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• Entity Framework won't SaveChanges on new entity with two-level relationship

  - by Tim Rourke

  I'm building an ASP.NET MVC site using the ADO.NET Entity Framework. I have an entity model that includes these entities, associated by foreign keys: Report(ID, Date, Heading, Report_Type_ID, etc.) SubReport(ID, ReportText, etc.) - one-to-one relationship with Report. ReportSource(ID, Name, Description) - one-to-many relationship with Sub_Report. ReportSourceType(ID, Name, Description) - one-to-many relationship with ReportSource. Contact (ID, Name, Address, etc.) - one-to-one relationship with Report_Source. There is a Create.aspx page for each type of SubReport. The post event method returns a new Sub_Report entity. Before, in my post method, I followed this process: Set the properties for a new Report entity from the page's fields. Set the SubReport entity's specific properties from the page's fields. Set the SubReport entity's Report to the new Report entity created in 1. Given an ID provided by the page, look up the ReportSource and set the Sub_Report entity's ReportSource to the found entity. SaveChanges. This workflow succeeded just fine for a couple of weeks. Then last week something changed and it doesn't work any more. Now instead of the save operation, I get this Exception: UpdateException: "Entities in 'DIR2_5Entities.ReportSourceSet' participate in the 'FK_ReportSources_ReportSourceTypes' relationship. 0 related 'ReportSourceTypes' were found. 1 'Report_Source_Types' is expected." The debug visualizer shows the following: The SubReport's ReportSource is set and loaded, and all of its properties are correct. The Report_Source has a valid ReportSourceType entity attached. In SQL Profiler the prepared SQL statement looks OK. Can anybody point me to what obvious thing I'm missing? TIA Notes: The Report and SubReport are always new entities in this case. The Report entity contains properties common to many types of reports and is used for generic queries. SubReports are specific reports with extra parameters varying by type. There is actually a different entity set for each type of SubReport, but this question applies to all of them, so I use SubReport as a simplified example.

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• Not your usual "The multi-part identifier could not be bound" error

  - by Eugene Niemand

  I have the following query, now the strange thing is if I run this query on my development and pre-prod server it runs fine. If I run it on production it fails. I have figured out that if I run just the Select statement its happy but as soon as I try insert into the table variable it complains. DECLARE @RESULTS TABLE ( [Parent] VARCHAR(255) ,[client] VARCHAR(255) ,[ComponentName] VARCHAR(255) ,[DealName] VARCHAR(255) ,[Purchase Date] DATETIME ,[Start Date] DATETIME ,[End Date] DATETIME ,[Value] INT ,[Currency] VARCHAR(255) ,[Brand] VARCHAR(255) ,[Business Unit] VARCHAR(255) ,[Region] VARCHAR(255) ,[DealID] INT ) INSERT INTO @RESULTS SELECT DISTINCT ClientName 'Parent' ,F.ClientID 'client' ,ComponentName ,A.DealName ,CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME , ISNULL(PurchaseDate , '1900-01-01')) 'Purchase Date' ,CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME , ISNULL(StartDate , '1900-01-01')) 'Start Date' ,CONVERT(SMALLDATETIME , ISNULL(EndDate , '1900-01-01')) 'End Date' ,DealValue 'Value' ,D.Currency 'Currency' ,ShortBrand 'Brand' ,G.BU 'Business Unit' ,C.DMRegion 'Region' ,DealID FROM LTCDB_admin_tbl_Deals A INNER JOIN dbo_DM_Brand B ON A.BrandID = B.ID INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_DM_Region C ON A.Region = C.ID INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_Currency D ON A.Currency = D.ID INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_Deal_Clients E ON A.DealID = E.Deal_ID INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_Clients F ON E.Client_ID = F.ClientID INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_DM_BU G ON G.ID = A.BU INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_Deal_Components H ON A.DealID = H.Deal_ID INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_Components I ON I.ComponentID = H.Component_ID WHERE EndDate != '1899-12-30T00:00:00.000' AND StartDate < EndDate AND B.ID IN ( 1 , 2 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 10 , 12 ) AND C.SalesRegionID IN ( 1 , 3 , 4 , 11 , 16 ) AND A.BU IN ( 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 8 , 9 , 11 , 12 , 15 , 16 , 19 , 20 , 22 , 23 , 24 , 26 , 28 , 30 ) AND ClientID = 16128 SELECT ... FROM @Results I get the following error Msg 8180, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Statement(s) could not be prepared. Msg 4104, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The multi-part identifier "Tbl1021.ComponentName" could not be bound. Msg 4104, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 The multi-part identifier "Tbl1011.Currency" could not be bound. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2454'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2461'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2491'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2490'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2482'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2478'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2477'. Msg 207, Level 16, State 1, Line 1 Invalid column name 'Col2475'. EDIT - EDIT - EDIT - EDIT - EDIT - EDIT through a process of elimination I have found that following and wondered if anyone can shed some light on this. If I remove only the DISTINCT the query runs fine, add the DISTINCT and I get strange errors. Also I have found that if I comment the following lines then the query runs with the DISTINCT what is strange is that none of the columns in the table LTCDB_admin_tbl_Deal_Components is referenced so I don't see how the distinct will affect that. INNER JOIN LTCDB_admin_tbl_Deal_Components H ON A.DealID = H.Deal_ID

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• XML: Process large data

  - by Atmocreations

  Hello What XML-parser do you recommend for the following purpose: The XML-file (formatted, containing whitespaces) is around 800 MB. It mostly contains three types of tag (let's call them n, w and r). They have an attribute called id which i'd have to search for, as fast as possible. Removing attributes I don't need could save around 30%, maybe a bit more. First part for optimizing the second part: Is there any good tool (command line linux and windows if possible) to easily remove unused attributes in certain tags? I know that XSLT could be used. Or are there any easy alternatives? Also, I could split it into three files, one for each tag to gain speed for later parsing... Speed is not too important for this preparation of the data, of course it would be nice when it took rather minutes than hours. Second part: Once I have the data prepared, be it shortened or not, I should be able to search for the ID-attribute I was mentioning, this being time-critical. Estimations using wc -l tell me that there are around 3M N-tags and around 418K W-tags. The latter ones can contain up to approximately 20 subtags each. W-Tags also contain some, but they would be stripped away. "All I have to do" is navigating between tags containing certain id-attributes. Some tags have references to other id's, therefore giving me a tree, maybe even a graph. The original data is big (as mentioned), but the resultset shouldn't be too big as I only have to pick out certain elements. Now the question: What XML parsing library should I use for this kind of processing? I would use Java 6 in a first instance, with having in mind to be porting it to BlackBerry. Might it be useful to just create a flat file indexing the id's and pointing to an offset in the file? Is it even necessary to do the optimizations mentioned in the upper part? Or are there parser known to be quite as fast with the original data? Little note: To test, I took the id being on the very last line on the file and searching for the id using grep. This took around a minute on a Core 2 Duo. What happens if the file grows even bigger, let's say 5 GB? I appreciate any notice or recommendation. Thank you all very much in advance and regards

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• Regular exp to validate email in C

