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• Learning content for MCSDs: Web Applications and Windows Store Apps using HTML5

  Recently, I started again to learn for various Microsoft certifications. First candidate on my way to MSCD: Web Applications is the Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3. Motivation to go for a Microsoft exam I guess, this is quite personal but let me briefly describe my intentions to go that exam. First, I'm doing web development since the 1990's. Working with HTML, CSS and Javascript is happening almost daily in my workspace. And honestly, I do not only do 'pure' web development but already integrated several HTML/CSS/Javascript frontend UIs into an existing desktop application (written in Visual FoxPro) inclusive two-way communication and data exchange. Hm, might be an interesting topic for another blog article here... Second, this exam has a very interesting aspect which is listed at the bottom of the exam's details: Credit Toward Certification When you pass Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3, you complete the requirements for the following certification(s): Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3 Specialist Exam 70-480: Programming in HTML5 with JavaScript and CSS3: counts as credit toward the following certification(s): MCSD: Web Applications MCSD: Windows Store Apps using HTML5 So, passing one single exam will earn you specialist certification straight-forward, and opens the path to higher levels of certifications. Preparations and learning path Well, due to a newsletter from Microsoft Learning (MSL) I caught interest in picking up the circumstances and learning materials for this particular exam. As of writing this article there is a promotional / voucher code available which enables you to register for this exam for free! Simply register yourself with or log into your existing account at Prometric, choose the exam for a testing facility near to you and enter the voucher code HTMLJMP (available through 31.03.2013 or while supplies last). Hurry up, there are restrictions... As stated above, I'm already very familiar with web development and the programming flavours involved into this. But of course, it is always good to freshen up your knowledge and reflect on yourself. Microsoft is putting a lot of effort to attract any kind of developers into the 'App Development'. Whether it is for the Windows 8 Store or the Windows Phone 8 Store, doesn't really matter. They simply need more apps. This demand for skilled developers also comes with a nice side-effect: Lots and lots of material to study. During the first couple of hours, I could easily gather high quality preparation material - again for free! Following is just a small list of starting points. If you have more resources, please drop me a message in the comment section, and I'll be glad to update this article accordingly. Developing HTML5 Apps Jump Start This is an accelerated jump start video course on development of HTML5 Apps for Windows 8. There are six modules that are split into two video sessions per module. Very informative and intense course material. This is packed stuff taken from an official preparation course for exam 70-480. Developing Windows Store Apps with HTML5 Jump Start Again, an accelerated preparation video course on Windows 8 Apps. There are six modules with two video sessions each which will catapult you to your exam. This is also related to preps for exam 70-481. Programming Windows 8 Apps with HTML, CSS, and JavaScript Kraig Brockschmidt delves into the ups and downs of Windows 8 App development over 800+ pages. Great eBook to read, study, and to practice the samples - best of all, it's for free. codeSHOW() This is a Windows 8 HTML/JS project with the express goal of demonstrating simple development concepts for the Windows 8 platform. Code, code and more code... absolutely great stuff to study and practice. Microsoft Virtual Academy I already wrote about the MVA in a previous article. Well, if you haven't registered yourself yet, now is the time. The list is not complete for sure, but this might keep you busy for at least one or even two weeks to go through the material. Please don't hesitate to add more resources in the comment section. Right now, I'm already through all videos once, and digging my way through chapter 4 of Kraig's book. Additional material - Pluralsight Apart from those free online resources, I also following some courses from the excellent library of Pluralsight. They already have their own section for Windows 8 development, but of course, you get companion material about HTML5, CSS and Javascript in other sections, too. Introduction to Building Windows 8 Applications Building Windows 8 Applications with JavaScript and HTML Selling Windows 8 Apps HTML5 Fundamentals Using HTML5 and CSS3 HTML5 Advanced Topics CSS3 etc... Interesting to see that Michael Palermo provides his course material on multiple platforms. Fantastic! You might also pay a visit to his personal blog. Hm, it just came to my mind that Aaron Skonnard of Pluralsight publishes so-called '24 hours Learning Paths' based on courses available in the course library. Would be interested to see a combination for Windows 8 App development using HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript in the future. Recommended workspace environment Well, you might have guessed it but this requires Windows 8, Visual Studio 2012 Express or another flavour, and a valid Developers License. Due to an MSDN subscription I working on VS 2012 Premium with some additional tools by Telerik. Honestly, the fastest way to get you up and running for Windows 8 App development is the source code archive of codeSHOW(). It does not only give you all source code in general but contains a couple of SDKs like Bing Maps, Microsoft Advertising, Live ID, and Telerik Windows 8 controls... for free! Hint: Get the Windows Phone 8 SDK as well. Don't worry, while you are studying the material for Windows 8 you will be able to leverage from this knowledge to development for the phone platform, too. It takes roughly one to two hours to get your workspace and learning environment, at least this was my time frame due to slow internet connection and an aged spare machine. ;-) Oh, before I forget to mention it, as soon as you're done, go quickly to the Windows Store and search for ClassBrowserPlus. You might not need it ad hoc for your development using HTML5, CSS and Javascript but I think that it is a great developer's utility that enables you to view the properties, methods and events (along with help text) for all Windows 8 classes. It's always good to look behind the scenes and to explore how it is made. Idea: Start/join a learning group The way you learn new things or intensify your knowledge in a certain technology is completely up to your personal preference. Back in my days at the university, we used to meet once or twice a week in a small quiet room to exchange our progress, questions and problems we ran into. In general, I recommend to any software craftsman to lift your butt and get out to exchange with other developers. Personally, I like this approach, as it gives you new points of view and an insight into others' own experience with certain techniques and how they managed to solve tricky issues. Just keep it relaxed and not too formal after all, and you might a have a good time away from your dull office desk. Give your machine a break, too.

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• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt 3)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter.  You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain.  Start with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file).  I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product.  I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs.  One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network.  The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client.  We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably.  Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster.  Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy.  Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner.  Maybe a movie too.  There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied.  Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working.  Maybe next time.  Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC.  Do not give it a gateway.  Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server.  This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network.  You will need all the addresses in the range available.  See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server.  The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later.  For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address.  Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections.  I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller.  If you have never done this, don’t worry.  The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain.  I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD).  .com, .biz., .net, .org  are all TLDs that we know and love.  I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world.  The domain is called MicroAD.  This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process.  You want to accept this option.  The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy.  Add the DHCP Role to the server.  Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients.  Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC.  Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network.  Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope.  You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster.  And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready.  Two more to go. Next comes file sharing.  Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs.  I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder.  I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder.   This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device.  The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose.  Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium.  Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does.  Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file?  That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs.  I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized.  I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder.  I chose a fixed VHD for performance.  I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo.  Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage.  If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why.  Yes, I do have some left over space.  Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL.  As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured.  At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

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• Clustering for Mere Mortals (Pt3)

  - by Geoff N. Hiten

  The Controller Now we get to the meat of the matter.  You want a virtual cluster, the first thing you have to do is create your own portable domain.  IStart with a plain vanilla install of Windows 2003 R2 Standard on a semi-default VM. (1 GB RAM, 2 cores, 2 NICs, 128GB dynamically expanding VHD file).  I chose this because it had the smallest disk and memory footprint of any current supported Microsoft Server product.  I created the VM with a single dynamically expanding VHD, one fixed 16 GB VHD, and two NICs.  One NIC is connected to the outside world and the other one is part of an internal-only network.  The first NIC is set up as a DHCP client.  We will get to the other one later. I actually tried this with Windows 2008 R2, but it failed miserably.  Not sure whether it was 2008 R2 or the fact I tried to use cloned VMs in the cluster.  Clustering is one place where NewSID would really come in handy.  Too bad Microsoft bought and buried it. Load and Patch the OS (hence the need for the outside connection).This is a good time to go get dinner.  Maybe a movie too.  There are close to a hundred patches that need to be downloaded and applied.  Avoiding that mess was why I put so much time into trying to get the 2008 R2 version working.  Maybe next time.  Don’t forget to add the extensions for VMLite (or whatever virtualization product you prefer). Set a fixed IP address on the internal-only NIC.  Do not give it a gateway.  Put the same IP address for the NIC and for the DNS Server.  This IP should be in a range that is never available on your public network.  You will need all the addresses in the range available.  See the previous post for the exact settings I used. I chose 10.97.230.1 as the server.  The rest of the 10.97.230 range is what I will use later.  For the curious, those numbers are based on elements of my home address.  Not truly random, but good enough for this project. Do not bridge the network connections.  I never allowed the cluster nodes direct access to any public network. Format the fixed VHD and leave it alone for now. Promote the VM to a Domain Controller.  If you have never done this, don’t worry.  The only meaningful decision is what to call the new domain.  I prefer a bogus name that does not correspond to a real Top-Level Domain (TLD).  .com, .biz., .net, .org  are all TLDs that we know and love.  I chose .test as the TLD since it is descriptive AND it does not exist in the real world.  The domain is called MicroAD.  This gives me MicroAD.Test as my domain. During the promotion process, you will be prompted to install DNS as part of the Domain creation process.  You want to accept this option.  The installer will automatically assign this DNS server as the authoritative owner of the MicroAD.test DNS domain (not to be confused with the MicroAD.test Active Directory domain.) For the rest of the DCPROMO process, just accept the defaults. Now let’s make our IP address management easy.  Add the DHCP Role to the server.  Add the server (10.97.230.1 in this case) as the default gateway to assign to DHCP clients.  Here is where you have to be VERY careful and bind it ONLY to the Internal NIC.  Trust me, your network admin will NOT like an extra DHCP server “helping” out on her network.  Go ahead and create a range of 10-20 IP Addresses in your scope.  You might find other uses for a pocket domain controller <cough> Mirroring </cough> than just for building a cluster.  And Clustering in SQL 2008 and Windows 2008 R2 fully supports DHCP addresses. Now we have three of the five key roles ready.  Two more to go. Next comes file sharing.  Since your cluster node VMs will not have access to any outside, you have to have some way to get files into these VMs.  I simply go to the root of C: and create a “Shared” folder.  I then share it out and grant full control to “Everyone” to both the share and to the underlying NTFS folder.   This will be immensely useful for Service Packs, demo databases, and any other software that isn’t packaged as an ISO that we can mount to the VM. Finally we need to create a block-level multi-connect storage device.  The kind folks at Starwinds Software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/) graciously gave me a non-expiring demo license for expressly this purpose.  Their iSCSI SAN software lets you create an iSCSI target from nearly any storage medium.  Refreshingly, their product does exactly what they say it does.  Thanks. Remember that 16 GB VHD file?  That is where we are going to carve into our LUNs.  I created an iSCSI folder off the root, just so I can keep everything organized.  I then carved 5 ea. 2 GB iSCSI targets from that folder.  I chose a fixed VHD for performance.  I tried this earlier with a dynamically expanding VHD, but too many layers of abstraction and sparseness combined to make it unusable even for a demo.  Stick with a fixed VHD so there is a one-to-one mapping between abstract and physical storage.  If you read the previous post, you know what I named these iSCSI LUNs and why.  Yes, I do have some left over space.  Always leave yourself room for future growth or options. This gets us up to where we can actually build the nodes and install SQL.  As with most clusters, the real work happens long before the individual nodes get installed and configured.  At least it does if you want the cluster to be a true high-availability platform.

