logic processing semantics and is very easily extendible.Font Data Catalog: A tool to store font dataGraffiti: Graffiti is a high-performance rendering engine built specifically for the Reach profile on top of XNA/Monogame with a very specific feature set * Support for the Reach profile * CPU/GPU vertex transformation (using SkinnedEffect) * Quake 3 shader style effects (Multi-pass) for anything Graffiti can render * Keyframed/procedural animation framework * Primitive rendering (antialiased, variable-sized points and lines) * Particle system using complex/primitive objects *Text rendering (w...homeland: A simple form Engine for Rails app.HTML5 for SharePoint 2010: HTML5 for SharePoint 2010 is a package of controls and webparts that allows using HTML5 controls in SharePoint. Image Cropper 4 Umbraco 5: Image cropper for Umbraco 5.IPickMovies: This is project for IPick Movies from Mezanmi Technologies.JFrame: jframeJustForTest: For Testkxcxw: This is a website project. Latence: projectLive: this is Live project.MASMYTEST: fdfMP3 player: Project for MUL.MSI Validation: MSI ValidationMyWp: wp applicationOpen Waves Activity Feed: Activity Feed component to be used in ASP.NET projects based on EPiServer CMS, SP, and other.pComboBox: Script ComboBox - Initial versions complete and functional ( current version is 1.54) program and documentation available on justcode.ca - http://www.justcode.ca/justwindowscode/ Source will be available at pcombobox.codeplex.com The basic functionality is shown in the below batch file to call this combobox was coded as follows pcombobox /p:one,"# two",three,4 /t:"title" echo %ERRORLEVEL% Basically you can call this combobox dialog window from a batch file or a vbscript an...Periodic.Net: Periodic.Net is a Periodic Table layout for Windows based on WPF and the .Net Framework 3.5 SP1, More info coming soon.Pob-Pong: A simple Pong game - the first Project of Elsor and Zakk.PodcastCasting: Podcast casting system for Podcasters that use voice talents in their storiesresolvendo.net: Projeto desenvolvido na 3 etapa do S2BSharepoint for TFS: Custom control to integrate files from Sharepoint to TFSShutdownAB: Windows service to shutdown computer after a backup.SSIS Restart Framework: A framework that provides restartability for SSIS 2012 projects. It is very much work in progress so at the current time, use at your own peril.Standalone Encrypted Sign In Library: The ECL library is a standalone connection library !stunserver: New version 1.1. This is the source code to STUNTMAN - an open source STUN server and client code by john selbie. Compliant with the latest RFCs including 5389, 5769, and 5780. Also includes backwards compatibility for RFC 3489. The stun server code is part of a larger personal project involving P2P file sharing and NAT traversal. Version 1.1 compiles on Linux, MacOS, BSD, and Solaris. Additional features are in development. www.stunprotocol.orgTask Scheduler Assistant: This is a very simple Windows service that watches folders/files and triggers an associated Scheduled Task accordingly. A simple * wildcard scheme is used for file triggers. Wildcards can only be in the filename and not in the path. This was initially built to be a Task Scheduler trigger from import processes from clients, providing the missing Trigger type from Window's Task Scheduler.Tech4WPF: Tech4WPF make it easier for developers to create technical applications. You will no longer have to create your own user controlls like knobs, gauges and simple charts. It's developed in C#/WPF. This project was inspirated by Qwt - Qt Widgets for Technical Applications http://qwt.sourceforge.net/. It's not port, but similar project, creating controls for technical aplications using .NET framework, WPF and all benefits of this platform like binding etc. Tech4WPF was created as a bachelo...TestProject_Git: git projectVS Templates for generating Duet Workspace sites: This project provides VS templates to easily create Duet Enterprise workspace sites.WinTest: This is a winform application. It need net framework 3.5 or higher version.WPF Progressive FizzBuzz Coding Assignment: Classic "FizzBuzz".YahalomProject: YahalomProject is for testing and using codeplex , tfs...Zorbo: Zorbo Server library was designed to add a unique twist to the Ares Galaxy P2P community. It features a large and detailed plugin architecture that allows developers to create rich chatroom experiences while being light-weight and fast.

