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• Visual Studio 2013 Static Code Analysis in depth: What? When and How?

  - by Hosam Kamel

  In this post I'll illustrate in details the following points What is static code analysis? When to use? Supported platforms Supported Visual Studio versions How to use Run Code Analysis Manually Run Code Analysis Automatically Run Code Analysis while check-in source code to TFS version control (TFSVC) Run Code Analysis as part of Team Build Understand the Code Analysis results & learn how to fix them Create your custom rule set Q & A References What is static Rule analysis? Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio performs static code analysis on code to help developers identify potential design, globalization, interoperability, performance, security, and a lot of other categories of potential problems according to Microsoft's rules that mainly targets best practices in writing code, and there is a large set of those rules included with Visual Studio grouped into different categorized targeting specific coding issues like security, design, Interoperability, globalizations and others. Static here means analyzing the source code without executing it and this type of analysis can be performed through automated tools (like Visual Studio 2013 Code Analysis Tool) or manually through Code Review which already supported in Visual Studio 2012 and 2013 (check Using Code Review to Improve Quality video on Channel9) There is also Dynamic analysis which performed on executing programs using software testing techniques such as Code Coverage for example. When to use? Running Code analysis tool at regular intervals during your development process can enhance the quality of your software, examines your code for a set of common defects and violations is always a good programming practice. Adding that Code analysis can also find defects in your code that are difficult to discover through testing allowing you to achieve first level quality gate for you application during development phase before you release it to the testing team. Supported platforms .NET Framework, native (C and C++) Database applications. Support Visual Studio versions All version of Visual Studio starting Visual Studio 2013 (except Visual Studio Test Professional) check Feature comparisons Create and modify a custom rule set required Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate. How to use? Code Analysis can be run manually at any time from within the Visual Studio IDE, or even setup to automatically run as part of a Team Build or check-in policy for Team Foundation Server. Run Code Analysis Manually To run code analysis manually on a project, on the Analyze menu, click Run Code Analysis on your project or simply right click on the project name on the Solution Explorer choose Run Code Analysis from the context menu Run Code Analysis Automatically To run code analysis each time that you build a project, you select Enable Code Analysis on Build on the project's Property Page Run Code Analysis while check-in source code to TFS version control (TFSVC) Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) provides a way for organizations to enforce practices that lead to better code and more efficient group development through Check-in policies which are rules that are set at the team project level and enforced on developer computers before code is allowed to be checked in. (This is available only if you're using Team Foundation Server) Require permissions on Team Foundation Server: you must have the Edit project-level information permission set to Allow typically your account must be part of Project Administrators, Project Collection Administrators, for more information about Team Foundation permissions check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms252587(v=vs.120).aspx In Team Explorer, right-click the team project name, point to Team Project Settings, and then click Source Control. In the Source Control dialog box, select the Check-in Policy tab. Click Add to create a new check-in policy. Double-click the existing Code Analysis item in the Policy Type list to change the policy. Check or Uncheck the policy option based on the configurations you need to perform as illustrated below: Enforce check-in to only contain files that are part of current solution: code analysis can run only on files specified in solution and project configuration files. This policy guarantees that all code that is part of a solution is analyzed. Enforce C/C++ Code Analysis (/analyze): Requires that all C or C++ projects be built with the /analyze compiler option to run code analysis before they can be checked in. Enforce Code Analysis for Managed Code: Requires that all managed projects run code analysis and build before they can be checked in. Check Code analysis rule set reference on MSDN What is Rule Set? Rule Set is a group of code analysis rules like the example below where Microsoft.Design is the rule set name where "Do not declare static members on generic types" is the code analysis rule Once you configured the Analysis rule the policy will be enabled for all the team member in this project whenever a team member check-in any source code to the TFSVC the policy section will highlight the Code Analysis policy as below TFS is a very extensible platform so you can simply implement your own custom Code Analysis Check-in policy, check this link for more details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd492668.aspx but you have to be aware also about compatibility between different TFS versions check http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb907157.aspx Run Code Analysis as part of Team Build With Team Foundation Build (TFBuild), you can create and manage build processes that automatically compile and test your applications, and perform other important functions. Code Analysis can be enabled in the Build Definition file by selecting the correct value for the build process parameter "Perform Code Analysis" Once configure, Kick-off your build definition to queue a new build, Code Analysis will run as part of build workflow and you will be able to see code analysis warning as part of build report Understand the Code Analysis results & learn how to fix them Now after you went through Code Analysis configurations and the different ways of running it, we will go through the Code Analysis result how to understand them and how to resolve them. Code Analysis window in Visual Studio will show all the analysis results based on the rule sets you configured in the project file properties, let's dig deep into what each result item contains: 1 Check ID The unique identifier for the rule. CheckId and Category are used for in-source suppression of a warning.       2 Title The title of warning message       3 Description A description of the problem or suggested fix 4 File Name File name and the line of code number which violate the code analysis rule set 5 Category The code analysis category for this error 6 Warning /Error Depend on how you configure it in the rule set the default is Warning level 7 Action Copy: copy the warning information to the clipboard Create Work Item: If you're connected to Team Foundation Server you can create a work item most probably you may create a Task or Bug and assign it for a developer to fix certain code analysis warning Suppress Message: There are times when you might decide not to fix a code analysis warning. You might decide that resolving the warning requires too much recoding in relation to the probability that the issue will arise in any real-world implementation of your code. Or you might believe that the analysis that is used in the warning is inappropriate for the particular context. You can suppress individual warnings so that they no longer appear in the Code Analysis window. Two options available: In Source inserts a SuppressMessage attribute in the source file above the method that generated the warning. This makes the suppression more discoverable. In Suppression File adds a SuppressMessage attribute to the GlobalSuppressions.cs file of the project. This can make the management of suppressions easier. Note that the SuppressMessage attribute added to GlobalSuppression.cs also targets the method that generated the warning. It does not suppress the warning globally.       Visual Studio makes it very easy to fix Code analysis warning, all you have to do is clicking on the Check Id hyperlink if you are not aware how to fix the warring and you'll be directed to MSDN online or local copy based on the configuration you did while installing Visual Studio and you will find all the information about the warring including how to fix it. Create a Custom Code Analysis Rule Set The Microsoft standard rule sets provide groups of rules that are organized by function and depth. For example, the Microsoft Basic Design Guidelines Rules and the Microsoft Extended Design Guidelines Rules contain rules that focus on usability and maintainability issues, with added emphasis on naming rules in the Extended rule set, you can create and modify a custom rule set to meet specific project needs associated with code analysis. To create a custom rule set, you open one or more standard rule sets in the rule set editor. Create and modify a custom rule set required Visual Studio Premium or Ultimate. You can check How to: Create a Custom Rule Set on MSDN for more details http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd264974.aspx Q & A Visual Studio static code analysis vs. FxCop vs. StyleCpp http://www.excella.com/blog/stylecop-vs-fxcop-difference-between-code-analysis-tools/ Code Analysis for SharePoint Apps and SPDisposeCheck? This post lists some of the rule set you can run specifically for SharePoint applications and how to integrate SPDisposeCheck as well. Code Analysis for SQL Server Database Projects? This post illustrate how to run static code analysis on T-SQL through SSDT ReSharper 8 vs. Visual Studio 2013? This document lists some of the features that are provided by ReSharper 8 but are missing or not as fully implemented in Visual Studio 2013. References A Few Billion Lines of Code Later: Using Static Analysis to Find Bugs in the Real World http://cacm.acm.org/magazines/2010/2/69354-a-few-billion-lines-of-code-later/fulltext What is New in Code Analysis for Visual Studio 2013 http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudioalm/archive/2013/07/03/what-is-new-in-code-analysis-for-visual-studio-2013.aspx Analyze the code quality of Windows Store apps using Visual Studio static code analysis http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/hh441471.aspx [Hands-on-lab] Using Code Analysis with Visual Studio 2012 to Improve Code Quality http://download.microsoft.com/download/A/9/2/A9253B14-5F23-4BC8-9C7E-F5199DB5F831/Using%20Code%20Analysis%20with%20Visual%20Studio%202012%20to%20Improve%20Code%20Quality.docx Originally posted at "Hosam Kamel| Developer & Platform Evangelist" http://blogs.msdn.com/hkamel

