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  • Exploring the Excel Services REST API

    - by jamiet
    Over the last few years Analysis Services guru Chris Webb and I have been on something of a crusade to enable better access to data that is locked up in countless Excel workbooks that litter the hard drives of enterprise PCs. The most prominent manifestation of that crusade up to now has been a forum thread that Chris began on Microsoft Answers entitled Excel Web App API? Chris began that thread with: I was wondering whether there was an API for the Excel Web App? Specifically, I was wondering if it was possible (or if it will be possible in the future) to expose data in a spreadsheet in the Excel Web App as an OData feed, in the way that it is possible with Excel Services? Up to recently the last 10 words of that paragraph "in the way that it is possible with Excel Services" had completely washed over me however a comment on my recent blog post Thoughts on ExcelMashup.com (and a rant) by Josh Booker in which Josh said: Excel Services is a service application built for sharepoint 2010 which exposes a REST API for excel documents. We're looking forward to pros like you giving it a try now that Office365 makes sharepoint more easily accessible.  Can't wait for your future blog about using REST API to load data from Excel on Offce 365 in SSIS. made me think that perhaps the Excel Services REST API is something I should be looking into and indeed that is what I have been doing over the past few days. And you know what? I'm rather impressed with some of what Excel Services' REST API has to offer. Unfortunately Excel Services' REST API also has one debilitating aspect that renders this blog post much less useful than it otherwise would be; namely that it is not publicly available from the Excel Web App on SkyDrive. Therefore all I can do in this blog post is show you screenshots of what the REST API provides in Sharepoint rather than linking you directly to those REST resources; that's a great shame because one of the benefits of a REST API is that it is easily and ubiquitously demonstrable from a web browser. Instead I am hosting a workbook on Sharepoint in Office 365 because that does include Excel Services' REST API but, again, all I can do is show you screenshots. N.B. If anyone out there knows how to make Office-365-hosted spreadsheets publicly-accessible (i.e. without requiring a username/password) please do let me know (because knowing which forum on which to ask the question is an exercise in futility). In order to demonstrate Excel Services' REST API I needed some decent data and for that I used the World Tourism Organization Statistics Database and Yearbook - United Nations World Tourism Organization dataset hosted on Azure Datamarket (its free, by the way); this dataset "provides comprehensive information on international tourism worldwide and offers a selection of the latest available statistics on international tourist arrivals, tourism receipts and expenditure" and you can explore the data for yourself here. If you want to play along at home by viewing the data as it exists in Excel then it can be viewed here. Let's dive in.   The root of Excel Services' REST API is the model resource which resides at: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model Note that this is true for every workbook hosted in a Sharepoint document library - each Excel workbook is a RESTful resource. (Update: Mark Stacey on Twitter tells me that "It's turned off by default in onpremise Sharepoint (1 tickbox to turn on though)". Thanks Mark!) The data is provided as an ATOM feed but I have Firefox's feed reading ability turned on so you don't see the underlying XML goo. As you can see there are four top level resources, Ranges, Charts, Tables and PivotTables; exploring one of those resources is where things get interesting. Let's take a look at the Tables Resource: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables Our workbook contains only one table, called ‘Table1’ (to reiterate, you can explore this table yourself here). Viewing that table via the REST API is pretty easy, we simply append the name of the table onto our previous URI: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1') As you can see, that quite simply gives us a representation of the data in that table. What you cannot see from this screenshot is that this is pure HTML that is being served up; that is all well and good but actually we can do more interesting things. If we specify that the data should be returned not as HTML but as: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1')?