  - by Liju Mathew

  Hi, We need to write a email validation program in C. We are planning to use GNU Cregex.h) regular expression. The regular expression we prepared is [a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:\.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?\.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])? But the below code is failing while compiling the regex. #include <stdio.h> #include <regex.h> int main(const char *argv, int argc) { const char *reg_exp = "[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?"; int status = 1; char email[71]; regex_t preg; int rc; printf("The regex = %s\n", reg_exp); rc = regcomp(&preg, reg_exp, REG_EXTENDED|REG_NOSUB); if (rc != 0) { if (rc == REG_BADPAT || rc == REG_ECOLLATE) fprintf(stderr, "Bad Regex/Collate\n"); if (rc == REG_ECTYPE) fprintf(stderr, "Invalid Char\n"); if (rc == REG_EESCAPE) fprintf(stderr, "Trailing \\\n"); if (rc == REG_ESUBREG || rc == REG_EBRACK) fprintf(stderr, "Invalid number/[] error\n"); if (rc == REG_EPAREN || rc == REG_EBRACE) fprintf(stderr, "Paren/Bracket error\n"); if (rc == REG_BADBR || rc == REG_ERANGE) fprintf(stderr, "{} content invalid/Invalid endpoint\n"); if (rc == REG_ESPACE) fprintf(stderr, "Memory error\n"); if (rc == REG_BADRPT) fprintf(stderr, "Invalid regex\n"); fprintf(stderr, "%s: Failed to compile the regular expression:%d\n", __func__, rc); return 1; } while (status) { fgets(email, sizeof(email), stdin); status = email[0]-48; rc = regexec(&preg, email, (size_t)0, NULL, 0); if (rc == 0) { fprintf(stderr, "%s: The regular expression is a match\n", __func__); } else { fprintf(stderr, "%s: The regular expression is not a match: %d\n", __func__, rc); } } regfree(&preg); return 0; } The regex compilation is failing with the below error. The regex = [a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+(?:.[a-z0-9!#$%&'*+/=?^_`{|}~-]+)*@(?:[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])?.)+[a-z0-9](?:[a-z0-9-]*[a-z0-9])? Invalid regex main: Failed to compile the regular expression:13 What is the cause of this error? Whether the regex need to be modified? Thanks, Mathew Liju

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• Queue ExternalInterface calls to Flash Object in UpdatePanel - Needs Improvement?

  - by Laramie

  A Flash (actually Flex) object is created on an ASP.Net page within an Update Panel using a modified version of the embedCallAC_FL_RunContent.js script so it can be written in dynamically. It is re-created with this script with each partial postback to that panel. There are also other Update Panels on the page. With some postbacks (partial and full), External Interface calls such as $get('FlashObj').ExternalInterfaceFunc('arg1', 0, true); are prepared server-side and added to the page using ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript. They're embedded in a function and stuffed into Sys.Application's load event, for example Sys.Application.add_load(funcContainingExternalInterfaceCalls). The problem is that because the Flash object's state state may change with each partial postback, the Flash (Flex) object and/or External Interface may not be ready or even exist yet in the DOM when the JavaScript - Flash External Interface call is made. It results in an "Object doesn't support this property or method" exception. I have a working strategy to make the ExternalInterface calls immediately if Flash is ready or else queue them until such time that Flash announces its readiness. //Called when the Flash object is initialized and can accept ExternalInterfaceCalls var flashReady = false; //Called by Flash when object is fully initialized function setFlashReady() { flashReady = true; //Make any queued ExternalInterface calls, then dequeue while (extIntQueue.length > 0) (extIntQueue.shift())(); } var extIntQueue = []; function callExternalInterface(flashObjName, funcName, args) { //reference to the wrapped ExternalInterface Call var wrapped = extWrap(flashObjName, funcName, args); //only procede with ExternalInterface call if the global flashReady variable has been set if (flashReady) { wrapped(); } else { //queue the function so when flashReady() is called next, the function is called and the aruments are passed. extIntQueue.push(wrapped); } } //bundle ExtInt call and hold variables in a closure function extWrap(flashObjName, funcName, args) { //put vars in closure return function() { var funcCall = '$get("' + flashObjName + '").' + funcName; eval(funcCall).apply(this, args); } } I set the flashReady var to dirty whenever I update the Update Panel that contains the Flash (Flex) object. ScriptManager.RegisterClientScriptBlock(parentContainer, parentContainer.GetType(), "flashReady", "flashReady = false;", true); I'm pleased that I got it to work, but it feels like a hack. I am still on the learning curve with respect to concepts like closures why "eval()" is apparently evil, so I'm wondering if I'm violating some best practice or if this code should be improved, if so how? Thanks.

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• How to make freelance clients understand the costs of developing and maintaining mature products?

  - by John

  I have a freelance web application project where the client requests new features every two weeks or so. I am unable to anticipate the requirements of upcoming features. So when the client requests a new feature, one of several things may happen: I implement the feature with ease because it is compatible with the existing platform I implement the feature with difficulty because I have to rewrite a significant portion of the platform's foundation Client withdraws request because it costs too much to implement against existing platform At the beginning of the project, for about six months, all feature requests fell under category 1) because the system was small and agile. But for the past six months, most feature implementation fell under category 2). The system is mature, forcing me to refactor and test everytime I want to add new modules. Additionally, I find myself breaking things that use to work, and fixing it (I don't get paid for this). The client is starting to express frustration at the time and cost for me to implement new features. To them, many of the feature requests are of the same scale as the features they requested six months ago. For example, a client would ask, "If it took you 1 week to build a ticketing system last year, why does it take you 1 month to build an event registration system today? An event registration system is much simpler than a ticketing system. It should only take you 1 week!" Because of this scenario, I fear feature requests will soon land in category 3). In fact, I'm already eating a lot of the cost myself because I volunteer many hours to support the project. The client is often shocked when I tell him honestly the time it takes to do something. The client always compares my estimates against the early months of a project. I don't think they're prepared for what it really costs to develop, maintain and support a mature web application. When working on a salary for a full time company, managers were more receptive of my estimates and even encouraged me to pad my numbers to prepare for the unexpected. Is there a way to condition my clients to think the same way? Can anyone offer advice on how I can continue to work on this web project without eating too much of the cost myself? Additional info - I've only been freelancing full time for 1 year. I don't yet have the high end clients, but I'm slowly getting there. I'm getting better quality clients as time goes by.