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• Power and Cooling Cost compared with Server/Hardware Cost

  - by psaccounts

  Has anyone done, or is aware of any, calculations to compare the cost of power and cooling compared to the cost of hardware (servers) in a typical data center? This is to compute a true total cost of ownership of self-hosting servers. Of course real TCO includes: hardware_cost + power + cooling + rental + human_cost + maintenance Is there any study that says something like (TCO - hardware_cost) = 40% of hardware_cost in 3 years? Any pointers will be appreciated.

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• Runtime analysis

  - by Joe Smith

  can someone please help me with the analysis of the following function (for inputs of size n). The part that confuses me the most is the inner for loop. def prefix_sums(L): # Total cost = ? pSum = [] #cost = 1 for a in range(len(L)+1): # range + body of function = (n+1) + (n+1)*(body) ? s = 0 #cost = 1 for b in range(a): # cost = ? s = s + L[b] #cost = operation + accessing list = 2 pSum.append(s) #cost = 1 return pSum #cost = 1 What I need to do is figure out the cost of each statement.

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• Software cost estimation

  - by David Conde

  I've seen on my work place (a University) most students making the software estimation cost of their final diploma work using COCOMO. My guessing is that this way of estimating costs is somewhat old (COCOMO dates of 1981), hence my question: How do you estimate costs in your software? I've seen things like : Cost = ( HoursOfWork + EstimatedIddle ) * HourlyRate That's not what I want, I'm looking for a properly (scientifically) defined cost model EDIT I've found some related questions on SO: What are some of the software cost estimation methods and models? How do you estimate the cost of developing software requirements?