$format=image then that data comes back as a pure image and can be used in any web page where you would ordinarily use images. This is the thing that I really like about Excel Services’ REST API – we can embed an image in any web page but instead of being a copy of the data, that image is actually live – if the underlying data in the workbook were to change then hitting refresh will show a new image. Pretty cool, no? The same is true of any Charts or Pivot Tables in your workbook - those can be embedded as images too and if the underlying data changes, boom, the image in your web page changes too. There is a lot of data in the workbook so the image returned by that previous URI is too large to show here so instead let’s take a look at a different resource, this time a range: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15') That URI returns cells A1 to C15 from a worksheet called “Data”: And if we ask for that as an image again: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15')?$format=image Were this image resource not behind a username/password then this would be a live image of the data in the workbook as opposed to one that I had to copy and upload elsewhere. Nonetheless I hope this little wrinkle doesn't detract from the inate value of what I am trying to articulate here; that an existing image in a web page can be changed on-the-fly simply by inserting some data into an Excel workbook. I for one think that that is very cool indeed! I think that's enough in the way of demo for now as this shows what is possible using Excel Services' REST API. Of course, not all features work quite how I would like and here is a bulleted list of some of my more negative feedback: The URIs are pig-ugly. Are "_vti_bin" & "ExcelRest.aspx" really necessary as part of the URI? Would this not be better: http://server/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/Model/Tables(‘Table1’) That URI provides the necessary addressability and is a lot easier to remember. Discoverability of these resources is not easy, we essentially have to handcrank a URI ourselves. Take the example of embedding a chart into a blog post - would it not be better if I could browse first through the document library to an Excel workbook and THEN through the workbook to the chart/range/table that I am interested in? Call it a wizard if you like. That would be really cool and would, I am sure, promote this feature and cut down on the copy-and-paste disease that the REST API is meant to alleviate. The resources that I demonstrated can be returned as feeds as well as images or HTML simply by changing the format parameter to ?$format=atom however for some inexplicable reason they don't return OData and no-one on the Excel Services team can tell me why (believe me, I have asked). $format is an OData parameter however other useful parameters such as $top and $filter are not supported. It would be nice if they were. Although I haven't demonstrated it here Excel Services' REST API does provide a makeshift way of altering the data by changing the value of specific cells however what it does not allow you to do is add new data into the workbook. Google Docs allows this and was one of the motivating factors for Chris Webb's forum post that I linked to above. None of this works for Excel workbooks hosted on SkyDrive This blog post is as long as it needs to be for a short introduction so I'll stop now. If you want to know more than I recommend checking out a few links: Excel Services REST API documentation on MSDNSo what does REST on Excel Services look like??? by Shahar PrishExcel Services in SharePoint 2010 REST API Syntax by Christian Stich. Any thoughts? Let's hear them in the comments section below! @Jamiet 

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  • C#: Optional Parameters - Pros and Pitfalls

    - by James Michael Hare
    When Microsoft rolled out Visual Studio 2010 with C# 4, I was very excited to learn how I could apply all the new features and enhancements to help make me and my team more productive developers. Default parameters have been around forever in C++, and were intentionally omitted in Java in favor of using overloading to satisfy that need as it was though that having too many default parameters could introduce code safety issues.  To some extent I can understand that move, as I’ve been bitten by default parameter pitfalls before, but at the same time I feel like Java threw out the baby with the bathwater in that move and I’m glad to see C# now has them. This post briefly discusses the pros and pitfalls of using default parameters.  I’m avoiding saying cons, because I really don’t believe using default parameters is a negative thing, I just think there are things you must watch for and guard against to avoid abuses that can cause code safety issues. Pro: Default Parameters Can Simplify Code Let’s start out with positives.  Consider how much cleaner it is to reduce all the overloads in methods or constructors that simply exist to give the semblance of optional parameters.  For example, we could have a Message class defined which allows for all possible initializations of a Message: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: // can either cascade these like this or duplicate the defaults (which can introduce risk) 4: public Message() 5: : this(string.Empty) 6: { 7: } 8:  9: public Message(string text) 10: : this(text, null) 11: { 12: } 13:  14: public Message(string text, IDictionary<string, string> properties) 15: : this(text, properties, -1) 16: { 17: } 18:  19: public Message(string text, IDictionary<string, string> properties, long timeToLive) 20: { 21: // ... 