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• Why I Love Microsoft Development

  - by Brian Lanham

  I've been writing software for a while and recently had an opportunity to broaden my horizons and start developing for iOS. We decided to leverage, as much as possible, our existing skills and use MonoTouch and MonoDevelop by Novell.    For those of you who do not know, Mono is a .NET port originally designed for Linux but adapted for other platforms as well. MonoTouch is a port specifically for building iOS applications using the .NET framework. MonoDroid is a port (in CTP-esque release) for Android.   A MISSING COMPONENT - VISUAL DESIGNER   MonoDevelop lacks one very significant component compared with other tools I am using: NO VISUAL DESIGNER. Instead of using an integrated visual designer, MonoDevelop shells to the Mac OS "Interface Builder".  Since MonoDevelop lets me have a "Visual Studio-esque" feel *and* I get to use C#, AND it's FREE, I am gladly willing to overlook this.  In fact, it's not even a question.  Free?  Sure, I'll take it with no Visual Designer.   In my experiences I've grown from UNIX and DOS to .NET development through many steps. Java/JSP/Servlets; Windows; Web; etc. I've been doing .NET for quite a few years and I guess I just got "comfortable" with the tools.   WHY AM I NOT GETTING IT?   Interface Builder (IB) is amazingly confusing for me. I had the opportunity to speak at the Northern VA Code Camp on 12/11/2010. My presentation was "Getting Started with iOS Development using MonoTouch and C#".    At the visual design part of the presentation, I asked one of the 3 or 4 Mac developers in the room about my confusion with the IB. I don't understand why the "Classes" list includes objects. I don't understand what "File's Owner" is. And, most importantly, WHAT THE HECK IS AN OUTLET AND WHY IS IT NECESSARY?!?!?"   His response to these question (especially Outlets): "They did it wrong."   I'm accustom to a visual designer that creates variables for graphical widgets for me. Not IB. Instead, I have to create "Outlets" manually. I still do not understand why and, the explanation from a seasoned Mac developer is that it's wrong. (He received nods of confirmation from the other Mac devs in the room.)   I LOVE MS DEV   I love development for Microsoft platforms using Microsoft development tools. I love Windows 7. I love Visual Studio 2010. I love SQL Server. Azure, Entity Framework, Active Directory, Office, WCF/WF/WPF, etc. are all designed with integration in mind. They are also all designed with developers in mind.   Steve Ballmer recently ranted "It's the developers!" That's why it is relatively quick to build apps using MS tools. Clearly, MS knows that while we usually enjoy building technology solutions, we are here to make money. And we need tools that accelerate our time to market without compromising the power and quality of our solutions.   So, yeah, I am sucking up I guess. But I love Microsoft Development. Thank you, Microsoft, for providing the plethora of great development tools.    P.S. (but please slow down a bit…I'm having trouble keeping up!)

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• Get to Know a Candidate (8 of 25): Rocky Anderson&ndash;Justice Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Ross Carl “Rocky” Anderson served two terms as the 33rd mayor of Salt Lake City, Utah, between 2000 and 2008.  He is the Executive Director of High Road for Human Rights.  Prior to serving as Mayor, he practiced law for 21 years in Salt Lake City, during which time he was listed in Best Lawyers in America, was rated A-V (highest rating) by Martindale-Hubbell, served as Chair of the Utah State Bar Litigation Section[4] and was Editor-in-Chief of, and a contributor to, Voir Dire legal journal. As mayor, Anderson rose to nationwide prominence as a champion of several national and international causes, including climate protection, immigration reform, restorative criminal justice, LGBT rights, and an end to the "war on drugs". Before and after the invasion by the U.S. of Iraq in 2003, Anderson was a leading opponent of the invasion and occupation of Iraq and related human rights abuses. Anderson was the only mayor of a major U.S. city who advocated for the impeachment of President George W. Bush, which he did in many venues throughout the United States. Anderson's work and advocacy led to local, national, and international recognition in numerous spheres, including being named by Business Week as one of the top twenty activists in the world on climate change,serving on the Newsweek Global Environmental Leadership Advisory Board, and being recognized by the Human Rights Campaign as one of the top ten straight advocates in the United States for LGBT equality. He has also received numerous awards for his work, including the EPA Climate Protection Award, the Sierra Club Distinguished Service Award, the Respect the Earth Planet Defender Award, the National Association of Hispanic Publications Presidential Award, The Drug Policy Alliance Richard J. Dennis Drugpeace Award, the Progressive Democrats of America Spine Award, the League of United Latin American Citizens Profile in Courage Award, the Bill of Rights Defense Committee Patriot Award, the Code Pink (Salt Lake City) Pink Star honor, the Morehouse University Gandhi, King, Ikeda Award, and the World Leadership Award for environmental programs. Formerly a member of the Democratic Party, Anderson expressed his disappointment with that Party in 2011, stating, “The Constitution has been eviscerated while Democrats have stood by with nary a whimper. It is a gutless, unprincipled party, bought and paid for by the same interests that buy and pay for the Republican Party." Anderson announced his intention to run for President in 2012 as a candidate for the newly-formed Justice Party. Although founded by Rocky Anderson of Utah, the Justice Party was first recognized by Mississippi and describes itself as advocating economic justice through measures such as green jobs and a right to organize, environment justice through enforcing employee safeguards in trade agreements, and social and civic justice through universal health care. In its first press release, the Utah Justice Party set forth its goals for justice in the economic, environmental, social and civic realms, along with a call to rid the corrupting influence of big money from government, to reverse the erosion of rights guaranteed by the Constitution, and to stop draining American resources to support illegal wars of aggression. Its press release says its grassroots supporters believe that now is the time for all to "shed their skeptical view that their voices don't matter", that "our 2-party system is a 'duopoly' controlled by the same corporate and military interests", and that the people must act to ensure "that our nation will achieve a brighter, sustainable future.” Anderson has ballot access in CO, CT, FL, ID, LA, MI, MN, MS, NJ, NM, OR, RI, TN, UT, VT, WA (152 electoral votes) and has write-in access in AL, AK, DE, GA, IL, IO, KS, MD, MO, NE, NH, NY, PA, TX Learn more about Rocky Anderson and Justice Party on Wikipedia.