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• How do we, as a community, help encourage programming in public schools? (Or state Schools for the U

  - by NoMoreZealots

  PRIMARY MOTIVATION My office gets involved with the "First Robotics" competitions and one thing that lingers year to year is the students typically have no preparation for doing even simple programming as part of the public schools system. While the science classes provide some basic grasp of mechanical and electrical concepts, by in large computer programming gets no coverage from the curriculum. (This my be different in other areas of the country/world.) What makes it worse is there is only a short period of time you have to prepare the student's and help them design the robot. Talking to some professors from local colleges, it's a problem because you can't assume even the most basic understanding for freshman CS majors. Languages like Python, Lua and BASIC are simple enough for at least high school level students, if not younger. SCOPE So how do you get public schools to support a programming, at least to the level of "Try it in BASIC" examples that used to be at the end of a chapter in my Algebra book? At least enough to prepare them for event's such as the FIRST Robotic competitions. Which the primary objectives are to teach problem solving and team work, and to possible foster an interest in Math, Science and Engineering in general. (Not force feed to them, as some people her seem to be implying.) Edit: Why teach kids: (Since 2000 CS enrollment in US colleges has decreased by 70% while college enrollment has increased, this is a PROBLEM.) Saying there is no value in teaching someone programming in Jr./High school because they might think "they know programming." Is like saying there's no value in teaching High school science and physics, because they might decide they "know physics." Leading to abuse like: "I passed a high school physics class, I'm going to develop a Unified Quantum Gravitational Theory." Better Prepared students are better students. Instead it would allows college programs to raise the bar on the entry level courses, allowing students to be weeded out based on their understanding of more advanced material. Plus people who did poorly in that in topic in High school aren't as likely to say "I think there's money in computer's so I'll computer science." Plus if people take it in high school and decide THEN that it's not for them, it's better than them wasting their money to PAY a college to figure that out. The result is that people who take the degree are more likely to succeed and be there for the RIGHT reasons. (i.e. It's what they REALLY want to do. And that's REALLY the key to being good at anything.) Programming is like anything else, the more practice and genuine interest you have the better you get. If you start them later, they get less practice. The earlier give them the opportunity to start, the more practice they will get. All other things equal, the more practice the better the programmer.

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• deleted gen folder, eclipse isn't generating it now :(

  - by LuxuryMode

  I accidentally deleted my gen folder and now, predictably, my resources are all messed up. I just created a gen folder myself and tried to project clean - that didn't work. Tried right-clicking project and going to android tools fix project properties - didn't work. Tried unchecking build automatically...didn't work. cleaned, closed project, closed eclipse, restarted, etc, etc. Nothing is working and I keep seeing this error: gen already exists but is not a source folder. Convert to a source folder or rename it. EDIT - OK was able to generate R.java, but now I'm getting crazy stuff in the console: [2011-06-14 17:06:11 - fastapp] Conversion to Dalvik format failed with error 1 [2011-06-14 17:06:42 - fastapp] Dx trouble processing "java/awt/font/NumericShaper.class": Ill-advised or mistaken usage of a core class (java.* or javax.*) when not building a core library. This is often due to inadvertently including a core library file in your application's project, when using an IDE (such as Eclipse). If you are sure you're not intentionally defining a core class, then this is the most likely explanation of what's going on. However, you might actually be trying to define a class in a core namespace, the source of which you may have taken, for example, from a non-Android virtual machine project. This will most assuredly not work. At a minimum, it jeopardizes the compatibility of your app with future versions of the platform. It is also often of questionable legality. If you really intend to build a core library -- which is only appropriate as part of creating a full virtual machine distribution, as opposed to compiling an application -- then use the "--core-library" option to suppress this error message. If you go ahead and use "--core-library" but are in fact building an application, then be forewarned that your application will still fail to build or run, at some point. Please be prepared for angry customers who find, for example, that your application ceases to function once they upgrade their operating system. You will be to blame for this problem. If you are legitimately using some code that happens to be in a core package, then the easiest safe alternative you have is to repackage that code. That is, move the classes in question into your own package namespace. This means that they will never be in conflict with core system classes. JarJar is a tool that may help you in this endeavor. If you find that you cannot do this, then that is an indication that the path you are on will ultimately lead to pain, suffering, grief, and lamentation. [2011-06-14 17:06:42 - fastapp] Dx 1 error; aborting [2011-06-14 17:06:42 - fastapp] Conversion to Dalvik format failed with error 1 And eclipse can't resolve the import of my resources import com.me.fastapp.R;

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• Bracketing algorithm when root finding. Single root in "quadratic" function

  - by Ander Biguri

  I am trying to implement a root finding algorithm. I am using the hybrid Newton-Raphson algorithm found in numerical recipes that works pretty nicely. But I have a problem in bracketing the root. While implementing the root finding algorithm I realised that in several cases my functions have 1 real root and all the other imaginary (several of them, usually 6 or 9). The only root I am interested is in the real one so the problem is not there. The thing is that the function approaches the root like a cubic function, touching with the point the y=0 axis... Newton-Rapson method needs some brackets of different sign and all the bracketing methods I found don't work for this specific case. What can I do? It is pretty important to find that root in my program... EDIT: more problems: sometimes due to reaaaaaally small numerical errors, say a variation of 1e-6 in some value the "cubic" function does NOT have that real root, it is just imaginary with a neglectable imaginary part... (checked with matlab) EDIT 2: Much more information about the problem. Ok, I need root finding algorithm. Info I have: The root I need to find is between [0-1] , if there are more roots outside that part I am not interested in them. The root is real, there may be imaginary roots, but I don't want them. Probably all the rest of the roots will be imaginary The root may be double in that point, but I think that actually doesn't mater in numerical analysis problems I need to use the root finding algorithm several times during the overall calculations, but the function will always be a polynomial In one of the particular cases of the root finding, my polynomial will be similar to a quadratic function that touches Y=0 with the point. Example of a real case: The coefficient may not be 100% precise and that really slight imprecision may make the function not to touch the Y=0 axis. I cannot solve for this specific case because in other cases it may be that the polynomial is pretty normal and doesn't make any "strange" thing. The method I am actually using is NewtonRaphson hybrid, where if the derivative is really small it makes a bisection instead of NewRaph (found in numerical recipes). Matlab's answer to the function on the image: roots: 0.853553390593276 + 0.353553390593278i 0.853553390593276 - 0.353553390593278i 0.146446609406726 + 0.353553390593273i 0.146446609406726 - 0.353553390593273i 0.499999999999996 + 0.000000040142134i 0.499999999999996 - 0.000000040142134i The function is a real example I prepared where I know that the answer I want is 0.5 Note: I still haven't check completely some of the answers I you people have give me (Thank you!), I am just trying to give al the information I already have to complete the question.

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• VB6 ADO Command to SQL Server