22: } 23: }   Now consider the same code with default parameters: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: // can either cascade these like this or duplicate the defaults (which can introduce risk) 4: public Message(string text = "", IDictionary<string, string> properties = null, long timeToLive = -1) 5: { 6: // ... 7: } 8: }   Much more clean and concise and no repetitive coding!  In addition, in the past if you wanted to be able to cleanly supply timeToLive and accept the default on text and properties above, you would need to either create another overload, or pass in the defaults explicitly.  With named parameters, though, we can do this easily: 1: var msg = new Message(timeToLive: 100);   Pro: Named Parameters can Improve Readability I must say one of my favorite things with the default parameters addition in C# is the named parameters.  It lets code be a lot easier to understand visually with no comments.  Think how many times you’ve run across a TimeSpan declaration with 4 arguments and wondered if they were passing in days/hours/minutes/seconds or hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds.  A novice running through your code may wonder what it is.  Named arguments can help resolve the visual ambiguity: 1: // is this days/hours/minutes/seconds (no) or hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds (yes) 2: var ts = new TimeSpan(1, 2, 3, 4); 3:  4: // this however is visually very explicit 5: var ts = new TimeSpan(days: 1, hours: 2, minutes: 3, seconds: 4);   Or think of the times you’ve run across something passing a Boolean literal and wondered what it was: 1: // what is false here? 2: var sub = CreateSubscriber(hostname, port, false); 3:  4: // aha! Much more visibly clear 5: var sub = CreateSubscriber(hostname, port, isBuffered: false);   Pitfall: Don't Insert new Default Parameters In Between Existing Defaults Now let’s consider a two potential pitfalls.  The first is really an abuse.  It’s not really a fault of the default parameters themselves, but a fault in the use of them.  Let’s consider that Message constructor again with defaults.  Let’s say you want to add a messagePriority to the message and you think this is more important than a timeToLive value, so you decide to put messagePriority before it in the default, this gives you: 1: public class Message 2: { 3: public Message(string text = "", IDictionary<string, string> properties = null, int priority = 5, long timeToLive = -1) 4: { 5: // ... 6: } 7: }   Oh boy have we set ourselves up for failure!  Why?  Think of all the code out there that could already be using the library that already specified the timeToLive, such as this possible call: 1: var msg = new Message(“An error occurred”, myProperties, 1000);   Before this specified a message with a TTL of 1000, now it specifies a message with a priority of 1000 and a time to live of -1 (infinite).  All of this with NO compiler errors or warnings. So the rule to take away is if you are adding new default parameters to a method that’s currently in use, make sure you add them to the end of the list or create a brand new method or overload. Pitfall: Beware of Default Parameters in Inheritance and Interface Implementation Now, the second potential pitfalls has to do with inheritance and interface implementation.  I’ll illustrate with a puzzle: 1: public interface ITag 2: { 3: void WriteTag(string tagName = "ITag"); 4: } 5:  6: public class BaseTag : ITag 7: { 8: public virtual void WriteTag(string tagName = "BaseTag") { Console.WriteLine(tagName); } 9: } 10:  11: public class SubTag : BaseTag 12: { 13: public override void WriteTag(string tagName = "SubTag") { Console.WriteLine(tagName); } 14: } 15:  16: public static class Program 17: { 18: public static void Main() 19: { 20: SubTag subTag = new SubTag(); 21: BaseTag subByBaseTag = subTag; 22: ITag subByInterfaceTag = subTag; 23:  24: // what happens here? 25: subTag.WriteTag(); 26: subByBaseTag.WriteTag(); 27: subByInterfaceTag.WriteTag(); 28: } 29: }   What happens?  Well, even though the object in each case is SubTag whose tag is “SubTag”, you will get: 1: SubTag 2: BaseTag 3: ITag   Why?  Because default parameter are resolved at compile time, not runtime!  This means that the default does not belong to the object being called, but by the reference type it’s being called through.  Since the SubTag instance is being called through an ITag reference, it will use the default specified in ITag. So the moral of the story here is to be very careful how you specify defaults in interfaces or inheritance hierarchies.  I would suggest avoiding repeating them, and instead concentrating on the layer of classes or interfaces you must likely expect your caller to be calling from. For example, if you have a messaging factory that returns an IMessage which can be either an MsmqMessage or JmsMessage, it only makes since to put the defaults at the IMessage level since chances are your user will be using the interface only. So let’s sum up.  