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• Pet Peeves with the Windows Phone 7 Marketplace

  - by Bil Simser

  Have you ever noticed how something things just gnaw at your very being. This is the case with the WP7 marketplace, the Zune software, and the things that drive me batshit crazy with a side of fries. To go. I wanted to share. XBox Live is Not the Centre of the Universe Okay, it’s fine that the Zune software has an XBox live tag for games so can see them clearly but do we really need to have it shoved down our throats. On every click? Click on Games in the marketplace: The first thing that it defaults to on the filters on the right is XBox Live: Okay. Fine. However if you change it (say to Paid) then click onto a title when you come back from that title is the filter still set to Paid? No. It’s back to XBox Live again. Really? Give us a break. If you change to any filter on any other genre then click on the selected title, it doesn’t revert back to anything. It stays on the selection you picked. Let’s be fair here. The Games genre should behave just like every other one. If I pick Paid then when I come back to the list please remember that. Double Dipping On the subject of XBox Live titles, Microsoft (and developers who have an agreement with Microsoft to produce Live titles, which generally rules out indie game developers) is double dipping with regards to exposure of their titles. Here’s the Puzzle and Trivia Game section on the Marketplace for XBox Live titles: And here’s the same category filtered on Paid titles: See the problem? Two indie titles while the rest are XBox Live ones. So while XBL has it’s filter, they also get to showcase their wares in the Paid and Free filters as well. If you’re going to have an XBox Live filter then use it and stop pushing down indie titles until they’re off the screen (on some genres this is already the case). Free and Paid titles should be just that and not include XBox Live ones. If you’re really stoked that people can’t find the Free XBox Live titles vs. the paid ones, then create a Free XBox Live filter and a Paid XBox Live filter. I don’t think we would mind much. Whose Trial is it Anyways? You might notice apps in the marketplace with titles like “My Fart App Professional Lite” or “Silicon Lamb Spleen Builder Free”. When you submit and app to the marketplace it can either be free or paid. If it’s a paid app you also have the option to submit it with Trial capabilities. It’s up to you to decide what you offer in the trial version but trial versions can be purchased from within the app so after someone trys out your app (for free) and wants to unlock the Super Secret Obama Spy Ring Level, they can just go to the marketplace from your app (if you built that functionality in) and upgrade to the paid version. However it creates a rift of sorts when it comes to visibility. Some developers go the route of the paid app with a trial version, others decide to submit *two* apps instead of one. One app is the “Free” or “Lite” verions and the other is the paid version. Why go to the hassle of submitting two apps when you can just create a trial version in the same app? Again, visibility. There’s no way to tell Paid apps with Trial versions and ones without (it’s an option, you don’t have to provide trial versions, although I think it’s a good idea). However there is a way to see the Free apps from the Paid ones so some submit the two apps and have the Free version have links to buy the paid one (again through the Marketplace tasks in the API). What we as developers need for visibility is a new filter. Trial. That’s it. It would simply filter on Paid apps that have trial capabilities and surface up those apps just like the free ones. If Microsoft added this filter to the marketplace, it would eliminate the need for people to submit their “Free” and “Lite” versions and make it easier for the developer not to have to maintain two systems. I mean, is it really that hard? Can’t be any more difficult than the XBox Live Filter that’s already there. Location is Everything The last thing on my bucket list is about location. When I launch Zune I’m running in my native location setting, Canada. What’s great is that I navigate to the Travel Tools section where I have one of my apps and behold the splendour that I see: There are my apps in the number 1 and number 4 slot for top selling in that category. I show it to my wife to make up for the sleepless nights writing this stuff and we dance around and celebrate. Then I change my location on my operation system to United States and re-launch Zune. WTF? My flight app has slipped to the 10th spot (I’m only showing 4 across here out of the 7 in Zune) and my border check app that was #1 is now in the 32nd spot! End of celebration. Not only is relevance being looked at here, I value the comments people make on may apps as do most developers. I want to respond to them and show them that I’m listening. The next version of my border app will provide multiple camera angles. However when I’m running in my native Canada location, I only see two reviews. Changing over to United States I see fourteen! While there are tools out there to provide with you a unified view, I shouldn’t have to rely on them. My own Zune desktop software should allow me to see everything. I realize that some developers will submit an app and only target it for some locations and that’s their choice. However I shouldn’t have to jump through hoops to see what apps are ahead of mine, or see people comments and ratings. Another proposal. Either unify the marketplace (i.e. when I’m looking at it show me everything combined) or let me choose a filter. I think the first option might be difficult as you’re trying to average out top selling apps across all markets and have to deal with some apps that have been omitted from some markets. Although I think you could come up with a set of use cases that would handle that, maybe that’s too much work. At the very least, let us developers view the markets in a drop down or something from within the Zune desktop. Having to shut down Zune, change our location, and re-launch Zune to see other perspectives is just too onerous. A Call to Action These are just one mans opinion. Do you agree? Disagree? Feel hungry for a bacon sandwich? Let everyone know via the comments below. Perhaps someone from Microsoft will be reading and take some of these ideas under advisement. Maybe not, but at least let’s get the word out that we really want to see some change. Egypt can do it, why not WP7 developers!

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• ANTS Memory Profiler 7.0

  - by James Michael Hare

  I had always been a fan of ANTS products (Reflector is absolutely invaluable, and their performance profiler is great as well – very easy to use!), so I was curious to see what the ANTS Memory Profiler could show me. Background While a performance profiler will track how much time is typically spent in each unit of code, a memory profiler gives you much more detail on how and where your memory is being consumed and released in a program. As an example, I’d been working on a data access layer at work to call a market data web service.  This web service would take a list of symbols to quote and would return back the quote data.  To help consolidate the thousands of web requests per second we get and reduce load on the web services, we implemented a 5-second cache of quote data.  Not quite long enough to where customers will typically notice a quote go “stale”, but just long enough to be able to collapse multiple quote requests for the same symbol in a short period of time. A 5-second cache may not sound like much, but it actually pays off by saving us roughly 42% of our web service calls, while still providing relatively up-to-date information.  The question is whether or not the extra memory involved in maintaining the cache was worth it, so I decided to fire up the ANTS Memory Profiler and take a look at memory usage. First Impressions The main thing I’ve always loved about the ANTS tools is their ease of use.  Pretty much everything is right there in front of you in a way that makes it easy for you to find what you need with little digging required.  I’ve worked with other, older profilers before (that shall remain nameless other than to hint it was created by a very large chip maker) where it was a mind boggling experience to figure out how to do simple tasks. Not so with AMP.  The opening dialog is very straightforward.  You can choose from here whether to debug an executable, a web application (either in IIS or from VS’s web development server), windows services, etc. So I chose a .NET Executable and navigated to the build location of my test harness.  Then began profiling. At this point while the application is running, you can see a chart of the memory as it ebbs and wanes with allocations and collections.  At any given point in time, you can take snapshots (to compare states) zoom in, or choose to stop at any time.  Snapshots Taking a snapshot also gives you a breakdown of the managed memory heaps for each generation so you get an idea how many objects are staying around for extended periods of time (as an object lives and survives collections, it gets promoted into higher generations where collection becomes less frequent). Generating a snapshot brings up an analysis view with very handy graphs that show your generation sizes.  Almost all my memory is in Generation 1 in the managed memory component of the first graph, which is good news to me, because Gen 2 collections are much rarer.  I once3 made the mistake once of caching data for 30 minutes and found it didn’t get collected very quick after I released my reference because it had been promoted to Gen 2 – doh! Analysis It looks like (from the second pie chart) that the majority of the allocations were in the string class.  This also is expected for me because the majority of the memory allocated is in the web service responses, so it doesn’t seem the entities I’m adapting to (to prevent being too tightly coupled to the web service proxy classes, which can change easily out from under me) aren’t taking a significant portion of memory. I also appreciate that they have clear summary text in key places such as “No issues with large object heap fragmentation were detected”.  For novice users, this type of summary information can be critical to getting them to use a tool and develop a good working knowledge of it. There is also a handy link at the bottom for “What to look for on the summary” which loads a web page of help on key points to look for. Clicking over to the session overview, it’s easy to compare the samples at each snapshot to see how your memory is growing, shrinking, or staying relatively the same.  Looking at my snapshots, I’m pretty happy with the fact that memory allocation and heap size seems to be fairly stable and in control: Once again, you can check on the large object heap, generation one heap, and generation two heap across each snapshot to spot trends. Back on the analysis tab, we can go to the [Class List] button to get an idea what classes are making up the majority of our memory usage.  As was little surprise to me, System.String was the clear majority of my allocations, though I found it surprising that the System.Reflection.RuntimeMehtodInfo came in second.  I was curious about this, so I selected it and went into the [Instance Categorizer].  This view let me see where these instances to RuntimeMehtodInfo were coming from. So I scrolled back through the graph, and discovered that these were being held by the System.ServiceModel.ChannelFactoryRefCache and I was satisfied this was just an artifact of my WCF proxy. I also like that down at the bottom of the Instance Categorizer it gives you a series of filters and offers to guide you on which filter to use based on the problem you are trying to find.  For example, if I suspected a memory leak, I might try to filter for survivors in growing classes.  This means that for instances of a class that are growing in memory (more are being created than cleaned up), which ones are survivors (not collected) from garbage collection.  This might allow me to drill down and find places where I’m holding onto references by mistake and not freeing them! Finally, if you want to really see all your instances and who is holding onto them (preventing collection), you can go to the “Instance Retention Graph” which creates a graph showing what references are being held in memory and who is holding onto them. Visual Studio Integration Of course, VS has its own profiler built in – and for a free bundled profiler it is quite capable – but AMP gives a much cleaner and easier-to-use experience, and when you install it you also get the option of letting it integrate directly into VS. So once you go back into VS after installation, you’ll notice an ANTS menu which lets you launch the ANTS profiler directly from Visual Studio.   Clicking on one of these options fires up the project in the profiler immediately, allowing you to get right in.  It doesn’t integrate with the Visual Studio windows themselves (like the VS profiler does), but still the plethora of information it provides and the clear and concise manner in which it presents it makes it well worth it. Summary If you like the ANTS series of tools, you shouldn’t be disappointed with the ANTS Memory Profiler.  It was so easy to use that I was able to jump in with very little product knowledge and get the information I was looking it for. I’ve used other profilers before that came with 3-inch thick tomes that you had to read in order to get anywhere with the tool, and this one is not like that at all.  It’s built for your everyday developer to get in and find their problems quickly, and I like that! Tweet Technorati Tags: Influencers,ANTS,Memory,Profiler