  - by Emtucifor

  I'm getting an inexplicable error with an ADO command in VB6 run against a SQL Server 2005 database. Here's some code to demonstrate the problem: Sub ADOCommand() Dim Conn As ADODB.Connection Dim Rs As ADODB.Recordset Dim Cmd As ADODB.Command Dim ErrorAlertID As Long Dim ErrorTime As Date Set Conn = New ADODB.Connection Conn.ConnectionString = "Provider=SQLOLEDB.1;Integrated Security=SSPI;Initial Catalog=database;Data Source=server" Conn.CursorLocation = adUseClient Conn.Open Set Rs = New ADODB.Recordset Rs.CursorType = adOpenStatic Rs.LockType = adLockReadOnly Set Cmd = New ADODB.Command With Cmd .Prepared = False .CommandText = "ErrorAlertCollect" .CommandType = adCmdStoredProc .NamedParameters = True .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@ErrorAlertID", adInteger, adParamOutput) .Parameters.Append .CreateParameter("@CreateTime", adDate, adParamOutput) Set .ActiveConnection = Conn Rs.Open Cmd ErrorAlertID = .Parameters("@ErrorAlertID").Value ErrorTime = .Parameters("@CreateTime").Value End With Debug.Print Rs.State ' Shows 0 - Closed Debug.Print Rs.RecordCount ' Of course this fails since the recordset is closed End Sub So this code was working not too long ago but now it's failing on the last line with the error: Run-time error '3704': Operation is not allowed when the object is closed Why is it closed? I just opened it and the SP returns rows. I ran a trace and this is what the ADO library is actually submitting to the server: declare @p1 int set @p1=1 declare @p2 datetime set @p2=''2010-04-22 15:31:07:770'' exec ErrorAlertCollect @ErrorAlertID=@p1 output,@CreateTime=@p2 output select @p1, @p2 Running this as a separate batch from my query editor yields: Msg 102, Level 15, State 1, Line 4 Incorrect syntax near '2010'. Of course there's an error. Look at the double single quotes in there. What the heck could be causing that? I tried using adDBDate and adDBTime as data types for the date parameter, and they give the same results. When I make the parameters adParamInputOutput, then I get this: declare @p1 int set @p1=default declare @p2 datetime set @p2=default exec ErrorAlertCollect @ErrorAlertID=@p1 output,@CreateTime=@p2 output select @p1, @p2 Running that as a separate batch yields: Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 2 Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'default'. Msg 156, Level 15, State 1, Line 4 Incorrect syntax near the keyword 'default'. What the heck? SQL Server doesn't support this kind of syntax. You can only use the DEFAULT keyword in the actual SP execution statement. I should note that removing the extra single quotes from the above statement makes the SP run fine. ... Oh my. I just figured it out. I guess it's worth posting anyway.

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• how to create a system-wide independent universal counter object primarily for Database keys?

  - by andora

  I would like to create/use a system-wide independent universal 'counter object' that can be called via COM in a thread-safe manner. The counter object will be passed an ID to identify which counter to return, handle the counting, 'persist' the count (occasionally), have reasonable performance (as fast as possible) perhaps capable of 1000 counts per second or better (1mS) and be accessible cross-process/out-of-process. The current count status must be persisted between object restarts/shutdowns. The counter object is liklely to be a 'singleton' type object implemented in some form of free-threaded dictionary, containing maybe 10 counters (perhaps 50 max). The count needs to be monotonic and consistent, (ie: guaranteed unique sequential values). Each counter should have a few methods, like reset, inc, dec, set, clear, remove. As a luxury, I would like to have a variable-increment (ie: 'step by' value). To support thread-safefty, perhaps some sorm of critical-section or mutex call. It just needs to return a long/4byte signed integer. I really want something that can be called from anywhere, including VBScript, so I figure COM is my preferred solution. The primary use of this is for database keys. I am unable to use autoinc or guid type keys and have ruled out database-generated counting systems at this point. I've spent days researching this and I have really struggled to find a solution. The best I can find is a free-threaded dictionary object that can be instantiated using COM+ from Motobit - it seems to offer all the 'basics' and I guess I could create some form of wrapper for this. So, here are my questions: Does such a 'general purpose counter-object already exist? Can you direct me to it? (MS did do an IIS/ASP object called 'MSWC.Counter' but this isn't 'cross-process'/ out-of-process component and isn't thread-safe. (but if it was, it would do!) What is the best way of creating such a Component? (I'd prefer VB6 right-now, [don't ask!] but can do in VB.NET2005 if I had to). I don't have the skills/knowledge/tools to use anything else. I am desparate for a workable solution. I need specific guidance! If anybody can code something up for me I am prepared to pay for it.

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• Reading and writing C++ vector to a file

  - by JB

  For some graphics work I need to read in a large amount of data as quickly as possible and would ideally like to directly read and write the data structures to disk. Basically I have a load of 3d models in various file formats which take too long to load so I want to write them out in their "prepared" format as a cache that will load much faster on subsequent runs of the program. Is it safe to do it like this? My worries are around directly reading into the data of the vector? I've removed error checking, hard coded 4 as the size of the int and so on so that i can give a short working example, I know it's bad code, my question really is if it is safe in c++ to read a whole array of structures directly into a vector like this? I believe it to be so, but c++ has so many traps and undefined behavour when you start going low level and dealing directly with raw memory like this. I realise that number formats and sizes may change across platforms and compilers but this will only even be read and written by the same compiler program to cache data that may be needed on a later run of the same program. #include <fstream> #include <vector> using namespace std; struct Vertex { float x, y, z; }; typedef vector<Vertex> VertexList; int main() { // Create a list for testing VertexList list; Vertex v1 = {1.0f, 2.0f, 3.0f}; list.push_back(v1); Vertex v2 = {2.0f, 100.0f, 3.0f}; list.push_back(v2); Vertex v3 = {3.0f, 200.0f, 3.0f}; list.push_back(v3); Vertex v4 = {4.0f, 300.0f, 3.0f}; list.push_back(v4); // Write out a list to a disk file ofstream os ("data.dat", ios::binary); int size1 = list.size(); os.write((const char*)&size1, 4); os.write((const char*)&list[0], size1 * sizeof(Vertex)); os.close(); // Read it back in VertexList list2; ifstream is("data.dat", ios::binary); int size2; is.read((char*)&size2, 4); list2.resize(size2); // Is it safe to read a whole array of structures directly into the vector? is.read((char*)&list2[0], size2 * sizeof(Vertex)); }

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• How to cache queries in EJB and return result efficient (performance POV)

  - by Maxym

  I use JBoss EJB 3.0 implementation (JBoss 4.2.3 server) At the beginning I created native query all the time using construction like Query query = entityManager.createNativeQuery("select * from _table_"); Of couse it is not that efficient, I performed some tests and found out that it really takes a lot of time... Then I found a better way to deal with it, to use annotation to define native queries: @NamedNativeQuery( name = "fetchData", value = "select * from _table_", resultClass=Entity.class ) and then just use it Query query = entityManager.createNamedQuery("fetchData"); the performance of code line above is two times better than where I started from, but still not that good as I expected... then I found that I can switch to Hibernate annotation for NamedNativeQuery (anyway, JBoss's implementation of EJB is based on Hibernate), and add one more thing: @NamedNativeQuery( name = "fetchData2", value = "select * from _table_", resultClass=Entity.class, readOnly=true) readOnly - marks whether the results are fetched in read-only mode or not. It sounds good, because at least in this case of mine I don't need to update data, I wanna just fetch it for report. When I started server to measure performance I noticed that query without readOnly=true (by default it is false) returns result with each iteration better and better, and at the same time another one (fetchData2) works like "stable" and with time difference between them is shorter and shorter, and after 5 iterations speed of both was almost the same... The questions are: 1) is there any other way to speed query using up? Seems that named queries should be prepared once, but I can't say it... In fact if to create query once and then just use it it would be better from performance point of view, but it is problematic to cache this object, because after creating query I can set parameters (when I use ":variable" in query), and it changes query object (isn't it?). well, is here any way to cache them? Or named query is the best option I can use? 2) any other approaches how to make results retrieveng faster. I mean, for instance I don't need those Entities to be attached, I won't update them, all I need is just fetch collection of data. Maybe readOnly is the only available way, so I can't speed it up, but who knows :) P.S. I don't ask about DB performance, all I need now is how not to create query all the time, so use it efficient, and to "allow" EJB to do less job with the same result concerning data returning.