In general, I really love default and named parameters in C# 4.0.  I think they’re a great tool to help make your code easier to read and maintain when used correctly. On the plus side, default parameters: Reduce redundant overloading for the sake of providing optional calling structures. Improve readability by being able to name an ambiguous argument. But remember to make sure you: Do not insert new default parameters in the middle of an existing set of default parameters, this may cause unpredictable behavior that may not necessarily throw a syntax error – add to end of list or create new method. Be extremely careful how you use default parameters in inheritance hierarchies and interfaces – choose the most appropriate level to add the defaults based on expected usage. Technorati Tags: C#,.NET,Software,Default Parameters

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  • Silverlight Cream for April 06, 2010 -- #832

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Issue: Alex van Beek, Gill Cleeren, SilverlightShow, Michael Sync, Rénald Nollet, Charles Petzold, The-Oliver, and Max Paulousky. Shoutouts: Denislav Savkov of SilverlightShow ported his Slider control to WP7: Windows Phone 7 Series Sample Image Viewer SilverlightShow interview: The Silverlight Tour - what, where and why. Interview with one of the Tour organizers Laurent Duveau From SilverlightCream.com: Silverlight 4: using the VisualStateManager for state animations with MVVM Alex van Beek has an approach to resolving the MVVM issue of Animations without keeping a reference to the ViewModel by way of VisualStateManager Leveraging the ASP.NET Membership in Silverlight Gill Cleeren's post at SilverlightShow talks about using ASP.NET authentication inside your Silverlight making membership not only something you know and understand, but now the transition from your ASP.NET apps to Silverlight is simple as well. Windows Phone 7 Series RSS reader SilverlightShow has a demo RSS Reader for WP7 up... no text, but the code is there. Step by Step Tutorial : Installing Multi-Touch Simulator for Silverlight Phone 7 Michael Sync actually has a multi-touch simulator working for WP7 ... it involves a bunch of moving parts and one of the requirements is Windows 7, but if that works for you, this will too :) Element Property Binding Improvements in Blend 4 Beta and Visual Studio 2010 RC Rénald Nollet demonstrates new Blend and VS2010 features that assists you in Element Property binding with real examples. Projection Transforms Sans Math Charles Petzold is writing about Silverlight and 3D and specifically in this post 3D without math which becomes PlaneProjection... good long tutorial on it and code to back it all up. Daily Demo: Silverlight Install out of browser & Check for Update Behaviors The-Oliver has a post up about OOB and checking for updates using behaviors with only a slight change to your xaml... cool! Wizards. Prototype of sketching Wizard for WPF – 2 Max Paulousky has part 2 of his tutorial on a sketchflow Wizard for WPF ... yes WPF, but check it out... source too. 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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  • Exploring the Excel Services REST API

    - by jamiet
    Over the last few years Analysis Services guru Chris Webb and I have been on something of a crusade to enable better access to data that is locked up in countless Excel workbooks that litter the hard drives of enterprise PCs. The most prominent manifestation of that crusade up to now has been a forum thread that Chris began on Microsoft Answers entitled Excel Web App API? Chris began that thread with: I was wondering whether there was an API for the Excel Web App? Specifically, I was wondering if it was possible (or if it will be possible in the future) to expose data in a spreadsheet in the Excel Web App as an OData feed, in the way that it is possible with Excel Services? Up to recently the last 10 words of that paragraph "in the way that it is possible with Excel Services" had completely washed over me however a comment on my recent blog post Thoughts on ExcelMashup.com (and a rant) by Josh Booker in which Josh said: Excel Services is a service application built for sharepoint 2010 which exposes a REST API for excel documents. We're looking forward to pros like you giving it a try now that Office365 makes sharepoint more easily accessible.  