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• “Query cost (relative to the batch)” <> Query cost relative to batch

  - by Dave Ballantyne

  OK, so that is quite a contradictory title, but unfortunately it is true that a common misconception is that the query with the highest percentage relative to batch is the worst performing.  Simply put, it is a lie, or more accurately we dont understand what these figures mean. Consider the two below simple queries: SELECT * FROM Person.BusinessEntity JOIN Person.BusinessEntityAddress ON Person.BusinessEntity.BusinessEntityID = Person.BusinessEntityAddress.BusinessEntityID go SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader ON Sales.SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID = Sales.SalesOrderHeader.SalesOrderID After executing these and looking at the plans, I see this : So, a 13% / 87% split ,  but 13% / 87% of WHAT ? CPU ? Duration ? Reads ? Writes ? or some magical weighted algorithm ?  In a Profiler trace of the two we can find the metrics we are interested in. CPU and duration are well out but what about reads (210 and 1935)? To save you doing the maths, though you are more than welcome to, that’s a 90.2% / 9.8% split.  Close, but no cigar. Lets try a different tact.  Looking at the execution plan the “Estimated Subtree cost” of query 1 is 0.29449 and query 2 its 1.96596.  Again to save you the maths that works out to 13.03% and 86.97%, round those and thats the figures we are after.  But, what is the worrying word there ? “Estimated”.  So these are not “actual”  execution costs,  but what’s the problem in comparing the estimated costs to derive a meaning of “Most Costly”.  Well, in the case of simple queries such as the above , probably not a lot.  In more complicated queries , a fair bit. By modifying the second query to also show the total number of lines on each order SELECT *,COUNT(*) OVER (PARTITION BY Sales.SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID) FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail JOIN Sales.SalesOrderHeader ON Sales.SalesOrderDetail.SalesOrderID = Sales.SalesOrderHeader.SalesOrderID The split in percentages is now 6% / 94% and the profiler metrics are : Even more of a discrepancy. Estimates can be out with actuals for a whole host of reasons,  scalar UDF’s are a particular bug bear of mine and in-fact the cost of a udf call is entirely hidden inside the execution plan.  It always estimates to 0 (well, a very small number). Take for instance the following udf Create Function dbo.udfSumSalesForCustomer(@CustomerId integer) returns money as begin Declare @Sum money Select @Sum= SUM(SalesOrderHeader.TotalDue) from Sales.SalesOrderHeader where CustomerID = @CustomerId return @Sum end If we have two statements , one that fires the udf and another that doesn't: Select CustomerID from Sales.Customer order by CustomerID go Select CustomerID,dbo.udfSumSalesForCustomer(Customer.CustomerID) from Sales.Customer order by CustomerID The costs relative to batch is a 50/50 split, but the has to be an actual cost of firing the udf. Indeed profiler shows us : No where even remotely near 50/50!!!! Moving forward to window framing functionality in SQL Server 2012 the optimizer sees ROWS and RANGE ( see here for their functional differences) as the same ‘cost’ too SELECT SalesOrderDetailID,SalesOrderId, SUM(LineTotal) OVER(PARTITION BY salesorderid ORDER BY Salesorderdetailid RANGE unbounded preceding) from Sales.SalesOrderdetail go SELECT SalesOrderDetailID,SalesOrderId, SUM(LineTotal) OVER(PARTITION BY salesorderid ORDER BY Salesorderdetailid Rows unbounded preceding) from Sales.SalesOrderdetail By now it wont be a great display to show you the Profiler trace reads a *tiny* bit different. So moral of the story, Percentage relative to batch can give a rough ‘finger in the air’ measurement, but dont rely on it as fact.

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• Determining Cost of API Calls

  - by Sam

  [This is a cross-post originally posted by me in SO. I think the question is more appropriate here.] I was going through the adwords API and came across their rate sheet - http://code.google.com/apis/adwords/docs/ratesheet.html . They charge $0.25 per 1000 API units and under the 'Operation Costs' sections list the cost (in API units) of different API calls. I am curious - based on what factors do they (and others API developers) calculate the cost of an API call? Is there any simple formula or a standard way to determine this? Note: When I say 'cost' of an API call, I don't mean the money but the API units. For example, how do you determine one API call costs 100 'units' and another 1000?

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• Quantitfying a cost for a software project

  - by The Elite Gentleman

  Disclaimer: I didn't know exactly where to put this question. If you feel that this question is not suitable for Programmers @ StackExchange, feel free to migrate it. Background: Broadening my last question, there is a request for tender for a software system that's open and I have decided to take it on. I am a software developer & engineer by profession and, in this tender process, I have to put on the pricing for my bid. I have been provided a documentation consisting of functional and non-functional requirements only. I have to put a project manager's cap on and think of all aspects, e.g. cost for implementation for the project, resources needed, etc. My question is: Is there a project framework that I can follow that breaks the project cycle into steps and corresponding cost aspect or how would I go about best calculating/approximating the cost for the project?

