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• Updating the managed debugging API for .NET v4

  - by Brian Donahue

  In any successful investigation, the right tools play a big part in collecting evidence about the state of the "crime scene" as it was before the detectives arrived. Unfortunately for the Crash Scene Investigator, we don't have the budget to fly out to the customer's site, chalk the outline, and eat their doughnuts. We have to rely on the end-user to collect the evidence for us, which means giving them the fingerprint dust and the evidence baggies and leaving them to it. With that in mind, the Red Gate support team have been writing tools that can collect vital clues with a minimum of fuss. Years ago we would have asked for a memory dump, where we used to get the customer to run CDB.exe and produce dumps that we could analyze in-house, but those dumps were pretty unwieldy (500MB files) and the debugger often didn't dump exactly where we wanted, or made five or more dumps. What we wanted was just the minimum state information from the program at the time of failure, so we produced a managed debugger that captured every first and second-chance exception and logged the stack and a minimal amount of variables from the memory of the application, which could all be exported as XML. This caused less inconvenience to the end-user because it is much easier to send a 65KB XML file in an email than a 500MB file containing all of the application's memory. We don't need to have the entire victim shipped out to us when we just want to know what was under the fingernails. The thing that made creating a managed debugging tool possible was the MDbg Engine example written by Microsoft as part of the Debugging Tools for Windows distribution. Since the ICorDebug interface is a bit difficult to understand, they had kindly created some wrappers that provided an event-driven debugging model that was perfect for our needs, but .NET 4 applications under debugging started complaining that "The debugger's protocol is incompatible with the debuggee". The introduction of .NET Framework v4 had changed the managed debugging API significantly, however, without an update for the MDbg Engine code! After a few hours of research, I had finally worked out that most of the version 4 ICorDebug interface still works much the same way in "legacy" v2 mode and there was a relatively easy fix for the problem in that you can still get a reference to legacy ICorDebug by changing the way the interface is created. In .NET v2, the interface was acquired using the CreateDebuggingInterfaceFromVersion method in mscoree.dll. In v4, you must first create IClrMetaHost, enumerate the runtimes, get an ICLRRuntimeInfo interface to the .NET 4 runtime from that, and use the GetInterface method in mscoree.dll to return a "legacy" ICorDebug interface. The rest of the MDbg Engine will continue working the old way. Here is how I had changed the MDbg Engine code to support .NET v4: private void InitFromVersion(string debuggerVersion){if( debuggerVersion.StartsWith("v1") ){throw new ArgumentException( "Can't debug a version 1 CLR process (\"" + debuggerVersion + "\"). Run application in a version 2 CLR, or use a version 1 debugger instead." );} ICorDebug rawDebuggingAPI=null;if (debuggerVersion.StartsWith("v4")){Guid CLSID_MetaHost = new Guid("9280188D-0E8E-4867-B30C-7FA83884E8DE"); Guid IID_MetaHost = new Guid("D332DB9E-B9B3-4125-8207-A14884F53216"); ICLRMetaHost metahost = (ICLRMetaHost)NativeMethods.ClrCreateInterface(CLSID_MetaHost, IID_MetaHost); IEnumUnknown runtimes = metahost.EnumerateInstalledRuntimes(); ICLRRuntimeInfo runtime = GetRuntime(runtimes, debuggerVersion); //Defined in metahost.hGuid CLSID_CLRDebuggingLegacy = new Guid(0xDF8395B5, 0xA4BA, 0x450b, 0xA7, 0x7C, 0xA9, 0xA4, 0x77, 0x62, 0xC5, 0x20);Guid IID_ICorDebug = new Guid("3D6F5F61-7538-11D3-8D5B-00104B35E7EF"); Object res;runtime.GetInterface(ref CLSID_CLRDebuggingLegacy, ref IID_ICorDebug, out res); rawDebuggingAPI = (ICorDebug)res; }elserawDebuggingAPI = NativeMethods.CreateDebuggingInterfaceFromVersion((int)CorDebuggerVersion.Whidbey,debuggerVersion);if (rawDebuggingAPI != null)InitFromICorDebug(rawDebuggingAPI);elsethrow new ArgumentException("Support for debugging version " + debuggerVersion + " is not yet implemented");} The changes above will ensure that the debugger can support .NET Framework v2 and v4 applications with the same codebase, but we do compile two different applications: one targeting v2 and the other v4. As a footnote I need to add that some missing native methods and wrappers, along with the EnumerateRuntimes method code, came from the Mindbg project on Codeplex. Another change is that when using the MDbgEngine.CreateProcess to launch a process in the debugger, do not supply a null as the final argument. This does not work any more because GetCORVersion always returns "v2.0.50727" as the function has been deprecated in .NET v4. What's worse is that on a system with only .NET 4, the user will be prompted to download and install .NET v2! Not nice! This works much better: proc = m_Debugger.CreateProcess(ProcessName, ProcessArgs, DebugModeFlag.Default,String.Format("v{0}.{1}.{2}",System.Environment.Version.Major,System.Environment.Version.Minor,System.Environment.Version.Build)); Microsoft "unofficially" plan on updating the MDbg samples soon, but if you have an MDbg-based application, you can get it working right now by changing one method a bit and adding a few new interfaces (ICLRMetaHost, IEnumUnknown, and ICLRRuntimeInfo). The new, non-legacy implementation of MDbg Engine will add new, interesting features like dump-file support and by association I assume garbage-collection/managed object stats, so it will be well worth looking into if you want to extend the functionality of a managed debugger going forward.

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• The Interaction between Three-Tier Client/Server Model and Three-Tier Application Architecture Model

  The three-tier client/server model is a network architectural approach currently used in modern networking. This approach divides a network in to three distinct components. Three-Tier Client/Server Model Components Client Component Server Component Database Component The Client Component of the network typically represents any device on the network. A basic example of this would be computer or another network/web enabled devices that are connected to a network. Network clients request resources on the network, and are usually equipped with a user interface for the presentation of the data returned from the Server Component. This process is done through the use of various software clients, and example of this can be seen through the use of a web browser client. The web browser request information from the Server Component located on the network and then renders the results for the user to process. The Server Components of the network return data based on specific client request back to the requesting client.  Server Components also inherit the attributes of a Client Component in that they are a device on the network and that they can also request information from other Server Components. However what differentiates a Client Component from a Server Component is that a Server Component response to requests from devices on the network. An example of a Server Component can be seen in a web server. A web server listens for new requests and then interprets the request, processes the web pages, and then returns the processed data back to the web browser client so that it may render the data for the user to interpret. The Database Component of the network returns unprocessed data from databases or other resources. This component also inherits attributes from the Server Component in that it is a device on a network, it can request information from other server components and database components, and it also listens for new requests so that it can return data when needed. The three-tier client/server model is very similar to the three-tier application architecture model, and in fact the layers can be mapped to one another. Three-Tier Application Architecture Model Presentation Layer/Logic Business Layer/Logic Data Layer/Logic The Presentation Layer including its underlying logic is very similar to the Client Component of the three-tiered model. The Presentation Layer focuses on interpreting the data returned by the Business Layer as well as presents the data back to the user.  Both the Presentation Layer and the Client Component focus primarily on the user and their experience. This allows for segments of the Business Layer to be distributable and interchangeable because the Presentation Layer is not directly integrated in with Business Layer. The Presentation Layer does not care where the data comes from as long as it is in the proper format. This allows for the Presentation Layer and Business Layer to be stored on one or more different servers so that it can provide a higher availability to clients requesting data. A good example of this is a web site that uses load balancing. When a web site decides to take on the task of load balancing they must obtain a network device that sits in front of a one or machines in order to distribute the request across multiple servers. When a user comes in through the load balanced device they are redirected to a specific server based on a few factors. Common Load Balancing Factors Current Server Availability Current Server Response Time Current Server Priority The Business Layer and corresponding logic are business rules applied to data prior to it being sent to the Presentation Layer. These rules are used to manipulate the data coming from the Data Access Layer, in addition to validating any data prior to being stored in the Data Access Layer. A good example of this would be when a user is trying to create multiple accounts under one email address. The Business Layer logic can prevent duplicate accounts by enforcing a unique email for every new account before the data is even stored in the Data Access Layer. The Server Component can be directly tied to this layer in that the server typically stores and process the Business Layer before it is returned to the end-user via the Presentation Layer. In addition the Server Component can also run automated process through the Business Layer on the data in the Data Access Layer so that additional business analysis can be derived from the data that has been already collected. The Data Layer and its logic are responsible for storing information so that it can be easily retrieved. Typical in most modern applications data is stored in a database management system however data can also be in the form of files stored on a file server. In addition a database can take on one of several forms. Common Database Formats XML File Pipe Delimited File Tab Delimited File Comma Delimited File (CSV) Plain Text File Microsoft Access Microsoft SQL Server MySql Oracle Sybase The Database component of the Networking model can be directly tied to the Data Layer because this is where the Data Layer obtains the data to return back the Business Layer. The Database Component basically allows for a place on the network to store data for future use. This enables applications to save data when they can and then quickly recall the saved data as needed so that the application does not have to worry about storing the data in memory. This prevents overhead that could be created when an application must retain all data in memory. As you can see the Three-Tier Client/Server Networking Model and the Three-Tiered Application Architecture Model rely very heavily on one another to function especially if different aspects of an application are distributed across an entire network. The use of various servers and database servers are wonderful when an application has a need to distribute work across the network. Network Components and Application Layers Interaction Database components will store all data needed for the Data Access Layer to manipulate and return to the Business Layer Server Component executes the Business Layer that manipulates data so that it can be returned to the Presentation Layer Client Component hosts the Presentation Layer that  interprets the data and present it to the user