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• Multiple column subselect in mysql 5 (5.1.42)

  - by rubber boots

  This one seems to be a simple problem, but I can't make it work in a single select or nested select. Retrieve the authors and (if any) advisers of a paper (article) into one row. I order to explain the problem, here are the two data tables (pseudo) papers (id, title, c_year) persons (id, firstname, lastname) plus a link table w/one extra attribute (pseudo): paper_person_roles( paper_id person_id act_role ENUM ('AUTHOR', 'ADVISER') ) This is basically a list of written papers (table: papers) and a list of staff and/or students (table: persons) An article my have (1,N) authors. An article may have (0,N) advisers. A person can be in 'AUTHOR' or 'ADVISER' role (but not at the same time). The application eventually puts out table rows containing the following entries: TH: || Paper_ID | Author(s) | Title | Adviser(s) | TD: || 21334 |John Doe, Jeff Tucker|Why the moon looks yellow|Brown, Rayleigh| ... My first approach was like: select/extract a full list of articles into the application, eg.SELECT q.id, q.title FROM papers AS q ORDER BY q.c_year and save the results of the query into an array (in the application). After this step, loop over the array of the returned information and retrieve authors and advisers (if any), via prepared statement (? is the paper's id) from the link table like:APPLICATION_LOOP(paper_ids in array) SELECT p.lastname, p.firstname, r.act_role FROM persons AS p, paper_person_roles AS r WHERE p.id=r.person_id AND r.paper_id = ? # The application does further processing from here (pseudo): foreach record from resulting records if record.act_role eq 'AUTHOR' then join to author_column if record.act_role eq 'ADVISER' then join to avdiser_column end print id, author_column, title, adviser_column APPLICATION_LOOP This works so far and gives the desired output. Would it make sense to put the computation back into the DB? I'm not very proficient in nontrivial SQL and can't find a solution with a single (combined or nested) select call. I tried sth. like SELECT q.title (CONCAT_WS(' ', (SELECT p.firstname, p.lastname AS aunames FROM persons AS p, paper_person_roles AS r WHERE q.id=r.paper_id AND r.act_role='AUTHOR') ) ) AS aulist FROM papers AS q, persons AS p, paper_person_roles AS r in several variations, but no luck ... Maybe there is some chance? Thanks in advance r.b.

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• PHP Changing Class Variables Outside of Class

  - by Jamie Bicknell

  Apologies for the wording on this question, I'm having difficulties explaining what I'm after, but hopefully it makes sense. Let's say I have a class, and I wish to pass a variable through one of it's methods, then I have another method which outputs this variable. That's all fine, but what I'm after is that if I update the variable which was originally passed, and do this outside the class methods, it should be reflected in the class. I've created a very basic example: class Test { private $var = ''; function setVar($input) { $this->var = $input; } function getVar() { echo 'Var = ' . $this->var . '<br />'; } } If I run $test = new Test(); $string = 'Howdy'; $test->setVar($string); $test->getVar(); I get Var = Howdy However, this is the flow I would like: $test = new Test(); $test->setVar($string); $string = 'Hello'; $test->getVar(); $string = 'Goodbye'; $test->getVar(); Expected output to be Var = Hello Var = Goodbye I don't know what the correct naming of this would be, and I've tried using references to the original variable but no luck. I've come across this in the past, with the PDO prepared statements, see Example #2 $stmt = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO REGISTRY (name, value) VALUES (?, ?)"); $stmt->bindParam(1, $name); $stmt->bindParam(2, $value); // insert one row $name = 'one'; $value = 1; $stmt->execute(); // insert another row with different values $name = 'two'; $value = 2; $stmt->execute(); I know I can change the variable to public and do the following, but it isn't quite the same as how the PDO class handles it, and I'm really looking to mimic that behaviour. $test = new Test(); $test->setVar($string); $test->var = 'Hello'; $test->getVar(); $test->var = 'Goodbye'; $test->getVar(); Any help, ideas, pointers, or advice would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

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• Converting my lightweight MySQL DB wrapper into MySQLi. Pesky Problems

  - by Chaplin

  Here is the original code: http://pastebin.com/DNxtmApY. I'm not that interested in prepared statements at the moment, I just want this wrapper updating to MySQLi so once MySQL becomes depreciated I haven't got to update a billion websites. Here is my attempt at converting to MySQLi. <? $database_host = "127.0.0.1"; $database_user = "user"; $database_pass = "pass"; $database_name = "name"; $db = new database($database_host, $database_user, $database_pass, $database_name); class database { var $link, $result; function database($host, $user, $pass, $db) { $this->link = mysqli_connect($host, $user, $pass, $db) or $this->error(); mysqli_select_db($db, $this->link) or $this->error(); } function query($query) { $this->result = mysqli_query($query, $this->link) or $this->error(); $this->_query_count++; return $this->result; } function countRows($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_num_rows($result); } function fetch($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_fetch_array($result); } function fetch_num($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_fetch_array($result, mysqli_NUM); } function fetch_assoc($result = "") { if ( empty( $result ) ) $result = $this->result; return mysqli_fetch_array($result, mysqli_ASSOC); } function escape($str) { return mysqli_real_escape_string($str); } function error() { if ( $_GET["debug"] == 1 ){ die(mysqi_error()); } else { echo "Error in db code"; } } } function sanitize($data) { //apply stripslashes if magic_quotes_gpc is enabled if(get_magic_quotes_gpc()) $data = stripslashes($data); // a mysqli connection is required before using this function $data = trim(mysqli_real_escape_string($data)); return $data; } However it chucks all sorts of errors: Warning: mysql_query(): Access denied for user 'www-data'@'localhost' (using password: NO) in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/user.php on line 7 Warning: mysql_query(): A link to the server could not be established in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/user.php on line 7 Warning: mysql_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be resource, boolean given in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/user.php on line 8 Warning: mysqli_fetch_array() expects parameter 1 to be mysqli_result, object given in /home/count/Workspace/lib/classes/database.php on line 31

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• Which programming idiom to choose for this open source library?