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• Oracle Solaris: Zones on Shared Storage

  - by Jeff Victor

  Oracle Solaris 11.1 has several new features. At oracle.com you can find a detailed list. One of the significant new features, and the most significant new feature releated to Oracle Solaris Zones, is casually called "Zones on Shared Storage" or simply ZOSS (rhymes with "moss"). ZOSS offers much more flexibility because you can store Solaris Zones on shared storage (surprise!) so that you can perform quick and easy migration of a zone from one system to another. This blog entry describes and demonstrates the use of ZOSS. ZOSS provides complete support for a Solaris Zone that is stored on "shared storage." In this case, "shared storage" refers to fiber channel (FC) or iSCSI devices, although there is one lone exception that I will demonstrate soon. The primary intent is to enable you to store a zone on FC or iSCSI storage so that it can be migrated from one host computer to another much more easily and safely than in the past. With this blog entry, I wanted to make it easy for you to try this yourself. I couldn't assume that you have a SAN available - which is a good thing, because neither do I! What could I use, instead? [There he goes, foreshadowing again... -Ed.] Developing this entry reinforced the lesson that the solution to every lab problem is VirtualBox. Oracle VM VirtualBox (its formal name) helps here in a couple of important ways. It offers the ability to easily install multiple copies of Solaris as guests on top of any popular system (Microsoft Windows, MacOS, Solaris, Oracle Linux (and other Linuxes) etc.). It also offers the ability to create a separate virtual disk drive (VDI) that appears as a local hard disk to a guest. This virtual disk can be moved very easily from one guest to another. In other words, you can follow the steps below on a laptop or larger x86 system. Please note that the ability to use ZOSS to store a zone on a local disk is very useful for a lab environment, but not so useful for production. I do not suggest regularly moving disk drives among computers. In the method I describe below, that virtual hard disk will contain the zone that will be migrated among the (virtual) hosts. In production, you would use FC or iSCSI LUNs instead. The zonecfg(1M) man page details the syntax for each of the three types of devices. Why Migrate? Why is the migration of virtual servers important? Some of the most common reasons are: Moving a workload to a different computer so that the original computer can be turned off for extensive maintenance. Moving a workload to a larger system because the workload has outgrown its original system. If the workload runs in an environment (such as a Solaris Zone) that is stored on shared storage, you can restore the service of the workload on an alternate computer if the original computer has failed and will not reboot. You can simplify lifecycle management of a workload by developing it on a laptop, migrating it to a test platform when it's ready, and finally moving it to a production system. Concepts For ZOSS, the important new concept is named "rootzpool". You can read about it in the zonecfg(1M) man page, but here's the short version: it's the backing store (hard disk(s), or LUN(s)) that will be used to make a ZFS zpool - the zpool that will hold the zone. This zpool: contains the zone's Solaris content, i.e. the root file system does not contain any content not related to the zone can only be mounted by one Solaris instance at a time Method Overview Here is a brief list of the steps to create a zone on shared storage and migrate it. The next section shows the commands and output. You will need a host system with an x86 CPU (hopefully at least a couple of CPU cores), at least 2GB of RAM, and at least 25GB of free disk space. (The steps below will not actually use 25GB of disk space, but I don't want to lead you down a path that ends in a big sign that says "Your HDD is full. Good luck!") Configure the zone on both systems, specifying the rootzpool that both will use. The best way is to configure it on one system and then copy the output of "zonecfg export" to the other system to be used as input to zonecfg. This method reduces the chances of pilot error. (It is not necessary to configure the zone on both systems before creating it. You can configure this zone in multiple places, whenever you want, and migrate it to one of those places at any time - as long as those systems all have access to the shared storage.) Install the zone on one system, onto shared storage. Boot the zone. Provide system configuration information to the zone. (In the Real World(tm) you will usually automate this step.) Shutdown the zone. Detach