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• Create and Backup Multiple Profiles in Google Chrome

  - by Asian Angel

  Other browsers such as Firefox and SeaMonkey allow you to have multiple profiles but not Chrome…at least not until now. If you want to use multiple profiles and create backups for them then join us as we look at Google Chrome Backup. Note: There is a paid version of this program available but we used the free version for our article. Google Chrome Backup in Action During the installation process you will run across this particular window. It will have a default user name filled in as shown here…you will not need to do anything except click on Next to continue installing the program. When you start the program for the first time this is what you will see. Your default Chrome Profile will already be visible in the window. A quick look at the Profile Menu… In the Tools Menu you can go ahead and disable the Start program at Windows Startup setting…the only time that you will need the program running is if you are creating or restoring a profile. When you create a new profile the process will start with this window. You can access an Advanced Options mode if desired but most likely you will not need it. Here is a look at the Advanced Options mode. It is mainly focused on adding Switches to the new Chrome Shortcut. The drop-down menu for the Switches available… To create your new profile you will need to choose: A profile location A profile name (as you type/create the profile name it will automatically be added to the Profile Path) Make certain that the Create a new shortcut to access new profile option is checked For our example we decided to try out the Disable plugins switch option… Click OK to create the new profile. Once you have created your new profile, you will find a new shortcut on the Desktop. Notice that the shortcut’s name will be Google Chrome + profile name that you chose. Note: On our system we were able to move the new shortcut to the “Start Menu” without problems. Clicking on our new profile’s shortcut opened up a fresh and clean looking instance of Chrome. Just out of curiosity we did decide to check the shortcut to see if the Switch set up correctly. Unfortunately it did not in this instance…so your mileage with the Switches may vary. This was just a minor quirk and nothing to get excited or upset over…especially considering that you can create multiple profiles so easily. After opening up our default profile of Chrome you can see the individual profile icons (New & Default in order) sitting in the Taskbar side-by-side. And our two profiles open at the same time on our Desktop… Backing Profiles Up For the next part of our tests we decided to create a backup for each of our profiles. Starting the wizard will allow you to choose between creating or restoring a profile. Note: To create or restore a backup click on Run Wizard. When you reach the second part of the process you can go with the Backup default profile option or choose a particular one from a drop-down list using the Select a profile to backup option. We chose to backup the Default Profile first… In the third part of the process you will need to select a location to save the profile to. Once you have selected the location you will see the Target Path as shown here. You can choose your own name for the backup file…we decided to go with the default name instead since it contained the backup’s calendar date. A very nice feature is the ability to have the cache cleared before creating the backup. We clicked on Yes…choose the option that best suits your needs. Once you have chosen either Yes or No the backup will then be created. Click Finish to complete the process. The backup file for our Default Profile at 14.0 MB in size. And the backup file for our Chrome Fresh Profile…2.81 MB. Restoring Profiles For the final part of our tests we decided to do a Restore. Select Restore and click Next to get the process started. In the second step you will need to browse for the Profile Backup File (and select the desired profile if you have created multiples). For our example we decided to overwrite the original Default Profile with the Chrome Fresh Profile. The third step lets you choose where to restore the chosen profile to…you can go with the Default Profile or choose one from the drop-down list using the Restore to a selected profile option. The final step will get you on your way to restoring the chosen profile. The program will conduct a check regarding the previous/old profile and ask if you would like to proceed with overwriting it. Definitely nice in case you change your mind at the last moment. Clicking Yes will finish the restoration. The only other odd quirk that we noticed while using the program was that the Next Button did not function after restoring the profile. You can easily get around the problem by clicking to close the window. Which one is which? After the restore process we had identical twins. Conclusion If you have been looking for a way to create multiple profiles in Google Chrome, then you might want to add this program to your system. Links Download Google Chrome Backup Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Backup and Restore Firefox Profiles EasilyBackup Different Browsers Easily with FavBackupBackup Your Browser with the New FavBackupStupid Geek Tricks: Compare Your Browser’s Memory Usage with Google ChromeHow to Make Google Chrome Your Default Browser TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows Tech Fanboys Field Guide Check these Awesome Chrome Add-ons iFixit Offers Gadget Repair Manuals Online Vista style sidebar for Windows 7 Create Nice Charts With These Web Based Tools Track Daily Goals With 42Goals

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• ANTS CLR and Memory Profiler In Depth Review (Part 2 of 2 &ndash; Memory Profiler)

  - by ToStringTheory

  One of the things that people might not know about me, is my obsession to make my code as efficient as possible. Many people might not realize how much of a task or undertaking that this might be, but it is surely a task as monumental as climbing Mount Everest, except this time it is a challenge for the mind… In trying to make code efficient, there are many different factors that play a part – size of project or solution, tiers, language used, experience and training of the programmer, technologies used, maintainability of the code – the list can go on for quite some time. I spend quite a bit of time when developing trying to determine what is the best way to implement a feature to accomplish the efficiency that I look to achieve. One program that I have recently come to learn about – Red Gate ANTS Performance (CLR) and Memory profiler gives me tools to accomplish that job more efficiently as well. In this review, I am going to cover some of the features of the ANTS memory profiler set by compiling some hideous example code to test against. Notice As a member of the Geeks With Blogs Influencers program, one of the perks is the ability to review products, in exchange for a free license to the program. I have not let this affect my opinions of the product in any way, and Red Gate nor Geeks With Blogs has tried to influence my opinion regarding this product in any way. Introduction – Part 2 In my last post, I reviewed the feature packed Red Gate ANTS Performance Profiler.  Separate from the Red Gate Performance Profiler is the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler – a simple, easy to use utility for checking how your application is handling memory management…  A tool that I wish I had had many times in the past.  This post will be focusing on the ANTS Memory Profiler and its tool set. The memory profiler has a large assortment of features just like the Performance Profiler, with the new session looking nearly exactly alike: ANTS Memory Profiler Memory profiling is not something that I have to do very often…  In the past, the few cases I’ve had to find a memory leak in an application I have usually just had to trace the code of the operations being performed to look for oddities…  Sadly, I have come across more undisposed/non-using’ed IDisposable objects, usually from ADO.Net than I would like to ever see.  Support is not fun, however using ANTS Memory Profiler makes this task easier.  For this round of testing, I am going to use the same code from my previous example, using the WPF application. This time, I will choose the ‘Profile Memory’ option from the ANTS menu in Visual Studio, which launches the solution in its currently configured state/start-up project, and then launches the ANTS Memory Profiler to help.  It prepopulates all of the fields with the current project information, and all I have to do is select the ‘Start Profiling’ option. When the window comes up, it is actually quite barren, just giving ideas on how to work the profiler.  You start by getting to the point in your application that you want to profile, and then taking a ‘Memory Snapshot’.  This performs a full garbage collection, and snapshots the managed heap.  Using the same WPF app as before, I will go ahead and take a snapshot now. As you can see, ANTS is already giving me lots of information regarding the snapshot, however this is just a snapshot.  The whole point of the profiler is to perform an action, usually one where a memory problem is being noticed, and then take another snapshot and perform a diff between them to see what has changed.  I am going to go ahead and generate 5000 primes, and then take another snapshot: As you can see, ANTS is already giving me a lot of new information about this snapshot compared to the last.  Information such as difference in memory usage, fragmentation, class usage, etc…  If you take more snapshots, you can use the dropdown at the top to set your actual comparison snapshots. If you beneath the timeline, you will see a breadcrumb trail showing how best to approach profiling memory using ANTS.  When you first do the comparison, you start on the Summary screen.  You can either use the charts at the bottom, or switch to the class list screen to get to the next step.  Here is the class list screen: As you can see, it lists information about all of the instances between the snapshots, as well as at the bottom giving you a way to filter by telling ANTS what your problem is.  I am going to go ahead and select the Int16[] to look at the Instance Categorizer Using the instance categorizer, you can travel backwards to see where all of the instances are coming from.  It may be hard to see in this image, but hopefully the lightbox (click on it) will help: I can see that all of these instances are rooted to the application through the UI TextBlock control.  This image will probably be even harder to see, however using the ‘Instance Retention Graph’, you can trace an objects memory inheritance up the chain to see its roots as well.  This is a simple example, as this is simply a known element.  Usually you would be profiling an actual problem, and comparing those differences.  I know in the past, I have spotted a problem where a new context was created per page load, and it was rooted into the application through an event.  As the application began to grow, performance and reliability problems started to emerge.  A tool like this would have been a great way to identify the problem quickly. Overview Overall, I think that the Red Gate ANTS Memory Profiler is a great utility for debugging those pesky leaks.  3 Biggest Pros: Easy to use interface with lots of options for configuring profiling session Intuitive and helpful interface for drilling down from summary, to instance, to root graphs ANTS provides an API for controlling the profiler. Not many options, but still helpful. 2 Biggest Cons: Inability to automatically snapshot the memory by interval Lack of complete integration with Visual Studio via an extension panel Ratings Ease of Use (9/10) – I really do believe that they have brought simplicity to the once difficult task of memory profiling.  I especially liked how it stepped you further into the drilldown by directing you towards the best options. Effectiveness (10/10) – I believe that the profiler does EXACTLY what it purports to do.  Features (7/10) – A really great set of features all around in the application, however, I would like to see some ability for automatically triggering snapshots based on intervals or framework level items such as events. Customer Service (10/10) – My entire experience with Red Gate personnel has been nothing but good.  their people are friendly, helpful, and happy! UI / UX (9/10) – The interface is very easy to get around, and all of the options are easy to find.  With a little bit of poking around, you’ll be optimizing Hello World in no time flat! Overall (9/10) – Overall, I am happy with the Memory Profiler and its features, as well as with the service I received when working with the Red Gate personnel.  Thank you for reading up to here, or skipping ahead – I told you it would be shorter!  Please, if you do try the product, drop me a message and let me know what you think!  I would love to hear any opinions you may have on the product. Code Feel free to download the code I used above – download via DropBox

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• Which workaround to use for the following SQL deadlock?