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• Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010-Part 3

  - by Tarun Arora

  Welcome back once again, in Part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies, in Part 2 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I discussed the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. In part 3 I’ll be discussing Test Result Analysis, Test Result Drill through, Test Report Generation, Test Run Comparison, Asp.net Profiler and some closing thoughts. Test Results – I see some creepy worms! In Part 2 we put together a web performance test and a load test, lets run the test to see load test to see how the Web site responds to the load simulation. While the load test is running you will be able to see close to real time analysis in the Load Test Analyser window. You can use the Load Test Analyser to conduct load test analysis in three ways: Monitor a running load test - A condensed set of the performance counter data is maintained in memory. To prevent the results memory requirements from growing unbounded, up to 200 samples for each performance counter are maintained. This includes 100 evenly spaced samples that span the current elapsed time of the run and the most recent 100 samples.         After the load test run is completed - The test controller spools all collected performance counter data to a database while the test is running. Additional data, such as timing details and error details, is loaded into the database when the test completes. The performance data for a completed test is loaded from the database and analysed by the Load Test Analyser. Below you can see a screen shot of the summary view, this provides key results in a format that is compact and easy to read. You can also print the load test summary, this is generated after the test has completed or been stopped.         Analyse the load test results of a previously run load test – We’ll see this in the section where i discuss comparison between two test runs. The performance counters can be plotted on the graphs. You also have the option to highlight a selected part of the test and view details, drill down to the user activity chart where you can hover over to see more details of the test run.   Generate Report => Test Run Comparisons The level of reports you can generate using the Load Test Analyser is astonishing. You have the option to create excel reports and conduct side by side analysis of two test results or to track trend analysis. The tools also allows you to export the graph data either to MS Excel or to a CSV file. You can view the ASP.NET profiler report to conduct further analysis as well. View Data and Diagnostic Attachments opens the Choose Diagnostic Data Adapter Attachment dialog box to select an adapter to analyse the result type. For example, you can select an IntelliTrace adapter, click OK and open the IntelliTrace summary for the test agent that was used in the load test.   Compare results This creates a set of reports that compares the data from two load test results using tables and bar charts. I have taken these screen shots from the MSDN documentation, I would highly recommend exploring the wealth of knowledge available on MSDN. Leaving Thoughts While load testing the application with an excessive load for a longer duration of time, i managed to bring the IIS to its knees by piling up a huge queue of requests waiting to be processed. This clearly means that the IIS had run out of threads as all the threads were busy processing existing request, one easy way of fixing this is by increasing the default number of allocated threads, but this might escalate the problem. The better suggestion is to try and drill down to the actual root cause of the problem. When ever the garbage collection runs it stops processing any pages so all requests that come in during that period are queued up, but realistically the garbage collection completes in fraction of a a second. To understand this better lets look at the .net heap, it is divided into large heap and small heap, anything greater than 85kB in size will be allocated to the Large object heap, the Large object heap is non compacting and remember large objects are expensive to move around, so if you are allocating something in the large object heap, make sure that you really need it! The small object heap on the other hand is divided into generations, so all objects that are supposed to be short-lived are suppose to live in Gen-0 and the long living objects eventually move to Gen-2 as garbage collection goes through.  As you can see in the picture below all < 85 KB size objects are first assigned to Gen-0, when Gen-0 fills up and a new object comes in and finds Gen-0 full, the garbage collection process is started, the process checks for all the dead objects and assigns them as the valid candidate for deletion to free up memory and promotes all the remaining objects in Gen-0 to Gen-1. So in the future when ever you clean up Gen-1 you have to clean up Gen-0 as well. When you fill up Gen – 0 again, all of Gen – 1 dead objects are drenched and rest are moved to Gen-2 and Gen-0 objects are moved to Gen-1 to free up Gen-0, but by this time your Garbage collection process has started to take much more time than it usually takes. Now as I mentioned earlier when garbage collection is being run all page requests that come in during that period are queued up. Does this explain why possibly page requests are getting queued up, apart from this it could also be the case that you are waiting for a long running database process to complete.      Lets explore the heap a bit more… What is really a case of crisis is when the objects are living long enough to make it to Gen-2 and then dying, this is definitely a high cost operation. But sometimes you need objects in memory, for example when you cache data you hold on to the objects because you need to use them right across the user session, which is acceptable. But if you wanted to see what extreme caching can do to your server then write a simple application that chucks in a lot of data in cache, run a load test over it for about 10-15 minutes, forcing a lot of data in memory causing the heap to run out of memory. If you get to such a state where you start running out of memory the IIS as a mode of recovery restarts the worker process. It is great way to free up all your memory in the heap but this would clear the cache. The problem with this is if the customer had 10 items in their shopping basket and that data was stored in the application cache, the user basket will now be empty forcing them either to get frustrated and go to a competitor website or if the customer is really patient, give it another try! How can you address this, well two ways of addressing this; 1. Workaround – A x86 bit processor only allows a maximum of 4GB of RAM, this means the machine effectively has around 3.4 GB of RAM available, the OS needs about 1.5 GB of RAM to run efficiently, the IIS and .net framework also need their share of memory, leaving you a heap of around 800 MB to play with. Because Team builds by default build your application in ‘Compile as any mode’ it means the application is build such that it will run in x86 bit mode if run on a x86 bit processor and run in a x64 bit mode if run on a x64 but processor. The problem with this is not all applications are really x64 bit compatible specially if you are using com objects or external libraries. So, as a quick win if you compiled your application in x86 bit mode by changing the compile as any selection to compile as x86 in the team build, you will be able to run your application on a x64 bit machine in x86 bit mode (WOW – By running Windows on Windows) and what that means is, you could use 8GB+ worth of RAM, if you take away everything else your application will roughly get a heap size of at least 4 GB to play with, which is immense. If you need a heap size of more than 4 GB you have either build a software for NASA or there is something fundamentally wrong in your application. 2. Solution – Now that you have put a workaround in place the IIS will not restart the worker process that regularly, which means you can take a breather and start working to get to the root cause of this memory leak. But this begs a question “How do I Identify possible memory leaks in my application?” Well i won’t say that there is one single tool that can tell you where the memory leak is, but trust me, ‘Performance Profiling’ is a great start point, it definitely gets you started in the right direction, let’s have a look at how. Performance Wizard - Start the Performance Wizard and select Instrumentation, this lets you measure function call counts and timings. Before running the performance session right click the performance session settings and chose properties from the context menu to bring up the Performance session properties page and as shown in the screen shot below, check the check boxes in the group ‘.NET memory profiling collection’ namely ‘Collect .NET object allocation information’ and ‘Also collect the .NET Object lifetime information’.    Now if you fire off the profiling session on your pages you will notice that the results allows you to view ‘Object Lifetime’ which shows you the number of objects that made it to Gen-0, Gen-1, Gen-2, Large heap, etc. Another great feature about the profile is that if your application has > 5% cases where objects die right after making to the Gen-2 storage a threshold alert is generated to alert you. Since you have the option to also view the most expensive methods and by capturing the IntelliTrace data you can drill in to narrow down to the line of code that is the root cause of the problem. Well now that we have seen how crucial memory management is and how easy Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 makes it for us to identify and reproduce the problem with the best of breed tools in the product. Caching One of the main ways to improve performance is Caching. Which basically means you tell the web server that instead of going to the database for each request you keep the data in the webserver and when the user asks for it you serve it from the webserver itself. BUT that can have consequences! Let’s look at some code, trust me caching code is not very intuitive, I define a cache key for almost all searches made through the common search page and cache the results. The approach works fine, first time i get the data from the database and second time data is served from the cache, significant performance improvement, EXCEPT when two users try to do the same operation and run into each other. But it is easy to handle this by adding the lock as you can see in the snippet below. So, as long as a user comes in and finds that the cache is empty, the user locks and starts to get the cache no more concurrency issues. But lets say you are processing 10 requests per second, by the time i have locked the operation to get the results from the database, 9 other users came in and found that the cache key is null so after i have come out and populated the cache they will still go in to get the results again. The application will still be faster because the next set of 10 users and so on would continue to get data from the cache. BUT if we added another null check after locking to build the cache and before actual call to the db then the 9 users who follow me would not make the extra trip to the database at all and that would really increase the performance, but didn’t i say that the code won’t be very intuitive, may be you should leave a comment you don’t want another developer to come in and think what a fresher why is he checking for the cache key null twice !!! The downside of caching is, you are storing the data outside of the database and the data could be wrong because the updates applied to the database would make the data cached at the web server out of sync. So, how do you invalidate the cache? Well if you only had one way of updating the data lets say only one entry point to the data update you can write some logic to say that every time new data is entered set the cache object to null. But this approach will not work as soon as you have several ways of feeding data to the system or your system is scaled out across a farm of web servers. The perfect solution to this is Micro Caching which means you cache the query for a set time duration and invalidate the cache after that set duration. The advantage is every time the user queries for that data with in the time span for which you have cached the results there are no calls made to the database and the data is served right from the server which makes the response immensely quick. Now figuring out the appropriate time span for which you micro cache the query results really depends on the application. Lets say your website gets 10 requests per second, if you retain the cache results for even 1 minute you will have immense performance gains. You would reduce 90% hits to the database for searching. Ever wondered why when you go to e-bookers.com or xpedia.com or yatra.com to book a flight and you click on the book button because the fare seems too exciting and you get an error message telling you that the fare is not valid any more. Yes, exactly => That is a cache failure! These travel sites or price compare engines are not going to hit the database every time you hit the compare button instead the results will be served from the cache, because the query results are micro cached, its a perfect trade-off, by micro caching the results the site gains 100% performance benefits but every once in a while annoys a customer because the fare has expired. But the trade off works in the favour of these sites as they are still able to process up to 30+ page requests per second which means cater to the site traffic by may be losing 1 customer every once in a while to a competitor who is also using a similar caching technique what are the odds that the user will not come back to their site sooner or later? Recap   Resources Below are some Key resource you might like to review. I would highly recommend the documentation, walkthroughs and videos available on MSDN. You can always make use of Fiddler to debug Web Performance Tests. Some community test extensions and plug ins available on Codeplex might also be of interest to you. The Road Ahead Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post, you may also want to read Part I and Part II if you haven’t so far. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Next ‘Load Testing in the cloud’, I’ll be working on exploring the possibilities of running Test controller/Agents in the Cloud. See you on the other side! Thank You!   Share this post : CodeProject