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• GUVCVIEW errors

  - by Brian Snapp

  I had GUVCVIEW working once before. it suddenly quit working. This is the error I receive........ bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111) bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111) bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111) bt_audio_service_open: connect() failed: Connection refused (111) video device: /dev/video0 /dev/video0 - device 1 Init. Intergrated Webcam (location: usb-0000:00:1a.7-2) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 768 } Time interval between frame: 1/9, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/9, 1/5, checking format: 1196444237 Format unavailable: 1196444237. Init v4L2 failed !! Init video returned -2 trying minimum setup ... video device: /dev/video0 /dev/video0 - device 1 Init. Intergrated Webcam (location: usb-0000:00:1a.7-2) { pixelformat = 'YUYV', description = 'YUV 4:2:2 (YUYV)' } { discrete: width = 640, height = 480 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 352, height = 288 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 320, height = 240 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 176, height = 144 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 160, height = 120 } Time interval between frame: 1/30, 1/20, 1/15, 1/10, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1024, height = 768 } Time interval between frame: 1/9, 1/5, { discrete: width = 1280, height = 1024 } Time interval between frame: 1/9, 1/5, checking format: 1448695129 Requested Format unavailable: get width 640 height 480 vid:0c45 pid:6410 driver:uvcvideo (guvcview:4079): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_hscale_new_with_range: assertion `min < max' failed (guvcview:4079): Gtk-CRITICAL **: gtk_scale_set_draw_value: assertion `GTK_IS_SCALE (scale)' failed Segmentation fault I suppose the problem lies in the fact, that I cannot locate a configuration file to edit. Any help in where this file may lie? I have tried searching for any/everything related to guvcview, and have had zero success. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and hopefully providing a solution..

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• Adventures in MVVM &ndash; My ViewModel Base &ndash; Silverlight Support!

  - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

  More Adventures in MVVM In my last post, I outlined the powerful features that are available in the ViewModelSupport.  It takes advantage of the dynamic features of C# 4.0 (as well as some 3.0 goodies) to help eliminate the plumbing that often comes with writing ViewModels.  If you are interested in learning about the capabilities, please take a look at that post and look at the code on CodePlex.  When I wrote about the ViewModel base class, I complained that the features did not work in Silverlight because as of 4.0, it does not support binding to dynamic properties.  Although I still think this is a bummer, I am happy to say that I have come up with a workaround.  In the Silverlight version of my base class, I include a PropertyCollectionConverter that lets you bind to dynamic properties in the ViewModelBase, especially the convention-based commands that the base class supports. To take advantage of any properties that are not statically defined, you can bind to the Properties property of the ViewModel and pass in a converter parameter for the name of the property you want to bind. For example, a ViewModel that looks like this: public class ExampleViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { Set("Text", "Foo"); } } Can bind to the dynamic property and the convention-based command with the following XAML. <TextBlock Text="{Binding Properties, Converter={StaticResource PropertiesConverter}, ConverterParameter=Text}" Margin="5" /> <Button Content="Execute MyCommand" Command="{Binding Properties, Converter={StaticResource PropertiesConverter}, ConverterParameter=MyCommand}" Margin="5" /> Of course, it is not as pretty as binding to Text and MyCommand like you can in WPF.  But, it is better than having a failed feature.  This allows you to share your ViewModels between WPF and Silverlight very easily.  <BeatDeadHorse>Hopefully, in Silverlight 5.0, we will see binding to dynamic properties more directly????</BeatDeadHorse>

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• Disabling Navigation Flicks in WPF

  - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz

  I am currently working on a multi-touch application using WPF.  One thing that has been irritating me with this development is an automatic navigation forward/back command that is bound to forward and backwards flicks.  Many of my touch-based interactions were being thwarted by gestures picked up by WPF as navigation.  I just wanted to disable this behavior. My programmatic back/forward calls are not affected by this change, which is nice.  Here is how I did it:  In my main window, I added the following command bindings:<NavigationWindow.CommandBindings> <CommandBinding Command="NavigationCommands.BrowseBack" Executed="DoNothing" /> <CommandBinding Command="NavigationCommands.BrowseForward" Executed="DoNothing" /> </NavigationWindow.CommandBindings> Then, the DoNothing method in the code-behind does nothing:private void DoNothing(object sender, ExecutedRoutedEventArgs e) { } There may be a better way to do this, but I haven’t found one.