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• White Paper on Analysis Services Tabular Large-scale Solution #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Since the first beta of Analysis Services 2012, I worked with many companies designing and implementing solutions based on Analysis Services Tabular. I am glad that Microsoft published a white paper about a case-study using one of these scenarios: An Analysis Services Case Study: Using Tabular Models in a Large-scale Commercial Solution. Alberto Ferrari is the author of the white paper and many people contributed to it. The final result is a very technical document based on a case study, which provides a level of detail that I don’t see often in other case studies (which are usually more marketing-oriented). This white paper has the following structure: Requirements (data model, capacity planning, client tool) Options considered (SQL Server Columnstore Indexes, SSAS Multidimensional, SSAS Tabular) Data Model optimizations (memory compression, query performance, scalability) Partitioning and Processing strategy for near real-time latency Hardware selection (NUMA analysis, Azure VM tests) Scalability tests (estimation of maximum users per node) If you are in charge of evaluating Tabular as analytical engine, or if you have to design your solution based on Tabular, this white paper is a must read. But if you just want to increase your knowledge of Analysis Services, you will find a lot of useful technical information. That said, my favorite quote of the document is the following one, funny but true: […] After several trials, the clear winner was a video gaming machine that one guy on the team used at home. That computer outperformed any available server, running twice as fast as the server-class machines we had in house. At that point, it was clear that the criteria for choosing the server would have to be expanded a bit, simply because it would have been impossible to convince the boss to build a cluster of gaming machines and trust it to serve our customers.  But, honestly, if a business has the flexibility to buy gaming machines (assuming the machines can handle capacity) – do this. Owen Graupman, inContact I want to write a longer discussion about how companies are adopting Tabular in scenarios where it is the hidden engine of a more complex solution (and not the classical “BI system”), because it is more frequent than you might expect (and has several advantages over many alternative approaches).

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• Basket Analysis with #dax in #powerpivot and #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  A few days ago I published a new article on DAX Patterns web site describing how to implement Basket Analysis in DAX. This topic is a very classical one and is also covered in the many-to-many revolution white paper. It has been also discussed in several blog posts, listed here in historical order: Simple Basket Analysis in DAX by Chris Webb PowerPivot, basket analysis and the hidden many to many by Alberto Ferrari Applied Basket Analysis in Power Pivot using DAX by Gerhard Brueckl As usual, in DAX Patterns we try to present the required DAX formulas in a way that is easy to adapt to specific models. We also try to show a good implementation from a performance point of view. Further optimizations are always possible in DAX. However, in order to keep the model simple to adapt in different scenarios, we avoid presenting optimizations that would require particular assumptions or restrictions on the data model. I hope you will find the Basket Analysis pattern useful. Even if you do not need it today, reading the DAX formula is a good exercise to check your knowledge of evaluation contexts in DAX. For example, describing how does it work the following expression is not a trivial task! [Orders with Both Products] := CALCULATE (     DISTINCTCOUNT ( Sales[SalesOrderNumber] ),     CALCULATETABLE (         SUMMARIZE ( Sales, Sales[SalesOrderNumber] ),         ALL ( Product ),         USERELATIONSHIP ( Sales[ProductCode], 'Filter Product'[Filter ProductCode] )     ) ) The good news is that you can use the patterns even if you do not really understand all the details of the DAX formulas you are using! Any feedback on this new pattern is very welcome.

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• Time complexity with bit cost

  - by Keyser

  I think I might have completely misunderstood bit cost analysis. I'm trying to wrap my head around the concept of studying an algorithm's time complexity with respect to bit cost (instead of unit cost) and it seems to be impossible to find anything on the subject. Is this considered to be so trivial that no one ever needs to have it explained to them? Well I do. (Also, there doesn't even seem to be anything on wikipedia which is very unusual). Here's what I have so far: The bit cost of multiplication and division of two numbers with n bits is O(n^2) (in general?) So, for example: int number = 2; for(int i = 0; i < n; i++ ){ number = i*i; } has a time complexity with respect to bit cost of O(n^3), because it does n multiplications (right?) But in a regular scenario we want the time complexity with respect to the input. So, how does that scenario work? The number of bits in i could be considered a constant. Which would make the time complexity the same as with unit cost except with a bigger constant (and both would be linear). Also, I'm guessing addition and subtraction can be done in constant time, O(1). Couldn't find any info on it but it seems reasonable since it's one assembler operation.

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• Cost effective way to provide static media content

  - by james

  I'd like to be able to deliver around 50MB of static content, either in about 30 individual files up to 10MB or grouped into 3 compressed files, around 5k to 20k times a day. Ideally I'd like to put some sort of very basic security around providing the data to ensure that a request is from the expected source, but if tossing the security for a big reduction in price is possible then it's an option. Does anyone have any suggestions other than what I've found: Google AppEngine is $0.12/GB & I believe has a file size limit of 10MB so I'd have to break the data up a bit. So a rough calculation would seem to be that this would cost me about $30 to $120 a day. Or I've seen something like what seems to be just public static content delivery with no type of logic capabilities like Usenet.nl at what I think calculates to about $0.025/GB which would cost me about $6 to $25 a day. Any idea if I'm going about these calculations right & if there might be a better option for just static content on a decently high volume delivery? Again some basic security would be great but if cost is greatly reduced without it then I'm up for that.

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• Using Analysis Services Processing Task & Analysis Services Execute DDL Task in SSIS

  SQL Server Integration Services (SSIS) is a Business Intelligence tool which can be used by database developers or administrators to perform Extract, Transform & Load (ETL) operations. In my previous article Using WMI Data Reader and WMI Event Watcher ... [Read Full Article]

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• Landed Cost Management Integration with OPM Financials

  - by Robert Story

  Upcoming WebcastTitle: Landed Cost Management Integration with OPM FinancialsDate: April 21, 2010 Time: 11:00 am EDT, 9:00 am PDT, 8:00 am MDT Product Family: EBS: Process Manufacturing Summary This one-hour session will present setup overview and detailed steps for a test case, and is recommended for functional users who are using OPM Financials module with an actual costing method. Topics will include: Overview on Landed Cost Management functionality Setup steps and a test case Some technical considerations Documentation and other reference materials available A short, live demonstration (only if applicable) and question and answer period will be included. Click here to register for this session....... ....... ....... ....... ....... ....... .......The above webcast is a service of the E-Business Suite Communities in My Oracle Support.For more information on other webcasts, please reference the Oracle Advisor Webcast Schedule.Click here to visit the E-Business Communities in My Oracle Support Note that all links require access to My Oracle Support.