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• The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

  - by guybarrette

  A few years go, I got interested in presentation styles after reading Cliff Atkinson’s Beyond Bullet Points book.  At that time, it was obvious that the Microsoft presentation culture was kind of missing the point by having far too many bullet points. I recently picked up Carmine Gallo’s The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.  I enjoyed this short read (238 pages) book full of presentation tips.  The best advise that I got from reading this book is that you must have an antagonist in your presentation.  This will help the audience visualize and understand the problem (antagonist) and the solution (what you present).  When presenting a technical topic, it is easy to forget to explain what problem is being solved by using this new technology/technique/pattern/API. This is a great read for anyone giving presentations, technical or not.     var addthis_pub="guybarrette";

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• The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

  A few years go, I got interested in presentation styles after reading Cliff Atkinsons Beyond Bullet Points book.  At that time, it was obvious that the Microsoft presentation culture was kind of missing the point by having far too many bullet points. I recently picked up Carmine Gallos The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs.  I enjoyed this short read (238 pages) book full of presentation tips.  The best advise that I got from reading this book is that you must have an antagonist...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate 2 Released

  - by shiju

  Microsoft has shipped Release Candidate version 2 for ASP.NET MVC 3. You can download the  ASP.NET MVC 3 Release Candidate 2 from here . If you have installed Visual Studio Service Pack 1 Beta, you must install ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2. Otherwise it will break the IntelliSense feature in the Razor views of ASP.NET MVC 3 RC1. The following are the some of the new changes in ASP.NET MVC 3 RC 2. Added Html.Raw Method Renamed "Controller.ViewModel" Property and the "View" Property To "ViewBag" Renamed "ControllerSessionStateAttribute" Class to "SessionStateAttribute" Fixed "RenderAction" Method to Give Explicit Values Precedence During Model Binding You can read more details from ScottGu’s blog post Announcing ASP.NET MVC 3 (Release Candidate 2)

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• Building The Right SharePoint Team For Your Organization