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• What are the best practices for phasing out obsolete code?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I have the need to phase out an obsolete method. I am aware of the [Obsolete] attribute. Does Microsoft have a recommended best practice guide for doing this? Here's my current plan: A. I do not want to create a new assembly because developers would have to add a new reference to their projects and I expect to get a lot of grief from my boss and co-workers if they must do this. We also do not maintain multiple assembly versions. We only use the latest version. Changing this practice would require changing our deployment process which is a big issue (have to teach people how to do things with TFS instead of FinalBuilder and get them to give up FinalBuilder) B. Mark the old method obsolete. C. Because the implementation is changing (not the method signature), I need to rename the method rather than create an overload. So, to make users aware of the proper method I plan to add a message to the [Obsolete] attribute. This part bothers me, because the only change I'm making is decoupling the method from the connection string. But, because I'm not adding a new assembly, I see no way around this. Result: [Obsolete("Please don't use this anymore because it does not implement IMyDbProvider. Use XXX instead.")]; /// <summary> /// /// </summary> /// <param name="settingName"></param> /// <returns></returns> public static Dictionary<string, Setting> ReadSettings(string settingName) { return ReadSettings(settingName, SomeGeneralClass.ConnectionString); } public Dictionary<string, Setting> ReadSettings2(string settingName) { return ReadSettings(settingName);// IMyDbProvider.ConnectionString private member added to class. Probably have to make this an instance method. }

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• Basic WCF Unit Testing

  - by Brian

  Coming from someone who loves the KISS method, I was surprised to find that I was making something entirely too complicated. I know, shocker right? Now I'm no unit testing ninja, and not really a WCF ninja either, but had a desire to test service calls without a) going to a database, or b) making sure that the entire WCF infrastructure was tip top. Who does? It's not the environment I want to test, just the logic I’ve written to ensure there aren't any side effects. So, for the K.I.S.S. method: Assuming that you're using a WCF service library (you are using service libraries correct?), it's really as easy as referencing the service library, then building out some stubs for bunking up data. The service contract We’ll use a very basic service contract, just for getting and updating an entity. I’ve used the default “CompositeType” that is in the template, handy only for examples like this. I’ve added an Id property and overridden ToString and Equals. [ServiceContract] public interface IMyService { [OperationContract] CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); [OperationContract] CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); [OperationContract] CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } The implementation When I implement the service, I want to be able to send known data into it so I don’t have to fuss around with database access or the like. To do this, I first have to create an interface for my data access: public interface IMyServiceDataManager { CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id); CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item); CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes(); } For the purposes of this we can ignore our implementation of the IMyServiceDataManager interface inside of the service. Pretend it uses LINQ to Entities to map its data, or maybe it goes old school and uses EntLib to talk to SQL. Maybe it talks to a tape spool on a mainframe on the third floor. It really doesn’t matter. That’s the point. So here’s what our service looks like in its most basic form: public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { //sanity checks if (id == 0) throw new ArgumentException("id cannot be zero."); return _dataManager.GetCompositeType(id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { return _dataManager.SaveCompositeType(item); } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return _dataManager.GetAllCompositeTypes(); } But what about the datamanager? The constructor takes care of that. I don’t want to expose any testing ability in release (or the ability for someone to swap out my datamanager) so this is what we get: IMyServiceDataManager _dataManager; public MyService() { _dataManager = new MyServiceDataManager(); } #if DEBUG public MyService(IMyServiceDataManager dataManager) { _dataManager = dataManager; } #endif The Stub Now it’s time for the rubber to meet the road… Like most guys that ever talk about unit testing here’s a sample that is painting in *very* broad strokes. The important part however is that within the test project, I’ve created a bunk (unit testing purists would say stub I believe) object that implements my IMyServiceDataManager so that I can deal with known data. Here it is: internal class FakeMyServiceDataManager : IMyServiceDataManager { internal FakeMyServiceDataManager() { Collection = new CompositeTypeCollection(); Collection.AddRange(new CompositeTypeCollection { new CompositeType { Id = 1, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 1", }, new CompositeType { Id = 2, BoolValue = false, StringValue = "foo 2", }, new CompositeType { Id = 3, BoolValue = true, StringValue = "foo 3", }, }); } CompositeTypeCollection Collection { get; set; } #region IMyServiceDataManager Members public CompositeType GetCompositeType(int id) { if (id <= 0) return null; return Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == id); } public CompositeType SaveCompositeType(CompositeType item) { var existing = Collection.SingleOrDefault(m => m.Id == item.Id); if (null != existing) { Collection.Remove(existing); } if (item.Id == 0) { item.Id = Collection.Count > 0 ? Collection.Max(m => m.Id) + 1 : 1; } Collection.Add(item); return item; } public CompositeTypeCollection GetAllCompositeTypes() { return Collection; } #endregion } So it’s tough to see in this example why any of this is necessary, but in a real world application you would/should/could be applying much more logic within your service implementation. This all serves to ensure that between refactorings etc, that it doesn’t send sparking cogs all about or let the blue smoke out. Here’s a simple test that brings it all home, remember, broad strokes: [TestMethod] public void MyService_GetCompositeType_ExpectedValues() { FakeMyServiceDataManager fake = new FakeMyServiceDataManager(); MyService service = new MyService(fake); CompositeType expected = fake.GetCompositeType(1); CompositeType actual = service.GetCompositeType(2); Assert.AreEqual<CompositeType>(expected, actual, "Objects are not equal. Expected: {0}; Actual: {1};", expected, actual); } Summary That’s really all there is to it. You could use software x or framework y to do the exact same thing, but in my case I just didn’t really feel like it. This speaks volumes to my not yet ninja unit testing prowess.