  - by Marko

  I found a SQL deadlock scenario in my application during concurrency. I belive that the two statements that cause the deadlock are (note - I'm using LINQ2SQL and DataContext.ExecuteCommand(), that's where this.studioId.ToString() comes into play): exec sp_executesql N'INSERT INTO HQ.dbo.SynchronizingRows ([StudioId], [UpdatedRowId]) SELECT @p0, [t0].[Id] FROM [dbo].[UpdatedRows] AS [t0] WHERE NOT (EXISTS( SELECT NULL AS [EMPTY] FROM [dbo].[ReceivedUpdatedRows] AS [t1] WHERE ([t1].[StudioId] = @p0) AND ([t1].[UpdatedRowId] = [t0].[Id]) ))',N'@p0 uniqueidentifier',@p0='" + this.studioId.ToString() + "'; and exec sp_executesql N'INSERT INTO HQ.dbo.ReceivedUpdatedRows ([UpdatedRowId], [StudioId], [ReceiveDateTime]) SELECT [t0].[UpdatedRowId], @p0, GETDATE() FROM [dbo].[SynchronizingRows] AS [t0] WHERE ([t0].[StudioId] = @p0)',N'@p0 uniqueidentifier',@p0='" + this.studioId.ToString() + "'; The basic logic of my (client-server) application is this: Every time someone inserts or updates a row on the server side, I also insert a row into the table UpdatedRows, specifying the RowId of the modified row. When a client tries to synchronize data, it first copies all of the rows in the UpdatedRows table, that don't contain a reference row for the specific client in the table ReceivedUpdatedRows, to the table SynchronizingRows (the first statement taking part in the deadlock). Afterwards, during the synchronization I look for modified rows via lookup of the SynchronizingRows table. This step is required, otherwise if someone inserts new rows or modifies rows on the server side during synchronization I will miss them and won't get them during the next synchronization (explanation scenario to long to write here...). Once synchronization is complete, I insert rows to the ReceivedUpdatedRows table specifying that this client has received the UpdatedRows contained in the SynchronizingRows table (the second statement taking part in the deadlock). Finally I delete all rows from the SynchronizingRows table that belong to the current client. The way I see it, the deadlock is occuring on tables SynchronizingRows (abbreviation SR) and ReceivedUpdatedRows (abbreviation RUR) during steps 2 and 3 (one client is in step 2 and is inserting into SR and selecting from RUR; while another client is in step 3 inserting into RUR and selecting from SR). I googled a bit about SQL deadlocks and came to a conclusion that I have three options. Inorder to make a decision I need more input about each option/workaround: Workaround 1: The first advice given on the web about SQL deadlocks - restructure tables/queries so that deadlocks don't happen in the first place. Only problem with this is that with my IQ I don't see a way to do the synchronization logic any differently. If someone wishes to dwelve deeper into my current synchronization logic, how and why it is set up the way it is, I'll post a link for the explanation. Perhaps, with the help of someone smarter than me, it's possible to create a logic that is deadlock free. Workaround 2: The second most common advice seems to be the use of WITH(NOLOCK) hint. The problem with this is that NOLOCK might miss or duplicate some rows. Duplication is not a problem, but missing rows is catastrophic! Another option is the WITH(READPAST) hint. On the face of it, this seems to be a perfect solution. I really don't care about rows that other clients are inserting/modifying, because each row belongs only to a specific client, so I may very well skip locked rows. But the MSDN documentaion makes me a bit worried - "When READPAST is specified, both row-level and page-level locks are skipped". As I said, row-level locks would not be a problem, but page-level locks may very well be, since a page might contain rows that belong to multiple clients (including the current one). While there are lots of blog posts specifically mentioning that NOLOCK might miss rows, there seems to be none about READPAST (never) missing rows. This makes me skeptical and nervous to implement it, since there is no easy way to test it (implementing would be a piece of cake, just pop WITH(READPAST) into both statements SELECT clause and job done). Can someone confirm whether the READPAST hint can miss rows? Workaround 3: The final option is to use ALLOW_SNAPSHOT_ISOLATION and READ_COMMITED_SNAPSHOT. This would seem to be the only option to work 100% - at least I can't find any information that would contradict with it. But it is a little bit trickier to setup (I don't care much about the performance hit), because I'm using LINQ. Off the top of my head I probably need to manually open a SQL connection and pass it to the LINQ2SQL DataContext, etc... I haven't looked into the specifics very deeply. Mostly I would prefer option 2 if somone could only reassure me that READPAST will never miss rows concerning the current client (as I said before, each client has and only ever deals with it's own set of rows). Otherwise I'll likely have to implement option 3, since option 1 is probably impossible... I'll post the table definitions for the three tables as well, just in case: CREATE TABLE [dbo].[UpdatedRows]( [Id] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL ROWGUIDCOL DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID() PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED, [RowId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL, [UpdateDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL, ) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE NONCLUSTERED INDEX IX_RowId ON dbo.UpdatedRows ([RowId] ASC) WITH (STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[ReceivedUpdatedRows]( [Id] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL ROWGUIDCOL DEFAULT NEWSEQUENTIALID() PRIMARY KEY NONCLUSTERED, [UpdatedRowId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL REFERENCES [dbo].[UpdatedRows] ([Id]), [StudioId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL REFERENCES, [ReceiveDateTime] [datetime] NOT NULL, ) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE CLUSTERED INDEX IX_Studios ON dbo.ReceivedUpdatedRows ([StudioId] ASC) WITH (STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, ALLOW_ROW_LOCKS = ON, ALLOW_PAGE_LOCKS = ON) ON [PRIMARY] GO CREATE TABLE [dbo].[SynchronizingRows]( [StudioId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL [UpdatedRowId] [uniqueidentifier] NOT NULL REFERENCES [dbo].[UpdatedRows] ([Id]) PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED ([StudioId], [UpdatedRowId]) ) ON [PRIMARY] GO PS! Studio = Client. PS2! I just noticed that the index definitions have ALLOW_PAGE_LOCK=ON. If I would turn it off, would that make any difference to READPAST? Are there any negative downsides for turning it off?

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• setting up linked list Java

  - by erp

  I'm working on some basic linked list stuff, like insert, delete, go to the front or end of the list, and basically i understand the concept of all of that stuff once i have the list i guess but im having trouble setting up the list. I was wondering of you guys could tell me if im going in the right direction. (mostly just the setup) this is what i have so far: public class List { private int size; private List linkedList; List head; List cur; List next; /** * Creates an empty list. * @pre * @post */ public List(){ linkedList = new List(); this.head = null; cur = head; } /** * Delete the current element from this list. The element after the deleted element becomes the new current. * If that's not possible, then the element before the deleted element becomes the new current. * If that is also not possible, then you need to recognize what state the list is in and define current accordingly. * Nothing should be done if a delete is not possible. * @pre * @post */ public void delete(){ // delete size--; } /** * Get the value of the current element. If this is not possible, throw an IllegalArgumentException. * @pre the list is not empty * @post * @return value of the current element. */ public char get(){ return getItem(cur); } /** * Go to the last element of the list. If this is not possible, don't change the cursor. * @pre * @post */ public void goLast(){ while (cur.next != null){ cur = cur.next; } } /** * Advance the cursor to the next element. If this is not possible, don't change the cursor. * @pre * @post */ public void goNext(){ if(cur.next != null){ cur = cur.next;} //else do nothing } /** * Retreat the cursor to the previous element. If this is not possible, don't change the cursor. * @pre * @post */ public void goPrev(){ } /** * Go to top of the list. This is the position before the first element. * @pre * @post */ public void goTop(){ } /** * Go to first element of the list. If this is not possible, don't change the cursor. * @pre * @post */ public void goFirst(){ } /** * Insert the given parameter after the current element. The newly inserted element becomes the current element. * @pre * @post * @param newVal : value to insert after the current element. */ public void insert(char newVal){ cur.setItem(newVal); size++; } /** * Determines if this list is empty. Empty means this list has no elements. * @pre * @post * @return true if the list is empty. */ public boolean isEmpty(){ return head == null; } /** * Determines the size of the list. The size of the list is the number of elements in the list. * @pre * @post * @return size which is the number of elements in the list. */ public int size(){ return size; } public class Node { private char item; private Node next; public Node() { } public Node(char item) { this.item = item; } public Node(char item, Node next) { this.item = item; this.next = next; } public char getItem() { return this.item; } public void setItem(char item) { this.item = item; } public Node getNext() { return this.next; } public void setNext(Node next) { this.next = next; } } } I got the node class alright (well i think it works alright), but is it necessary to even have that class? or can i go about it without even using it (just curious). And for example on the method get() in the list class can i not call that getItem() method from the node class because it's getting an error even though i thought that was the whole point for the node class. bottom line i just wanna make sure im setting up the list right. Thanks for any help guys, im new to linked list's so bear with me!

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• Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship – book review

  - by DigiMortal

     Writing code that is easy read and test is not something that is easy to achieve. Unfortunately there are still way too much programming students who write awful spaghetti after graduating. But there is one really good book that helps you raise your code to new level – your code will be also communication tool for you and your fellow programmers. “Clean Code: A Handbook of Agile Software Craftsmanship” by Robert C. Martin is excellent book that helps you start writing the easily readable code. Of course, you are the one who has to learn and practice but using this book you have very good guide that keeps you going to right direction. You can start writing better code while you read this book and you can do it right in your current projects – you don’t have to create new guestbook or some other simple application to start practicing. Take the project you are working on and start making it better! My special thanks to Robert C. Martin I want to say my special thanks to Robert C. Martin for this book. There are many books that teach you different stuff and usually you have markable learning curve to go before you start getting results. There are many books that show you the direction to go and then leave you alone figuring out how to achieve all that stuff you just read about. Clean Code gives you a lot more – the mental tools to use so you can go your way to clean code being sure you will be soon there. I am reading books as much as I have time for it. Clean Code is top-level book for developers who have to write working code. Before anything else take Clean Code and read it. You will never regret your decision. I promise. Fragment of editorial review “Even bad code can function. But if code isn’t clean, it can bring a development organization to its knees. Every year, countless hours and significant resources are lost because of poorly written code. But it doesn’t have to be that way. What kind of work will you be doing? You’ll be reading code—lots of code. And you will be challenged to think about what’s right about that code, and what’s wrong with it. More importantly, you will be challenged to reassess your professional values and your commitment to your craft. Readers will come away from this book understanding How to tell the difference between good and bad code How to write good code and how to transform bad code into good code How to create good names, good functions, good objects, and good classes How to format code for maximum readability How to implement complete error handling without obscuring code logic How to unit test and practice test-driven development This book is a must for any developer, software engineer, project manager, team lead, or systems analyst with an interest in producing better code.” Table of contents Clean code Meaningful names Functions Comments Formatting Objects and data structures Error handling Boundaries Unit tests Classes Systems Emergence Concurrency Successive refinement JUnit internals Refactoring SerialDate Smells and heuristics A Concurrency II org.jfree.date.SerialDate Cross references of heuristics Epilogue Index