  - by Walkman

  I have an interesting question about which programming idiom is easier to use for beginner developers writing concrete file parsing classes. I'm developing an open source library, which one of the main functionality is to parse plain text files and get structured information from them. All of the files contains the same kind of information, but can be in different formats like XML, plain text (each of them is structured differently), etc. There are a common set of information pieces which is the same in all (e.g. player names, table names, some id numbers) There are formats which are very similar to each other, so it's possible to define a common Base class for them to facilitate concrete format parser implementations. So I can clearly define base classes like SplittablePlainTextFormat, XMLFormat, SeparateSummaryFormat, etc. Each of them hints the kind of structure they aim to parse. All of the concrete classes should have the same information pieces, no matter what. To be useful at all, this library needs to define at least 30-40 of these parsers. A couple of them are more important than others (obviously the more popular formats). Now my question is, which is the best programming idiom to choose to facilitate the development of these concrete classes? Let me explain: I think imperative programming is easy to follow even for beginners, because the flow is fixed, the statements just come one after another. Right now, I have this: class SplittableBaseFormat: def parse(self): "Parses the body of the hand history, but first parse header if not yet parsed." if not self.header_parsed: self.parse_header() self._parse_table() self._parse_players() self._parse_button() self._parse_hero() self._parse_preflop() self._parse_street('flop') self._parse_street('turn') self._parse_street('river') self._parse_showdown() self._parse_pot() self._parse_board() self._parse_winners() self._parse_extra() self.parsed = True So the concrete parser need to define these methods in order in any way they want. Easy to follow, but takes longer to implement each individual concrete parser. So what about declarative? In this case Base classes (like SplittableFormat and XMLFormat) would do the heavy lifting based on regex and line/node number declarations in the concrete class, and concrete classes have no code at all, just line numbers and regexes, maybe other kind of rules. Like this: class SplittableFormat: def parse_table(): "Parses TABLE_REGEX and get information" # set attributes here def parse_players(): "parses PLAYER_REGEX and get information" # set attributes here class SpecificFormat1(SplittableFormat): TABLE_REGEX = re.compile('^(?P<table_name>.*) other info \d* etc') TABLE_LINE = 1 PLAYER_REGEX = re.compile('^Player \d: (?P<player_name>.*) has (.*) in chips.') PLAYER_LINE = 16 class SpecificFormat2(SplittableFormat): TABLE_REGEX = re.compile(r'^Tournament #(\d*) (?P<table_name>.*) other info2 \d* etc') TABLE_LINE = 2 PLAYER_REGEX = re.compile(r'^Seat \d: (?P<player_name>.*) has a stack of (\d*)') PLAYER_LINE = 14 So if I want to make it possible for non-developers to write these classes the way to go seems to be the declarative way, however, I'm almost certain I can't eliminate the declarations of regexes, which clearly needs (senior :D) programmers, so should I care about this at all? Do you think it matters to choose one over another or doesn't matter at all? Maybe if somebody wants to work on this project, they will, if not, no matter which idiom I choose. Can I "convert" non-programmers to help developing these? What are your observations? Other considerations: Imperative will allow any kind of work; there is a simple flow, which they can follow but inside that, they can do whatever they want. It would be harder to force a common interface with imperative because of this arbitrary implementations. Declarative will be much more rigid, which is a bad thing, because formats might change over time without any notice. Declarative will be harder for me to develop and takes longer time. Imperative is already ready to release. I hope a nice discussion will happen in this thread about programming idioms regarding which to use when, which is better for open source projects with different scenarios, which is better for wide range of developer skills. TL; DR: Parsing different file formats (plain text, XML) They contains same kind of information Target audience: non-developers, beginners Regex probably cannot be avoided 30-40 concrete parser classes needed Facilitate coding these concrete classes Which idiom is better?

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• Advanced Data Source Engine coming to Telerik Reporting Q1 2010

  This is the final blog post from the pre-release series. In it we are going to share with you some of the updates coming to our reporting solution in Q1 2010. A new Declarative Data Source Engine will be added to Telerik Reporting, that will allow full control over data management, and deliver significant gains in rendering performance and memory consumption. Some of the engines new features will be: Data source parameters - those parameters will be used to limit data retrieved from the data source to just the data needed for the report. Data source parameters are processed on the data source side, however only queried data is fetched to the reporting engine, rather than the full data source. This leads to lower memory consumption, because data operations are performed on queried data only, rather than on all data. As a result, only the queried data needs to be stored in the memory vs. the whole dataset, which was the case with the old approach Support for stored procedures - they will assist in achieving a consistent implementation of logic across applications, and are especially practical for performing repetitive tasks. A stored procedure stores the SQL statements and logic, which can then be executed in different reports and/or applications. Stored Procedures will not only save development time, but they will also improve performance, because each stored procedure is compiled on the data base server once, and then is reutilized. In Telerik Reporting, the stored procedure will also be parameterized, where elements of the SQL statement will be bound to parameters. These parameterized SQL queries will be handled through the data source parameters, and are evaluated at run time. Using parameterized SQL queries will improve the performance and decrease the memory footprint of your application, because they will be applied directly on the database server and only the necessary data will be downloaded on the middle tier or client machine; Calculated fields through expressions - with the help of the new reporting engine you will be able to use field values in formulas to come up with a calculated field. A calculated field is a user defined field that is computed "on the fly" and does not exist in the data source, but can perform calculations using the data of the data source object it belongs to. Calculated fields are very handy for adding frequently used formulas to your reports; Improved performance and optimized in-memory OLAP engine - the new data source will come with several improvements in how aggregates are calculated, and memory is managed. As a result, you may experience between 30% (for simpler reports) and 400% (for calculation-intensive reports) in rendering performance, and about 50% decrease in memory consumption. Full design time support through wizards - Declarative data sources are a great advance and will save developers countless hours of coding. In Q1 2010, and true to Telerik Reportings essence, using the new data source engine and its features requires little to no coding, because we have extended most of the wizards to support the new functionality. The newly extended wizards are available in VS2005/VS2008/VS2010 design-time. More features will be revealed on the product's what's new page when the new version is officially released in a few days. Also make sure you attend the free webinar on Thursday, March 11th that will be dedicated to the updates in Telerik Reporting Q1 2010. 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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• Surface Review from Canadian Guy Who Didn&rsquo;t Go To Build

  - by D'Arcy Lussier

  I didn’t go to Build last week, opted to stay home and go trick-or-treating with my daughters instead. I had many friends that did go however, and I was able to catch up with James Chambers last night to hear about the conference and play with his Surface RT and Nokia 920 WP8 devices. I’ve been using Windows 8 for a while now, so I’m not going to comment on OS features – lots of posts out there on that already. Let me instead comment on the hardware itself. Size and Weight The size of the tablet was awesome. The Windows 8 tablet I’m using to reference this against is the one from Build 2011 (Samsung model) we received as well as my iPad. The Surface RT was taller and slightly heavier than the iPad, but smaller and lighter than the Samsung Win 8 tablet. I still don’t prefer the default wide-screen format, but the Surface RT is much more usable even when holding it by the long edge than the Samsung. Build Quality No issues with the build quality, it seemed very solid. But…y’know, people have been going on about how the Surface RT materials are so much better than the plastic feeling models Samsung and others put out. I didn’t really notice *that* much difference in that regard with the Surface RT. Interesting feature I didn’t expect – the Windows button on the device is touch-sensitive, not a mechanical one. I didn’t try video or anything, so I can’t comment on the media experience. The kickstand is a great feature, and the way the Surface RT connects to the combo case/keyboard touchcover is very slick while being incredibly simple. What About That Touch Cover Keyboard? So first, kudos to Microsoft on the touch cover! This thing was insanely responsive (including the trackpad) and really delivered on the thinness I was expecting. With that said, and remember this is with very limited use, I would probably go with the Type Cover instead of the Touch Cover. The difference is buttons. The Touch Cover doesn’t actually have “buttons” on the keyboard – hence why its a “touch” cover. You tap on a key to type it. James tells me after a while you get used to it and you can type very fast. For me, I just prefer the tactile feeling of a button being pressed/depressed. But still – typing on the touch case worked very well. Would I Buy One? So after playing with it, did I cry out in envy and rage that I wasn’t able to get one of these machines? Did I curse my decision to collect Halloween candy with my kids instead of being at Build getting hardware? Well – no. Even with the keyboard, the Surface RT is not a business laptop replacement device. While Office does come included, you can’t install any other applications outside of Windows Store Apps. This might be limiting depending on what other applications you need to have available on your computer. Surface RT is a great personal computing device, as long as you’re not already invested in a competing ecosystem. I’ve heard people make statements that they’re going to replace all the iPads in their homes with Surface tablets. In my home, that’s not feasible – my wife and daughters have amassed quite a collection of games via iTunes. We also buy all our music via iTunes as well, so even with the XBox streaming music service now available we’re still tied quite tightly to iTunes. So who is the Surface RT for? In my mind, if you’re looking for a solid, compact device that provides basic business functionality (read: email) or if you have someone that needs a very simple to use computer for email, web browsing, etc., then Surface RT is a great option. For me, I’m waiting on the Samsung Ativ Smart PC Pro and am curious to see what changes the Surface Pro will come with.