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• Developing a Cost Model for Cloud Applications

  - by BuckWoody

  Note - please pay attention to the date of this post. As much as I attempt to make the information below accurate, the nature of distributed computing means that components, units and pricing will change over time. The definitive costs for Microsoft Windows Azure and SQL Azure are located here, and are more accurate than anything you will see in this post: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/offers/  When writing software that is run on a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) offering like Windows Azure / SQL Azure, one of the questions you must answer is how much the system will cost. I will not discuss the comparisons between on-premise costs (which are nigh impossible to calculate accurately) versus cloud costs, but instead focus on creating a general model for estimating costs for a given application. You should be aware that there are (at this writing) two billing mechanisms for Windows and SQL Azure: “Pay-as-you-go” or consumption, and “Subscription” or commitment. Conceptually, you can consider the former a pay-as-you-go cell phone plan, where you pay by the unit used (at a slightly higher rate) and the latter as a standard cell phone plan where you commit to a contract and thus pay lower rates. In this post I’ll stick with the pay-as-you-go mechanism for simplicity, which should be the maximum cost you would pay. From there you may be able to get a lower cost if you use the other mechanism. In any case, the model you create should hold. Developing a good cost model is essential. As a developer or architect, you’ll most certainly be asked how much something will cost, and you need to have a reliable way to estimate that. Businesses and Organizations have been used to paying for servers, software licenses, and other infrastructure as an up-front cost, and power, people to the systems and so on as an ongoing (and sometimes not factored) cost. When presented with a new paradigm like distributed computing, they may not understand the true cost/value proposition, and that’s where the architect and developer can guide the conversation to make a choice based on features of the application versus the true costs. The two big buckets of use-types for these applications are customer-based and steady-state. In the customer-based use type, each successful use of the program results in a sale or income for your organization. Perhaps you’ve written an application that provides the spot-price of foo, and your customer pays for the use of that application. In that case, once you’ve estimated your cost for a successful traversal of the application, you can build that into the price you charge the user. It’s a standard restaurant model, where the price of the meal is determined by the cost of making it, plus any profit you can make. In the second use-type, the application will be used by a more-or-less constant number of processes or users and no direct revenue is attached to the system. A typical example is a customer-tracking system used by the employees within your company. In this case, the cost model is often created “in reverse” - meaning that you pilot the application, monitor the use (and costs) and that cost is held steady. This is where the comparison with an on-premise system becomes necessary, even though it is more difficult to estimate those on-premise true costs. For instance, do you know exactly how much cost the air conditioning is because you have a team of system administrators? This may sound trivial, but that, along with the insurance for the building, the wiring, and every other part of the system is in fact a cost to the business. There are three primary methods that I’ve been successful with in estimating the cost. None are perfect, all are demand-driven. The general process is to lay out a matrix of: components units cost per unit and then multiply that times the usage of the system, based on which components you use in the program. That sounds a bit simplistic, but using those metrics in a calculation becomes more detailed. In all of the methods that follow, you need to know your application. The components for a PaaS include computing instances, storage, transactions, bandwidth and in the case of SQL Azure, database size. In most cases, architects start with the first model and progress through the other methods to gain accuracy. Simple Estimation The simplest way to calculate costs is to architect the application (even UML or on-paper, no coding involved) and then estimate which of the components you’ll use, and how much of each will be used. Microsoft provides two tools to do this - one is a simple slider-application located here: http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/pricing-calculator/  The other is a tool you download to create an “Return on Investment” (ROI) spreadsheet, which has the advantage of leading you through various questions to estimate what you plan to use, located here: https://roianalyst.alinean.com/msft/AutoLogin.do?d=176318219048082115  You can also just create a spreadsheet yourself with a structure like this: Program Element Azure Component Unit of Measure Cost Per Unit Estimated Use of Component Total Cost Per Component Cumulative Cost               Of course, the consideration with this model is that it is difficult to predict a system that is not running or hasn’t even been developed. Which brings us to the next model type. Measure and Project A more accurate model is to actually write the code for the application, using the Software Development Kit (SDK) which can run entirely disconnected from Azure. The code should be instrumented to estimate the use of the application components, logging to a local file on the development system. A series of unit and integration tests should be run, which will create load on the test system. You can use standard development concepts to track this usage, and even use Windows Performance Monitor counters. The best place to start with this method is to use the Windows Azure Diagnostics subsystem in your code, which you can read more about here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/sumitm/archive/2009/11/18/introducing-windows-azure-diagnostics.aspx This set of API’s greatly simplifies tracking the application, and in fact you can use this information for more than just a cost model. After you have the tracking logs, you can plug the numbers into ay of the tools above, which should give a representative cost or in some cases a unit cost. The consideration with this model is that the SDK fabric is not a one-to-one comparison with performance on the actual Windows Azure fabric. Those differences are usually smaller, but they do need to be considered. Also, you may not be able to accurately predict the load on the system, which might lead to an architectural change, which changes the model. This leads us to the next, most accurate method for a cost model. Sample and Estimate Using standard statistical and other predictive math, once the application is deployed you will get a bill each month from Microsoft for your Azure usage. The bill is quite detailed, and you can export the data from it to do analysis, and using methods like regression and so on project out into the future what the costs will be. I normally advise that the architect also extrapolate a unit cost from those metrics as well. This is the information that should be reported back to the executives that pay the bills: the past cost, future projected costs, and unit cost “per click” or “per transaction”, as your case warrants. The challenge here is in the model itself - statistical methods are not foolproof, and the larger the sample (in this case I recommend the entire population, not a smaller sample) is key. References and Tools Articles: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/patrick_butler_monterde/archive/2010/02/10/windows-azure-billing-overview.aspx http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/gg213848.aspx http://blog.codingoutloud.com/2011/06/05/azure-faq-how-much-will-it-cost-me-to-run-my-application-on-windows-azure/ http://blogs.msdn.com/b/johnalioto/archive/2010/08/25/10054193.aspx http://geekswithblogs.net/iupdateable/archive/2010/02/08/qampa-how-can-i-calculate-the-tco-and-roi-when.aspx   Other Tools: http://cloud-assessment.com/ http://communities.quest.com/community/cloud_tools