Can't wait for your future blog about using REST API to load data from Excel on Offce 365 in SSIS. made me think that perhaps the Excel Services REST API is something I should be looking into and indeed that is what I have been doing over the past few days. And you know what? I'm rather impressed with some of what Excel Services' REST API has to offer. Unfortunately Excel Services' REST API also has one debilitating aspect that renders this blog post much less useful than it otherwise would be; namely that it is not publicly available from the Excel Web App on SkyDrive. Therefore all I can do in this blog post is show you screenshots of what the REST API provides in Sharepoint rather than linking you directly to those REST resources; that's a great shame because one of the benefits of a REST API is that it is easily and ubiquitously demonstrable from a web browser. Instead I am hosting a workbook on Sharepoint in Office 365 because that does include Excel Services' REST API but, again, all I can do is show you screenshots. N.B. If anyone out there knows how to make Office-365-hosted spreadsheets publicly-accessible (i.e. without requiring a username/password) please do let me know (because knowing which forum on which to ask the question is an exercise in futility). In order to demonstrate Excel Services' REST API I needed some decent data and for that I used the World Tourism Organization Statistics Database and Yearbook - United Nations World Tourism Organization dataset hosted on Azure Datamarket (its free, by the way); this dataset "provides comprehensive information on international tourism worldwide and offers a selection of the latest available statistics on international tourist arrivals, tourism receipts and expenditure" and you can explore the data for yourself here. If you want to play along at home by viewing the data as it exists in Excel then it can be viewed here. Let's dive in.   The root of Excel Services' REST API is the model resource which resides at: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model Note that this is true for every workbook hosted in a Sharepoint document library - each Excel workbook is a RESTful resource. (Update: Mark Stacey on Twitter tells me that "It's turned off by default in onpremise Sharepoint (1 tickbox to turn on though)". Thanks Mark!) The data is provided as an ATOM feed but I have Firefox's feed reading ability turned on so you don't see the underlying XML goo. As you can see there are four top level resources, Ranges, Charts, Tables and PivotTables; exploring one of those resources is where things get interesting. Let's take a look at the Tables Resource: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables Our workbook contains only one table, called ‘Table1’ (to reiterate, you can explore this table yourself here). Viewing that table via the REST API is pretty easy, we simply append the name of the table onto our previous URI: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1') As you can see, that quite simply gives us a representation of the data in that table. What you cannot see from this screenshot is that this is pure HTML that is being served up; that is all well and good but actually we can do more interesting things. If we specify that the data should be returned not as HTML but as: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Tables('Table1')?$format=image then that data comes back as a pure image and can be used in any web page where you would ordinarily use images. This is the thing that I really like about Excel Services’ REST API – we can embed an image in any web page but instead of being a copy of the data, that image is actually live – if the underlying data in the workbook were to change then hitting refresh will show a new image. Pretty cool, no? The same is true of any Charts or Pivot Tables in your workbook - those can be embedded as images too and if the underlying data changes, boom, the image in your web page changes too. There is a lot of data in the workbook so the image returned by that previous URI is too large to show here so instead let’s take a look at a different resource, this time a range: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15') That URI returns cells A1 to C15 from a worksheet called “Data”: And if we ask for that as an image again: http://server/_vti_bin/ExcelRest.aspx/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/model/Ranges('Data!A1|C15')?$format=image Were this image resource not behind a username/password then this would be a live image of the data in the workbook as opposed to one that I had to copy and upload elsewhere. Nonetheless I hope this little wrinkle doesn't detract from the inate value of what I am trying to articulate here; that an existing image in a web page can be changed on-the-fly simply by inserting some data into an Excel workbook. I for one think that that is very cool indeed! I think that's enough in the way of demo for now as this shows what is possible using Excel Services' REST API. Of course, not all features work quite how I would like and here is a bulleted list of some of my more negative feedback: The URIs are pig-ugly. Are "_vti_bin" & "ExcelRest.aspx" really necessary as part of the URI? Would this not be better: http://server/Documents/TourismExpenditureInMillionsOfUSD.xlsx/Model/Tables(‘Table1’) That URI provides the necessary addressability and is a lot easier to remember. Discoverability of these resources is not easy, we essentially have to handcrank a URI ourselves. Take the example of embedding a chart into a blog post - would it not be better if I could browse first through the document library to an Excel workbook and THEN through the workbook to the chart/range/table that I am interested in? Call it a wizard if you like. That would be really cool and would, I am sure, promote this feature and cut down on the copy-and-paste disease that the REST API is meant to alleviate. The resources that I demonstrated can be returned as feeds as well as images or HTML simply by changing the format parameter to ?