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• What is the best way to design a table with an arbitrary id?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I have the need to create a table with a unique id as the PK. The ID is a surrogate key. Originally, I had a natural key, but requirement changes have undermined this idea. Then, I considered adding an auto incrementing identity. But, this presents problems. A. I can't specify my own ID. B. The ID's are difficult to reset. Both of these together make it difficult to copy over this table with new data or move the table across domains, e.g. Dev to QA. I need to refer to these ID's from the front end, JavaScript...so they must not change. So, the only way I am aware of to meet all these challenges is to make a GUID ID. This way, I can overwrite the ID's when I need to or I can generate a new one without concern for order (E.G. an int based id would require I know the last inserted ID). Is a GUID the best way to accomplish my goals? Considering that a GUID is a string and joining on a string is an expensive task, is there a better way?

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• Does having multiple URIs mapping to the same resource help SEO?

  - by Brian Wheeler

  Let's say I have a site with products that have tags, if each resource is available at GET '/products/tagged/:tag_list/:product_permalink' Could that be better for SEO than just one permalink? For example a product tagged "tea" and "coffee" would be available at GET '/products/tagged/tea/:product_permalink' GET '/products/tagged/coffee/:product_permalink' GET '/products/tagged/tea/coffee/:product_permalink' GET '/products/tagged/coffee/tea/:product_permalink' I would imagine that google would appreciate this because it gives multiple URIs with different levels of detail about the product, but I cant really be certain. Anyone have any direct knowledge on the topic? --EDIT-- As John Conde points, this is a horrible idea. What about having the links on my site link to a route such as GET '/products/tagged/:full_tag_list/:product_permalink', and then any time a user changes tags just have a HTTP moved permanently status to the new URL. Therefore duplicate URLs would be highly unlikely and mitigated by the proper response. Would this be better?

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• Sound stopped working

  - by Brian West

  I ran through the troubleshooting at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/SoundTroubleshooting It did not play the test sound, and it also does not play sounds during speaker-test. It does play sounds when I adjust my volume on my computer (using pommed). It worked just the other day, but this is the first time I've tested it since last night, when I put it to pm-suspend-hybrid and it half-woke up (the backlight came on, but it didn't fully wake up), then went back, then half-woke again, but was frozen like that. I had to do a manual reboot of the machine when that happened. Now my sound doesn't work, except for adjusting the volume (where the little "beep" sound plays). During the troubleshooting, it recognized my sound card, the sound modules, and the sound card's installation. I've tried removing ~/.pulse, but to no avail. Also, if it's any help, pulseaudio is running, but pulseaudio --check returns nothing, which the manpage suggests indicates an error. Edit: I should probably clarify that the wake up from the suspend-hybrid was not provoked in any way. I was laying in bed when I noticed my room was brighter suddenly, so I got up to check on it.

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• Links for Getting Started with PowerShell for Office 365 and Exchange Online

