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• OTN Architect Day Headed to Reston, VA - May 16

  - by Bob Rhubart

  In 2011 OTN Architect Day made stops in Chicago, Denver, Phoenix, Redwood Shores, and Toronto. The 2012 series begins with OTN Architect Day in Reston, VA on Wednesday May 16. Registration is now open for this free event, but don't get caught napping -- seating is limited, and the event is just 5 weeks away. The information below reflects the most recent updates to the event agenda, including the addition of Oracle ACE Director Kai Yu as the guest keynote speaker. Kai is Senior System Engineer / Architect at Dell, Inc., and has been very busy of late as a speaker at various industry and Oracle User Group events. I'm very happy Kai has agreed to make the trek from his hometown in Austin, TX to share his insight at the Architect Day event in Reston.  If you're in the area, put this one on your calendar. You won't be sorry.   Venue Sheraton Reston Hotel 11810 Sunrise Valley Drive Reston, VA 20191 Event Agenda 8:30 am - 9:00 am Registration and Continental Breakfast 9:00 am - 9:15 am Welcome and Opening Comments 9:15 am - 10:00 am Engineered Systems: Oracle's Vision for the Future | Ralf Dossman Oracle's Exadata and Exalogic are impressive products in their own right. But working in combination they deliver unparalleled transaction processing performance with up to a 30x increase over existing legacy systems, with the lowest cost of ownership over a 3 or 5 year basis than any other hardware. In this session you'll learn how to leverage Oracle's Engineered Systems within your enterprise to deliver record-breaking performance at the lowest TCO. 10:00 am - 10:30 am High Availability Infrastructure for Cloud Computing | Kai Yu Infrastructure high availability is extremely critical to Cloud Computing. In a Cloud system that hosts a large number of databases and applications with different SLAs, any unplanned outage can be devastating, and even a small planned downtime may be unacceptable. This presentation will discuss various technology solutions and the related best practices that system architects should consider in cloud infrastructure design to ensure high availability. 10:30 am - 10:45 am Break 10:45 am - 11:30 am Breakout Sessions: (pick one) Innovations in Grid Computing with Oracle Coherence | Bjorn Boe Learn how Coherence can increase the availability, scalability and performance of your existing applications with its advanced low-latency data-grid technologies. Also hear some interesting industry-specific use cases that customers had implemented and how Oracle is integrating Coherence into its Enterprise Java stack. Cloud Computing - Making IT Simple | Scott Mattoon The road to Cloud Computing is not without a few bumps. This session will help to smooth out your journey by tackling some of the potential complications. We'll examine whether standardization is a prerequisite for the Cloud. We'll look at why refactoring isn't just for application code. We'll check out deployable entities and their simplification via higher levels of abstraction. And we'll close out the session with a look at engineered systems and modular clouds. 11:30 pm - 12:15 pm Breakout Sessions: (pick one) Oracle Enterprise Manager | Joe Diemer Oracle Enterprise Manager (EM) provides complete lifecycle management for the cloud - from automated cloud setup to self-service delivery to cloud operations. In this session you'll learn how to take control of your cloud infrastructure with EM features including Consolidation Planning and Self-Service provisioning with Metering and Chargeback. Come hear how Oracle is expanding its management capabilities into the cloud! Rationalization and Defense in Depth - Two Steps Closer to the Clouds | Dave Chappelle Security represents one of the biggest concerns about cloud computing. In this session we'll get past the FUD with a real-world look at some key issues. We'll discuss the infrastructure necessary to support rationalization and security services, explore architecture for defense -in-depth, and deal frankly with the good, the bad, and the ugly in Cloud security. 12:15 pm - 1:15 pm Lunch 1:40 pm - 2:00 pm Panel Discussion - Q&A 2:00 pm - 2:45 pm Breakout Sessions: (pick one) 21st Century SOA | Peter Belknap Service Oriented Architecture has evolved from concept to reality in the last decade. The right methodology coupled with mature SOA technologies has helped customers demonstrate success in both innovation and ROI. In this session you will learn how Oracle SOA Suite's orchestration, virtualization, and governance capabilities provide the infrastructure to run mission critical business and system applications. And we'll take a special look at the convergence of SOA & BPM using Oracle's Unified technology stack. Track B: Oracle Cloud Reference Architecture | Anbu Krishnaswamy Cloud initiatives are beginning to dominate enterprise IT roadmaps. Successful adoption of Cloud and the subsequent governance challenges warrant a Cloud reference architecture that is applied consistently across the enterprise. This presentation gives an overview of Oracle's Cloud Reference Architecture, which is part of the Cloud Enterprise Technology Strategy (ETS). Concepts covered include common management layer capabilities, service models, resource pools, and use cases. 2:45 pm - 3:00 pm Break 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm Roundtable Discussions 4:00 pm - 4:15 pm Closing Comments & Readouts from Roundtable 4:15 pm - 5:00 pm Cocktail Reception / Networking Session schedule and content subject to change.

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• Giving a Bomberman AI intelligent bomb placement

  - by Paul Manta

  I'm trying to implement an AI algorithm for Bomberman. Currently I have a working but not very smart rudimentary implementation (the current AI is overzealous in placing bombs). This is the first AI I've ever tried implementing and I'm a bit stuck. The more sophisticated algorithms I have in mind (the ones that I expect to make better decisions) are too convoluted to be good solutions. What general tips do you have for implementing a Bomberman AI? Are there radically different approaches for making the bot either more defensive or offensive? Edit: Current algorithm My current algorithm goes something like this (pseudo-code): 1) Try to place a bomb and then find a cell that is safe from all the bombs, including the one that you just placed. To find that cell, iterate over the four directions; if you can find any safe divergent cell and reach it in time (eg. if the direction is up or down, look for a cell that is found to the left or right of this path), then it's safe to place a bomb and move in that direction. 2) If you can't find and safe divergent cells, try NOT placing a bomb and look again. This time you'll only need to look for a safe cell in only one direction (you don't have to diverge from it). 3) If you still can't find a safe cell, don't do anything. for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): place bomb at current location if (can find and reach divergent safe cell in current $(direction)): bomb = true move = $(direction) return for $(direction) in (up, down, left, right): do not place bomb at current location if (any safe cell in the current $(direction)): bomb = false move = $(direction) return else: bomb = false move = stay_put This algorithm makes the bot very trigger-happy (it'll place bombs very frequently). It doesn't kill itself, but it does have a habit of making itself vulnerable by going into dead ends where it can be blocked and killed by the other players. Do you have any suggestions on how I might improve this algorithm? Or maybe I should try something completely different? One of the problems with this algorithm is that it tends to leave the bot with very few (frequently just one) safe cells on which it can stand. This is because the bot leaves a trail of bombs behind it, as long as it doesn't kill itself. However, leaving a trail of bombs behind leaves few places where you can hide. If one of the other players or bots decide to place a bomb somewhere near you, it often happens that you have no place to hide and you die. I need a better way to decide when to place bombs.