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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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• How to Create Views for All Tables with Oracle SQL Developer

  - by thatjeffsmith

  Got this question over the weekend via a friend and Oracle ACE Director, so I thought I would share the answer here. If you want to quickly generate DDL to create VIEWs for all the tables in your system, the easiest way to do that with SQL Developer is to create a data model. Wait, why would I want to do this? StackOverflow has a few things to say on this subject… So, start with importing a data dictionary. Step One: Open of Create a Model In SQL Developer, go to View – Data Modeler – Browser. Then in the browser panel, expand your design and create a new Relational Model. Step Two: Import your Data Dictionary This is a fancy way of saying, ‘suck objects out of the database into my model’ This will open a wizard to connect, select your schema(s), objects, etc. Once they’re in your model, you’re ready to cook with gas I’m using HR (Human Resources) for this example. You should end up with something that looks like this. Our favorite HR model Now we’re ready to generate the views! Step Three: Auto-generate the Views Go to Tools – Data Modeler – Table to View Wizard. I don’t want all my tables included, and I want to change the naming standard Decide if you want to change the default generated view names By default the views will be created as ‘V_TABLE_NAME.’ If you don’t like the ‘V_’ you can enter your own. You also can reference the object and model name with variables as shown in the screenshot above. I’m going to go with something a little more personal. The views are the little green boxes in the diagram Can’t find your views? They should be grouped together in your diagram. Don’t forget to use the Navigator to easily find and navigate to those model diagram objects! Step Four: Generate the DDL Ok, let’s use the Generate DDL button on the toolbar. Un-check everything but your views If you used a prefix, take advantage of that to create a filter. You might have existing views in your model that you don’t want to include, right? Once you click ‘OK’ the DDL will be generated. -- Generated by Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler 4.0.0.825 -- at: 2013-11-04 10:26:39 EST -- site: Oracle Database 11g -- type: Oracle Database 11g CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_COUNTRIES ( COUNTRY_ID , COUNTRY_NAME , REGION_ID ) AS SELECT COUNTRY_ID , COUNTRY_NAME , REGION_ID FROM HR.COUNTRIES ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_EMPLOYEES ( EMPLOYEE_ID , FIRST_NAME , LAST_NAME , EMAIL , PHONE_NUMBER , HIRE_DATE , JOB_ID , SALARY , COMMISSION_PCT , MANAGER_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID ) AS SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID , FIRST_NAME , LAST_NAME , EMAIL , PHONE_NUMBER , HIRE_DATE , JOB_ID , SALARY , COMMISSION_PCT , MANAGER_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID FROM HR.EMPLOYEES ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_JOBS ( JOB_ID , JOB_TITLE , MIN_SALARY , MAX_SALARY ) AS SELECT JOB_ID , JOB_TITLE , MIN_SALARY , MAX_SALARY FROM HR.JOBS ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_JOB_HISTORY ( EMPLOYEE_ID , START_DATE , END_DATE , JOB_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID ) AS SELECT EMPLOYEE_ID , START_DATE , END_DATE , JOB_ID , DEPARTMENT_ID FROM HR.JOB_HISTORY ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_LOCATIONS ( LOCATION_ID , STREET_ADDRESS , POSTAL_CODE , CITY , STATE_PROVINCE , COUNTRY_ID ) AS SELECT LOCATION_ID , STREET_ADDRESS , POSTAL_CODE , CITY , STATE_PROVINCE , COUNTRY_ID FROM HR.LOCATIONS ; CREATE OR REPLACE VIEW HR.TJS_BLOG_REGIONS ( REGION_ID , REGION_NAME ) AS SELECT REGION_ID , REGION_NAME FROM HR.REGIONS ; -- Oracle SQL Developer Data Modeler Summary Report: -- -- CREATE TABLE 0 -- CREATE INDEX 0 -- ALTER TABLE 0 -- CREATE VIEW 6 -- CREATE PACKAGE 0 -- CREATE PACKAGE BODY 0 -- CREATE PROCEDURE 0 -- CREATE FUNCTION 0 -- CREATE TRIGGER 0 -- ALTER TRIGGER 0 -- CREATE COLLECTION TYPE 0 -- CREATE STRUCTURED TYPE 0 -- CREATE STRUCTURED TYPE BODY 0 -- CREATE CLUSTER 0 -- CREATE CONTEXT 0 -- CREATE DATABASE 0 -- CREATE DIMENSION 0 -- CREATE DIRECTORY 0 -- CREATE DISK GROUP 0 -- CREATE ROLE 0 -- CREATE ROLLBACK SEGMENT 0 -- CREATE SEQUENCE 0 -- CREATE MATERIALIZED VIEW 0 -- CREATE SYNONYM 0 -- CREATE TABLESPACE 0 -- CREATE USER 0 -- -- DROP TABLESPACE 0 -- DROP DATABASE 0 -- -- REDACTION POLICY 0 -- -- ERRORS 0 -- WARNINGS 0 You can then choose to save this to a file or not. This has a few steps, but as the number of tables in your system increases, so does the amount of time this feature can save you!

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• Want a headless build server for SSDT without installing Visual Studio? You’re out of luck!

  - by jamiet

  An issue that regularly seems to rear its head on my travels is that of headless build servers for SSDT. What does that mean exactly? Let me give you my interpretation of it. A SQL Server Data Tools (SSDT) project incorporates a build process that will basically parse all of the files within the project and spit out a .dacpac file. Where an organisation employs a Continuous Integration process they will likely want to automate the building of that dacpac whenever someone commits a change to the source control repository. In order to do that the organisation will use a build server (e.g. TFS, TeamCity, Jenkins) and hence that build server requires all the pre-requisite software that understands how to build an SSDT project. The simplest way to install all of those pre-requisites is to install SSDT itself however a lot of folks don’t like that approach because it installs a lot unnecessary components on there, not least Visual Studio itself. Those folks (of which i am one) are of the opinion that it should be unnecessary to install a heavyweight GUI in order to simply get a few software components required to do something that inherently doesn’t even need a GUI. The phrase “headless build server” is often used to describe a build server that doesn’t contain any heavyweight GUI tools such as Visual Studio and is a desirable state for a build server. In his blog post Headless MSBuild Support for SSDT (*.sqlproj) Projects Gert Drapers outlines the steps necessary to obtain a headless build server for SSDT: This article describes how to install the required components to build and publish SQL Server Data Tools projects (*.sqlproj) using MSBuild without installing the full SQL Server Data Tool hosted inside the Visual Studio IDE. http://sqlproj.com/index.php/2012/03/headless-msbuild-support-for-ssdt-sqlproj-projects/ Frankly however going through these steps is a royal PITA and folks like myself have longed for Microsoft to support headless build support for SSDT by providing a distributable installer that installs only the pre-requisites for building SSDT projects. Yesterday in MSDN forum thread Building a VS2013 headless build server - it's sooo hard Mike Hingley complained about this very thing and it prompted a response from Kevin Cunnane from the SSDT product team: The official recommendation from the TFS / Visual Studio team is to install the version of Visual Studio you use on the build machine. I, like many others, would rather not have to install full blown Visual Studio and so I asked: Is there any chance you'll ever support any of these scenarios: Installation of all build/deploy pre-requisites without installing the VS shell? TFS shipping with all of the pre-requisites for doing SSDT project build/deploys 3rd party build servers (e.g. TeamCity) shipping with all of the requisites for doing SSDT project build/deploys I have to say that the lack of a single installer containing all the pre-requisites for SSDT build/deploy puzzles me. Surely the DacFX installer would be a perfect vehicle for that? Kevin replied again: The answer is no for all 3 scenarios. We looked into this issue, discussed it with the Visual Studio / TFS team, and in the end agreed to go with their latest guidance which is to install Visual Studio (e.g. VS2013 Express for Web) on the build machine. This is how Visual Studio Online is doing it and it's the approach recommended for customers setting up their own TFS build servers. I would hope this is compatible with 3rd party build servers but have not verified whether this works with TeamCity etc. Note that DacFx MSI isn't a suitable release vehicle for this as we don't want to include Visual Studio/MSBuild dependencies in that package. It's meant to just include the core DacFx DLLs used by SSMS, SqlPackage.exe on the command line, etc. What this means is we won't be providing a separate MSI installer or nuget package with just the necessary build DLLs you need to run your build and tests. If someone wanted to create a script that generated a nuget package based on our DLLs and targets files, then release that somewhere on the web for easier integration with 3rd party build servers we've no problem with that. Again, here’s the link to the thread and its worth reading in its entirety if this is something that interests you. So there you have it. Microsoft will not be be providing support for headless build servers for SSDT but if someone in the community wants to go ahead and roll their own, go right ahead. @Jamiet

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• SQLAuthority News – Windows Efficiency Tricks and Tips – Personal Technology Tip

  - by pinaldave

  This is the second post in my series about my favorite Technology Tips, and I wanted to focus on my favorite Microsoft product.  Choosing just one topic to cover was too hard, though.  There are so many interesting things I have to share that I am forced to turn this second installment into a five-part post.  My five favorite Windows tips and tricks. 1) You can open multiple applications using the task bar. With the new Windows 7 taskbar, you can start navigating with just one click.  For example, you can launch Word by clicking on the icon on your taskbar, and if you are using multiple different programs at the same time, you can simply click on the icon to return to Word.  However, what if you need to open another Word document, or begin a new one?  Clicking on the Word icon is just going to bring you back to your original program.  Just click on the Word icon again while holding down the shift key, and you’ll open up a new document. 2) Navigate the screen with the touch of a button – and not your mouse button. Yes, we live in a pampered age.  We have access to amazing technology, and it just gets better every year.  But have you ever found yourself wishing that right when you were in the middle of something, you didn’t have to interrupt your work flow be reaching for your mouse to navigate through the screen?  Yes, we have all been guilty of this pampered wish.  But Windows has delivered!  Now you can move your application window using your arrow keys. Lock the window to the left, right hand screen: Win+left Arrow and Win+right Arrow Maximize & minimize: Win+up arrow and Win+down arrow Minimize all items on screen: Win+M Return to your original folder, or browse through all open windows: Alt+up arrow, Alt+Left Arrow, or Alt+right arrow Close down or reopen all windows: win+home 3) Are you one of the few people who still uses Command Prompt? You know who you are, and you aren’t ashamed to still use this option that so many people have forgotten about it.  You can easily access it by holding down the shift key while RIGHT clicking on any folder. 4) Quickly select multiple files without using your mouse. We all know how to select multiple files or folders by Ctrl-clicking or Shift-clicking multiple items.  But all of us have tried this, and then accidentally released Ctrl, only to lose all our precious work.  Now there is a way to select only the files you want through a check box system.  First, go to Windows Explorer, click Organize, and then “Folder and Search Options.”  Go to the View tab, and under advanced settings, you can find a box that says “Use check boxes to select items.”  Once this has been selected, you will be able to hover your mouse over any file and a check box will appear.  This makes selecting multiple, random files quick and easy. 5) Make more out of remote access. If you work anywhere in the tech field, you are probably the go-to for computer help with friends and family, and you know the usefulness of remote access (ok, some of us use this extensively at work, as well, but we all have friends and family who rely on our skills!).  Often it is necessary to restart a computer, which is impossible in remote access as the computer will not show the shutdown menu.  To force the computer to do your wishes, we return to Command Prompt.  Open Command Prompt and type “shutdown /s” for shutdown, or “shutdown /r” for restart. I hope you will find above five tricks which I use in my daily use very important. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLAuthority News, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Personal Technology