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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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• Tool to convert blogger.com content to dasBlog

  - by Daniel Moth

  Due to blogger.com dropping FTP support, I've had to move my blog. If you are in a similar situation, this post will help you by showing you the necessary steps to take. Goals No loss on blog posts, comments AND all existing permalinks continue to work (redirect to the correct place). Steps Download the XML files corresponding to your blogger.com content and store them in a folder. Install and configure dasBlog on your local machine. Configure your web.config file (will need updating once you run step 4). Use the tool I describe further down to generate the content and place it at the right place. Test your site locally. Once you are happy, repeat step 2 on your hosting provider of choice. Remember to copy up your dasBlog theme folder if you created one. Copy up the local web.config file and the XML dasBlog content files generated by the tool of step 4. Test your site on the server. Once you are happy, go live (following instructions from your hoster). In my case, I gave the nameservers from my new hoster to my existing domain registrar and they made the switch. Tool (code) At step 4 above I referred to a tool. That is an overstatement, it is simply one 450-line C#code file that you can download here: BloggerToDasBlog.cs. I used this from a .NET 2.0 console app (and I run it under the Visual Studio debugger, i.e. F5) like this: Program.cs. The console app referenced the dasBlog 2.3 ASP.NET Blogging Engine i.e. the newtelligence.DasBlog.Runtime.dll assembly. Let me describe what the code does: Input: A path to a folder where the XML files from the old blogger.com blog reside. It can deal with both types of XML file. A full file path to a file where it creates XML redirect input (as required by the rewriteMap mentioned here). The blog URL. The author's email. The blog author name. A path to an empty folder where the new XML dasBlog content files will get created. The subfolder name used after the domain name in the URL. The 3 reg ex patterns to use. You can use the same as mine, but will need to tweak the monthly_archive rule. Again, to see what values I passed for all the above, see my Program.cs file. Output: It creates dasBlog XML files in the folder specified. It creates those by parsing the old blogger.com XML files that reside in the folder specified. After that is generated, copy it to the "Content" folder under your dasBlog installation. It creates an XML file with a single ignorable root element and a bunch of inner XML elements. You can copy paste these in the web.config file as discussed in this post. Other notes: For each blog post, it detects outgoing links to itself (i.e. to the same blog), and rewrites those to point to the new URLs. So internal links do not rely on the web.config redirects. It deals with duplicate post titles; it does not deal with triplicates and higher. Removes all references to blogger.com (e.g. references to [email protected], the injected hidden footer for statistics that each blog post has and others – see the code). It creates a lot of diagnostic output (in the Output window) and indeed the documentation for the code is in the Debug.WriteLine statements ;) This is not code I will maintain or support – it was a throwaway one-use project that I am sharing here as a starting point for anyone finding themselves in the same boat that I was. Enjoy "as is". Comments about this post welcome at the original blog.

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• Great Customer Service Example

  - by MightyZot

  A few days ago I wrote about what I consider a poor customer service interaction with TiVo, a company that I have been faithful to for the past 12 years or so. In that post I talked about how they helped me, but I felt like I was doing something wrong at the end of the call – when in reality I was just following through with an offer that TiVo made possible through my cable company. Today I had a wonderful customer service interaction with American Express, another company that I have been loyal to for many years.(I am a Gold Card member.) I like my Amex card because I can use it for big purchases and it forces me to pay them off at the end of the month. Well, the reality is that I’m not always so good at doing that, so sometimes my payments are over a couple of months.  :) A few days ago I received an email from “American Express” fraud detection. The email stated that I should call a toll free number and have the last four digits of my card handy. I grew up during the BBS era with some creative and somewhat mischievous friends. I’ve learned to be extremely cautious with regard to my online life! So, I did what you would expect…I sent them a nice reply that said “Go screw yourself.” For the past couple of days someone has been trying to call me and I assumed it was the same prankster trying to get the last four digits of my card. The last caller left a message indicating that they were from American Express and they wanted to talk to me about my card. After looking up their customer service numbers on the www.americanexpress.com web site, I called and was put through to the fraud detection group. The rep explained that there were some charges on my wife’s card that did not fit our purchase profile. She went through each charge and, for the most part, they looked like charges my wife may have made. My wife had asked to use the card for some Christmas shopping during the same timeframe as the charges. The American Express rep very politely explained that these looked out of character to her. She continued through the charges. She listed a charge for $160 – at this point my adrenaline started kicking in. My wife said she was going to charge about $25 or $30 dollars, not $160. Next, the rep listed a charge for over $1200. Uh oh!! Now I know that my account has been compromised. I informed the rep that we definitely did not make those charges. She replied with, “that’s ok Mr Pope, we declined those charges as well as some others.” We went through the pending charges and there were a couple more that were questionable. The rep very patiently waited while I called my wife on my office phone to verify the charges. Sure enough, my wife had not ordered anything from Netflix or purchased anything with Yahoo Wallet! “No problem Mr Pope, we will remove those charges as well.” “We are going to cancel your wife’s card and send her a new one. She will receive it by 7pm tomorrow via Federal Express. Please watch your statements over the next couple of months. If you notice anything fishy, give us a call and we will take care of it for you.” (Wow, I’m thinking to myself!) “Is there anything else I can help you with Mr Pope?” “Nope, thank you very much for catching this so early and declining those charges!”, I said smiling. Apparently she could hear me smiling on the other end of the phone line because she replied with “keep smiling Mr Pope and have a good rest of your week.” Now THAT’s customer service!  Thank you American Express!!! I shall remain an ever faithful customer. Interesting…

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• What’s the use of code reuse?