the zone from the original system. Attach the zone to its new "home" system. Boot the zone. The zone can be used normally, and even migrated back, or to a different system. Details The rest of this shows the commands and output. The two hostnames are "sysA" and "sysB". Note that each Solaris guest might use a different device name for the VDI that they share. I used the device names shown below, but you must discover the device name(s) after booting each guest. In a production environment you would also discover the device name first and then configure the zone with that name. Fortunately, you can use the command "zpool import" or "format" to discover the device on the "new" host for the zone. The first steps create the VirtualBox guests and the shared disk drive. I describe the steps here without demonstrating them. Download VirtualBox and install it using a method normal for your host OS. You can read the complete instructions. Create two VirtualBox guests, each to run Solaris 11.1. Each will use its own VDI as its root disk. Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest.Install Solaris 11.1 in each guest. To install a Solaris 11.1 guest, you can either download a pre-built VirtualBox guest, and import it, or install Solaris 11.1 from the "text install" media. If you use the latter method, after booting you will not see a windowing system. To install the GUI and other important things, login and run "pkg install solaris-desktop" and take a break while it installs those important things. Life is usually easier if you install the VirtualBox Guest Additions because then you can copy and paste between the host and guests, etc. You can find the guest additions in the folder matching the version of VirtualBox you are using. You can also read the instructions for installing the guest additions. To create the zone's shared VDI in VirtualBox, you can open the storage configuration for one of the two guests, select the SATA controller, and click on the "Add Hard Disk" icon nearby. Choose "Create New Disk" and specify an appropriate path name for the file that will contain the VDI. The shared VDI must be at least 1.5 GB. Note that the guest must be stopped to do this. Add that VDI to the other guest - using its Storage configuration - so that each can access it while running. The steps start out the same, except that you choose "Choose Existing Disk" instead of "Create New Disk." Because the disk is configured on both of them, VirtualBox prevents you from running both guests at the same time. Identify device names of that VDI, in each of the guests. Solaris chooses the name based on existing devices. The names may be the same, or may be different from each other. This step is shown below as "Step 1." Assumptions In the example shown below, I make these assumptions. The guest that will own the zone at the beginning is named sysA. The guest that will own the zone after the first migration is named sysB. On sysA, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 On sysB, the shared disk is named /dev/dsk/c7t3d0 (Finally!) The Steps Step 1) Determine the name of the disk that will move back and forth between the systems. root@sysA:~# format Searching for disks...done AVAILABLE DISK SELECTIONS: 0. c7t0d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@0,0 1. c7t2d0 /pci@0,0/pci8086,2829@d/disk@2,0 Specify disk (enter its number): ^D Step 2) The first thing to do is partition and label the disk. The magic needed to write an EFI label is not overly complicated. root@sysA:~# format -e c7t2d0 selecting c7t2d0 [disk formatted] FORMAT MENU: ... format fdisk No fdisk table exists. The default partition for the disk is: a 100% "SOLARIS System" partition Type "y" to accept the default partition, otherwise type "n" to edit the partition table. n SELECT ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: ... Enter Selection: 1 ... G=EFI_SYS 0=Exit? f SELECT ONE... ... 6 format label ... Specify Label type[1]: 1 Ready to label disk, continue? y format quit root@sysA:~# ls /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 /dev/dsk/c7t2d0 Step 3) Configure zone1 on sysA. root@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 Use 'create' to begin configuring a new zone. zonecfg:zone1 create create: Using system default template 'SYSdefault' zonecfg:zone1 set zonename=zone1 zonecfg:zone1 set zonepath=/zones/zone1 zonecfg:zone1 add rootzpool zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool add storage dev:dsk/c7t2d0 zonecfg:zone1:rootzpool end zonecfg:zone1 exit root@sysA:~# oot@sysA:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t2d0 Step 4) Install the zone. This step takes the most time, but you can wander off for a snack or a few laps around the gym - or both! (Just not