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• Code Metrics: Number of IL Instructions

  - by DigiMortal

  In my previous posting about code metrics I introduced how to measure LoC (Lines of Code) in .NET applications. Now let’s take a step further and let’s take a look how to measure compiled code. This way we can somehow have a picture about what compiler produces. In this posting I will introduce you code metric called number of IL instructions. NB! Number of IL instructions is not something you can use to measure productivity of your team. If you want to get better idea about the context of this metric and LoC then please read my first posting about LoC. What are IL instructions? When code written in some .NET Framework language is compiled then compiler produces assemblies that contain byte code. These assemblies are executed later by Common Language Runtime (CLR) that is code execution engine of .NET Framework. The byte code is called Intermediate Language (IL) – this is more common language than C# and VB.NET by example. You can use ILDasm tool to convert assemblies to IL assembler so you can read them. As IL instructions are building blocks of all .NET Framework binary code these instructions are smaller and highly general – we don’t want very rich low level language because it executes slower than more general language. For every method or property call in some .NET Framework language corresponds set of IL instructions. There is no 1:1 relationship between line in high level language and line in IL assembler. There are more IL instructions than lines in C# code by example. How much instructions there are? I have no common answer because it really depends on your code. Here you can see some metrics from my current community project that is developed on SharePoint Server 2007. As average I have about 7 IL instructions per line of code. This is not metric you should use, it is just illustrative example so you can see the differences between numbers of lines and IL instructions. Why should I measure the number of IL instructions? Just take a look at chart above. Compiler does something that you cannot see – it compiles your code to IL. This is not intuitive process because you usually cannot say what is exactly the end result. You know it at greater plain but you don’t know it exactly. Therefore we can expect some surprises and that’s why we should measure the number of IL instructions. By example, you may find better solution for some method in your source code. It looks nice, it works nice and everything seems to be okay. But on server under load your fix may be way slower than previous code. Although you minimized the number of lines of code it ended up with increasing the number of IL instructions. How to measure the number of IL instructions? My choice is NDepend because Visual Studio is not able to measure this metric. Steps to make are easy. Open your NDepend project or create new and add all your application assemblies to project (you can also add Visual Studio solution to project). Run project analysis and wait until it is done. You can see over-all stats form global summary window. This is the same window I used to read the LoC and the number of IL instructions metrics for my chart. Meanwhile I made some changes to my code (enabled advanced caching for events and event registrations module) and then I ran code analysis again to get results for this section of this posting. NDepend is also able to tell you exactly what parts of code have problematically much IL instructions. The code quality section of CQL Query Explorer shows you how much problems there are with members in analyzed code. If you click on the line Methods too big (NbILInstructions) you can see all the problematic members of classes in CQL Explorer shown in image on right. In my case if have 10 methods that are too big and two of them have horrible number of IL instructions – just take a look at first two methods in this TOP10. Also note the query box. NDepend has easy and SQL-like query language to query code analysis results. You can modify these queries if you like and also you can define your own ones if default set is not enough for you. What is good result? As you can see from query window then the number of IL instructions per member should have maximally 200 IL instructions. Of course, like always, the less instructions you have, the better performing code you have. I don’t mean here little differences but big ones. By example, take a look at my first method in warnings list. The number of IL instructions it has is huge. And believe me – this method looks awful. Conclusion The number of IL instructions is useful metric when optimizing your code. For analyzing code at general level to find out too long methods you can use the number of LoC metric because it is more intuitive for you and you can therefore handle the situation more easily. Also you can use NDepend as code metrics tool because it has a lot of metrics to offer.

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• elementary OS Luna Wallpaper Pack Available for Download

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you looking for some fresh wallpapers for your desktop? Prefer to avoid looking for those wallpapers individually? Then you may want to have a look at the wallpaper pack for the upcoming Luna release of elementary OS. These wallpapers provide a nice variety in look and feel…just keep the ones you like and enjoy a fresh looking desktop! Note: The wallpaper pack comes in a .tar.gz file format (which can be unzipped in the same way as a .zip file format). Wallpaper pack is ~45 MB in size. Luna Wallpapers Officially Revealed [elementary OS Blog] How to Banish Duplicate Photos with VisiPic How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It?

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• Looking into ASP.Net MVC 4.0 Mobile Development - part 2

  - by nikolaosk

  In this post I will be continuing my discussion on ASP.Net MVC 4.0 mobile development. You can have a look at my first post on the subject here . Make sure you read it and understand it well before you move one reading the remaining of this post. I will not be writing any code in this post. I will try to explain a few concepts related to the MVC 4.0 mobile functionality. In this post I will be looking into the Browser Overriding feature in ASP.Net MVC 4.0. By that I mean that we override the user agent for a given user session. This is very useful feature for people who visit a site through a device and they experience the mobile version of the site, but what they really want is the option to be able to switch to the desktop view. "Why they might want to do that?", you might wonder.Well first of all the users of our ASP.Net MVC 4.0 application will appreciate that they have the option to switch views while some others will think that they will enjoy more the contents of our website with the "desktop view" since the mobile device they view our site has a quite large display.  Obviously this is only one site. These are just different views that are rendered.To put it simply, browser overriding lets our application treat requests as if they were coming from a different browser rather than the one they are actually from. In order to do that programmatically we must have a look at the System.Web.WebPages namespace and the classes in it. Most specifically the class BrowserHelpers. Have a look at the picture below   In this class we see some extension methods for HttpContext class.These methods are called extensions-helpers methods and we use them to switch to one browser from another thus overriding the current/actual browser. These APIs have effect on layout,views and partial views and will not affect any other ASP.Net Request.Browser related functionality.The overridden browser is stored in a cookie. Let me explain what some of these methods do. SetOverriddenBrowser() -  let us set the user agent string to specific value GetOverriddenBrowser() -  let us get the overridden value ClearOverriddenBrowser() -  let us remove any overridden user agent for the current request   To recap, in our ASP.Net MVC 4.0 applications when our application is viewed in our mobile devices, we can have a link like "Desktop View" for all those who desperately want to see the site with in full desktop-browser version.We then can specify a browser type override. My controller class (snippet of code) that is responsible for handling the switching could be something like that. public class SwitchViewController : Controller{ public RedirectResult SwitchView(bool mobile, string returnUrl){if (Request.Browser.IsMobileDevice == mobile)HttpContext.ClearOverriddenBrowser();elseHttpContext.SetOverriddenBrowser(mobile ? BrowserOverride.Mobile : BrowserOverride.Desktop);return Redirect(returnUrl);}} Hope it helps!!!!