  - by Tony Davis

  All great developers write reusable code, don’t they? Well, maybe, but as with all statements regarding what “great” developers do or don’t do, it’s probably an over-simplification. A novice programmer, in particular, will encounter in the literature a general assumption of the importance of code reusability. They spend time worrying about DRY (don’t repeat yourself), moving logic into specific “helper” modules that they can then reuse, agonizing about the minutiae of the class structure, inheritance and interface design that will promote easy reuse. Unfortunately, writing code specifically for reuse often leads to complicated object hierarchies and inheritance models that are anything but reusable. If, instead, one strives to write simple code units that are highly maintainable and perform a single function, in a concise, isolated fashion then the potential for reuse simply “drops out” as a natural by-product. Programmers, of course, care about these principles, about encapsulation and clean interfaces that don’t expose inner workings and allow easy pluggability. This is great when it helps with the maintenance and development of code but how often, in practice, do we actually reuse our code? Most DBAs and database developers are familiar with the practical reasons for the limited opportunities to reuse database code and its potential downsides. However, surely elsewhere in our code base, reuse happens often. After all, we can all name examples, such as date/time handling modules, which if we write with enough care we can plug in to many places. I spoke to a developer just yesterday who looked me in the eye and told me that in 30+ years as a developer (a successful one, I’d add), he’d never once reused his own code. As I sat blinking in disbelief, he explained that, of course, he always thought he would reuse it. He’d often agonized over its design, certain that he was creating code of great significance that he and other generations would reuse, with grateful tears misting their eyes. In fact, it never happened. He had in his head, most of the algorithms he needed and would simply write the code from scratch each time, refining the algorithms and tailoring the code to meet the specific requirements. It was, he said, simply quicker to do that than dig out the old code, check it, correct the mistakes, and adapt it. Is this a common experience, or just a strange anomaly? Viewed in a certain light, building code with a focus on reusability seems to hark to a past age where people built cars and music systems with the idea that someone else could and would replace and reuse the parts. Technology advances so rapidly that the next time you need the “same” code, it’s likely a new technique, or a whole new language, has emerged in the meantime, better equipped to tackle the task. Maybe we should be less fearful of the idea that we could write code well suited to the system requirements, but with little regard for reuse potential, and then rewrite a better version from scratch the next time.

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• Who should ‘own’ the Enterprise Architecture?

  - by Michael Glas

  I recently had a discussion around who should own an organization’s Enterprise Architecture. It was spawned by an article titled “Busting CIO Myths” in CIO magazine1 where the author interviewed Jeanne Ross, director of MIT's Center for Information Systems Research and co-author of books on enterprise architecture, governance and IT value.In the article Jeanne states that companies need to acknowledge that "architecture says everything about how the company is going to function, operate, and grow; the only person who can own that is the CEO". "If the CEO doesn't accept that role, there really can be no architecture."The first question that came up when talking about ownership was whether you are talking about a person, role, or organization (there are pros and cons to each, but in general, I like to assign accountability to as few people as possible). After much thought and discussion, I came to the conclusion that we were answering the wrong question. Instead of talking about ownership we were talking about responsibility and accountability, and the answer varies depending on the particular role of the organization’s Enterprise Architecture and the activities of the enterprise architect(s).Instead of looking at just who owns the architecture, think about what the person/role/organization should do. This is one possible scenario (thanks to Bob Covington): The CEO should own the Enterprise Strategy which guides the business architecture. The Business units should own the business processes and information which guide the business, application and information architectures. The CIO should own the technology, IT Governance and the management of the application and information architectures/implementations. The EA Governance Team owns the EA process.  If EA is done well, the governance team consists of both IT and the business. While there are many more roles and responsibilities than listed here, it starts to provide a clearer understanding of ‘ownership’. Now back to Jeanne’s statement that the CEO should own the architecture. If you agree with the statement about what the architecture is (and I do agree), then ultimately the CEO does need to own it. However, what we ended up with was not really ownership, but more statements around roles and responsibilities tied to aspects of the enterprise architecture. You can debate the semantics of ownership vs. responsibility and accountability, but in the end the important thing is to come to a clearer understanding that is easily communicated (and hopefully measured) around the question “Who owns the Enterprise Architecture”.The next logical step . . . create a RACI matrix that details the findings . . . but that is a step that each organization needs to do on their own as it will vary based on current EA maturity, company culture, and a variety of other factors. Who ‘owns’ the Enterprise Architecture in your organization? 1 CIO Magazine Article (Busting CIO Myths): http://www.cio.com/article/704943/Busting_CIO_Myths Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; line-height:115%; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}

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• Session Update from IASA 2010

  - by [email protected]

  Below: Tom Kristensen, senior vice president at Marsh US Consumer, and Roger Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, senior director of insurance strategy, Oracle Insurance. Tom and Roger participated in a panel discussion on policy administration systems this week at IASA 2010. This week was the 82nd Annual IASA Educational Conference & Business Show held in Grapevine, Texas. While attending the conference, I had the pleasure of serving as a panelist in one of many of the outstanding sessions conducted this year. The session - entitled "Achieving Business Agility and Promoting Growth with a Modern Policy Administration System" - included industry experts Steve Forte from OneShield, Mike Sciole of IFG Companies, and Tom Kristensen, senior vice president at Marsh US Consumer. The session was conducted as a panel discussion and focused on how insurers can leverage best practices to mitigate risk while enabling rapid product innovation through a modern policy administration system. The panelists offered insight into business and technical challenges for both Life & Annuity and Property & Casualty carriers. The session had three primary learning objectives: Identifying how replacing a legacy system with a more modern policy administration solution can deliver agility and growth Identifying how processes and system should be re-engineered or replaced in order to improve speed-to-market and product support Uncovering how to leverage best practices to mitigate risk during a migration to a new platform Tom Kristensen, who is an industry veteran with over 20 years of experience, was able was able to offer a unique perspective as a business process outsourcer (BPO). Marsh US Consumer is currently implementing both the Oracle Insurance Policy Administration solution and the Oracle Revenue Management and Billing platform while at the same time implementing a new BPO customer. Tom offered insight on the need to replace their aging systems and Marsh's ability to drive new products and processes with a modern solution. As a best practice, their current project has empowered their business users to play a major role in both the requirements gathering and configuration phases. Tom stated that working with a modern solution has also enabled his organization to use a more agile implementation methodology and get hands-on experience with the software earlier in the project. He also indicated that Marsh was encouraged by how quickly it will be able to implement new products, which is another major advantage of a modern rules-based system. One of the more interesting issues was raised by an audience member who asked, "With all the vendor solutions available in North American and across Europe, what is going to make some of them more successful than others and help ensure their long term success?" Panelist Mike Sciole, IFG Companies suggested that carriers do their due diligence and follow a structured evaluation process focusing on vendors who demonstrate they have the "cash to invest in long term R&D" and evaluate audited annual statements for verification. Other panelists suggested that the vendor space will continue to evolve and those with a strong strategy focused on the insurance industry and a solid roadmap will likely separate themselves from the rest. The session concluded with the panelists offering advice about not being afraid to evaluate new modern systems. While migrating to a new platform can be challenging and is typically only undertaken every 15+ years by carriers, the ability to rapidly deploy and manage new products, create consistent processes to better service customers, and the ability to manage their business more effectively, transparently and securely are well worth the effort. Roger A.Soppe, CLU, LUTCF, is the Senior Director of Insurance Strategy, Oracle Insurance.

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