at the same time...) root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 install Created zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Image: Preparing at /zones/zone1/root. AI Manifest: /tmp/manifest.xml.RXaycg SC Profile: /usr/share/auto_install/sc_profiles/enable_sci.xml Zonename: zone1 Installation: Starting ... Creating IPS image Startup linked: 1/1 done Installing packages from: solaris origin: http://pkg.us.oracle.com/support/ DOWNLOAD PKGS FILES XFER (MB) SPEED Completed 183/183 33556/33556 222.2/222.2 2.8M/s PHASE ITEMS Installing new actions 46825/46825 Updating package state database Done Updating image state Done Creating fast lookup database Done Installation: Succeeded Note: Man pages can be obtained by installing pkg:/system/manual done. Done: Installation completed in 1696.847 seconds. Next Steps: Boot the zone, then log into the zone console (zlogin -C) to complete the configuration process. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T163634Z.zone1.install Step 5) Boot the Zone. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot Step 6) Login to zone's console to complete the specification of system information. root@sysA:~# zlogin -C zone1 Answer the usual questions and wait for a login prompt. Then you can end the console session with the usual "~." incantation. Step 7) Shutdown the zone so it can be "moved." root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown Step 8) Detach the zone so that the original global zone can't use it. root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 installed /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 484M 1.51G 23% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Step 9) Review the result and shutdown sysA so that sysB can use the shared disk. root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# init 0 Step 10) Now boot sysB and configure a zone with the parameters shown above in Step 1. (Again, the safest method is to use "zonecfg ... export" on sysA as described in section "Method Overview" above.) The one difference is the name of the rootzpool storage device, which was shown in the list of assumptions, and which you must determine by booting sysB and using the "format" or "zpool import" command. When that is done, you should see the output shown next. (I used the same zonename - "zone1" - in this example, but you can choose any valid zonename you want.) root@sysB:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysB:~# zonecfg -z zone1 info zonename: zone1 zonepath: /zones/zone1 brand: solaris autoboot: false bootargs: file-mac-profile: pool: limitpriv: scheduling-class: ip-type: exclusive hostid: fs-allowed: anet: linkname: net0 ... rootzpool: storage: dev:dsk/c7t3d0 Step 11) Attaching the zone automatically imports the zpool. root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T184034Z.zone1.attach root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysB:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 Step 12) Now let's migrate the zone back to sysA. Create a file in zone1 so we can verify it exists after we migrate the zone back, then begin migrating it back. root@zone1:~# ls /opt root@zone1:~# touch /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt/fileA -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 /opt/fileA root@zone1:~# exit logout [Connection to zone 'zone1' pts/2 closed] root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 shutdown root@sysB:~# zoneadm -z zone1 detach Exported zone zpool: zone1_rpool root@sysB:~# init 0 Step 13) Back on sysA, check the status. Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@sysA:~# zoneadm list -cv ID NAME STATUS PATH BRAND IP 0 global running / solaris shared - zone1 configured /zones/zone1 solaris excl root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 14) Re-attach the zone back to sysA. root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 attach Imported zone zpool: zone1_rpool Progress being logged to /var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach Installing: Using existing zone boot environment Zone BE root dataset: zone1_rpool/rpool/ROOT/solaris Cache: Using /var/pkg/publisher. Updating non-global zone: Linking to image /. Processing linked: 1/1 done Updating non-global zone: Auditing packages. No updates necessary for this image. Updating non-global zone: Zone updated. Result: Attach Succeeded. Log saved in non-global zone as /zones/zone1/root/var/log/zones/zoneadm.20121022T190441Z.zone1.attach root@sysA:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 17.6G 11.2G 6.47G 63% 1.00x ONLINE - zone1_rpool 1.98G 491M 1.51G 24% 1.00x ONLINE - root@sysA:~# zoneadm -z zone1 boot root@sysA:~# zlogin zone1 [Connected to zone 