  - by Brian Jackett

  This past week I worked with some customers who were getting started with using PowerShell against Exchange Online as part of their new Office 365 solution.  As you may know Exchange is not my primary focus area but since these customers’ needs centered around PowerShell I thought this would be a good opportunity to learn more.  What soon became apparent to me was a few things: The output / objects returned from Exchange Online vs. on-premises commandlets sometimes differ (mainly due to Exchange Online output needing to be serialized across the wire) Some of the community scripts posted on TechNet Script Center or PoSH Code Repository that work for on-premises won’t work against Exchange Online due to the above I went to multiple resources to get an introduction of using the Exchange Online commandlets      In light of the last item I would like to share some resources I gathered for getting started with the Exchange Online commandlets.  I will address the first two items in a follow up post that shows one sample script that I helped a customer fix.   Links Using PowerShell with Office365 http://blah.winsmarts.com/2011-4-Using_PowerShell_with_Office365.aspx   Administering Microsoft Office 365 using WIndows PowerShell http://blog.powershell.no/2011/05/09/administering-microsoft-office-365-using-windows-powershell/   Reference to Available PowerShell Cmdlets in Exchange Online http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/dd575549.aspx   Windows PowerShell cmdlets for Office 365 http://onlinehelp.microsoft.com/en-us/office365-enterprises/hh125002.aspx   Role Based Access Control in Exchange Online http://help.outlook.com/en-us/140/dd207274.aspx   Exchange Online and RBAC http://blogs.technet.com/b/ilvancri/archive/2011/05/16/exchange-online-office365-and-rbac.aspx   Conclusion    Office 365 is being integrated into more and more customers’ environments.  While your PowerShell skills can still be used to manage certain portions of Office 365 (Exchange Online as of the time of this writing) there are a few differences in how data is passed back and forth.  Hopefully the links above will get you started on scripting against  cloud based services.         -Frog Out

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• What's the best project management software for internal dev. 5 man shop

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I work for a large corporation, but we do small intranet web application development. Our project management tracking sucks. Its custom software built by a jr. intern. For what its worth, our development style is akin to agile, but there's nothing set in stone...very customer oriented approach. I need project tracking that meets the criteria: Intranet, internal products. Mostly maintenance, some new development. 5 developers 12 products 1 hands-off manager. He really just wants to know estimated man hours, due date for dev, QA and release. Along with a short description of the project. Free or super cheap. Bonus Simple pretty UI. Think pretty charts. Hope I covered everything. Please ask for any clarification. If you read dreaming in code, the company uses some project tracking software that sounds pretty sweet. Note, we do have Team Foundation Server. I already tried pushing its use as PM tracking, but its too complicated. I can't get people to sit and train. So this software has to be easy.

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• What should one keep in mind when switching from traditional to RESTful routing in Rails?

  - by Brian Holder-Chow

  What should one keep in mind when switching from traditional to RESTful routing in Rails? From a typical Rails routes.rb file: # This is a legacy wild controller route that's not recommended for RESTful applications. # Note: This route will make all actions in every controller accessible via GET requests. match ':controller(/:action(/:id))(.:format)' As switching away from this means that I will have to create routes for each controller individually, does anyone have any advice on the best way to migrate this safely?

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• Should a programmer "think" for the client?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  I have gotten to the point where I hate requirements gathering. Customer's are too vague for their own good. In an agile environment, where we can show the client a piece of work to completion it's not too bad as we can make small regular corrections/updates to functionality. In a "waterfall" type in environment (requirements first, nearly complete product next) things can get ugly. This kind of environment has led me to constantly question requirements. E.G. Customer wants "automatically convert input to the number 1" (referring to a Qty in an order). But what they don't think about is that "input" could be a simple type-o. An "x" in a textbox could be a "woops" not I want 1 of those "toothpaste" products. But, there's so much in the air with requirements that I could stand and correct for hours on end smashing out what they want. This just isn't healthy. Working for a corporation, I could try to adjust the culture to fit the agile model that would help us (no small job, above my pay grade). Or, sweep ugly details under the rug and hope for the best. Maybe my customer is trying to get too close to the code? How does one handle the problem of "thinking for the client" without pissing them off with too many questions?

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• Marshalling the value of a char* ANSI string DLL API parameter into a C# string

  - by Brian Biales

  For those who do not mix .NET C# code with legacy DLL's that use char* pointers on a regular basis, the process to convert the strings one way or the other is non-obvious. This is not a comprehensive article on the topic at all, but rather an example of something that took me some time to go find, maybe it will save someone else the time. I am utilizing a third party too that uses a call back function to inform my application of its progress.  This callback includes a pointer that under some circumstances is a pointer to an ANSI character string.  I just need to marshal it into a C# string variable.  Seems pretty simple, yes?  Well, it is, (as are most things, once you know how to do them). The parameter of my callback function is of type IntPtr, which implies it is an integer representation of a pointer.  If I know the pointer is pointing to a simple ANSI string, here is a simple static method to copy it to a C# string: private static string GetStringFromCharStar(IntPtr ptr) {     return System.Runtime.InteropServices.Marshal.PtrToStringAnsi(ptr); } The System.Runtime.InteropServices is where to look any time you are mixing legacy unmanaged code with your .NET application.