  - by Mark Rackley

  I see the question posted fairly often asking what kind SharePoint team an organization should have. How many people do I need? What roles do I need to fill? What is best for my organization? Well, just like every other answer in SharePoint, the correct answer is “it depends”. Do you ever get sick of hearing that??? I know I do… So, let me give you my thoughts and opinions based upon my experience and what I’ve seen and let you come to your own conclusions. What are the possible SharePoint roles? I guess the first thing you need to understand are the different roles that exist in SharePoint (and their are LOTS). Remember, SharePoint is a massive beast and you will NOT find one person who can do it all. If you are hoping to find that person you will be sorely disappointed. For the most part this is true in SharePoint 2007 and 2010. However, generally things are improved in 2010 and easier for junior individuals to grasp. SharePoint Administrator The absolutely positively only role that you should not be without no matter the size of your organization or SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint administrator. These guys are essential to keeping things running and figuring out what’s wrong when things aren’t running well. These unsung heroes do more before 10 am than I do all day. The bad thing is, when these guys are awesome, you don’t even know they exist because everything is running so smoothly. You should definitely invest some time and money here to make sure you have some competent if not rockstar help. You need an admin who truly loves SharePoint and will go that extra mile when necessary. Let me give you a real world example of what I’m talking about: We have a rockstar admin… and I’m sure she’s sick of my throwing her name around so she’ll just have to live with remaining anonymous in this post… sorry Lori… Anyway! A couple of weeks ago our Server teams came to us and said Hi Lori, I’m finalizing the MOSS servers and doing updates that require a restart; can I restart them? Seems like a harmless request from your server team does it not? Sure, go ahead and apply the patches and reboot during our scheduled maintenance window. No problem? right? Sounded fair to me… but no…. not to our fearless SharePoint admin… I need a complete list of patches that will be applied. There is an update that is out there that will break SharePoint… KB973917 is the patch that has been shown to cause issues. What? You mean Microsoft released a patch that would actually adversely affect SharePoint? If we did NOT have a rockstar admin, our server team would have applied these patches and then when some problem occurred in SharePoint we’d have to go through the fun task of tracking down exactly what caused the issue and resolve it. How much time would that have taken? If you have a junior SharePoint admin or an admin who’s not out there staying on top of what’s going on you could have spent days tracking down something so simple as applying a patch you should not have applied. I will even go as far to say the only SharePoint rockstar you NEED in your organization is a SharePoint admin. You can always outsource really complicated development projects or bring in a rockstar contractor every now and then to make sure you aren’t way off track in other areas. For your day-to-day sanity and to keep SharePoint running smoothly, you need an awesome Admin. Some rockstars in this category are: Ben Curry, Mike Watson, Joel Oleson, Todd Klindt, Shane Young, John Ferringer, Sean McDonough, and of course Lori Gowin. SharePoint Developer Another essential role for your SharePoint deployment is a SharePoint developer. Things do start to get a little hazy here and there are many flavors of “developers”. Are you writing custom code? using SharePoint Designer? What about SharePoint Branding?  Are all of these considered developers? I would say yes. Are they interchangeable? I’d say no. Development in SharePoint is such a large beast in itself. I would say that it’s not so large that you can’t know it all well, but it is so large that there are many people who specialize in one particular category. If you are lucky enough to have someone on staff who knows it all well, you better make sure they are well taken care of because those guys are ready-made to move over to a consulting role and charge you 3 times what you are probably paying them. :) Some of the all-around rockstars are Eric Shupps, Andrew Connell (go Razorbacks), Rob Foster, Paul Schaeflein, and Todd Bleeker SharePoint Power User/No-Code Solutions Developer These SharePoint Swiss Army Knives are essential for quick wins in your organization. These people can twist the out-of-the-box functionality to make it do things you would not even imagine. Give these guys SharePoint Designer, jQuery, InfoPath, and a little time and they will create views, dashboards, and KPI’s that will blow your mind away and give your execs the “wow” they are looking for. Not only can they deliver that wow factor, but they can mashup, merge, and really help make your SharePoint application usable and deliver an overall better user experience. Before you hand off a project to your SharePoint Custom Code developer, let one of these rockstars look at it and show you what they can do (in probably less time). I would say the second most important role you can fill in your organization is one of these guys. Rockstars in this category are Christina Wheeler, Laura Rogers, Jennifer Mason, and Mark Miller SharePoint Developer – Custom Code If you want to really integrate SharePoint into your legacy systems, or really twist it and make it bend to your will, you are going to have to open up Visual Studio and write some custom code.  Remember, SharePoint is essentially just a big, huge, ginormous .NET application, so you CAN write code to make it do ANYTHING, but do you really want to spend the time and effort to do so? At some point with every other form of SharePoint development you are going to run into SOME limitation (SPD Workflows is the big one that comes to mind). If you truly want to knock down all the walls then custom development is the way to go. PLEASE keep in mind when you are looking for a custom code developer that a .NET developer does NOT equal a SharePoint developer. Just SOME of the things these guys write are: Custom Workflows Custom Web Parts Web Service functionality Import data from legacy systems Export data to legacy systems Custom Actions Event Receivers Service Applications (2010) These guys are also the ones generally responsible for packaging everything up into solution packages (you are doing that, right?). Rockstars in this category are Phil Wicklund, Christina Wheeler, Geoff Varosky, and Brian Jackett. SharePoint Branding “But it LOOKS like SharePoint!” Somebody call the WAAAAAAAAAAAAHMbulance…   Themes, Master Pages, Page Layouts, Zones, and over 2000 styles in CSS.. these guys not only have to be comfortable with all of SharePoint’s quirks and pain points when branding, but they have to know it TWICE for publishing and non-publishing sites.  Not only that, but these guys really need to have an eye for graphic design and be able to translate the ramblings of business into something visually stunning. They also have to be comfortable with XSLT, XML, and be able to hand off what they do to your custom developers for them to package as solutions (which you are doing, right?). These rockstars include Heater Waterman, Cathy Dew, and Marcy Kellar SharePoint Architect SharePoint Architects are generally SharePoint Admins or Developers who have moved into more of a BA role? Is that fair to say? These guys really have a grasp and understanding for what SharePoint IS and what it can do. These guys help you structure your farms to meet your needs and help you design your applications the correct way. It’s always a good idea to bring in a rockstar SharePoint Architect to do a sanity check and make sure you aren’t doing anything stupid.  Most organizations probably do not have a rockstar architect on staff. These guys are generally brought in at the deployment of a farm, upgrade of a farm, or for large development projects. I personally also find architects very useful for sitting down with the business to translate their needs into what SharePoint can do. A good architect will be able to pick out what can be done out-of-the-box and what has to be custom built and hand those requirements to the development Staff. Architects can generally fill in as an admin or a developer when needed. Some rockstar architects are Rick Taylor, Dan Usher, Bill English, Spence Harbar, Neil Hodgkins, Eric Harlan, and Bjørn Furuknap. Other Roles / Specialties On top of all these other roles you also get these people who specialize in things like Reporting, BDC (BCS in 2010), Search, Performance, Security, Project Management, etc... etc... etc... Again, most organizations will not have one of these gurus on staff, they’ll just pay out the nose for them when they need them. :) SharePoint End User Everyone else in your organization that touches SharePoint falls into this category. What they actually DO in SharePoint is determined by your governance and what permissions you give these guys. Hopefully you have these guys on a fairly short leash and are NOT giving them access to tools like SharePoint Designer. Sadly end users are the ones who truly make your deployment a success by using it, but are also your biggest enemy in breaking it.  :)  We love you guys… really!!! Okay, all that’s fine and dandy, but what should MY SharePoint team look like? It depends! Okay… Are you just doing out of the box team sites with no custom development? Then you are probably fine with a great Admin team and a great No-Code Solution Development team. How many people do you need? Depends on how busy you can keep them. Sorry, can’t answer the question about numbers without knowing your specific needs. I can just tell you who you MIGHT need and what they will do for you. I’ll leave you with what my ideal SharePoint Team would look like for a particular scenario: Farm / Organization Structure Dev, QA, and 2 Production Farms. 5000 – 10000 Users Custom Development and Integration with legacy systems Team Sites, My Sites, Intranet, Document libraries and overall company collaboration Team Rockstar SharePoint Administrator 2-3 junior SharePoint Administrators SharePoint Architect / Lead Developer 2 Power User / No-Code Solution Developers 2-3 Custom Code developers Branding expert With a team of that size and skill set, they should be able to keep a substantial SharePoint deployment running smoothly and meet your business needs. This does NOT mean that you would not need to bring in contract help from time to time when you need an uber specialist in one area. Also, this team assumes there will be ongoing development for the life of your SharePoint farm. If you are just going to be doing sporadic custom development, it might make sense to partner with an awesome firm that specializes in that sort of work (I can give you the name of a couple if you are interested).  Again though, the size of your team depends on the number of requests you are receiving and how much active deployment you are doing. So, don’t bring in a team that looks like this and then yell at me because they are sitting around with nothing to do or are so overwhelmed that nothing is getting done. I do URGE you to take the proper time to asses your needs and determine what team is BEST for your organization. Also, PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not skimp on the talent. When it comes to SharePoint you really do get what you pay for when it comes to employees, contractors, and software.  SharePoint can become absolutely critical to your business and because you skimped on hiring a developer he created a web part that brings down the farm because he doesn’t know what he’s doing, or you hire an admin who thinks it’s fine to stick everything in the same Content Database and then can’t figure out why people are complaining. SharePoint can be an enormous blessing to an organization or it’s biggest curse. Spend the time and money to do it right, or be prepared to spending even more time and money later to fix it.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, April 01, 2010New ProjectsASP.NET Bing Maps: Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map style, add a PushPin...Bricks' Bane: Bricks' Bane is a brick breaker game developed using XNA and published on XBox Live Indy Games. Source code includes a C# library useful for game d...cURL for dotnet: Another dotnet binding for libcurl see http://curl.haxx.se for more info about cURL/libcurlCustom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Functoid para Biztalk Server 2006 utilizando dados do SQL Server 2005FEI STU Pharmacy e-shop: Elektronicky obchod s liekmi Vytvorte jednoduchú klient-server aplikáciu, ktorá bude realizovať elektronický obchod s liekmi. Moduly: 1. e-shop f...Flavours of Wix: Investigating building DSL's to create installers based on WIXFulcrum: Fulcrum is a code generation framework built on top of the T4 technology in Visual Studio. GreviousAngel: New team projectHabanero Inferno: Habanero Inferno coming soon.Kawo Pounga !: A useless game !!!LetsXNA!!: This is a project created by members of Linked In group Lets XNA!! to build a XNA game and have fun in the process. The goal is to build a simple ...Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: <project name>Linq to Naver </project name> <programming language>C#, CSharp</programming language>LocoSync: LocoSync is a file Syncronization/Backup/Archiver program, which is easily extendable. It is easy to add new syncronization methods using C# code.Natural Language Processing: Natural Language ProcessingNop Commerce Azure: Ce projet vous permet de mettre en place rapidement et simplement votre site d'e-commerce en ligne en bénéficiant de tous les avantages de la plate...Nwinsock: Nwinsock is a component for network , Object Transfer, Pocket Compression, Support TCP,UDP Protocol, Thread Base OnTime: OnTime is a simple program from that matching game back in the day just to bring light to programming techniques. It's developed in C#.?OpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: OpenGL ES 2.0 wrapper for .NET Compact Framework. Developed on HTC HD 2 device but should run on any Windows Mobile device that has the correct lib...ortaknokta: bu proje: birkaç kişinin bir araya gelip, istedikleri konularda tartışma yapmalarına olanak saglamak icin hazırlanmaya çalışıl maktadır. P-Data: P-Data es una herramienta que permite obtener información procedente de archivos de datos (Data Profiling) a través de consultas SQL, automatizando...PowerAuras: Addon for World of Warcraft - Displays effects on screen at different conditionsPowerShell ToodleDo Module: PowerShell Module for interacting with toodledo.com online To-Do list site. RSS Reader for Windows Phone 7: This RSS Reader application for windows 7Streamlet Containers: This is my implement of STL-style containers, including a dynamic array, a double-linked list and an r-b-tree. Just for practice. Please feel free...Troav: Social encyclopedia built using c# and the Orchard frameworkUmbraco App_Code/Usercontrol Editor: Package for Umbraco to add App_Code and usercontrol editing to the Developer section of the Umbraco administration system. Will support GeSHi editi...Vczh Reactive Programming Library: Reactive programming library provide a stream or state machine view to use .NET eventsWhoIs XML API: The project uses the public WhoIs XML API service (http://www.whoisxmlapi.com/) to obtain detailed details. The project is written in C# and serial...WPF FlowDocument Examples for VS2008 and VS2010: WPF Text Samples (especially FlowDocument) on the various possible effects: sub- and super-script, ruby (a.k.a. furigana), and various others...You are here (for Windows Mobile): This sample shows you how to play a *.wav file on your device with Compact Framework 2.0. There is better support for playing music on Compact F...New Releases( λunula ): Lunula 0.4.0: Changelog Implemented a virtual machine. Implemented a compiler for the virtual machine. Added first-class continuations (call/cc) Removed co...Alter gear SQL index Management: Setup 1.0.1: Changes Test connection - successful message Connection string timeout property added Setup Project added to project source code Possible issu...ASP.NET Bing Maps: ASP.NET Bing Maps 0.1b: Project Description Extensible and easy to use, this is ASP.NET Bing Maps Control. Drag & Drop and is ready to go. You can configure map mode, map ...ASP.NET MVC Validation Library: ASP.NET MVC Validation Library 1.3: Changes since 1.2: - Support remote validation - Support custom server-side validation - The design of validation attribute is improved Note: test...BigDays 2010: HelfenHelfen - v1: PLEASE NOTE: This project is published under the Microsoft Public License (Ms-PL). http://bigdays10.codeplex.com/license IT IS A DEMO SOLUTION FOR...Caps - Manage your collection!: Caps Console 0.1.4.0 Alpha: This is preview release (Alpha quality). This release contains only limited amount of fixes and new features from user point of view. Major focus f...CSharpQuery: Version 1.0: This version is stable. Please report any possible bugs. The next release will include a sample project and index management tools. Until then pl...Custom Functoid que acessa o banco de dados SQL: Custom Functoid SQL Server: Solução do Visual Studio com código fonte e script SQL do functoid em BiztalkDawf: Dual Audio Workflow: Beta 3: Suppose if two good audio events overlap in time with a videoevent of interest. (This can only happen if PluralEyes isn't used on everything). Befo...Dirac codec user interface: Dirac User Interface (checkin 37132): Same as 36795 version, but done with the last source code.DotNetNuke® Blog: 04.00.00 RC 3: PLEASE NOTE: You may upgrade an RC 2 install. But please do not upgrade previous version of the Beta releases - please start from RC 2 or 03.05.0...DotNetNuke® Skinning Extensions: SimpleTitle Skin Object: This is an example skin object that only renders the "page name" if used in a skin and the "module title" if used in a container. No extra spans, c...Fulcrum: Fulcrum v0.9: Initial release of FulcrumHelloTipi Photos Uploader: Version 2010.03.31: De toute petites corrections : - Correction du bouton envoyer - Impossible d'interagir avec l'application quand on uploadkdar: KDAR 0.0.18: KDAR - Kernel Debugger Anti Rootkit - dispacth table's signature bases updated ( many driver's) - scripts refactored - some bug fixedLegend: Legend Libraries: The latest release.Linq To Naver , Custom Linq Provider for Naver searchengine OpenAPI: Linq to Naver: Linq to NaverLive at Education Meta Web-Service: Live at Education Meta Web Service v. 1.0: We're happy to publish final version of Live at Education Meta Web Serivce (LAEMWS). In this release: Huge list of Windows Live ID enabled servic...Live@edu SSO WebPart for MOSS 2007: WebPart 2.0: This release is based on Live@edu Meta Web Service (laemws - http://laemws.codeplex.com). It is highly recomended to use laemws version of webpart,...LocoSync: LocoSync v0.1r2010.03.31 installer: This is the first public release. Unzip and run setup. Or if you have .net 3.5 runtime available download the exetutable and try...Natural Language Processing: test1: testNop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Azure: Nop Commerce Full Sources with additionnals Azure Projects.Nwinsock: NWinsock: Nwinsock version 1.0 is hereOpen NFe: DANFe v1.9.8: Correção CSTOpenGL ES 2.0 Compact Framework Wrapper: v0.1 Sources: First rough release. It has a working sample application which renders a triangle with rotation. Don't expect anything great. Just a very early ...patterns & practices - Windows Azure Guidance: Code Drop 3: Second iteration of a-Expense on Azure. This release builds on the previous one and mainly focuses on replacing SQL Azure by Table Storage. We hav...Posh4DNN: Posh4DNN Scripts 2.0: This release greatly increases the speed of installation and incorporates the use of IIS and SQL Server Snap-ins for managing those services. Inst...Process Enactment Tool Framework: PET 1.1: PET Core new intermediate model with arbitrary "clean" relations among objects and several updates of the object fields (see DependencyInterfacesA...Project Tru Tiên: Elements-test V1-fix (v1): Là Elements-test V1 đã được fix các vấn đề sau: - Fix lỗi hiển thị thú cưỡi Hổ Kỳ Lân - Fix hiển thị tab tiếng trung --> sang tiếng việt - Fix hiể...Sentinel - Log Viewer: Sentinel 0.8.1 (nLog support): Build of the 0.8.1 code (svn revision 36823) which included support for both nLog and log4net that has been in SVN for a while but didn't have a bi...sgMotion Animation Library: SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1): SgMotion v1.1 (For Sunburn 1.3.1) This release includes both a Windows & Xbox sample. The sample is set to default at Forward rendering, but can e...sTASKedit: sTASKedit 44538 (Developer Alpha): + nearly all fields are viewed in this release for task verification and identifying of unknownsTest Project (ignore): asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf asdf sadf sdf asdf a: ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ;dlf jkasdf ;lkasjdf ...Test Project (ignore): cdscs: csdcacacTroav: Traov20100331 Source Pre-Alpah: This is some experiements with implementing custom modules with Microsoft's Orchard frame work. This is very preliminary, and subject to change.Weather Report WebControls: WebWeatherReport: 主要文件的源代码WhoIs XML API: Initial Release: Initial ReleaseYou are here (for Windows Mobile): CAB file and Source Code: You can find more Controls and samples for Windows Mobile developers at: http://www.beemobile4.netMost Popular ProjectshmrEngineRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibraryMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseSilverlight ToolkitAJAX Control ToolkitWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETLiveUpload to FacebookMost Active ProjectsRawrGraffiti CMSBase Class LibrariesjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesBlogEngine.NETMicrosoft Biology FoundationN2 CMSLINQ to TwitterManaged Extensibility FrameworkFarseer Physics Engine