'zone1' pts/2] Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.11 11.1 September 2012 root@zone1:~# zpool list NAME SIZE ALLOC FREE CAP DEDUP HEALTH ALTROOT rpool 1.98G 538M 1.46G 26% 1.00x ONLINE - Step 15) Check for the file created on sysB, earlier. root@zone1:~# ls -l /opt total 1 -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 0 Oct 22 14:47 fileA Next Steps Here is a brief list of some of the fun things you can try next. Add space to the zone by adding a second storage device to the rootzpool. Make sure that you add it to the configurations of both zones! Create a new zone, specifying two disks in the rootzpool when you first configure the zone. When you install that zone, or clone it from another zone, zoneadm uses those two disks to create a mirrored pool. (Three disks will result in a three-way mirror, etc.) Conclusion Hopefully you have seen the ease with which you can now move Solaris Zones from one system to another.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 07, 2011

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, February 07, 2011Popular ReleasesRawr: Rawr 4.0.19 Beta: Rawr is now web-based. The link to use Rawr4 is: http://elitistjerks.com/rawr.phpThis is the Cataclysm Beta Release. More details can be found at the following link http://rawr.codeplex.com/Thread/View.aspx?ThreadId=237262 As of the 4.0.16 release, you can now also begin using the new Downloadable WPF version of Rawr!This is a pre-alpha release of the WPF version, there are likely to be a lot of issues. If you have a problem, please follow the Posting Guidelines and put it into the Issue Trac...EnhSim: EnhSim 2.3.5 ALPHA: 2.3.5 ALPHAThis release supports WoW patch 4.06 at level 85 To use this release, you must have the Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 Redistributable Package installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=A7B7A05E-6DE6-4D3A-A423-37BF0912DB84 To use the GUI you must have the .NET 4.0 Framework installed. This can be downloaded from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/en/details.aspx?FamilyID=9cfb2d51-5ff4-4491-b0e5-b386f32c0992 - Removed the chanc...Pyxis 2: Production Release: Pyxis 2.0.0.13 - Full Production Release This release of Pyxis 2 offers you a wide range of features: Launch Applications in their own threads & domains Render alpha-blended icons on the desktop Support for SD & USB drives Online App Store Dynamic & Static IP support Menus & Modals Over a dozen GUI controls File selection dialogs Folder selection dialog Application, Bootloader, and Firmware Updating Update Release Notes Much More!Microsoft All-In-One Code Framework: Sample Browser v2 (CTP Release): Sample Browser v2 (CTP Release) http://i3.codeplex.com/Project/Download/FileDownload.aspx?ProjectName=1code&DownloadId=205917MVVM Light Toolkit: MVVM Light Toolkit V3 SP1 (4): There was a small issue with the previous release that caused errors when installing the templates in VS10 Express. This release corrects the error. Only use this if you encountered issues when installing the previous release. No changes in the binaries.Barcode Rendering Framework: 2.2.0.0: Breaking ChangesThe assembly version for many files has changed (all now aligned with the core BRF assembly at version 2.1.0.0) so please update web.config files if you are using the Zen.Barcode.Web/Zen.Barcode.Web.Design assemblies. What's NewSimple barcode image HTTP handler that uses standard HTTP GET and query string parameters for rendering barcode images. Support for embedding barcodes in SSRS 2008 reports. Important SQL Server Reporting Services 2008 InformationFirstly the SSRS CRI...Finestra Virtual Desktops: 1.0: Finally the version 1.0 release! Sorry for the long delay since the last release, but I think that you'll find this release to be really smooth, really stable, and a really great enhancement to Windows. New features include: Windows 7 taskbar integration Major performance and usability improvements Redesigned look and feel New name: Finestra Better automatic updating Much faster full-screen switcher Fixes Windows 7 hotkey collisions by default Updated installerNuclex Framework: R1323: This release is a pure XNA 4.0 release that no longer includes any XNA 3.1 binaries or projects. All x86 assemblies have been compiled targeting the .NET 4.0 Client Profile. Requires either Visual C# 2010 Express or Visual Studio 2010, both with XNA Game Studio 4.0. 