$format=atom however for some inexplicable reason they don't return OData and no-one on the Excel Services team can tell me why (believe me, I have asked). $format is an OData parameter however other useful parameters such as $top and $filter are not supported. It would be nice if they were. Although I haven't demonstrated it here Excel Services' REST API does provide a makeshift way of altering the data by changing the value of specific cells however what it does not allow you to do is add new data into the workbook. Google Docs allows this and was one of the motivating factors for Chris Webb's forum post that I linked to above. None of this works for Excel workbooks hosted on SkyDrive This blog post is as long as it needs to be for a short introduction so I'll stop now. If you want to know more than I recommend checking out a few links: Excel Services REST API documentation on MSDNSo what does REST on Excel Services look like??? by Shahar PrishExcel Services in SharePoint 2010 REST API Syntax by Christian Stich. Any thoughts? Let's hear them in the comments section below! @Jamiet 

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  • SQL SERVER – Weekly Series – Memory Lane – #035

    - by Pinal Dave
    Here is the list of selected articles of SQLAuthority.com across all these years. Instead of just listing all the articles I have selected a few of my most favorite articles and have listed them here with additional notes below it. Let me know which one of the following is your favorite article from memory lane. 2007 Row Overflow Data Explanation  In SQL Server 2005 one table row can contain more than one varchar(8000) fields. One more thing, the exclusions has exclusions also the limit of each individual column max width of 8000 bytes does not apply to varchar(max), nvarchar(max), varbinary(max), text, image or xml data type columns. Comparison Index Fragmentation, Index De-Fragmentation, Index Rebuild – SQL SERVER 2000 and SQL SERVER 2005 An old but like a gold article. Talks about lots of concepts related to Index and the difference from earlier version to the newer version. I strongly suggest that everyone should read this article just to understand how SQL Server has moved forward with the technology. Improvements in TempDB SQL Server 2005 had come up with quite a lots of improvements and this blog post describes them and explains the same. If you ask me what is my the most favorite article from early career. I must point out to this article as when I wrote this one I personally have learned a lot of new things. Recompile All The Stored Procedure on Specific TableI prefer to recompile all the stored procedure on the table, which has faced mass insert or update. sp_recompiles marks stored procedures to recompile when they execute next time. This blog post explains the same with the help of a script.  2008 SQLAuthority Download – SQL Server Cheatsheet You can download and print this cheat sheet and use it for your personal reference. If you have any suggestions, please let me know and I will see if I can update this SQL Server cheat sheet. Difference Between DBMS and RDBMS What is the difference between DBMS and RDBMS? DBMS – Data Base Management System RDBMS – Relational Data Base Management System or Relational DBMS High Availability – Hot Add Memory Hot Add CPU and Hot Add Memory are extremely interesting features of the SQL Server, however, personally I have not witness them heavily used. These features also have few restriction as well. I blogged about them in detail. 2009 Delete Duplicate Rows I have demonstrated in this blog post how one can identify and delete duplicate rows. Interesting Observation of Logon Trigger On All Servers – Solution The question I put forth in my previous article was – In single login why the trigger fires multiple times; it should be fired only once. I received numerous answers in thread as well as in my MVP private news group. Now, let us discuss the answer for the same. The answer is – It happens because multiple SQL Server services are running as well as intellisense is turned on. Blog post demonstrates how we can do the same with the help of SQL scripts. Management Studio New Features I have selected my favorite 5 features and blogged about it. IntelliSense for Query Editing Multi Server Query Query Editor Regions Object Explorer Enhancements Activity Monitors Maximum Number of Index per Table One of the questions I asked in my user group was – What is the maximum number of Index per table? I received lots of answers to this question but only two answers are correct. Let us now take a look at them in this blog post. 2010 Default Statistics on Column – Automatic Statistics on Column The truth is, Statistics can be in a table even though there is no Index in it. If you have the auto- create and/or auto-update Statistics feature turned on for SQL Server database, Statistics will be automatically created on the Column based on a few conditions. Please read my previously posted article, SQL SERVER – When are Statistics Updated – What triggers Statistics to Update, for the specific conditions when Statistics is updated. 