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• Great library of ASP.NET videos – Pluralsight!

  - by hajan

  I have been subscribed to the Pluralsight website and of course since ASP.NET is my favorite development technology, I passed throughout few series of videos related to ASP.NET. You have list of ASP.NET galleries from Fundamentals to Advanced topics including the latest features of ASP.NET 4.0, ASP.NET Ajax, ASP.NET MVC etc. Most of the speakers are either Microsoft MVPs or known technology experts! I was really curious to see the way they have organized the entire course materials, and trust me, I was quite amazed. I saw the ASP.NET 4.0 video series to confirm my knowledge and some other video series regarding general software development concepts, design patterns etc. I would like to point out if anyone of you is interested to get FREE 1-week .NET training pass in the Pluralsight library, please CONTACT ME, write your name and email and include the purpose of the message in the content. I hope you will find this useful. Regards, Hajan

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• Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7

  - by Asian Angel

  Rango the chameleon has his hands full when he becomes the new sheriff in an Old West town called Dirt. Now you can bring his adventures to your desktop with this new theme from Microsoft. The theme comes with seven wallpapers featuring Rango, his new friends, and others he meets along the way. Download the Rango Windows 7 Theme [Windows 7 Personalization Gallery] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7 Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic E.T. II – Extinction [Fake Movie Sequel Video] Remastered King’s Quest Games Offer Classic Gaming on Modern Machines Compare Your Internet Cost and Speed to Global Averages [Infographic] Orbital Battle for Terra Wallpaper