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• Lost transparency in SDL surfaces drawn manually

  - by Christian Ivicevic

  I want to create SDL_Surface objects for each layer of my 2d tile-based map so that I have to render only one surface per layer rather than too many tiles. With normal tiles which do not have transparent areas this works well, however I am not able to create a SDL_Surface with transparent pixels everywhere to be able to draw some tiles on specific parts which should be visible (I do NOT want the whole surface to appear with a specific opacity - I want to create overlaying tiles where one can look through). Currently I am creating my layers like this to draw with SDL_BlitSurface on them: SDL_Surface* layer = SDL_CreateRGBSurface( SDL_HWSURFACE | SDL_SRCALPHA, layerWidth, layerHeight, 32, 0, 0, 0, 0); If you have a look at this screenshot I have provided here you can see that the bottom layer with no transparent parts gets rendered correctly. However the overlay with the tree tile (which is transparent in the top left corner) is drawn own its own surface which is black and not transparent as expected. The expected result (concerning the transparency) can be seen here Can anyone explain me how to handle surfaces which are actually transparent rather than drawing all my overlay tiles separately?

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• Add Artistic Effects to Your Pictures in Office 2010

  - by DigitalGeekery

  Do you ever wish you could add cool effects to images in your Office document pictures, but don’t have access to a graphics editor? Today we take a look at the Artistic Effects featire which is a new feature in Office 2010. Note: We will show you examples in Excel, but the Artistic Effect are available in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. To insert a picture into your Office document, click the Picture button on the Insert tab. Once you import your picture, the Picture Tools format ribbon should be active. If not, click on the image.     In the Adjust group, click on Artistic Effects. You will see a selection of effects previews images in the dropdown list. Hover your cursor over the effects to use Live Preview to see what your picture will look like if that effect is applied.   When you find an effect you like, just click to apply it to the image. There are also some additional Artistic Effect Options. Each effect will have a it’s own set of available options that can be adjusted by moving the sliders left or right. If you find you want to undo an effect after it has been applied, simply select the None option from the previews under Artistic Effects. Conclusion Artistic Effects provides a really easy way to add professional looking effects to images in Office 2010 without the need to access graphics editing software. Check out some of our other Office 2010 articles like how to use advanced font ligatures, add video from the web to PowerPoint 2010, and preview before you paste in Office 2010. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Add Effects To Your Pictures in Word 2007Center Pictures and Other Objects in Office 2007 & 2010Tools to Help Post Content On Your WordPress BlogAdd Classic Polaroid Look to Your Digital picturesGive Your Desktop Artistic Flair with FotoSketcher 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 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup The iPod Revolution Ultimate Boot CD can help when disaster strikes Windows Firewall with Advanced Security – How To Guides Sculptris 1.0, 3D Drawing app AceStock, a Tiny Desktop Quote Monitor Gmail Button Addon (Firefox)

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• View and Flip Between Firefox Tabs in 3D

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default tab switching style in Firefox? Then get ready to enjoy a more visually pleasing 3D experience with the FoxTab extension. Using FoxTab As soon as you have the extension installed, you will see a new toolbar button available beside the address bar. Before going further you may want to look through the viewing styles available in the lower right corner. Note: You can choose to have the FoxTab button appear in the status bar if preferred or use the keyboard (i.e. F12) by itself to launch FoxTab. The grid view with an angled 3D setting. The page flow view with a more frontal look. If the default background color is not to your liking then you can easily change to a new color or insert a background image. After choosing a new background color, making a few adjustments in the options, and opening more tabs things look very nice using the grid viewing style. Followed by the carousel viewing style. And finally the wall viewing style. You can also set up a top sites page using your favorite viewing style. To add a page to the top sites group right click within the webpage and select Add To Top Sites. Just like that your new selection is added in. Keep in mind that we were not able to move/switch positions in the grid during our tests. Options The extension has plenty of options and settings to help you customize FoxTab to your liking. Conclusion FoxTab adds visually pleasing 3D tab switching to Firefox for anyone who loves eye candy and a touch of fun while browsing. Links Download the FoxTab extension (Mozilla Add-ons) Visit the FoxTab Homepage Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips You Really Want to Completely Disable Tabs in Firefox?Quick Hits: 11 Firefox Tab How-TosQuick Tip: Save Windows and Tabs When Restarting FirefoxMake Firefox Use Multiple Rows of TabsQuick Tip: Use Tab Characters in Textarea Boxes in Firefox 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 Xobni Plus for Outlook All My Movies 5.9 CloudBerry Online Backup 1.5 for Windows Home Server Snagit 10 2010 World Cup Schedule Boot Snooze – Reboot and then Standby or Hibernate Customize Everything Related to Dates, Times, Currency and Measurement in Windows 7 Google Earth replacement Icon (Icons we like) Build Great Charts in Excel with Chart Advisor tinysong gives a shortened URL for you to post on Twitter (or anywhere)

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• Web framework for IPad and common desktop browsers?

  - by Chris

  We are developing a web-based, commercial point-of-sale application. We'd like the same web site to work well on an Ipad as well a desktop browsers. We're looking for a web framework that makes the site look good on an IPad, but also makes the site work well in a desktop browser such as Chrome, IE, or Firefox on Windows or a Mac. I found quite a few at 18 Mobile Frameworks and Development Tools for Creating iPhone Apps Most of them, such as JQTouch, help a web site look and act more like a native IPhone application but they don't emphasize the cross platform/browser experience. The exception seems to be Sproutcore, which seems to be a full-fledged javascript MVC application framework. I did have trouble getting some of the demos to work under Chrome, but what did work looks good. What framework(s) have you actually used to develop web sites to work on an Ipad and desktop browser? If you didn't use a framework, how did you get it to work well under both environments?

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• What Works in Data Integration?

  - by dain.hansen

  TDWI just recently put out this paper on "What Works in Data Integration". I invite you especially to take a look at the section on "Accelerating your Business with Real-time Data Integration" and the DIRECTV case study. The article discusses some of the technology considerations for BI/DW and how data integration plays a role to deliver timely, accessible, and high-quality data. It goes on to outline the three key requirements for how to deliver high performance, low impact, and reliability and how that can translate to faster results. The DIRECTV webinar is something you definitely want to take a look at, you'll hear how DIRECTV successfully transformed their data warehouse investments into a competitive advantage with Oracle GoldenGate.