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• Silverlight Cream for March 21, 2010 -- #816

  - by Dave Campbell

  In this Issue: Michael Washington, John Papa(-2-, -3-, -4-), Jonas Follesø, David Anson, Scott Guthrie, Andrej Tozon, Bill Reiss(-2-), Pete Blois, and Lee. Shoutouts: Frank LaVigne has a Mix10 Session Downloader for us all to use... thanks Frank! Read what Ward Bell has to say about MVVM, Josh Smith’s Way ... it's all good. Robby Ingebretsen posts on his 10 Favorite Open Source Fonts You Can Embed in WPF or Silverlight Mike Harsh posted Slides and Demos from my MIX10 Session . The download link at Drop.io is down for maintenance until Sunday evening, March 21. From SilverlightCream.com: Blend 4: TreeView SelectedItemChanged using MVVM Michael Washington has a post up about doing SelectedItemChanged on a TreeView with MVVM, oh and he's starting out in Blend 4... Silverlight TV 14: Developing for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight John Papa hit Silverlight TV pretty hard at the beginning of MIX10. This first one is with Mike Harsh talking about WP7. (Hi Mike ... wondered where you'd run off to!), and you can go to the shoutout section to get Mike's session material from MIX as well. Silverlight TV 15: Announcing Silverlight 4 RC at MIX 10 In this next Silverlight TV(15), John Papa and Adam Kinney discuss Silverlight 4RC ... thank goodness it's out, we can all let go of the breath we've been holding in :) Silverlight TV 16: Tim Heuer and Jesse Liberty Talk about Silverlight 4 RC at MIX 10 Silverlight TV 16 has John Papa sharing the spotlight with Jesse Liberty and Tim Heuer ... geez... can you find 3 more kowledgable Silverlight folks to listen to? No? then go listen to this :) Silverlight TV 17: Build a Twitter Client for Windows Phone 7 with Silverlight The latest Silverlight TV has John Papa bringing Mike Harsh back to produce a Twitter Client for WP7. Simulating multitouch on the Windows Phone 7 Emulator Jonas Follesø has a great post up about simulating multi-touch on WP7 using multiple mice ... yeah, you read that right :) Using IValueConverter to create a grouped list of items simply and flexibly David Anson demonstrates grouping items in a ListBox using IValueConverter. I think I can pretty well guarantee I would NOT have thought of doing this.. :) Building a Windows Phone 7 Twitter Application using Silverlight In the MIX10 first-day keynote, Scott Guthrie did File->New Project and built a WP7 Twitter app. He has that up as a tutorial with all sorts of external links including one to the keynote itself. Named and optional parameters in Silverlight 4 Andrej Tozon delves into the optional parameters that are now available to Silverlight developers... pretty cool stuff. Space Rocks game step 4: Inheriting from Sprite Bill Reiss continues with his game development series with this one on inheriting from the Sprite class and centering objects Space Rocks game step 5: Rotating the ship Bill Reiss's episode 5 is on rotating the ship you setup in episode 4. Don't worry about the transforms, Bill gives it all to us :) Labyrinth Sample for Windows Phone Wow... check out the sample Pete Blois did for the Phone... Silverlight coolness :) PathListBox in SL4 – firstlook Lee has a post up on the PathListBox. I think this is going to catch on quick... it's just too cool not to! Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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• SQL SERVER – Vacation, Travel and Study – A New Concept

  - by pinaldave

  Quite often when developers go to training sessions they either find it very boring because of study or great because they treat it as a vacation. There should be a perfect balance between study and extra activities. Studying is Boring Studying is very hard. Nobody likes to study, very few people are going to list “studying” as one of their favorite hobbies.  Already my young daughter knows she doesn’t want to study, and I don’t want to either.  If you read my blog regularly you know that I am always saying that we need to be students for life.  However, all philosophy aside, if you are put in a room with an instructor to study for eight hours a day, you are going to feel bored, uncomfortable, and unhappy.  I was a trainer myself, and I understand that all-day study sessions are no fun – even for the trainer.  I always tried to be entertaining, but even eight hours of jokes and laughter is tiresome.  Eight hours at a comedy club would be boring after a little while – and if we can’t even enjoy fun stuff for eight hours straight, how can we expect to study for eight hours straight? Studying for Career or Certification Even those who have advanced degrees and went to college for years, or even decades, find studying hard.  There is a difference between studying for a career and studying for a certification.  At least to get a degree there is a variety of subjects, with labs, exams, and practice problems to make things more interesting.  You can also choose your major and what you want to spend your time studying.  For certification you do not have this luxury.  You have to learn and memorize specific parts, and there is no option to change your major if you don’t like it.  Your option is to gain your certification, or fail.  Many people will find that last option unacceptable. Studying at Vacation We have established: eight hours of uninterrupted study is boring.  That is why I am so excited about what my very good friend is doing with Koenig Solutions.  His whole goal was to make classes that are intensive but not in a traditional format.  He adds in aspects of the vacation.  It is true that you will study and sit with instructors for six or eight hours a day, but in the mornings and evenings you can go out and see the sights in exotic locations.  He has chosen the locations for his training courses for their proximity to tourist attractions like the Himalayas, the Taj Mahal, and Goa, India’s most popular resort town.  Every location has access to great experiences like river rafting, safari tours, or meditation.  There are five locations to choose from: Dehli, Dehradun, Shimla (close to the Himalayas), Goa Beach, and Dubai.  After a day of classes and hours of sight-seeing, you will be more than ready to return to campus tired and ready to study.  This is the kind of study I can do! My friend’s point is that studying and fun can still go hand-in-hand.  How many times have we heard a professor say this?  But this time it is true.  There is great fun in learning in exotic locations.  If you want to travel in India and are interested in also taking the opportunity to learn something, let Koenig Solutions know. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• New security options in UCM Patch Set 3

  - by kyle.hatlestad

  While the Patch Set 3 (PS3) release was mostly focused on bug fixes and such, some new features sneaked in there. One of those new features is to the security options. In 10gR3 and prior versions, UCM had a component called Collaboration Manager which allowed for project folders to be created and groups of users assigned as members to collaborate on documents. With this component came access control lists (ACL) for content and folders. Users could assign specific security rights on each and every document and folder within a project. And it was even possible to enable these ACL's without having the Collaboration Manager component enabled (see technote# 603148.1). When 11g came out, Collaboration Manager was no longer available. But the configuration settings to turn on ACLs were still there. Well, in PS3 they're implemented slightly differently. And there is a new component available which adds an additional dimension to define security on the object, Roles. So now instead of selecting individual users or groups of users (defined as an Alias in User Admin), you can select a particular role. And if a user has that role, they are granted that level of access. This can allow for a much more flexible and manageable security model instead of trying to manage with just user and group access as people come and go in the organization. The way that it is enabled is still through configuration entries. First log in as an administrator and go to Administration -> Admin Server. On the Component Manager page, click the 'advanced component manager' link in the description paragraph at the top. In the list of Disabled Components, enable the RoleEntityACL component. Then click the General Configuration link on the left. In the Additional Configuration Variables text area, enter the new configuration values: UseEntitySecurity=true SpecialAuthGroups=<comma separated list of Security Groups to honor ACLs> The SpecialAuthGroups should be a list of Security Groups that honor the ACL fields. If an ACL is applied to a content item with a Security Group outside this list, it will be ignored. Save the settings and restart the instance. Upon restart, three new metadata fields will be created: xClbraUserList, xClbraAliasList, xClbraRoleList. If you are using OracleTextSearch as the search indexer, be sure to run a Fast Rebuild on the collection. On the Check In, Search, and Update pages, values are added by simply typing in the value and getting a type-ahead list of possible values. Select the value, click Add and then set the level of access (Read, Write, Delete, or Admin). If all of the fields are blank, then it simply falls back to just Security Group and Account access. For Users and Groups, these values are automatically picked up from the corresponding database tables. In the case of Roles, this is an explicitly defined list of choices that are made available. These values must match the role that is being defined from WebLogic Server or you LDAP/AD repository. To add these values, go to Administration -> Admin Applets -> Configuration Manager. On the Views tab, edit the values for the ExternalRolesView. By default, 'guest' and 'authenticated' are added. Once added to through the view, they will be available to select from for the Roles Access List. As for how they are stored in the metadata fields, each entry starts with it's identifier: ampersand (&) symbol for users, "at" (@) symbol for groups, and colon (:) for roles. Following that is the entity name. And at the end is the level of access in paranthesis. e.g. (RWDA). And each entry is separated by a comma. So if you were populating values through batch loader or an external source, the values would be defined this way. Detailed information on Access Control Lists can be found in the Oracle Fusion Middleware System Administrator's Guide for Oracle Content Server.