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• SharePoint Designer 2010 Workflow Email Link To Item

  - by Brian Jackett

  In this post I’ll walk you through the process of sending an email that contains a link to the current item from a SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow.  This is a process that has been published on many other forums and blogs, but many that I have seen are more complex than seems necessary. Problem     A common request from SharePoint users is to get an email which contains a link to review/approve/edit the workflow item.  SharePoint list items contain an automatic property for Url Path, but unfortunately that Url is not properly formatted to retrieve the item if you include it directly on the message body.  I tried a few solutions suggested from other blogs or forums that took a substring of the Url Path property, concatenated the display form view Url, and mixed in some other strings.  While I was able to get this working in some scenarios I still had issues in general. Solution     My solution involved adding a hyperlink to the message body.  This ended up being far easier than I had expected and fairly intuitive once I found the correct property to use.  Follow these steps to see what I did.     First add a “Send an Email” action to your workflow.  Edit the action to pull up the email configuration dialog.  Click the “Add hyperlink” button seen below. When prompted for the address of the link click the fx button to perform a lookup.  Choose Workflow Context from the “data source” dropdown.  Choose Current Item URL from the “field from source” dropdown.  Click OK. Your Edit Hyperlink dialog should now look something like this. The end result will be a hyperlink added to your email pointing to the current workflow item.  Note: this link points to the non-modal dialog display form (display form similar to what you had in 2007). Conclusion     In this post I walked you through the steps to create a SharePoint Designer 2010 workflow with an email that contains a link to the current item.  While there are many other options for accomplishing this out on the web I found this to be a more concise process and easy to understand.  Hopefully you found this helpful as well.  Feel free to leave any comments or feedback if you’ve found other ways that were helpful to you.         -Frog Out

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• MVP Pattern Philsophical Question - Security Checking in UI

  - by Brian

  Hello, I have a philosophical question about the MVP pattern: I have a component that checks whether a user has access to a certain privilege. This privilege turns on or off certain UI features. For instance, suppose you have a UI grid, and for each row that gets bound, I do a security check to see if certain features in the grid should be enabled or disabled. There are two ways to do this: have the UI/view call the component's method, determine if it has access, and enable/disable or show/hide. The other is have the view fire an event to the presenter, have the presenter do the check and return the access back down to the view through the model or through the event arg. As per the MVP pattern, which component should security checks fit into, the presenter or the view? Since the view is using it to determine its accessibility, it seems more fitting in the view, but it is doing database checks and all inside this business component, and there is business logic there, so I can see the reverse argument too. Thoughts? Thanks.

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• Install gcc on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS

  - by Brian M. Hunt

  When I try to install gcc on Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server with apt-get install gcc, I get the following error: The following packages have unmet dependencies: gcc : Depends: cpp (>= 4:4.6.1-2ubuntu5) but it is not going to be installed Depends: gcc-4.6 (>= 4.6.1-1) but it is not going to be installed Recommends: libc6-dev but it is not going to be installed or libc-dev When I delve deeper (i.e. try to apt-get install gcc-4.6), I get: gcc-4.6 : Depends: gcc-4.6-base (= 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) but 4.6.3-1ubuntu5 is to be installed Depends: cpp-4.6 (= 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libgomp1 (>= 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libquadmath0 (>= 4.6.1-9ubuntu3) but it is not going to be installed Recommends: libc6-dev (>= 2.13-0ubuntu6) but it is not going to be installed So when I try to install gcc-4.6=4.6.1-9ubuntu3 I get a list of 366 packages to remove (including e.g. apt). Which is craziness. This is an essentially vanilla installation of Ubuntu 12.04 LTS Server (i.e. I installed nginx, python-flup, python-yaml, rsync, python-pkg-resources, lsof, fontconfig, iptables, ufw, scons, and grc). It is very surprising to me that I cannot install gcc, so I am somewhat confused as to why attempting to install gcc fails. The only apparent fix would seem to be uninstalling 366 packages, many of which are central to the operation of Ubuntu. Something doesn't add up, and I would be very grateful for assistance. EDIT The above is with the latest packages of course, having used apt-get update; apt-get upgrade before attempting the above. Sorry, I should have mentioned that.

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• Why is prefixing column names considered bad practice?

  - by P.Brian.Mackey

  According to a popular SO post is it considered a bad practice to prefix table names. At my company every column is prefixed by a table name. This is difficult for me to read. I'm not sure the reason, but this naming is actually the company standard. I can't stand the naming convention, but I have no documentation to back up my reasoning. All I know is that reading AdventureWorks is much simpler. In this our company DB you will see a table, Person and it might have column name: Person_First_Name or maybe even Person_Person_First_Name (don't ask me why you see person 2x) Why is it considered a bad practice to pre-fix column names? Are underscores considered evil in SQL as well? Note: I own Pro SQL Server 2008 - Relation Database design and implementation. References to that book are welcome.

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• What I saw at TechEd North America 2014