2011 T-SQL Scripts to Find Maximum between Two Numbers In this blog post there are two different scripts listed which demonstrates way to find the maximum number between two numbers. I need your help, which one of the script do you think is the most accurate way to find maximum number? Find Details for Statistics of Whole Database – DMV – T-SQL Script I was recently asked is there a single script which can provide all the necessary details about statistics for any database. This question made me write following script. I was initially planning to use sp_helpstats command but I remembered that this is marked to be deprecated in future. 2012 Introduction to Function SIGN SIGN Function is very fundamental function. It will return the value 1, -1 or 0. If your value is negative it will return you negative -1 and if it is positive it will return you positive +1. Let us start with a simple small example. Template Browser – A Very Important and Useful Feature of SSMS Templates are like a quick cheat sheet or quick reference. Templates are available to create objects like databases, tables, views, indexes, stored procedures, triggers, statistics, and functions. Templates are also available for Analysis Services as well. The template scripts contain parameters to help you customize the code. You can Replace Template Parameters dialog box to insert values into the script. An invalid floating point operation occurred If you run any of the above functions they will give you an error related to invalid floating point. Honestly there is no workaround except passing the function appropriate values. SQRT of a negative number will give you result in real numbers which is not supported at this point of time as well LOG of a negative number is not possible (because logarithm is the inverse function of an exponential function and the exponential function is NEVER negative). Validating Spatial Object with IsValidDetailed Function SQL Server 2012 has introduced the new function IsValidDetailed(). This function has made my life very easy. In simple words, this function will check if the spatial object passed is valid or not. If it is valid it will give information that it is valid. If the spatial object is not valid it will return the answer that it is not valid and the reason for the same. This makes it very easy to debug the issue and make the necessary correction. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: Memory Lane, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Bug with Set / Get Accessor in .Net 3.5

    - by MarkPearl
    I spent a few hours scratching my head on this one... So I thought I would blog about it in case someone else had the same headache. Assume you have a class, and you are wanting to use the INotifyPropertyChanged interface so that when you bind to an instance of the class, you get the magic sauce of binding to do you updates to the UI. Well, I had a special instance where I wanted one of the properties of the class to add some additional formatting to itself whenever someone changed its value (see the code below).   class Test: INotifyPropertyChanged {     private string_inputValue;     public stringInputValue     {         get        {             return_inputValue;         }         set        {             if(value!= _inputValue)             {                 _inputValue = value+ "Extra Stuff";                 NotifyPropertyChanged("InputValue");                     }         }     }     public eventPropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged;     public voidNotifyPropertyChanged(stringinfo)     {         if(PropertyChanged != null)         {             PropertyChanged(this, newPropertyChangedEventArgs(info));         }     } }   Everything looked fine, but when I ran it in my WPF project, the textbox I was binding to would not update? I couldn’t understand it! I thought the code made sense, so why wasn’t it working? Eventually StackOverflow came to the rescue, where I was told that it was a bug in the .Net 3.5 Runtime and that a fix was scheduled in .Net 4 For those who have the same problem, here is the workaround… You need to put the NotifyPropertyChanged method on the application thread! public string InputValue { get { return _inputValue; } set { if (value != _inputValue) { _inputValue = value + "Extra Stuff"; // // React to the type of measurement // Application.Current.Dispatcher.BeginInvoke((Action)delegate { NotifyPropertyChanged("InputValue"); }); } } }

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  • C#: LINQ vs foreach - Round 1.