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• Aero Isn’t Gone in Windows 8: 6 Aero Features You Can Still Use

  - by Chris Hoffman

  Many people think Aero is completely gone in Windows 8, but this isn’t true. Microsoft hasn’t helped matters by saying they’ve “moved beyond Aero” in several blog posts. However, hardware acceleration and most Aero features are still present. Aero is more than Glass. What’s actually gone is the Aero branding and the Aero Glass theme with transparent, blurred window borders. The Flip 3D feature, which wasn’t used by many Windows users, has also been removed. How To Delete, Move, or Rename Locked Files in Windows HTG Explains: Why Screen Savers Are No Longer Necessary 6 Ways Windows 8 Is More Secure Than Windows 7

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• UK SQL Server User Group Events (June)

  There are two events of note for the SQL Server User Group in June.  The first is a Live Meeting event with myself on 04.06.2009.  I am going to be looking at how to integrate Data Mining into your BI solution.  I will be looking at putting DM into SSIS, SSAS and SSRS.  It will be very demo oriented.  You can register for the event here The second event is an event at Microsoft Reading on 10.06.2009.  The evening will be a BI/Data Mining event.  Chris Webb and myself are organizing it and  we want speakers.  We would love to see new faces up there telling us about their BI/DM solutions/Tips and Tricks.  If you want to speak at the event then let me or Chris know.  If you just want to attend then you can register here.

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• Silverlight Cream for December 05, 2010 -- #1003

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this (Almost) All-Submittal Issue: John Papa(-2-), Jesse Liberty, Tim Heuer, Dan Wahlin, Markus Egger, Phil Middlemiss, Coding4Fun, Michael Washington, Gill Cleeren, MichaelD!, Colin Eberhardt, Kunal Chowdhury, and Rabeeh Abla. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Two-Way Binding on TreeView.SelectedItem" Phil Middlemiss WP7: "Taking Screen Shots of Windows Phone 7 Panorama Apps" Markus Egger Training: "Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part - 4)" Kunal Chowdhury Shoutouts: Don't let the fire go out... check out the Firestarter Labs Bart Czernicki discusses the need for 64-bit Silverlight: Why a 64-bit runtime for Silverlight 5 Matters Laurent Duveau is interviewed by the SilverlightShow folks to discuss his WP7 app: Laurent Duveau on Morse Code Flash Light WP7 Application From SilverlightCream.com: John Papa: Silverlight 5 Features John Papa has a post up highlighting his take on what's cool in the new featureset for Silverlight 5... including an external link to the keynote. Silverlight Firestarter Keynote and Sessions John Papa also has posted links to all the individual session videos... what a great resource! Yet Another Podcast #17 – Scott Guthrie Jesse Liberty went big with his latest Yet Another Podcast ... he is interviewing Scott Guthrie about the Firestarter, Silverlight, WP7. and more. Silverlight 5 Plans Revealed With this post from Tim Heuer, I find myself adding a Silverlight 5 tag... so bring on the fun! ... unless you've been overloaded like I have since last Thursday, you've probably seen this, but what the heck... Silverlight Firestarter Wrap Up and WCF RIA Services Talk Sample Code Phoenix's own Dan Wahlin had a great WCF RIA Services presentation at the Firestarter last week, and his material and lots of other good links are up on his blog, and I'd say that even if he didn't have a couple shoutouts to me in it :) Thanks Dan!! Taking Screen Shots of Windows Phone 7 Panorama Apps Markus Egger helps us all out with a post on how to get screenshots of your WP7 Panorama app... in case you haven't tried it ... it's not as easy as it sounds! Two-Way Binding on TreeView.SelectedItem Phil Middlemiss is back with a post taking some of the mystery out of the TreeView control bound to a data context and dealing with the SelectedItem property... oh yeah, and throw all that into MVVM! Great tutorial as usual, a cool behavior, and all the source. Native Extensions for Microsoft Silverlight Alan Cobb pointed me to a quick post up on the Coding4Fun site about the NESL (Native Extensions for SilverLight) from Microsoft that give access to some cool features of Windows 7 from Silverlight... I added an NESL tag in case other posts appear on this subject. Silverlight Simple Drag And Drop / Or Browse View Model / MVVM File Upload Control Michael Washington has another great tutorial up at CodeProject that expands on prior work he'd done with drag/drop file upload with this post on integrating an updated browse/upload into ViewModel/MVVM projects, all of which is Blendable. The validation story in Silverlight (Part 1) In good news for all of us, Gill Cleeren has started a tutorial series at SilverlightShow on Silverlight Validation. The first one is up discussing the basics... The Common Framework MichaelD! has a WPF/Silverlight framework up with Facebook Authentication, Xaml-driven IOC, T4 synchronous WCF proxies, and WP7 on the roadmap... source on CodePlex, check it out and give him some feedback. Exploring Reactive Extensions (Rx) through Twitter and Bing Maps Mashups If you've been waiting around to learn Rx, Colin Eberhardt has the post up for you (and me)... great tutorial up on Twitter and Bing Maps Mashups ... and all the code... for the twitter immediate app, and also the UKSnow one we showed last week... check out the demo page, and grab the source! Beginners Guide to Visual Studio LightSwitch (Part - 4) Kunal Chowdhury has the 4th part of his Lightswitch tutorial series up at SilverlightShow. In this one, he shows how to integrate multiple tables into a screen. It is here Take Your Silverlight Application Full Screen & intercept all windows keys !! Rabeeh Abla sent me this link to the blog describing a COM exposed library that intercepts all keys when Silverlight is full-screen. There are a few I hit when I'm going through blogs that Ctrl-W (FF) just won't take down and that annoys me... so this might be a solution if you have that problem... worth a look anyway! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• Antivirus Free Antivirus Download

  Many computer problems are caused by viruses and malware on your computer. The best and easiest way to correct this is to use a recognized antivirus and keep it updated. Antivirus free download at: http://antivirus-freedownloads.blogspot.com Links Web Content: http://antivirus-freedownloads.blogspot.com http://antivirus-freedownloads.blogspot.com/2010/06/free-antivirus-software-norton.html Antivirus Free Download Microsoft best FREE DOWNLOAD: http://antivirus-freedownloads.blogspot.com  read moreBy ciem novDid you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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• Sam Abraham To Speak about MVC & MVVM at InterClick on May 19th

  - by Sam Abraham

  My next speaking engagement will be taking place at InterClick in Boca Raton, FL on Wednesday May 19th 2010.  Here is a quick abstract of what I will be blabbing about: MVC & MVVM are two of many buzzwords under the Architecture Spotlight as means of achieving true separation of concerns between data, business logic and UI layers. In this session, we will be discussing the basic concepts of Microsoft MVC and demonstrating the ease of creating a new MVC project and related Unit Tests within VS2010. We will then move to introduce MVVM as a design paradigm and incorporating that into an MS MVC application structure. Next, we will take a look at MVVM in the context of a sample Silverlight application. Throughout our talk we will be demonstrating various features of the latest and greatest VS2010. You can get more information about the event and the speaker, as well as register to attend at this link: http://sherstaff.com/EventSignUp.aspx?EventID=777 Look forward to seeing you all there.

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• Ask How-To Geek: Speeding Up the Start Menu Search, Halting Auto-Rotating Android Screens, and Dropbox-powered Torrenting

  - by Jason Fitzpatrick

  This week we take a look at tweaking the Window’s start menu search for fast and focused searching, locking down a hyperactive Android screen, and fueling your torrenting habit through Dropbox. Once a week we dip into our reader mailbag to help readers solve their problems, sharing the useful solutions with you in the process. Read on to see our fixes for this week’s reader dilemmas. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Inspire Geek Love with These Hilarious Geek Valentines How to Integrate Dropbox with Pages, Keynote, and Numbers on iPad RGB? CMYK? Alpha? What Are Image Channels and What Do They Mean? How to Recover that Photo, Picture or File You Deleted Accidentally How To Colorize Black and White Vintage Photographs in Photoshop How To Get SSH Command-Line Access to Windows 7 Using Cygwin Amazon Finally Adds Real Page Numbers to the Kindle Now You Can Print Google Docs and Gmail through Google Cloud Print AppBrain Enables Direct-to-Phone Installation Again Build a DIY Clapper to Hone Your Electronics Chops How to Kid Proof Your Computer’s Power and Reset Buttons Microsoft’s Windows Media Player Extension Adds H.264 Support Back to Google Chrome