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• Beginner Geek: Scan a Document or Picture in Windows 7

  - by Mysticgeek

  There may come a time when you want to digitize your priceless old pictures, or need to scan a receipts and documents for your company. Today we look at how to scan a picture or document in Windows 7. Scanning Your Document In this example we’re using an HP PSC 1500 All-In-One printer connected to a Windows 7 Home Premium 32-bit system. Different scanners will vary, however the process is essentially the same. The scanning process has changed a bit since the XP days. To scan a document in Windows 7, place the document or picture in the scanner, click on Start, and go to Devices and Printers.   When the Devices and Printers window opens, find your scanning device and double-click on it to get the manufacturers Printer Actions menu. For our HP PSC 1500 we have a few different options like printing, device setup, and scanner actions. Here we’ll click on the Scan a document or photo hyperlink. The New Scan window opens and from here you can adjust the quality of the scanned image and choose the output file type. Then click the Preview button to get an idea of what the image will look like.   If you’re not happy with the preview, then you can go back and make any adjustments to the quality of the document or photo. Once everything looks good, click on the Scan button. The scanning process will start. The amount of time it takes will depend on your scanner type, and the quality of the settings you choose. The higher the quality…the more time it will take. You will have the option to tag the picture if you want to… Now you can view your scanned document or photo inside Windows Photo Viewer. If you’re happy with the look of the document, you can send it off in an email, put it on an network drive, FTP it… whatever you need to do with it. Another method is to place the document of photo you wish to scan in the scanner, open up Devices and Printers, then right-click on the scanning device and select Start Scan from the context menu. This should bypass the manufacturer screen and go directly into the New Scan window, where you can start the scan process. From the Context Menu you can also choose Scan Properties. This will allow you to test the scanner if you’re having problems with it and change some of its settings. Or you can choose Scan Profiles which allows you to use pre-selected settings, create your own, or set one as the default. Although scanning documents and photos isn’t a common occurrence as it was a few years ago, Windows 7 still includes the feature. When you need to scan a document or photo in Windows 7, this should get you started. Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Easily Rotate Pictures In Word 2007Beginner Geek: Delete User Accounts in Windows 7Customize Your Welcome Picture Choices in Windows VistaSecure Computing: Detect and Eliminate Malware Using Windows DefenderMark Your Document As Final in Word 2007 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Creating a Password Reset Disk in Windows Bypass Waiting Time On Customer Service Calls With Lucyphone MELTUP – "The Beginning Of US Currency Crisis And Hyperinflation" Enable or Disable the Task Manager Using TaskMgrED Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes

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• Travelling MVP #4: DevReach 2012

  - by DigiMortal

  Our next stop after Varna was Sofia where DevReach happens. DevReach is one of my favorite conferences in Europe because of sensible prices and strong speakers line-up. Also they have VIP-party after conference and this is good event to meet people you don’t see every day, have some discussion with speakers and find new friends. Our trip from Varna to Sofia took about 6.5 hours on bus. As I was tired from last evening it wasn’t problem for me as I slept half the trip. After smoking pause in Velike Tarnovo I watched movies from bus TV. We had supper later in city center Happy’s – place with good meat dishes and nice service. And next day it begun…. :) DevReach 2012 DevReach is held usually in Arena Mladost. It’s near airport and Telerik office. The event is organized by local MVP Martin Kulov together with Telerik. Two days of sessions with strong speakers is good reason enough for me to go to visit some event. Some topics covered by sessions: Windows 8 development web development SharePoint Windows Azure Windows Phone architecture Visual Studio Practically everybody can find some interesting session in every time slot. As the Arena is not huge it is very easy to go from one sessions to another if selected session for time slot is not what you expected. On the second floor of Arena there are many places where you can eat. There are simple chunk-food places like Burger King and also some restaurants. If you are hungry you will find something for your taste for sure. Also you can buy beer if it is too hot outside :) Weather was very good for October – practically Estonian summer – 25C and over. Sessions I visited Here is the list of sessions I visited at DevReach 2012: DevReach 2012 Opening & Welcome Messsage with Martin Kulov and Stephen Forte Principled N-Tier Solution Design with Steve Smith Data Patterns for the Cloud with Brian Randell .NET Garbage Collection Performance Tips with Sasha Goldshtein Building Secured, Scalable, Low-latency Web Applications with the Windows Azure Platform with Ido Flatow It’s a Knockout! MVVM Style Web Applications with Charles Nurse Web Application Architecture – Lessons Learned from Adobe Brackets with Brian Rinaldi Demystifying Visual Studio 2012 Performance Tools with Martin Kulov SPvNext – A Look At All the Exciting And New Features In SharePoint with Sahil Malik Portable Libraries – Why You Should Care with Lino Tadros I missed some sessions because of some death march projects that are going and that I have to coordinate but it was not big loss as I had time to walk around in session venue neighborhood and see Sofia Business Park. Next year again! I will be there again next year and hopefully more guys from Estonia will join me. I think it’s good idea to take short vacation for DevReach time and do things like we did this time – Bucharest, Varna, Sofia. It’s only good idea to plan some more free time so we are not very much in hurry and also we have no work stuff to do on the trip. This far this trip has been one of best trips I have organized and I will go and meet all those guys in this region again! :)

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• Know Your Audience, And/Or Your Customer

  - by steve.diamond

  Yesterday I gave an internal presentation to about 20 Oracle employees on "messaging," not messaging technology, but embarking on the process of building messages. One of the elements I covered was the importance of really knowing and understanding your audience. As a humorous reference I included two side-by-side photos of Oakland A's fans and Oakland Raiders fans. The Oakland A's fans looked like happy-go-lucky drunk types. The Oakland Raiders fans looked like angry extras from a low budget horror flick. I then asked my presentation attendees what these two groups had in common. Here's what I heard. --They're human (at least I THINK they're human). --They're from Oakland. --They're sports fans. After that, it was anyone's guess. A few days earlier we were putting the finishing touches on a sales presentation for one of our product lines. We had included an upfront "lead in" addressing how the economy is improving, yet that doesn't mean sales executives will have any more resources to add to their teams, invest in technology, etc. This "lead in" included miscellaneous news article headlines and statistics validating the slowly improving economy. When we subjected this presentation to internal review two days ago, this upfront section in particular was scrutinized. "Is the economy really getting better? I (exclamation point) don't think it's really getting better. Haven't you seen the headlines coming out of Greece and Europe?" Then the question TO ME became, "Who will actually be in the audience that sees and hears this presentation? Will s/he be someone like me? Or will s/he be someone like the critic who didn't like our lead-in?" We took the safe route and removed that lead in. After all, why start a "pitch" with a component that is arguably subjective? What if many of our audience members are individuals at organizations still facing a strong headwind? For reasons I won't go into here, it was the right decision to make. The moral of the story: Make sure you really know your audience. Harness the wisdom of the information your organization's CRM systems collect to get that fully informed "customer view." Conduct formal research. Conduct INFORMAL research. Ask lots of questions. Study industries and scenarios that have nothing to do with yours to see "how they do it." Stop strangers in coffee shops and on the street...seriously. Last week I caught up with an old friend from high school who recently retired from a 25 year career with the USMC. He said, "I can learn something from every single person I come into contact with." What a great way of approaching the world. Then, think about and write down what YOU like and dislike as a customer. But also remember that when it comes to your company's products, you are most likely NOT the customer, so don't go overboard in superimposing your own world view. Approaching the study of customers this way adds rhyme, reason and CONTEXT to lengthy blog posts like this one. Know your audience.

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• What I Expect From Myself This Year

  - by Lee Brandt

  I am making it a point not to call them resolutions, because the word has become an institution and is beginning to have no meaning. That's why I end up not keeping my resolutions, I think. So in the spirit of holding myself to my own commitments, I will make a plan and some realistic goals. 1.) Lose weight. Everyone has this on their list, but I am going to be conservative and specific. I currently weigh 393lbs. (yeah, I know). So I want to plan to lose 10lbs per month, that's 1lb. every three days, that shouldn't be difficult if I stick to my diet and exercise plan. - How do I do this?     - Diet: vegetarian. Since I already know I have high blood pressure and borderline high cholesterol, a meat-free diet is in order. I was vegan for a little over 2 years in 2006-2008, I think I can handle vegetarian.     - Exercise: at least 3 times (preferably every day) a week for 30 minutes. It has to be something that gets my heart rate up, or burns in my muscles. I can walk for cardio to start and mild calisthenics (girly push-ups, crunches, etc.).         - Move: I spend all my time behind the computer. I have recently started to use a slight variation of the Pomodoro Technique (my Pomodoros are 50 minutes instead of 25). During my 10 minutes every hour to answer emails, chats, etc., I will take a few minutes to stretch. 2.) Get my wife pregnant. We've been talking about it for years. Now that she is done with graduate school and I have a great job, now's the time. We'll be the oldest parents in the PTA most likely, but I don't care. 3.) Blog More. Another favorite among bloggers, but I do have about six drafts for blog posts started. The topics are there all I need to do is flesh out the post. This can be the first hour of any computer time I have after work. As soon as I am done exercising, shower and post. 4.) Speak less. Most people want to speak more. I want to concentrate on the places that I enjoy and that can really use the speakers (like local code camps), rather than trying to be some national speaker. I love speaking at conferences, but I need to spend some more time at home if we're going to get pregnant. 5.) Read more. I got a Kindle for Christmas and I am loving it so far. I have almost finished Treasure Island, and am getting ready to pick my next book. I will probably read a lot of classics for 2 reasons: (1) they teach deep lessons and (2) most are free for the Kindle. 6.) Find my religion. I was raised Southern Baptist, but I want to find my own way. I've been wanting to go to the local Unitarian Church, so I will make a point to go before the end of March. I also want to add a few religious books to my reading list. My boss bought me a copy of Lee Strobel's The Case for Christ: A Journalist's Personal Investigation of the Evidence for Jesus , and I have a copy of Bruce Feiler's Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (P.S.) . I will start there. Seems like a lot now that I spell it out like this. But these are only starters. I am forty years old. I cannot keep living like I am twenty anymore. So here we go, 2011.