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• How much system and business analysis should a programmer be reasonably expected to do?

  - by Rahul

  In most places I have worked for, there were no formal System or Business Analysts and the programmers were expected to perform both the roles. One had to understand all the subsystems and their interdependencies inside out. Further, one was also supposed to have a thorough knowledge of the business logic of the applications and interact directly with the users to gather requirements, answer their queries etc. In my current job, for ex, I spend about 70% time doing system analysis and only 30% time programming. I consider myself a good programmer but struggle with developing a good understanding of the business rules of a complex application. Often, this creates a handicap because while I can write efficient algorithms and thread-safe code, I lose out to guys who may be average programmers but have a much better understanding of the business processes. So I want to know - How much business and systems knowledge should a programmer have ? - How does one go about getting this knowledge in an immensely complex software system (e.g. trading applications) with several interdependent business processes but poorly documented business rules.

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• Analysis Services Tabular books #ssas #tabular

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  Many people are looking for books about Analysis Services Tabular. Today there are two books available and they complement each other: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: The BISM Tabular Model by Marco Russo, Alberto Ferrari and Chris Webb Applied Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services: Tabular Modeling by Teo Lachev The book I wrote with Alberto and Chris is a complete guide to create tabular models and has a good coverage about DAX, including how to use it for enriching a semantic model with calculated columns and measures and how to use it for querying a Tabular model. In my experience, DAX as a query language is a very interesting option for custom analytical applications that requires a fast calculation engine, or simply for standard reports running in Reporting Services and accessing a Tabular model. You can freely preview the table of content and read some excerpts from the book on Safari Books Online. The book is in printing and should be shipped within mid-July, so finally it will be very soon on the shelf of all the people already preordered it! The Teo Lachev’s book, covers the full spectrum of Tabular models provided by Microsoft: starting with self-service BI, you have users creating a model with PowerPivot for Excel, publishing it to PowerPivot for SharePoint and exploring data by using Power View; then, the PowerPivot for Excel model can be imported in a Tabular model and published in Analysis Services, adding more control on the model through row-level security and partitioning, for example. Teo’s book follows a step-by-step approach describing each feature that is very good for a beginner that is new to PowerPivot and/or to BISM Tabular. If you need to get the big picture and to start using the products that are part of the new Microsoft wave of BI products, the Teo’s book is for you. After you read the book from Teo, or if you already have a certain confidence with PowerPivot or BISM Tabular and you want to go deeper about internals, best practices, design patterns in just BISM Tabular, then our book is a suggested read: it contains several chapters about DAX, includes discussions about new opportunities in data model design offered by Tabular models, and also provides examples of optimizations you can obtain in DAX and best practices in data modeling and queries. It might seem strange that an author write a review of a book that might seem to compete with his one, but in reality these two books complement each other and are not alternatives. If you have any doubt, buy both: you will be not disappointed! Moreover, Amazon usually offers you a deal to buy three books, including the Visualizing Data with Microsoft Power View, another good choice for getting all the details about Power View.