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• .NET 3.5 Installation Problems in Windows 8

  - by Rick Strahl

  Windows 8 installs with .NET 4.5. A default installation of Windows 8 doesn't seem to include .NET 3.0 or 3.5, although .NET 2.0 does seem to be available by default (presumably because Windows has app dependencies on that). I ran into some pretty nasty compatibility issues regarding .NET 3.5 which I'll describe in this post. I'll preface this by saying that depending on how you install Windows 8 you may not run into these issues. In fact, it's probably a special case, but one that might be common with developer folks reading my blog. Specifically it's the install order that screwed things up for me -  installing Visual Studio before explicitly installing .NET 3.5 from Windows Features - in particular. If you install Visual Studio 2010 I highly recommend you install .NET 3.5 from Windows features BEFORE you install Visual Studio 2010 and save yourself the trouble I went through. So when I installed Windows 8, and then looked at the Windows Features to install after the fact in the Windows Feature dialog, I thought - .NET 3.5 - who needs it. I'd be happy to not have to install .NET 3.5, but unfortunately I found out quite a while after initial installation that one of my applications/tools (DevExpress's awesome CodeRush) depends on it and won't install without it. Enabling .NET 3.5 in Windows 8 If you want to run .NET 3.5 on Windows 8, don't download an installer - those installers don't work on Windows 8, and you don't need to do this because you can use the Windows Features dialog to enable .NET 3.5: And that *should* do the trick. If you do this before you install other apps that require .NET 3.5 and install a non-SP1 one version of it, you are going to have no problems. Unfortunately for me, even after I've installed the above, when I run the CodeRush installer I still get this lovely dialog: Now I double checked to see if .NET 3.5 is installed - it is, both for 32 bit and 64 bit. I went as far as creating a small .NET Console app and running it to verify that it actually runs. And it does… So naturally I thought the CodeRush installer is a little whacky. After some back and forth Alex Skorkin on Twitter pointed me in the right direction: He asked me to look in the registry for exact info on which version of .NET 3.5 is installed here: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP where I found that .NET 3.5 SP1 was installed. This is the 64 bit key which looks all correct. However, when I looked under the 32 bit node I found: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\NET Framework Setup\NDP\v3.5 Notice that the service pack number is set to 0, rather than 1 (which it was for the 64 bit install), which is what the installer requires. So to summarize: the 64 bit version is installed with SP1, the 32 bit version is not. Uhm, Ok… thanks for that! Easy to fix, you say - just install SP1. Nope, not so easy because the standalone installer doesn't work on Windows 8. I can't get either .NET 3.5 installer or the SP 1 installer to even launch. They simply start and hang (or exit immediately) without messages. I also tried to get Windows to update .NET 3.5 by checking for Windows Updates, which should pick up on the dated version of .NET 3.5 and pull down SP1, but that's also no go. Check for Updates doesn't bring down any updates for me yet. I'm sure at some random point in the future Windows will deem it necessary to update .NET 3.5 to SP1, but at this point it's not letting me coerce it to do it explicitly. How did this happen I'm not sure exactly whether this is the cause and effect, but I suspect the story goes like this: Installed Windows 8 without support for .NET 3.5 Installed Visual Studio 2010 which installs .NET 3.5 (no SP) I now had .NET 3.5 installed but without SP1. I then: Tried to install CodeRush - Error: .NET 3.5 SP1 required Enabled .NET 3.5 in Windows Features I figured enabling the .NET 3.5 Windows Features would do the trick. But still no go. Now I suspect Visual Studio installed the 32 bit version of .NET 3.5 on my machine and Windows Features detected the previous install and didn't reinstall it. This left the 32 bit install at least with no SP1 installed. How to Fix it My final solution was to completely uninstall .NET 3.5 *and* to reboot: Go to Windows Features Uncheck the .NET Framework 3.5 Restart Windows Go to Windows Features Check .NET Framework 3.5 and voila, I now have a proper installation of .NET 3.5. I tried this before but without the reboot step in between which did not work. Make sure you reboot between uninstalling and reinstalling .NET 3.5! More Problems The above fixed me right up, but in looking for a solution it seems that a lot of people are also having problems with .NET 3.5 installing properly from the Windows Features dialog. The problem there is that the feature wasn't properly loading from the installer disks or not downloading the proper components for updates. It turns out you can explicitly install Windows features using the DISM tool in Windows.dism.exe /online /enable-feature /featurename:NetFX3 /Source:f:\sources\sxs You can try this without the /Source flag first - which uses the hidden Windows installer files if you kept those. Otherwise insert the DVD or ISO and point at the path \sources\sxs path where the installer lives. This also gives you a little more information if something does go wrong.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Windows  .NET   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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• Download, Install, and Update Metro-Style Apps from the Windows Store in Windows 8

  - by Lori Kaufman

  The Windows Store is similar to the app stores for Apple iOS and Android devices and Windows phones. It allows you to buy and download both free and paid Metro-style apps for Windows 8. When you purchase an app from the Windows Store, it can be installed on up to five Windows PCs or tablets. A Microsoft email account is also required to download and install apps from the Windows store. NOTE: How-To Geek has released a Geek Trivia app for Windows 8. For more information about the app and for a link to download it, see our article. This article shows you how to download, install, and update Metro-style apps from the Windows Store. We also show you how to uninstall an app from the Metro Start screen. Why Enabling “Do Not Track” Doesn’t Stop You From Being Tracked HTG Explains: What is the Windows Page File and Should You Disable It? How To Get a Better Wireless Signal and Reduce Wireless Network Interference

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• Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 And .NET Framework 4.0 Update

  - by Paulo Morgado

  As announced by Jason Zender in his blog post, Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 is available for download for MSDN subscribers since March 8 and is available to the general public since March 10. Brian Harry provides information related to TFS and S. "Soma" Somasegar provides information on the latest Visual Studio 2010 enhancements. With this service pack for Visual Studio an update to the .NET Framework 4.0 is also released. For detailed information about these releases, please refer to the corresponding KB articles: Update for Microsoft .NET Framework 4 Description of Visual Studio 2010 Service Pack 1 Update: When I was upgrading from the Beta to the final release on Windows 7 Enterprise 64bit, the instalation hanged with Returning IDCANCEL. INSTALLMESSAGE_WARNING [Warning 1946.Property 'System.AppUserModel.ExcludeFromShowInNewInstall' for shortcut 'Manage Help Settings - ENU.lnk' could not be set.]. Canceling the installation didn’t work and I had to kill the setup.exe process. When reapplying it again, rollbacks were reported, so I reapplied it again – this time with succes.

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• Installing SubText with Web PI

  - by Ben Griswold

  SubText is the engine behind our company blog. With the goal of ensuring a smooth transition between the main website and the blogs, I spent some time tightening up the styles for the aggregate and individual blogs last week.  This required a custom SubText skin and lot of css tweaking. Though I’ve previously had the SubText source running on my machine, there was no need to update or rebuild the solution in my current case so just went ahead with a local installation using the Microsoft Web Platform Installer (Web PI).  I just checked the SubText box, provided answers to a few key setup questions (admin user credentials, SubText database, etc) and I was up and running in minutes.   Once the setup was complete, I was asked if I’d like to launch SubText.  The SubText Installation Wizard picked up where Web PI left off and the setup couldn’t have been easier.  Web PI provides quick and easy installs for lots of goodies.  Check it out.

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• Mouse not working after upgrade

  - by Gaz

  After upgrade from 12.4 to 13.4 my usb mouse does not respond. Unlike similar posts my keyboard works (Alt + Tab, num loc etc) which means I can enter password and still log into desktop but still with no mouse support. I have tried other usb and PS2 mice (Logitech and Microsoft mouse) that are working on other Systems with no success. When running "xsetpointer -1 | grep Pointer" in terminal window as per post USB Mouse not recognized it shows no mouse installed. When the mouse is plugged in the light under mouse illuminates so their is power to mouse. In KDE by using the keyboard I was able to turn on "Move pointer with keyboard (using num pad)" from the "Mouse - KDE Control Module" which allowed me to move the mouse pointer using the keyboard. Without complete reinstall how do I get mouse working again?

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• AIS is hiring!