3rd party libraries needed to compile and run the source code are included, so everything will compile out of the box. Changes: - Thanks to a generous contribution by Adrian Tsai, the TrueType importer now accepts standard Windo...Community Forums NNTP bridge: Community Forums NNTP Bridge V43: Release of the Community Forums NNTP Bridge to access the social and anwsers MS forums with a single, open source NNTP bridge. This release has added some features / bugfixes: Bugfix: Now supporting multi-line headers in all headers ;) / Thanks to Kai Schätzl for reporting this! Debug output optimized / Added a "Copy to clipboard" button in the debug windowFacebook C# SDK: 5.0.2 (BETA): PLEASE TAKE A FEW MINUTES TO GIVE US SOME FEEDBACK: Facebook C# SDK Survey This is third BETA release of the version 5 branch of the Facebook C# SDK. Remember this is a BETA build. Some things may change or not work exactly as planned. We are absolutely looking for feedback on this release to help us improve the final 5.X.X release. This release contains some breaking changes. Particularly with authentication. After spending time reviewing the trouble areas that people are having using th...ASP.NET MVC SiteMap provider: MvcSiteMapProvider 3.0.0 for MVC3: Using NuGet?MvcSiteMapProvider is also listed in the NuGet feed. Learn more... Like the project? Consider a donation!Donate via PayPal via PayPal. ChangelogTargeting ASP.NET MVC 3 and .NET 4.0 Additional UpdatePriority options for generating XML sitemaps Allow to specify target on SiteMapTitleAttribute One action with multiple routes and breadcrumbs Medium Trust optimizations Create SiteMapTitleAttribute for setting parent title IntelliSense for your sitemap with MvcSiteMapSchem...patterns & practices SharePoint Guidance: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab: SharePoint Guidance 2010 Hands On Lab consists of six labs: one for logging, one for service location, and four for application setting manager. Each lab takes about 20 minutes to walk through. Each lab consists of a PDF document. You can go through the steps in the doc to create solution and then build/deploy the solution and run the lab. For those of you who wants to save the time, we included the final solution so you can just build/deploy the solution and run the lab.Value Injecter - object(s) to -> object mapper: 2.3: it lets you define your own convention-based matching algorithms (ValueInjections) in order to match up (inject) source values to destination values. inject from multiple sources in one InjectFrom added ConventionInjectionMobile Device Detection and Redirection: 0.1.11.11: Improvements to Beta Release The following changes have been made in version 0.1.11.11: BlackBerry Version 6 devices (such as the 9800 Torch) are now correctly identified with a dedicated handler. Android powered devices are now correctly identified. Minor change to Provider.cs to improve performance and optimise data sent to 51Degrees.mobi if the option is enabled. GC.collect is no longer called at any point. All garbage collection now happens automatically IMPORTANT CHANGES This rele...TweetSharp: TweetSharp v2.0.0.0 - Preview 10: Documentation for this release may be found at http://tweetsharp.codeplex.com/wikipage?title=UserGuide&referringTitle=Documentation. Note: This code is currently preview quality. Preview 9 ChangesAdded support for trends Added support for Silverlight 4 Elevated WP7 fixes Third Party Library VersionsHammock v1.1.7: http://hammock.codeplex.com Json.NET 4.0 Release 1: http://json.codeplex.comFacebook Graph Toolkit: Facebook Graph Toolkit 0.7: Version 0.7 updates (2 Feb 2011)new Facebook Graph objects: Link, Note, StatusMessage new publish features: status update, post with link attachment new Graph Api connections in User object: statuses, links, notes internal code path improvement on Api object bug fixed: extra "r" character appears for strings with "\r" symbols in Json Objects bug fixed: error when performing Postback to the same page Tutorial and documentation available at http://fbgraph.computerbeacon.netPhalanger - The PHP Language Compiler for the .NET Framework: 2.0 (February 2011): Next release of Phalanger; again faster, more stable and ready for daily use. Based on many user experiences this release is one more step closer to be perfect compiler and runtime of your old PHP applications; or perfect platform for migrating to .NET. February 2011 release of Phalanger introduces several changes, enhancements and fixes. See complete changelist for all the changes. To improve the performance of your application using MySQL, please use Managed MySQL Extension for Phalanger....Chemistry Add-in for Word: Chemistry Add-in for Word - Version 1.0: On February 1, 2011, we announced the availability of version 1 of the Chemistry Add-in for Word, as well as the assignment of the open source project to the Outercurve Foundation by Microsoft Research and the University of Cambridge. System RequirementsHardware RequirementsAny computer that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010. Software RequirementsYour computer must have the