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• Play a New Random Game Each Day in Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Being able to unwind for a few moments each day can make the time pass so much better and help you feel refreshed. If your favorite method for relaxing is playing a quick game, then join us as we take a look at the Random Games from MyGiochi.net extension for Google Chrome. Random Games from MyGiochi.net in Action The really great thing about this extension is that each day you can have a new random game to play. If you love variety this is definitely going to be a perfect match for you. We got “Power Golf” as our random game of the day. Here is a look at things once we got started…this one can be a lot of fun to play. Time to move on to the third hole now… What if you want something different from the game available on any given day? In the upper right corner you will find links for “game categories” that you can look through (clicking on the links will open a new tab). Since the links are in Italian you might need to experiment a little bit to find the category that you want to browse through. We chose the “Games for Girls Category”. With Chrome’s new built in “Translation Bar” you can easily switch the page over to the language of your choice. Note: Translation Bar available in Dev Channel releases. Ready to choose a fun game to play! You really can have a lot of fun with the games available at My Giochi. With our “game of the day” we had a second option for other games to try. More games equals more fun! Conclusion If playing online games is your favorite way to relax then the MyGiochi.net extension will make a great addition to your browser. Have fun with all of those new games each day! Links Download the Random Games from MyGiochi.net extension (Google Chrome Extensions) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Geek Fun: Play Alien Arena the Free FPS GamePlay Avalanche!! in Google ChromeFriday Fun: Get Your Mario OnFriday Fun: Play Bubble QuodFriday Fun: 13 Days in Hell TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 PCmover Professional How to Browse Privately in Firefox Kill Processes Quickly with Process Assassin Need to Come Up with a Good Name? Try Wordoid StockFox puts a Lightweight Stock Ticker in your Statusbar Explore Google Public Data Visually The Ultimate Excel Cheatsheet

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• ASP.NET AJAX - Working with AutoCompleteExtender in the AJAX Toolkit

  Read along as we look at an extender for the text box control used in ASP.NET AJAX called AutoCompleteExtender.

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• What is the most efficient way to blur in a shader?

  - by concernedcitizen

  I'm currently working on screen space reflections. I have perfectly reflective mirror-like surfaces working, and I now need to use a blur to make the reflection on surfaces with a low specular gloss value look more diffuse. I'm having difficulty deciding how to apply the blur, though. My first idea was to just sample a lower mip level of the screen rendertarget. However, the rendertarget uses SurfaceFormat.HalfVector4 (for HDR effects), which means XNA won't allow linear filtering. Point filtering looks horrible and really doesn't give the visual cue that I want. I've thought about using some kind of Box/Gaussian blur, but this would not be ideal. I've already thrashed the texture cache in the raymarching phase before the blur even occurs (a worst case reflection could be 32 samples per pixel), and the blur kernel to make the reflections look sufficiently diffuse would be fairly large. Does anyone have any suggestions? I know it's doable, as Photon Workshop achieved the effect in Unity.

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• Best approach for a flexible layout for ASP.NET application

  - by Rohith Nair

  I am looking for a best approach for designing a dynamic page. I want my users to be able to determine the position of set of controls to be loaded into a page. Should be able to add new controls or swap in and out new controls into an existing page. Eg: Portal based applications,iGoogle kind of websites I am afraid that I will be re-inventing the wheel if I go and create a portal structure for my web application. There are a couple of things in my mind to look into: Good third-party suites which can do the same Should I look into Silverlight RIA application? I have researched about the Infragistics and Telerik controls and the price is high for just a control like LayoutManager which I need. Any alternatives? What is the best approach for this kind of situation, to add to the list?

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• Caveats with the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests in IIS 7/8

  - by Rick Strahl

  One of the nice enhancements in IIS 7 (and now 8) is the ability to be able to intercept non-managed - ie. non ASP.NET served - requests from within ASP.NET managed modules. This opened up a ton of new functionality that could be applied across non-managed content using .NET code. I thought I had a pretty good handle on how IIS 7's Integrated mode pipeline works, but when I put together some samples last tonight I realized that the way that managed and unmanaged requests fire into the pipeline is downright confusing especially when it comes to the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute. There are a number of settings that can affect whether a managed module receives non-ASP.NET content requests such as static files or requests from other frameworks like PHP or ASP classic, and this is topic of this blog post. Native and Managed Modules The integrated mode IIS pipeline for IIS 7 and later - as the name suggests - allows for integration of ASP.NET pipeline events in the IIS request pipeline. Natively IIS runs unmanaged code and there are a host of native mode modules that handle the core behavior of IIS. If you set up a new IIS site or application without managed code support only the native modules are supported and fired without any interaction between native and managed code. If you use the Integrated pipeline with managed code enabled however things get a little more confusing as there both native modules and .NET managed modules can fire against the same IIS request. If you open up the IIS Modules dialog you see both managed and unmanaged modules. Unmanaged modules point at physical files on disk, while unmanaged modules point at .NET types and files referenced from the GAC or the current project's BIN folder. Both native and managed modules can co-exist and execute side by side and on the same request. When running in IIS 7 the IIS pipeline actually instantiates a the ASP.NET  runtime (via the System.Web.PipelineRuntime class) which unlike the core HttpRuntime classes in ASP.NET receives notification callbacks when IIS integrated mode events fire. The IIS pipeline is smart enough to detect whether managed handlers are attached and if they're none these notifications don't fire, improving performance. The good news about all of this for .NET devs is that ASP.NET style modules can be used for just about every kind of IIS request. All you need to do is create a new Web Application and enable ASP.NET on it, and then attach managed handlers. Handlers can look at ASP.NET content (ie. ASPX pages, MVC, WebAPI etc. requests) as well as non-ASP.NET content including static content like HTML files, images, javascript and css resources etc. It's very cool that this capability has been surfaced. However, with that functionality comes a lot of responsibility. Because every request passes through the ASP.NET pipeline if managed modules (or handlers) are attached there are possible performance implications that come with it. Running through the ASP.NET pipeline does add some overhead. ASP.NET and Your Own Modules When you create a new ASP.NET project typically the Visual Studio templates create the modules section like this: <system.webServer> <validation validateIntegratedModeConfiguration="false" /> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" > </modules> </system.webServer> Specifically the interesting thing about this is the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="true" flag, which seems to indicate that it controls whether any registered modules always run, even when the value is set to false. Realistically though this flag does not control whether managed code is fired for all requests or not. Rather it is an override for the preCondition flag on a particular handler. With the flag set to the default true setting, you can assume that pretty much every IIS request you receive ends up firing through your ASP.NET module pipeline and every module you have configured is accessed even by non-managed requests like static files. In other words, your module will have to handle all requests. Now so far so obvious. What's not quite so obvious is what happens when you set the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest="false". You probably would expect that immediately the non-ASP.NET requests no longer get funnelled through the ASP.NET Module pipeline. But that's not what actually happens. For example, if I create a module like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" /> by default it will fire against ALL requests regardless of the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests flag. Even if the value runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false", the module is fired. Not quite expected. So what is the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests really good for? It's essentially an override for managedHandler preCondition. If I declare my handler in web.config like this:<add name="SharewareModule" type="HowAspNetWorks.SharewareMessageModule" preCondition="managedHandler" /> and the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" my module only fires against managed requests. If I switch the flag to true, now my module ends up handling all IIS requests that are passed through from IIS. The moral of the story here is that if you intend to only look at ASP.NET content, you should always set the preCondition="managedHandler" attribute to ensure that only managed requests are fired on this module. But even if you do this, realize that runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" can override this setting. runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests and Http Application Events Another place the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequest attribute affects is the Global Http Application object (typically in global.asax) and the Application_XXXX events that you can hook up there. So while the events there are dynamically hooked up to the application class, they basically behave as if they were set with the preCodition="managedHandler" configuration switch. The end result is that if you have runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" you'll see every Http request passed through the Application_XXXX events, and you only see ASP.NET requests with the flag set to "false". What's all that mean? Configuring an application to handle requests for both ASP.NET and other content requests can be tricky especially if you need to mix modules that might require both. Couple of things are important to remember. If your module doesn't need to look at every request, by all means set a preCondition="managedHandler" on it. This will at least allow it to respond to the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="false" flag and then only process ASP.NET requests. Look really carefully to see whether you actually need runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" in your applications as set by the default new project templates in Visual Studio. Part of the reason, this is the default because it was required for the initial versions of IIS 7 and ASP.NET 2 in order to handle MVC extensionless URLs. However, if you are running IIS 7 or later and .NET 4.0 you can use the ExtensionlessUrlHandler instead to allow you MVC functionality without requiring runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true": <handlers> <remove name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" /> <add name="ExtensionlessUrlHandler-Integrated-4.0" path="*." verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG,PUT,DELETE,PATCH,OPTIONS" type="System.Web.Handlers.TransferRequestHandler" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" /> </handlers> Oddly this is the default for Visual Studio 2012 MVC template apps, so I'm not sure why the default template still adds runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true" is - it should be enabled only if there's a specific need to access non ASP.NET requests. As a side note, it's interesting that when you access a static HTML resource, you can actually write into the Response object and get the output to show, which is trippy. I haven't looked closely to see how this works - whether ASP.NET just fires directly into the native output stream or whether the static requests are re-routed directly through the ASP.NET pipeline once a managed code module is detected. This doesn't work for all non ASP.NET resources - for example, I can't do the same with ASP classic requests, but it makes for an interesting demo when injecting HTML content into a static HTML page :-) Note that on the original Windows Server 2008 and Vista (IIS 7.0) you might need a HotFix in order for ExtensionLessUrlHandler to work properly for MVC projects. On my live server I needed it (about 6 months ago), but others have observed that the latest service updates have integrated this functionality and the hotfix is not required. On IIS 7.5 and later I've not needed any patches for things to just work. Plan for non-ASP.NET Requests It's important to remember that if you write a .NET Module to run on IIS 7, there's no way for you to prevent non-ASP.NET requests from hitting your module. So make sure you plan to support requests to extensionless URLs, to static resources like files. Luckily ASP.NET creates a full Request and full Response object for you for non ASP.NET content. So even for static files and even for ASP classic for example, you can look at Request.FilePath or Request.ContentType (in post handler pipeline events) to determine what content you are dealing with. As always with Module design make sure you check for the conditions in your code that make the module applicable and if a filter fails immediately exit - minimize the code that runs if your module doesn't need to process the request.© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in IIS7   ASP.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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• Selling your services when you use uncommon technologies