  - by Steve Michelotti

  My company, Applied Information Sciences (AIS), is currently hiring for multiple positions. AIS is growing and we have immediate needs for all levels of technologists with a focus developing on the Microsoft stack!  We are seeking .NET developers with a strong Object Oriented Foundation around the DC metro area.  Our goal is to find smart people that are technology enthusiasts and interested in staying on the bleeding edge.  If you have a passion for solving complex business problems by building flexible and scalable solutions, then we want to talk to you!  Our clients are demanding the latest technologies and we have upcoming projects using .NET 4.0, ASP.NET MVC, Silverlight 4, VS2010 with SharePoint 2010.  If you have been exposed to these technologies – great!  If not, then we will train you!  Bottom line…we want smart, capable people with a drive for success! See all of our open positions here. If you’re interested, feel free to send me a private message through my blog here.

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• How to read/write cookies in asp.net

  - by SAMIR BHOGAYTA

  Writing Cookies Response.Cookies["userName"].Value = "patrick"; Response.Cookies["userName"].Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(1); HttpCookie aCookie = new HttpCookie("lastVisit"); aCookie.Value = DateTime.Now.ToString(); aCookie.Expires = DateTime.Now.AddDays(1); Response.Cookies.Add(aCookie); Reading Cookies: if(Request.Cookies["userName"] != null) Label1.Text = Server.HtmlEncode(Request.Cookies["userName"].Value); if(Request.Cookies["userName"] != null) { HttpCookie aCookie = Request.Cookies["userName"]; Label1.Text = Server.HtmlEncode(aCookie.Value); } Below link will give you full detailed information about cookies http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms178194.aspx

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• Big Data – Role of Cloud Computing in Big Data – Day 11 of 21

  - by Pinal Dave

  In yesterday’s blog post we learned the importance of the NewSQL. In this article we will understand the role of Cloud in Big Data Story What is Cloud? Cloud is the biggest buzzword around from last few years. Everyone knows about the Cloud and it is extremely well defined online. In this article we will discuss cloud in the context of the Big Data. Cloud computing is a method of providing a shared computing resources to the application which requires dynamic resources. These resources include applications, computing, storage, networking, development and various deployment platforms. The fundamentals of the cloud computing are that it shares pretty much share all the resources and deliver to end users as a service.  Examples of the Cloud Computing and Big Data are Google and Amazon.com. Both have fantastic Big Data offering with the help of the cloud. We will discuss this later in this blog post. There are two different Cloud Deployment Models: 1) The Public Cloud and 2) The Private Cloud Public Cloud Public Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by commercial providers (Amazon, Rackspace etc.) creates a highly scalable data center that hides the complex infrastructure from the consumer and provides various services. Private Cloud Private Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build by a single organization where they are managing highly scalable data center internally. Here is the quick comparison between Public Cloud and Private Cloud from Wikipedia:   Public Cloud Private Cloud Initial cost Typically zero Typically high Running cost Unpredictable Unpredictable Customization Impossible Possible Privacy No (Host has access to the data Yes Single sign-on Impossible Possible Scaling up Easy while within defined limits Laborious but no limits Hybrid Cloud Hybrid Cloud is the cloud infrastructure build with the composition of two or more clouds like public and private cloud. Hybrid cloud gives best of the both the world as it combines multiple cloud deployment models together. Cloud and Big Data – Common Characteristics There are many characteristics of the Cloud Architecture and Cloud Computing which are also essentially important for Big Data as well. They highly overlap and at many places it just makes sense to use the power of both the architecture and build a highly scalable framework. Here is the list of all the characteristics of cloud computing important in Big Data Scalability Elasticity Ad-hoc Resource Pooling Low Cost to Setup Infastructure Pay on Use or Pay as you Go Highly Available Leading Big Data Cloud Providers There are many players in Big Data Cloud but we will list a few of the known players in this list. Amazon Amazon is arguably the most popular Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provider. The history of how Amazon started in this business is very interesting. They started out with a massive infrastructure to support their own business. Gradually they figured out that their own resources are underutilized most of the time. They decided to get the maximum out of the resources they have and hence  they launched their Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) service in 2006. Their products have evolved a lot recently and now it is one of their primary business besides their retail selling. Amazon also offers Big Data services understand Amazon Web Services. Here is the list of the included services: Amazon Elastic MapReduce – It processes very high volumes of data Amazon DynammoDB – It is fully managed NoSQL (Not Only SQL) database service Amazon Simple Storage Services (S3) – A web-scale service designed to store and accommodate any amount of data Amazon High Performance Computing – It provides low-tenancy tuned high performance computing cluster Amazon RedShift – It is petabyte scale data warehousing service Google Though Google is known for Search Engine, we all know that it is much more than that. Google Compute Engine – It offers secure, flexible computing from energy efficient data centers Google Big Query – It allows SQL-like queries to run against large datasets Google Prediction API – It is a cloud based machine learning tool Other Players Besides Amazon and Google we also have other players in the Big Data market as well. Microsoft is also attempting Big Data with the Cloud with Microsoft Azure. Additionally Rackspace and NASA together have initiated OpenStack. The goal of Openstack is to provide a massively scaled, multitenant cloud that can run on any hardware. Thing to Watch The cloud based solutions provides a great integration with the Big Data’s story as well it is very economical to implement as well. However, there are few things one should be very careful when deploying Big Data on cloud solutions. Here is a list of a few things to watch: Data Integrity Initial Cost Recurring Cost Performance Data Access Security Location Compliance Every company have different approaches to Big Data and have different rules and regulations. Based on various factors, one can implement their own custom Big Data solution on a cloud. Tomorrow In tomorrow’s blog post we will discuss about various Operational Databases supporting Big Data. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Big Data, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL

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• Seven Worlds will collide…. High Availability BI is not such a Distant Sun.

  - by Testas

  Over the last 5 years I have observed Microsoft persevere with the notion of Self Service BI over a series of conferences as far back as SQLBits V in Newport. The release of SQL Server 2012, improvements in Excel and the integration with SharePoint 2010 is making this a reality. Business users are now empowered to create their own BI reports through a number of different technologies such as PowerPivot, PowerView and Report Builder. This opens up a whole new way of working; improving staff productivity, promoting efficient decision making and delivering timely business reports. There is, however; a serious question to answer. What happens should any of these applications become unavailable? More to the point, how would the business react should key business users be unable to fulfil reporting requests for key management meetings when they require it?  While the introduction of self-service BI will provide instant access to the creation of management information reports, it will also cause instant support calls should the access to the data become unavailable. These are questions that are often overlooked when a business evaluates the need for self-service BI. But as I have written in other blog posts, the thirst for information is unquenchable once the business users have access to the data. When they are unable to access the information, you will be the first to know about it and will be expected to have a resolution to the downtime as soon as possible. The world of self-service BI is pushing reporting and analytical databases to the tier 1 application level for some of Coeo’s customers. A level that is traditionally associated with mission critical OLTP environments. There is recognition that by making BI readily available to the business user, provisions also need to be made to ensure that the solution is highly available so that there is minimal disruption to the business. This is where High Availability BI infrastructures provide a solution. As there is a convergence of technologies to support a self-service BI culture, there is also a convergence of technologies that need to be understood in order to provide the high availability architecture required to support the self-service BI infrastructure. While you may not be the individual that implements these components, understanding the concepts behind these components will empower you to have meaningful discussions with the right people should you put this infrastructure in place. There are 7 worlds that you will have to understand to successfully implement a highly available BI infrastructure   1.       Server/Virtualised server hardware/software 2.       DNS 3.       Network Load Balancing 4.       Active Directory 5.       Kerberos 6.       SharePoint 7.       SQL Server I have found myself over the last 6 months reaching out to knowledge that I learnt years ago when I studied for the Windows 2000 and 2003 (MCSE) Microsoft Certified System Engineer. (To the point that I am resuming my studies for the Windows Server 2008 equivalent to be up to date with newer technologies) This knowledge has proved very useful in the numerous engagements I have undertaken since being at Coeo, particularly when dealing with High Availability Infrastructures. As a result of running my session at SQLBits X and SQL Saturday in Dublin, the feedback I have received has been that many individuals desire to understand more of the concepts behind the first 6 “worlds” in the list above. Over the coming weeks, a series of blog posts will be put on this site to help understand the key concepts of each area as it pertains to a High Availability BI Infrastructure. Each post will not provide exhaustive coverage of the topic. For example DNS can be a book in its own right when you consider that there are so many different configuration options with Forward Lookup, Reverse Lookups, AD Integrated Zones and DNA forwarders to name some examples. What I want to do is share the pertinent points as it pertains to the BI infrastructure that you build so that you are equipped with the knowledge to have the right discussion when planning this infrastructure. Next, we will focus on the server infrastructure that will be required to support the High Availability BI Infrastructure, from both a physical box and virtualised perspective. Thanks   Chris

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