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• SQL SERVER – Discard Results After Query Execution – SSMS

  - by pinaldave

  The first thing I do any day is to turn on the computer. Today I woke up and as soon as I turned on the computer I saw a chat message from a friend. He was a bit confused and wanted me to help him. Just as usual I am keeping the relevant conversation in focus and documenting our conversation as chat. Let us call him Ajit. Ajit: Pinal, every time I run a query there is no result displayed in the SSMS but when I run the query in my application it works and returns an appropriate result. Pinal:  Have you tried with different parameters? Ajit: Same thing. However, it works from another computer when I connect to the same server with the same query parameters? Pinal: What? That is new and I believe it is something to do with SSMS and not with the server. Send me screenshot please. Ajit: I believe so, let me send you a screenshot, Pinal: (looking at the screenshot) Oh man, there is no result-tab at all. Ajit: That is what the problem is. It does not have the tab which displays the result. This works just fine from another computer. Pinal: Have you referred Nakul’s blog post – SSMS – Query result options – Discard result after query executes, that talks about setting which can discard the query results after execution. (After a while) Ajit: I think it seems like on the computer where I am running the query my SSMS seems to have the option enabled related to discarding results. I fixed it by following Nakul’s blog post. Pinal: Great! Quite often I get the question what is the importance of the feature. Let us first see how to turn on or turn off this feature in SQL Server Management Studio 2012. In SSMS 2012 go to Tools >> Options >> Query Results > SQL Server >> Results to Grid >> Discard Results After Query Execution. When enabled this option will discard results after the execution. The advantage of disabling the option is that it will improve the performance by using less memory. However the real question is why would someone enable or disable the option. What are the cases when someone wants to run the query but do not care about the result? Matter of the fact, it does not make sense at all to run query and not care about the result. The matter of the fact, I can see quite a few reasons for using this option. I often enable this option when I am doing performance tuning exercise. During performance tuning exercise when I am working with execution plans and do not need results to verify every time or when I am tuning Indexes and its effect on execution plan I do not need the results. In this kind of situations I do keep this option on and discard the results. It always helps me big time as in most of the performance tuning exercise I am dealing with huge amount of the data and dealing with this data can be expensive. Nakul’s has done the experiment here already but I am going to repeat the same again using AdventureWorks Database. Run following T-SQL Script with and without enabling the option to discard the results. USE AdventureWorks2012 GO SELECT * FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail GO 10 After enabling Discard Results After Query Execution After disabling Discard Results After Query Execution Well, this is indeed a good option when someone is debugging the execution plan or does not want the result to be displayed. Please note that this option does not reduce IO or CPU usage for SQL Server. It just discards the results after execution and a good help for debugging on the development server. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Server Management Studio, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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• Subscribable World Cup 2010 Calendar

  - by jamiet

  I bang on quite a lot on this blog about ways in which data can get published over the web and one of the most interesting ways, in my opinion, of publishing data in a structured manner that is well understood is to use the iCalendar specification. There isn’t much information in the world that doesn’t have some concept of “when” so iCalendar is a great way of distributing that information. You have probably used iCalendar at some point without even knowing about it. All files with a .ics suffix are iCalendar format files and that is why you can happily import them into Outlook, Hotmail Calendar, Google Calendar etc… where they can be parsed and have the semantic data (when, where and who) extracted from them. Importing of iCalendar format data is really only half the trick though; in my opinion the real value of iCalendar-formatted calendar is the ability to subscribe to them. Subscribing has a simple benefit over importing but that single benefit is of massive importance: a subscriber to an iCalendar calendar can periodically check to see if any updates have been made and, if they have, automatically update the local copy. The real benefit to the user is the productivity gain – a single update to an iCalendar means that all subscribers are automatically made aware of the change and there is zero effort on the part of the subscriber; as my former colleague Howard van Rooijen is fond of saying, “work smarter not harder” – nowhere is this edict more ably demonstrated than subscribing versus importing of calendars. If you want to read some more thoughts about iCalendar then go and read my past blog post Calendar syndication - My big hope for 2009's breakthrough technology or better still go and seek out Jon Udell who speaks very authoritatively on the issue of iCalendar. With this subject of iCalendar on my mind I was interested to discover (via Steve Clayton’s blog post Download the world cup fixtures) that the BBC had made a .ics file available containing all of the matches in the upcoming World Cup. As you can probably guess this was a file that was made available so that it could be imported into your calendar of choice. It had one obvious downside though, right now nobody knows who is going to be playing in the knock-out stages so the calendar looks like this: with no teams being named after 25th June. How much more useful would this calendar have been if the BBC had made it possible to subscribe to the calendar instead, thus the calendar could be updated with the teams for the knock out stages when they are known and every subscriber would have a permanently up-to-date record of all the fixtures in their calendar. Better still, the calendar could be updated with match results as well or perhaps even post a match report from the BBC sport pages; when calendars are made subscribable a sea of opportunity opens up for distribution of information. So with that in mind I have decided to go one better than the BBC. I have imported their .ics into a brand new Hotmail calendar and made it publicly available at the following URLs: HTML http://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/index.html iCalendar webcal://cid-dc1ed121af0476be.calendar.live.com/calendar/World+Cup+2010/calendar.ics The link you’re really interested in is the second one - click on that and it should open up in your calendar software of choice. Or, if you want to view it in an online calendar such as Hotmail Calendar or Google Calendar, copy and paste that URL into the appropriate place. I shall endeavour to keep the calendar updated throughout the World Cup and even if I don’t you’re no worse off than if you had imported the BBC’s .ics file so why not give it a try? If I do keep it up to date then you will have a permanent record of the 2010 World Cup available in your calendar. Forever. If you have your calendar synced to your smartphone then you’ll be carrying match reports around with you without you having to do a single thing. Surely that’s worth a quick click isn’t it?   If you have any thoughts let me have them in the comments below. Thanks for reading. @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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• A quick look at: sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors

  - by Jonathan Allen

  SQL Server places data into cache as it reads it from disk so as to speed up future queries. This dmv lets you see how much data is cached at any given time and knowing how this changes over time can help you ensure your servers run smoothly and are adequately resourced to run your systems. This dmv gives the number of cached pages in the buffer pool along with the database id that they relate to: USE [tempdb] GO SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY DB_NAME(database_id) , database_id ORDER BY cached_pages_count DESC; This gives you results which are quite useful, but if you add a new column with the code: …to convert the pages value to show a MB value then they become more relevant and meaningful. To see how your server reacts to queries, start up SSMS and connect to a test server and database – mine is called AdventureWorks2008. Make sure you start from a know position by running: -- Only run this on a test server otherwise your production server's-- performance may drop off a cliff and your phone will start ringing. DBCC DROPCLEANBUFFERS GO Now we can run a query that would normally turn a DBA’s hair white: USE [AdventureWorks2008] go SELECT * FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] …and then check our cache situation: A nice low figure – not! Almost 2000 pages of data in cache equating to approximately 15MB. Luckily these tables are quite narrow; if this had been on a table with more columns then this could be even more dramatic. So, let’s make our query more efficient. After resetting the cache with the DROPCLEANBUFFERS and FREEPROCCACHE code above, we’ll only select the columns we want and implement a WHERE predicate to limit the rows to a specific customer. SELECT [sod].[OrderQty] , [sod].[ProductID] , [soh].[OrderDate] , [soh].[CustomerID] FROM [Sales].[SalesOrderDetail] AS sod INNER JOIN [Sales].[SalesOrderHeader] AS soh ON [sod].[SalesOrderID] = [soh].[SalesOrderID] WHERE [soh].[CustomerID] = 29722 …and check our effect cache: Now that is more sympathetic to our server and the other systems sharing its resources. I can hear you asking: “What has this got to do with logging, Jonathan?” Well, a smart DBA will keep an eye on this metric on their servers so they know how their hardware is coping and be ready to investigate anomalies so that no ‘disruptive’ code starts to unsettle things. Capturing this information over a period of time can lead you to build a picture of how a database relies on the cache and how it interacts with other databases. This might allow you to decide on appropriate schedules for over night jobs or otherwise balance the work of your server. You could schedule this job to run with a SQL Agent job and store the data in your DBA’s database by creating a table with: IF OBJECT_ID('CachedPages') IS NOT NULL DROP TABLE CachedPages CREATE TABLE CachedPages ( cached_pages_count INT , MB INT , Database_Name VARCHAR(256) , CollectedOn DATETIME DEFAULT GETDATE() ) …and then filling it with: INSERT INTO [dbo].[CachedPages] ( [cached_pages_count] , [MB] , [Database_Name] ) SELECT COUNT(*) AS cached_pages_count , ( COUNT(*) * 8.0 ) / 1024 AS MB , CASE database_id WHEN 32767 THEN 'ResourceDb' ELSE DB_NAME(database_id) END AS Database_name FROM sys.dm_os_buffer_descriptors GROUP BY database_id After this has been left logging your system metrics for a while you can easily see how your databases use the cache over time and may see some spikes that warrant your attention. This sort of logging can be applied to all sorts of server statistics so that you can gather information that will give you baseline data on how your servers are performing. This means that when you get a problem you can see what statistics are out of their normal range and target you efforts to resolve the issue more rapidly.

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• Change the Way Google Search Results Display in Firefox

  - by Asian Angel

  Are you tired of the default look for search results at Google? If you want a different and customized pleasing look for them, then join us as we look at the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Note: User Style Scripts & User Scripts can be added to most browsers but we are using Firefox & the Greasemonkey extension for our example here. Before Here is the standard look for search results at Google…not bad but it really does not stand out that well either. Installing the User Script You may be asking yourself what makes this particular user script different from others. Take a look at the list of goodies that you get access to and you will understand: Multiple columns of results Removes “Sponsored Links” Add numbers to the results Auto-load more results Removes web search dialogues Open links in a new tab Favicons GooglePreview Self updating Can be configured from a simple user dialogue To get started click on the Webpage Install Button. Once you click on the Webpage Install Button you will see the following window asking for confirmation to add the user script to Firefox. Click Install to complete the process. GoogleMonkeyR in Action Refreshing the same search page shown above shows a noticeable difference already. The light blue background makes the search results stand out a bit better. This is an improvement from before but you will definitely want to have a look to see just how far you can go… Right click on the Greasemonkey Status Bar Icon, go to User Script Commands, and select GoogleMonkeyR Preferences. Once you have clicked on GoogleMonkeyR Preferences the search page will be shaded out and you will have access to the user script’s preferences. This is where you can really make your search results unique looking! Here are the changes that we started out with… After refreshing our search results things looked even better. A look at the entire page of results with our browser maximized and set for two columns. If you have the Auto load more results Option enabled new results will be added very quickly as you scroll down. Our set of search results after adding Favicons & GooglePreview Images. Conclusion If you have been wanting a more dramatic and pleasing look for the search results at Google then you can not go wrong with the GoogleMonkeyR User Script. Change as little or as much as you want to get that perfect look in your browser. Link Install the GoogleMonkeyR User Script Download the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox (Mozilla Add-ons) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Make Firefox Quick Search Use Google’s Beta Search KeysMake Firefox Built-In Search Box Use Google’s Experimental Search KeysMake Firefox Show Google Results for Default Address Bar SearchesCombine Wolfram Alpha & Google Search Results in FirefoxHow To Run 4 Different Google Searches at Once In the Same Tab TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips VMware Workstation 7 Acronis Online Backup DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Explorer++ is a Worthy Windows Explorer Alternative Error Goblin Explains Windows Error Codes Twelve must-have Google Chrome plugins Cool Looking Skins for Windows Media Player 12 Move the Mouse Pointer With Your Face Movement Using eViacam Boot Windows Faster With Boot Performance Diagnostics

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