  - by speeder

  I took a look in Stackoverflow most popular profiles, and then I did the same in several other sites, and then I took a look in job postings in several boards, mostly out of curiosity, because I noticed this: If you work with Java, .NET or other managed languages, or you work with stuff that is popular for web development (Ruby, JavaScript, etc...) you can get lots of points on Stackoverflow, find lots of jobs and clients, find forums, friends, colleagues, etc... But how a programmer of uncommon languages (Lua, pure C, Lisp, D, ADA, Haskell, etc...) find information, sell his services, and so on? EDIT: This also applies to fields: You work with web, corporate software, database, etc... it is great... You dislike those previous 3, noone ever will hire your services...

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• Tuning Red Gate: #4 of Some

  - by Grant Fritchey

  First time connecting to these servers directly (keys to the kingdom, bwa-ha-ha-ha. oh, excuse me), so I'm going to take a look at the server properties, just to see if there are any issues there. Max memory is set, cool, first possible silly mistake clear. In fact, these look to be nicely set up. Oh, I'd like to see the ANSI Standards set by default, but it's not a big deal. The default location for database data is the F:\ drive, where I saw all the activity last time. Cool, the people maintaining the servers in our company listen, parallelism threshold is set to 35 and optimize for ad hoc is enabled. No shocks, no surprises. The basic setup is appropriate. On to the problem database. Nothing wrong in the properties. The database is in SIMPLE recovery, but I think it's a reporting system, so no worries there. Again, I'd prefer to see the ANSI settings for connections, but that's the worst thing I can see. Time to look at the queries, tables, indexes and statistics because all the information I've collected over the last several days suggests that we're not looking at a systemic problem (except possibly not enough memory), but at the traditional tuning issues. I just want to note that, I started looking at the system, not the queries. So should you when tuning your environment. I know, from the data collected through SQL Monitor, what my top poor performing queries are, and the most frequently called, etc. I'm starting with the most frequently called. I'm going to get the execution plan for this thing out of the cache (although, with the cache dumping constantly, I might not get it). And it's not there. Called 1.3 million times over the last 3 days, but it's not in cache. Wow. OK. I'll see what's in cache for this database: SELECT  deqs.creation_time,         deqs.execution_count,         deqs.max_logical_reads,         deqs.max_elapsed_time,         deqs.total_logical_reads,         deqs.total_elapsed_time,         deqp.query_plan,         SUBSTRING(dest.text, (deqs.statement_start_offset / 2) + 1,                   (deqs.statement_end_offset - deqs.statement_start_offset) / 2                   + 1) AS QueryStatement FROM    sys.dm_exec_query_stats AS deqs         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_sql_text(deqs.sql_handle) AS dest         CROSS APPLY sys.dm_exec_query_plan(deqs.plan_handle) AS deqp WHERE   dest.dbid = DB_ID('Warehouse') AND deqs.statement_end_offset > 0 AND deqs.statement_start_offset > 0 ORDER BY deqs.max_logical_reads DESC ; And looking at the most expensive operation, we have our first bad boy: Multiple table scans against very large sets of data and a sort operation. a sort operation? It's an insert. Oh, I see, the table is a heap, so it's doing an insert, then sorting the data and then inserting into the primary key. First question, why isn't this a clustered index? Let's look at some more of the queries. The next one is deceiving. Here's the query plan: You're thinking to yourself, what's the big deal? Well, what if I told you that this thing had 8036318 reads? I know, you're looking at skinny little pipes. Know why? Table variable. Estimated number of rows = 1. Actual number of rows. well, I'm betting several more than one considering it's read 8 MILLION pages off the disk in a single execution. We have a serious and real tuning candidate. Oh, and I missed this, it's loading the table variable from a user defined function. Let me check, let me check. YES! A multi-statement table valued user defined function. And another tuning opportunity. This one's a beauty, seriously. Did I also mention that they're doing a hash against all the columns in the physical table. I'm sure that won't lead to scans of a 500,000 row table, no, not at all. OK. I lied. Of course it is. At least it's on the top part of the Loop which means the scan is only executed once. I just did a cursory check on the next several poor performers. all calling the UDF. I think I found a big tuning opportunity. At this point, I'm typing up internal emails for the company. Someone just had their baby called ugly. In addition to a series of suggested changes that we need to implement, I'm also apologizing for being such an unkind monster as to question whether that third eye & those flippers belong on such an otherwise lovely child.