  - by Brian Schroer

  Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/brians/archive/2014/05/19/teched-north-america-2014.aspxI was thrilled to be able to attend TechEd North America 2014 in Houston last week. I got to go to Orlando in 2008, and since then I’ve had to settle for watching the sessions online (which ain’t bad – They’re all available on Channel 9 for streaming or downloading. Here are links to the Developer Track sessions and to the sessions from all tracks.) The sessions I attended (with my favorites bolded) were: Shiny new stuff The Microsoft Application Platform for Developers: Create Applications That Span Devices and Services INTRODUCING: The Future of .NET on the Server DEEP DIVE: The Future of .NET on the Server ASP.NET: Building Web Application Using ASP.NET and Visual Studio The Next Generation of .NET for Building Applications The Future of Visual Basic and C# Stuff you can use now Building Rich Apps with AngularJS on ASP.NET Get the Most Out of Your Code Maps SignalR: Building Real-Time Applications with ASP.NET SignalR Performance Optimize Your ASP.NET Web App Modern Web and Visual Studio Visual Studio Power User: Tips and Tricks Debugging Tips and Tricks in Visual Studio 2013 In a world where the whole company uses TFS… Using Functional, Exploratory and Acceptance Testing to Release with Confidence A Practical View of Release Management for Visual Studio 2013 From Vanity to Value, Metrics That Matter: Improving Lean and Agile, Kanban, and Scrum Ain’t Nobody Got Time for That As usual, there were some time slots with nothing of interest and others with 5 things I wanted to see at the same time. Here are the sessions I’m still planning to watch… Getting Started with TypeScript Building a Large Scale JavaScript Application in TypeScript Modern Application Lifecycle Management Why a Hacker Can Own Your Web Servers in a Day! Async Best Practices for C# and Visual Basic Building Multi-Device Apps with the New Visual Studio Tooling for Apache Cordova Applying S.O.L.I.D. Principles in .NET/C# Native Mobile Application Development for iOS, Android, and Windows in C# and Visual Studio Using Xamarin Latest Innovations in Developing ASP.NET MVC Web Applications Zero to Hero: Untested to Tested with Microsoft Fakes Using Visual Studio Cool and Elegant ASP.NET Web Forms with HTML 5 for the Modern Web The Present and Future of .NET in a World of Devices and Services

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• Taking advantage of an "Intel Turbo Memory" card for swap or fast bootup

  - by Brian Ballsun-Stanton

  I have an X61 thinkpad (currently running 10.10) that I purchased 3 years ago. I splurged a little and got a Turbo Memory expansion to improve my windows boots. When I installed 10.04 (and subsquently upgraded to 10.10) there was no Turbo Memory support and there's an awful lot of noise on searches. 1) Is there any support for Intel Turbo Memory in 11.04 or trivially compilable into the kernel as swap, suspend, hibernate point, or boot partition? 2) If there is, should I bother trying to use it?

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• Open Source Bulletin Board with Facebook Group Integration

  - by Brian

  I'm working on a an open-source community-oriented project which needs a highly social component where users can post discussion topics and questions and interact with each other. It would be ideal to facilitate discussion seamlessly between a bulletin board and Facebook. Has anyone seen such an integration? I'm talking about something that goes beyond a simple FB OAuth and actually synchronizes both forum posts / topics / OAuth / comments. Pretty please if a moderator is going to delete this tell me which StackExchange forum is the appropriate place for posting such an inquiry. :)

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• Is it possible to render and style a <title> element from within the <head> of an html document?

  - by Brian Z

  Is it possible to render and style a <title> element from within the <head> of an html document? I thought it was impossible to render information from the <head>, but the system status page for 37signals.com seems to be doing just that - http://status.37signals.com/. If you inspect the element at the very top of the page, the text that reads "37signals System Status", you'll see that the part of the DOM that is generating the text is the <head>'s <title>, and the css is as follows: title { display: block; margin: 10px auto; max-width: 840px; width: 100%; padding: 0 20px; float: left; color: black; text-rendering: optimizelegibility; -moz-box-sizing: border-box; box-sizing: border-box; } Can someone confirm that the <title> info from the <head> is indeed what is being rendered? If so, can someone point to documentation that defines this capability as I have not found any? I have applied the above css to an html document on my local web server using the same browser (chromium, os x 10.8.5) as the 37signals site was viewed on, yet my file did not display the <head>'s <title>.

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• Get to Know a Candidate (11 of 25): Roseanne Barr&ndash;Peace &amp; Freedom Party

  - by Brian Lanham

  DISCLAIMER: This is not a post about “Romney” or “Obama”. This is not a post for whom I am voting. Information sourced for Wikipedia. Barr is an American actress, comedienne, writer, television producer, and director.  Barr began her career in stand-up comedy at clubs before gaining fame for her role in the sitcom Roseanne. The show was a hit and lasted nine seasons, from 1988 to 1997. She won both an Emmy Award and a Golden Globe Award for Best Actress for her work on the show. Barr had crafted a "fierce working-class domestic goddess" persona in the eight years preceding her sitcom and wanted to do a realistic show about a strong mother who was not a victim of patriarchal consumerism. The granddaughter of immigrants from Europe and Russia, Barr was the oldest of four children in a working-class Jewish Salt Lake City family; she was also active in the LDS Church. In 1974 she married Bill Pentland, with whom she had three children, before divorcing in 1990 and marrying comedian Tom Arnold for four years. Controversy arose when she sang "The Star-Spangled Banner" off-key at a 1990 nationally aired baseball game, followed by grabbing her crotch and spitting. After her sitcom ended, she launched her own talk show, The Roseanne Show, which aired from 1998 to 2000. In 2005, she returned to stand-up comedy with a world tour. In 2011, she starred in an unscripted TV show, Roseanne's Nuts that lasted from July to September of that year, about her life on a Hawaiian farm. The Peace and Freedom Party (PFP) is a nationally-organized political party with affiliates in more than a dozen states, including California, Florida, Colorado and Hawaii. Its first candidates appeared on the ballot in 1966, but the Peace and Freedom Party of California was founded on June 23, 1967, after the LAPD riot in the wealthy Century City section of Los Angeles, and qualified for the ballot in January 1968.  The Peace and Freedom Party went national in 1968 as a left-wing organization opposed to the Vietnam War. From its inception, Peace and Freedom Party has been a left-wing political organization. It is a strong advocate of protecting the environment from pollution and nuclear waste. It advocates personal liberties and universal, high quality and free access to education and health care. Its understanding of socialism includes a socialist economy, where industries, financial institutions, and natural resources are owned by the people as a whole and democratically managed by the people who work in them and use them. Barr is on the Ballot in: CA, CO, FL Learn more about Roseanne Barr and Peace and Freedom Party on Wikipedia.