following software: Any version of Windows that can run Office 2007 or Office 2010, which includes Windows XP SP3 and...Minemapper: Minemapper v0.1.4: Updated mcmap, now supports new block types. Added a Worlds->'View Cache Folder' menu item.StyleCop for ReSharper: StyleCop for ReSharper 5.1.15005.000: Applied patch from rodpl for merging of stylecop setting files with settings in parent folder. Previous release: A considerable amount of work has gone into this release: Huge focus on performance around the violation scanning subsystem: - caching added to reduce IO operations around reading and merging of settings files - caching added to reduce creation of expensive objects Users should notice condsiderable perf boost and a decrease in memory usage. Bug Fixes: - StyleCop's new Objec...New ProjectsAtari Lynx Emulator: Atari Lynx emulator written in C#BMIcalculator: BMI Calculator for Windows Phone 7.Channel9 Plugin for PlayOn: This is a plugin for use with PlayOn Digital Media Server.cup: cosDEBUG ANALYZER.NET Plugs: Debugging memory dumps using .NET Plugs written in C#Foursquare Venue api: This project allows a user to enter venue information and search foursquare . it will show who is the mayor who is currently at the venue as well as icons for the user . it uses google maps lat and long as well as foursqaure V2 api JSON..G19 Glower: Application for the Logitech G19 keyboard to change the colour of the keyboard as you type. Basic effect is to glow the keyboard more as you type, but there are other modes available. It is also fully customizable and plugin based, so feel free to change it all you wish!GMare: GMare (Game Maker Alternative Room Editor) is a third party room editor for YoYo Game's Game Maker (Supports versions 5 to 8). Offering more robust tools and options to make room editing less cumbersome. GMare is developed in C#, using .NET 2.0, and OpenGL.Hime Parser Generator: Lexer and parser generator for C#. Currently parsing methods are LR(0), LR(1) and LALR(1). Partially implemented parsing methods are GLR(1), GLALR(1), RNGLR(1) and RNGLALR(1). Can be extended for using other parsing methods, including from the LL family.Irrlicht.Net: Irrlicht.Net, is practically what the name says, a wrapper for Irrlicht 1.7.2, written in C#, but should work for other .Net based programming languages. It is, right now in the very early stages, but still you can make something out of it.MapShell: MapShell makes it easy for GIS Administrators to automate repetitive tasks by providing a command-line interface to useful GIS functionality with the consistent syntax and staggering power of PowerShell.MonoStrategy: This project is intended to be an OpenSource remake of one of the best multiplayer realtime strategy games in the world, "The Settlers 3" (Die Siedler 3), with support for all major platforms and mobile devices released under Affero GPL 3. OpenKTV: open source KTV systemRemote Hardware Monitor: Remote Hardware Monitor provides JSON and XML serialised access to data from the Open Hardware Monitor (http://openhardwaremonitor.org/). It is developed in C# using Json.NET for JSON serialisation. SENG 403 Group 6: TBASharePoint Correlation ID View Webpart: Enables a webpart and a ribbon button that allows you to retrieve the information recorded in the ULS log tagged with a specific correlation ID. This makes it much easier for SharePoint developers to retrieve the log messages for a specific correlation token.SharePoint OM Explorer: Explorer SharePoint 2010 under the covers with a set of connected and connectable web parts with an underlying vision to make it easy to: - View site hiearchy - See all object model data for sites, lists, content types, event receivers, etc - Easily view customized bits vs. OOB.System Center Service Manager Facade: This project is c# facade API around SCSM objects using T4 templates and codeTemporary internal server sample for your C# application: CSISS is a sample for you as a C# developer. It explains with an example how to create a virtual, temporary "server" in a class.TestSGB2: This is a test upload2Tiff Splitter: A simple WinForms app that that opens a multi-page tiff file and saves all pages as individual tiff files. The multi-page tiff can be opened via open file dialog, or dragged in.Time Tracker for Windows Phone 7: This is a sample time tracker application created by the members of the LetsXNA !! linked in user group. See LetsXNA.Org for more details. You are welcome to contribute by joining the linked in group and the registering as a developer on codeplex. Lets build a great time tracker!TraceLight: <project name> TraceLight ray tracer </project name> <programming language> C# </programming language>

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