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• Using the Static Code Analysis feature of Visual Studio (Premium/Ultimate) to find memory leakage problems

  - by terje

  Memory for managed code is handled by the garbage collector, but if you use any kind of unmanaged code, like native resources of any kind, open files, streams and window handles, your application may leak memory if these are not properly handled.  To handle such resources the classes that own these in your application should implement the IDisposable interface, and preferably implement it according to the pattern described for that interface. When you suspect a memory leak, the immediate impulse would be to start up a memory profiler and start digging into that.   However, before you follow that impulse, do a Static Code Analysis run with a ruleset tuned to finding possible memory leaks in your code.  If you get any warnings from this, fix them before you go on with the profiling. How to use a ruleset In Visual Studio 2010 (Premium and Ultimate editions) you can define your own rulesets containing a list of Static Code Analysis checks.   I have defined the memory checks as shown in the lists below as ruleset files, which can be downloaded – see bottom of this post.  When you get them, you can easily attach them to every project in your solution using the Solution Properties dialog. Right click the solution, and choose Properties at the bottom, or use the Analyze menu and choose “Configure Code Analysis for Solution”: In this dialog you can now choose the Memorycheck ruleset for every project you want to investigate.  Pressing Apply or Ok opens every project file and changes the projects code analysis ruleset to the one we have specified here. How to define your own ruleset  (skip this if you just download my predefined rulesets) If you want to define the ruleset yourself, open the properties on any project, choose Code Analysis tab near the bottom, choose any ruleset in the drop box and press Open Clear out all the rules by selecting “Source Rule Sets” in the Group By box, and unselect the box Change the Group By box to ID, and select the checks you want to include from the lists below. Note that you can change the action for each check to either warning, error or none, none being the same as unchecking the check.   Now go to the properties window and set a new name and description for your ruleset. Then save (File/Save as) the ruleset using the new name as its name, and use it for your projects as detailed above. It can also be wise to add the ruleset to your solution as a solution item. That way it’s there if you want to enable Code Analysis in some of your TFS builds.   Running the code analysis In Visual Studio 2010 you can either do your code analysis project by project using the context menu in the solution explorer and choose “Run Code Analysis”, you can define a new solution configuration, call it for example Debug (Code Analysis), in for each project here enable the Enable Code Analysis on Build   In Visual Studio Dev-11 it is all much simpler, just go to the Solution root in the Solution explorer, right click and choose “Run code analysis on solution”.     The ruleset checks The following list is the essential and critical memory checks.  CheckID Message Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1001 Types that own disposable fields should be disposable No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182172.aspx CA1049 Types that own native resources should be disposable Only if the pointers assumed to point to unmanaged resources point to something else  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182173.aspx CA1063 Implement IDisposable correctly No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms244737.aspx CA2000 Dispose objects before losing scope No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182289.aspx CA2115 1 Call GC.KeepAlive when using native resources See description  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182300.aspx CA2213 Disposable fields should be disposed If you are not responsible for release, of if Dispose occurs at deeper level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182328.aspx CA2215 Dispose methods should call base class dispose Only if call to base happens at deeper calling level  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182330.aspx CA2216 Disposable types should declare a finalizer Only if type does not implement IDisposable for the purpose of releasing unmanaged resources  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182329.aspx CA2220 Finalizers should call base class finalizers No  http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182341.aspx Notes: 1) Does not result in memory leak, but may cause the application to crash   The list below is a set of optional checks that may be enabled for your ruleset, because the issues these points too often happen as a result of attempting to fix up the warnings from the first set.   ID Message Type of fault Can be ignored ? Link to description with fix suggestions CA1060 Move P/invokes to NativeMethods class Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182161.aspx CA1816 Call GC.SuppressFinalize correctly Performance Sometimes, see description http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182269.aspx CA1821 Remove empty finalizers Performance No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb264476.aspx CA2004 Remove calls to GC.KeepAlive Performance and maintainability Only if not technically correct to convert to SafeHandle http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182293.aspx CA2006 Use SafeHandle to encapsulate native resources Security No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182294.aspx CA2202 Do not dispose of objects multiple times Exception (System.ObjectDisposedException) No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182334.aspx CA2205 Use managed equivalents of Win32 API Maintainability and complexity Only if the replace doesn’t provide needed functionality http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182365.aspx CA2221 Finalizers should be protected Incorrect implementation, only possible in MSIL coding No http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms182340.aspx   Downloadable ruleset definitions I have defined three rulesets, one called Inmeta.Memorycheck with the rules in the first list above, and Inmeta.Memorycheck.Optionals containing the rules in the second list, and the last one called Inmeta.Memorycheck.All containing the sum of the two first ones.  All three rulesets can be found in the  zip archive  “Inmeta.Memorycheck” downloadable from here.   Links to some other resources relevant to Static Code Analysis MSDN Magazine Article by Mickey Gousset on Static Code Analysis in VS2010 MSDN :  Analyzing Managed Code Quality by Using Code Analysis, root of the documentation for this Preventing generated code from being analyzed using attributes Online training course on Using Code Analysis with VS2010 Blogpost by Tatham Oddie on custom code analysis rules How to write custom rules, from Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog Microsoft Code Analysis Team Blog

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• Books or help on OO Analysis

  - by Pat

  I have this course where we learn about the domain model, use cases, contracts and eventually leap into class diagrams and sequence diagrams to define good software classes. I just had an exam and I got trashed, but part of the reason is we barely have any practical material, I spent at least two good months without drawing a single class diagram by myself from a case study. I'm not here to blame the system or the class I'm in, I'm just wondering if people have some exercise-style books that either provide domain models with glossaries, system sequence diagrams and ask you to use GRASP to make software classes? I could really use some alone-time practicing going from analysis to conception of software entities. I'm almost done with Larman's book called "Applying UML and Patterns An Introduction to Object-Oriented Analysis and Design and Iterative Development, Third Edition". It's a good book, but I'm not doing anything by myself since it doesn't come with exercises. Thanks.