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• CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 09, 2012

  CodePlex Daily Summary for Monday, April 09, 2012Popular ReleasesStyleCop+: StyleCop+ 1.8: Built over StyleCop 4.7.17.0 According to http://stylecop.codeplex.com/workitem/7156, it should be the last version which is released without new features and only for compatibility reasons. Do not forget to Unblock the file after downloading (more details) Stay tuned!Path Copy Copy: 10.1: This release addresses the following work items: 11357 11358 11359 This release is a recommended upgrade, especially for users who didn't install the 10.0.1 version.ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.3: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???，????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript，?? CSS，?? UpdatePanel，?? ViewState，?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????：Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??：http://extasp.net/ ??：http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??：http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??：http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????： +2012-04-08 v3.1.3 -??Language="zh_TW"?JS???BUG（??）。 +?D...Coding4Fun Tools: Coding4Fun.Phone.Toolkit v1.5.5: New Controls ChatBubble ChatBubbleTextBox OpacityToggleButton New Stuff TimeSpan languages added: RU, SK, CS Expose the physics math from TimeSpanPicker Image Stretch now on buttons Bug Fixes Layout fix so RoundToggleButton and RoundButton are exactly the same Fix for ColorPicker when set via code behind ToastPrompt bug fix with OnNavigatedTo Toast now adjusts its layout if the SIP is up Fixed some issues with Expression Blend supportHarness - Internet Explorer Automation: Harness 2.0.3: support the operation fo frameset, frame and iframe Add commands SwitchFrame GetUrl GoBack GoForward Refresh SetTimeout GetTimeout Rename commands GetActiveWindow to GetActiveBrowser SetActiveWindow to SetActiveBrowser FindWindowAll to FindBrowser NewWindow to NewBrowser GetMajorVersion to GetVersionBetter Explorer: Better Explorer 2.0.0.861 Alpha: - fixed new folder button operation not work well in some situations - removed some unnecessary code like subclassing that is not needed anymore - Added option to make Better Exlorer default (at least for WIN+E operations) - Added option to enable file operation replacements (like Terracopy) to work with Better Explorer - Added some basic usability to "Share" button - Other fixesText Designer Outline Text: Version 2 Preview 2: Added Fake 3D demos for C++ MFC, C# Winform and C# WPFLightFarsiDictionary - ??????? ??? ?????/???????: LightFarsiDictionary - v1: LightFarsiDictionary - v1WPF Application Framework (WAF): WPF Application Framework (WAF) 2.5.0.3: Version: 2.5.0.3 (Milestone 3): This release contains the source code of the WPF Application Framework (WAF) and the sample applications. Requirements .NET Framework 4.0 (The package contains a solution file for Visual Studio 2010) The unit test projects require Visual Studio 2010 Professional Changelog Legend: [B] Breaking change; [O] Marked member as obsolete [O] WAF: Mark the StringBuilderExtensions class as obsolete because the AppendInNewLine method can be replaced with string.Jo...GeoMedia PostGIS data server: PostGIS GDO 1.0.1.2: This is a new version of GeoMeda PostGIS data server which supports user rights. It means that only those feature classes, which the current user has rights to select, are visible in GeoMedia. Issues fixed in this release Fixed problem with renaming and deleting feature classes - IMPORTANT! - the gfeatures view must be recreated so that this issue is completely fixed. The attached script "GFeaturesView2.sql" can be used to accomplish this task. Another way is to drop and recreate the metadat...SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: SkyDrive Connector for SharePoint: Fixed a few bugs pertaining to live authentication Removed dependency on Shared Documents Removed CallBack web part propertyClosedXML - The easy way to OpenXML: ClosedXML 0.65.2: Aside from many bug fixes we now have Conditional Formatting The conditional formatting was sponsored by http://www.bewing.nl (big thanks) New on v0.65.1 Fixed issue when loading conditional formatting with default values for icon sets New on v0.65.2 Fixed issue loading conditional formatting Improved inserts performanceLiberty: v3.2.0.0 Release 4th April 2012: Change Log-Added -Halo 3 support (invincibility, ammo editing) -Halo 3: ODST support (invincibility, ammo editing) -The file transfer page now shows its progress in the Windows 7 taskbar -"About this build" settings page -Reach Change what an object is carrying -Reach Change which node a carried object is attached to -Reach Object node viewer and exporter -Reach Change which weapons you are carrying from the object editor -Reach Edit the weapon controller of vehicles and turrets -An error dia...MSBuild Extension Pack: April 2012: Release Blog Post The MSBuild Extension Pack April 2012 release provides a collection of over 435 MSBuild tasks. A high level summary of what the tasks currently cover includes the following: System Items: Active Directory, Certificates, COM+, Console, Date and Time, Drives, Environment Variables, Event Logs, Files and Folders, FTP, GAC, Network, Performance Counters, Registry, Services, Sound Code: Assemblies, AsyncExec, CAB Files, Code Signing, DynamicExecute, File Detokenisation, GUID’...DotNetNuke® Community Edition CMS: 06.01.05: Major Highlights Fixed issue that stopped users from creating vocabularies when the portal ID was not zero Fixed issue that caused modules configured to be displayed on all pages to be added to the wrong container in new pages Fixed page quota restriction issue in the Ribbon Bar Removed restriction that would not allow users to use a dash in page names. Now users can create pages with names like "site-map" Fixed issue that was causing the wrong container to be loaded in modules wh...51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.3.1: One Click Install from NuGet Changes to Version 2.1.3.11. [assembly: AllowPartiallyTrustedCallers] has been added back into the AssemblyInfo.cs file to prevent failures with other assemblies in Medium trust environments. 