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• SPARC T4-4 Delivers World Record Performance on Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark

  - by Brian

  Oracle's SPARC T4-4 server delivered world record performance with subsecond response time on the Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark using Oracle Database 11g Release 2 running on Oracle Solaris 11. The SPARC T4-4 server achieved throughput of 430,000 cube-queries/hour with an average response time of 0.85 seconds and the median response time of 0.43 seconds. This was achieved by using only 60% of the available CPU resources leaving plenty of headroom for future growth. The SPARC T4-4 server operated on an Oracle OLAP cube with a 4 billion row fact table of sales data containing 4 dimensions. This represents as many as 90 quintillion aggregate rows (90 followed by 18 zeros). Performance Landscape Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 Benchmark 4 Billion Fact Table Rows System Queries/hour Users* Response Time (sec) Average Median SPARC T4-4 430,000 7,300 0.85 0.43 * Users - the supported number of users with a given think time of 60 seconds Configuration Summary and Results Hardware Configuration: SPARC T4-4 server with 4 x SPARC T4 processors, 3.0 GHz 1 TB memory Data Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR) 2 x Sun Storage F5100 Flash Array (each with 80 FMODs) Redo Storage 1 x Sun Fire X4275 (using COMSTAR with 8 HDD) Software Configuration: Oracle Solaris 11 11/11 Oracle Database 11g Release 2 (11.2.0.3) with Oracle OLAP option Benchmark Description The Oracle OLAP Perf Version 2 benchmark is a workload designed to demonstrate and stress the Oracle OLAP product's core features of fast query, fast update, and rich calculations on a multi-dimensional model to support enhanced Data Warehousing. The bulk of the benchmark entails running a number of concurrent users, each issuing typical multidimensional queries against an Oracle OLAP cube consisting of a number of years of sales data with fully pre-computed aggregations. The cube has four dimensions: time, product, customer, and channel. Each query user issues approximately 150 different queries. One query chain may ask for total sales in a particular region (e.g South America) for a particular time period (e.g. Q4 of 2010) followed by additional queries which drill down into sales for individual countries (e.g. Chile, Peru, etc.) with further queries drilling down into individual stores, etc. Another query chain may ask for yearly comparisons of total sales for some product category (e.g. major household appliances) and then issue further queries drilling down into particular products (e.g. refrigerators, stoves. etc.), particular regions, particular customers, etc. Results from version 2 of the benchmark are not comparable with version 1. The primary difference is the type of queries along with the query mix. Key Points and Best Practices Since typical BI users are often likely to issue similar queries, with different constants in the where clauses, setting the init.ora prameter "cursor_sharing" to "force" will provide for additional query throughput and a larger number of potential users. Except for this setting, together with making full use of available memory, out of the box performance for the OLAP Perf workload should provide results similar to what is reported here. For a given number of query users with zero think time, the main measured metrics are the average query response time, the median query response time, and the query throughput. A derived metric is the maximum number of users the system can support achieving the measured response time assuming some non-zero think time. The calculation of the maximum number of users follows from the well-known response-time law N = (rt + tt) * tp where rt is the average response time, tt is the think time and tp is the measured throughput. Setting tt to 60 seconds, rt to 0.85 seconds and tp to 119.44 queries/sec (430,000 queries/hour), the above formula shows that the T4-4 server will support 7,300 concurrent users with a think time of 60 seconds and an average response time of 0.85 seconds. For more information see chapter 3 from the book "Quantitative System Performance" cited below. -- See Also Quantitative System Performance Computer System Analysis Using Queueing Network Models Edward D. Lazowska, John Zahorjan, G. Scott Graham, Kenneth C. Sevcik external local Oracle Database 11g – Oracle OLAP oracle.com OTN SPARC T4-4 Server oracle.com OTN Oracle Solaris oracle.com OTN Oracle Database 11g Release 2 oracle.com OTN Disclosure Statement Copyright 2012, Oracle and/or its affiliates. All rights reserved. Oracle and Java are registered trademarks of Oracle and/or its affiliates. Other names may be trademarks of their respective owners. Results as of 11/2/2012.

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