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• "continue" and "break" for static analysis

  - by B. VB.

  I know there have been a number of discussions of whether break and continue should be considered harmful generally (with the bottom line being - more or less - that it depends; in some cases they enhance clarity and readability, but in other cases they do not). Suppose a new project is starting development, with plans for nightly builds including a run through a static analyzer. Should it be part of the coding guidelines for the project to avoid (or strongly discourage) the use of continue and break, even if it can sacrifice a little readability and require excessive indentation? I'm most interested in how this applies to C code. Essentially, can the use of these control operators significantly complicate the static analysis of the code possibly resulting in additional false negatives, that would otherwise register a potential fault if break or continue were not used? (Of course a complete static analysis proving the correctness of an aribtrary program is an undecidable proposition, so please keep responses about any hands-on experience with this you have, and not on theoretical impossibilities) Thanks in advance!

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• How to use OO for data analysis? [closed]

  - by Konsta

  In which ways could object-orientation (OO) make my data analysis more efficient and let me reuse more of my code? The data analysis can be broken up into get data (from db or csv or similar) transform data (filter, group/pivot, ...) display/plot (graph timeseries, create tables, etc.) I mostly use Python and its Pandas and Matplotlib packages for this besides some DB connectivity (SQL). Almost all of my code is a functional/procedural mix. While I have started to create a data object for a certain collection of time series, I wonder if there are OO design patterns/approaches for other parts of the process that might increase efficiency?

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• Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model #ssas #tabular #bism

  - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)

  I, Alberto and Chris spent many months (many nights, holidays and also working days of the last months) writing the book we would have liked to read when we started working with Analysis Services Tabular. A book that explains how to use Tabular, how to model data with Tabular, how Tabular internally works and how to optimize a Tabular model. All those things you need to start on a real project in order to make an happy customer. You know, we’re all consultants after all, so customer satisfaction is really important to be paid for our job! Now the book writing is finished, we’re in the final stage of editing and reviews and we look forward to get our print copy. Its title is very long: Microsoft SQL Server 2012 Analysis Services – The BISM Tabular Model. But the important thing is that you can already (pre)order it. This is the list of chapters: 01. BISM Architecture 02. Guided Tour on Tabular 03. Loading Data Inside Tabular 04. DAX Basics 05. Understanding Evaluation Contexts 06. Querying Tabular 07. DAX Advanced 08. Understanding Time Intelligence in DAX 09. Vertipaq Engine 10. Using Tabular Hierarchies 11. Data modeling in Tabular 12. Using Advanced Tabular Relationships 13. Tabular Presentation Layer 14. Tabular and PowerPivot for Excel 15. Tabular Security 16. Interfacing with Tabular 17. Tabular Deployment 18. Optimization and Monitoring And this is the book cover – have a good read!

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• Is there a real difference between dynamic analysis and testing?

  - by user970696

  Often testing is regarded as a dynamic analysis of a software. Yet while writing my thesis, the reviewer noted to me that dynamic analysis is about analyzing the program behind the scenes - e.g. profiling and that it is not the same as testing because its "analysis" which looks inside and observes. I know that "static analysis" is not testing, should we then separate this "dynamic analysis" also from testing? Some books do refer to dynamic analysis in this sense. I would maybe say that testing is a one mean of dynamic analysis?

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• .NET Libraries Cost More Than Windows?

  - by Kevin Mark

  When looking into libraries to make my programming life a little bit easier I've (almost) always been disappointed by the prices offered. For instance, Actipro's WPF Studio is $650. I suppose that's worth it if you plan to make money from the use of those controls. But take a look at, say, Windows. Windows 7 Ultimate is just about $220. I consider Windows to be a far more complex and "worth-it" product/purchase than a library that runs on it. Why the significant difference in pricing? Do libraries really need to be so expensive, or do they need to charge more in order to make a decent some of money?

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• dependency analysis from C# code thru to database tables/columns

  - by fpdave

  I'm looking for a tool to do system wide dependency analysis in C# code and SQL-Server databases. Its looking like the only tool available that does this might be CAST (cast software), which is expensive and it does lots more besides that I dont really need. c# code thru to database column dependency would be hugely useful for many reasons, including: - determining effects of database changes throughout the system - seeing hot spots in the database schema - finding dead stored procedures/tables/etc - understanding the existing code base does anyone know of any such tools?

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• Having trouble running code analysis from command prompt with msbuild

  - by devlife

  I'm using VS2010 RC while targeting .NET 3.5. I can run code analysis via Visual Studio without a problem. However, when I try to run code analysis on our CI server it isn't getting executed. When I attempt to build using msbuild 4.0 I get the following exception: C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\CodeAnalysis\Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.targets(129,9): error MSB4018: The "CodeAnalysis" task failed unexpectedly. C:\Program Files (x86)\MSBuild\Microsoft\VisualStudio\v10.0\CodeAnalysis\Microsoft.CodeAnalysis.targets(129,9): error MSB4018: System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'System.Runtime.Versioning.TargetFrameworkAttribute' from assembly 'mscorlib, Version=4.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089 Like I said, it works fine when I run it through VS.

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