2. The Lite data embedded into the assembly has been updated to include devices from December 2011. The 42 new RingMark properties will return Unknown if RingMark data is not available. Changes to Version 2.1.2.11Code Changes 1. The project is now licenced under the Mozilla...MVC Controls Toolkit: Mvc Controls Toolkit 2.0.0: Added Support for Mvc4 beta and WebApi The SafeqQuery and HttpSafeQuery IQueryable implementations that works as wrappers aroung any IQueryable to protect it from unwished queries. "Client Side" pager specialized in paging javascript data coming either from a remote data source, or from local data. LinQ like fluent javascript api to build queries either against remote data sources, or against local javascript data, with exactly the same interface. There are 3 different query objects exp...nopCommerce. Open source shopping cart (ASP.NET MVC): nopcommerce 2.50: Highlight features & improvements: • Significant performance optimization. • Allow store owners to create several shipments per order. Added a new shipping status: “Partially shipped”. • Pre-order support added. Enables your customers to place a Pre-Order and pay for the item in advance. Displays “Pre-order” button instead of “Buy Now” on the appropriate pages. Makes it possible for customer to buy available goods and Pre-Order items during one session. It can be managed on a product variant ...WiX Toolset: WiX v3.6 RC0: WiX v3.6 RC0 (3.6.2803.0) provides support for VS11 and a more stable Burn engine. For more information see Rob's blog post about the release: http://robmensching.com/blog/posts/2012/4/3/WiX-v3.6-Release-Candidate-Zero-availableSageFrame: SageFrame 2.0: Sageframe is an open source ASP.NET web development framework developed using ASP.NET 3.5 with service pack 1 (sp1) technology. It is designed specifically to help developers build dynamic website by providing core functionality common to most web applications.New ProjectsAprilSpring: Common Framework by pansq and huangghASP.Net MVC Dynamic JS/CSS Script Compression Framework: ASP.Net MVC JS and CSS dynamic script compression and composite script library. Also resolves virtual content urls in CSS files.BANews: ???????????????????，??SQL+Server2008，C#，asp.net????，??????Jquery?CSS+DIV??。??????，?????????????，????????，??????，??。Blazonisation: If have emblem of some state, but don't know anything about it, you can use this tool to resolve your problem. Controle de Campenato: Outro Projeto com alunos da Infnet onde desenvolveremos um controle de campeonato...Controle Financeiro Pessoal Web: Projeto desenvolvido com os alunos do curso Oficial da Microsoft na INFNET. Consiste em controlar as despesas e receitas durante o mes e realizar uma projeção sobre os próximos meses. Bons Estudos, Prof. Carlos PedroCoPro - The .NET Content Provisioning Framework: CoPro makes content management, localization and globalization for ASP.NET Developers easier. It provides a framework which takes care of all management and provisioning activities and the developer only has to create the content and place it on the site. It is developed in C#.cppERF: Class ERF function. Test on VC++ 2008 express, and cygwin.Dev Studio 17 Web-Based FTP Client: Dev Studio 17 Web-Based FTP Client is a web based ftp application built using asp.net, c#.EasyCRMNet: EasyCRMNetEnterpriseLibrary Azure Backing Store: Most developers face difficulties in migrating the application, which is using caching block of Enterprise library, to azure due to unavailability of app fabric cache backing store for Enterprise Library. This library provides an app fabric backing store for enterprise library.Event Aggregator: One of the key aspects in application design is managing dependencies between modules. Good architecture might begin to suffer from strong coupling as long as the project grows. All this affects further development by making it harder to change modules (a change in one module usually forces a ripple effect of changes in other modules), also strongly coupled modules are harder to reuse and test. Message coupling is a good choice in developing loosely coupled architecture. This is the looses...FarhadYazdan-Panah Personal Repsitory: A place for backupFluent Assertions MVC: MVC Extensions for Fluent Assertions library. Source Code is on GitHub: https://github.com/CaseyBurns/FluentAssertions.MVCGboot: GtalkBotGetPicture: GetPicture is a project that get some pictures at a website.It is not good,just use to study.gmfbridge: clone for gmfbridge http://www.gdcl.co.uk/gmfbridge/GoodStore: ??????????，??B/S??，asp.net?sqlserver???，???????，?????????。。。JSLint for Resharper: Adds highlighting of JSLint validation errors to Resharper. kiemtien: Alpha state website, very unstable.nuIDE Kinect Prototype (Experimental): Prototype for Kinect-integrated Visual Studio extension concept. (Not yet alpha - throw away code)PB-LOG-Quick and easy XML logger for .NET: PB-LOG is a quick and easy XML logger for all kink of .NET application. You can insert log associated to a user. There're 4 kind of log: Error, Info, Warning, Event. It's developed in C# 4. There's also a PB-LOG for WP7.PB-LOG-WP7-Quick and easy XML logger for Windows Phone 7: PB-LOG is a quick and easy XML logger for all Windows Phone 7. You can insert log associated to a user. There're 4 kind of log: Error, Info, Warning, Event. It's developed in C# 4.Persian_Calendar_for_Microsoft_Office: "Persian_Calendar_for_Microsoft_Office" makes it easier for Office user group to do their tasks according to time-sheets in IRAN. You'll no longer have to depend on other forms of calendar. It would be developed in any programming language esp C#.Projeto Agenda FPU: Projeto AgendaPS Framework: PS.Framework is an Application Framework to simplify the developement of .NET Applications. It's containing many helpfull classes and functions e.g. an RemotingInterface to simplify the use of .NET Remoting.Quizzer123: Awesome application for quizzes and tests!SharePoint 2010 Automatic Content Database Selection: This solution for SharePoint 2010 automatically selects the smallest content database when you create a new site collection in a web application.SIToFb2: samizdat to bf2 converterSmart Logger: SmartLogger is a web service that can consume exceptions thrown from client applications. The exceptions can be categorized based on severity, applications and exception time stamp. It also includes a search feature to drill down the exceptions log based on search criteria. The release 1.0 will include logging exceptions with search feature. Adding new applications and user right management will follow.Sync Sync: [image:365572] A SharePoint ETL and migration toolTestCuttingStockUsingSolverFoundation: using solver foundation from msft to solve civ e 606 group assignment 2, the cutting stock problem.Vote: ?，???????????????！??，????，?????！WebFurniture: Web-?????????? ??? ?????????????? ????????? ???????yammyy2: yammyy2 zhongjh: ?????????，???????。

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• I thought everyone did it like this – Training Session Code Management

  - by Fatherjack

  One of an occasional series of blogs about things that I do that perhaps others don’t. From very early on in my dealings with SQL Server Management Studio I started using Solutions and Projects. This means that I started using them when writing sessions and it wasn’t until speaking with someone at PASS Summit 2013 that I found out that this was a process that was unheard of by some people. So, here we go, a run through how I create and manage code and other documents that I use in presentations. For people unsure what solutions and projects are; • Solution – a container for one or more projects. • Project – a container for files, .sql files are grouped as Queries, all other files are stored as Misc. How do I start? Open Management Studio as normal, and then click File | New and select Project This will bring up the New Project dialog box and you can select/add details as necessary in the places indicated. If this is the first project you are creating then be sure to select the Create directory for solution check box (4). If know in advance that you are going to have more than one project in the solution then you may want to edit the Solution name (3) as by default it will take the name of the project that you enter at (2). This will lead you to the following folder structure (depending on the location that you chose in 3) above. In SSMS you need to turn on the Solution Explorer, either via the View menu or pressing Ctrl + Alt + L                   This will bring up a dockable window that will let you quickly access the files that you choose to include in the Solution.                     Can we get to work and write some code yet please? Yes, we can. As with many Microsoft products there are several ways to go about this, let’s look at the easiest way when creating new code. When writing a presentation I usually start from the position we are currently in – a brand new solution and project with no code. Later on we will look at incorporating existing code files into the Project where we need it. Right-click on the Project name and choose Add New Query           As soon as you click this you will be prompted to select the sql server that you want to connect to and once you have done that you will have your new query open in the text editor and the Solution Explorer will now look like this, showing your server connection and your new query.               And the Project folder will look like this         Now once you have written your code don’t press save, choose Save As and give the code a better name than QueryX.sql. SSMS will interpret this as a request to rename Query1 and your Project and the Project folder will show that SQLQuery1.sql no longer exists but there is now a file named as you requested. If you happen to click save in error then right-click the query in the project and choose rename.               You can then alter the name as you like, even when open in the SSMS text editor, and the file will be renamed. When creating a set of scripts for a presentation I name files with a numeric prefix so that when they are sorted by name they are in the order that I need to use them during the session. I love this idea but I’ve got loads of existing scripts I want to put in Projects Excellent, adding existing files to a project is easy, let’s consider that you have query files in your My Documents folder and you want to bring them into the Project we have just created. Right-click on the Project and choose Add | Existing Item           Navigate to the location of your chosen file and select it. The file will open in SSMS text editor and the Project will be updated to show that the selected query is now part of your project. If you look in Windows Explorer you will see that the query file has been copied into the Project folder, the original file still remains in your My Documents (or wherever it existed). I’ll leave it as an exercise for the reader to explore creating further Projects within a solution but will happily answer questions if you get into difficulties. What other advantages do I get from this? Well, as all your code is neatly in one Solution folder and the folder contains only files that are pertinent to the session you are presenting then it makes it very easy to share this code, simply copy the whole folder onto a USB stick, Blog, FTP location, wherever you choose and it’s all there in one self-contained parcel. You don’t have to limit yourself to .sql query files, you can add any sort of document via the Add Existing Item method, just try it out. Right-click on the protect and choose Add | Existing Item           Change the file type filter.                       You can multi select items here using Ctrl as you click each item you want. When you are done, click the Add button and the items will be brought into your project.                 Again, using this process means the files are copied into the project folder, leaving you original files untouched in their original location. Once they are here you can double click them in the SSMS Solution Explorer to open them, for files with a specific file type then the appropriate application will be launched – ie Word, Excel etc. However, if the files are something that the SSMS Text editor can display then they will open in a tab in SSMS. Try it out with a text file or even a PS1 file … This sounds excellent but what do I need to watch out for? One big thing to consider when working like this is the version of SSMS that you are using. There is something fundamentally different between the different versions in the way that the project (.ssmssqlproj) and solution (.sqlsuo and .ssmssln) files are formatted. If you create a solution in an older version of SSMS and then open it in a newer version you will be given the option to upgrade it. Once you do this upgrade then the older version of SSMS will not be able to open the solution any more. Now this ranks as more of an annoyance than disaster as the files within the projects are not affected in any way, you would just have to delete the files mentioned and recreate the solution in the older version again. Summary So, here we have seen how using SSMS Projects and Solutions can help keep related code files (and other document types) together in a neat structure so that they can be quickly navigated during a presentation and it also makes it incredibly simple to distribute your code and share it with others. I hope this is of use to you and helps you bring more order into your sql files, whether you are a person that does technical presentations or not, having your code grouped and managed can make for a lot of advantages as your code library expands.  

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• Get a Silverlight XAP signing certificate for cheap thanks to GoDaddy

  One of the new features in Silverlight 4 is the ability to sign your XAP applications so that your out-of-browser trusted applications look more friendly (trusted) to your users, they come from a verified publisher, and they can take advantage of the auto-update APIs in Silverlight. If you dont know what Im talking about, heres some resources for some background: XAP Signing in Silverlight 4 HOWTO Video: Sign Silverlight 4 Applications Basically if you are writing a Silverlight 4 trusted...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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• Custom Theming now Available in Gmail

  - by Asian Angel

  This past November Google unveiled a new look for Gmail with HD themes, but you could not set up custom themes until now. Set up your new custom theme with a Light or Dark look to match up nicely with your chosen background and enjoy a more personalized experience in your inbox. This is where you will find the new custom settings on the Themes Settings Page… The confirmation screens for the new Light and Dark Custom Themes… How to Make Your Laptop Choose a Wired Connection Instead of Wireless HTG Explains: What Is Two-Factor Authentication and Should I Be Using It? HTG Explains: What Is Windows RT and What Does It Mean To Me?

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• If Scheme is untyped, how can it have numbers and lists?

  - by Dokkat

  Scheme is said to be just an extension of the Untyped Lambda Calculus (correct me if I am wrong). If that is the case, how can it have Lists and Numbers? Those, to me, look like 2 base types. So I'd say Racket is actually an extension of the Simply Typed Lambda Calculus. No? Question: Is Scheme's type system actually based or more similar to Simply Typed or Untyped Lambda Calculus? In what ways does it differ from Untyped and or Simply Typed Lambda Calculus? (The same question is valid for "untyped" languages such as Python and JavaScript - all of which look like they have base types to me.)

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• How to compile and use Xapian on Windows with C#

  A look at how to compile and use the Xapian search technology on Windows and it's pitfalls.

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• Is there a very simple XML Editor/Viewer?

  - by Paul Spangle

  Part of our support job is to look at XML documents sent to our systems by our clients that have failed to load correctly. I do this by pasting the file in to Visual Studio as an XML file and VS colours it and adds line-breaks, indenting, etc. and it's then usually quite simple to spot the error and manually fix it and resubmit the document. Do I really have to use Visual Studio to do this? OK, it does the job quite well, but I'd have thought that something like Notepad++ would do the job just as well with a fraction of the machine resource usage. Is there are plugin for Notepad++ or another bit of freeware that can make XML look pretty and let me make simple edits?

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• Looking for enterprise web application design inspiration [closed]

  - by Farshid

  I've checked many websites to be inspired about what the look and feel of a serious enterprise web-application should look like. But the whole I saw were designed for being used by single users and not serious corporate users. The designs I saw were mostly happy-colored, and looked like being developed by a small team of eager young passionate developers. But what I'm looking for, are showcases of serious web apps' designs (e.g. web apps developed by large corporations) that are developed for being used by a large number of corporate uses. Can you suggest me sources for this kind of inspiration?

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