    - by James Michael Hare
    So I was reading Peter Kellner's blog entry on Resharper 5.0 and its LINQ refactoring and thought that was very cool.  But that raised a point I had always been curious about in my head -- which is a better choice: manual foreach loops or LINQ?    The answer is not really clear-cut.  There are two sides to any code cost arguments: performance and maintainability.  The first of these is obvious and quantifiable.  Given any two pieces of code that perform the same function, you can run them side-by-side and see which piece of code performs better.   Unfortunately, this is not always a good measure.  Well written assembly language outperforms well written C++ code, but you lose a lot in maintainability which creates a big techncial debt load that is hard to offset as the application ages.  In contrast, higher level constructs make the code more brief and easier to understand, hence reducing technical cost.   Now, obviously in this case we're not talking two separate languages, we're comparing doing something manually in the language versus using a higher-order set of IEnumerable extensions that are in the System.Linq library.   Well, before we discuss any further, let's look at some sample code and the numbers.  First, let's take a look at the for loop and the LINQ expression.  This is just a simple find comparison:       // find implemented via LINQ     public static bool FindViaLinq(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         return list.Any(item => item == target);     }         // find implemented via standard iteration     public static bool FindViaIteration(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         foreach (var i in list)         {             if (i == target)             {                 return true;             }         }           return false;     }   Okay, looking at this from a maintainability point of view, the Linq expression is definitely more concise (8 lines down to 1) and is very readable in intention.  You don't have to actually analyze the behavior of the loop to determine what it's doing.   So let's take a look at performance metrics from 100,000 iterations of these methods on a List<int> of varying sizes filled with random data.  For this test, we fill a target array with 100,000 random integers and then run the exact same pseudo-random targets through both searches.                       List<T> On 100,000 Iterations     Method      Size     Total (ms)  Per Iteration (ms)  % Slower     Any         10       26          0.00046             30.00%     Iteration   10       20          0.00023             -     Any         100      116         0.00201             18.37%     Iteration   100      98          0.00118             -     Any         1000     1058        0.01853             16.78%     Iteration   1000     906         0.01155             -     Any         10,000   10,383      0.18189             17.41%     Iteration   10,000   8843        0.11362             -     Any         100,000  104,004     1.8297              18.27%     Iteration   100,000  87,941      1.13163             -   The LINQ expression is running about 17% slower for average size collections and worse for smaller collections.  Presumably, this is due to the overhead of the state machine used to track the iterators for the yield returns in the LINQ expressions, which seems about right in a tight loop such as this.   So what about other LINQ expressions?  After all, Any() is one of the more trivial ones.  I decided to try the TakeWhile() algorithm using a Count() to get the position stopped like the sample Pete was using in his blog that Resharper refactored for him into LINQ:       // Linq form     public static int GetTargetPosition1(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         return list.TakeWhile(item => item != target).Count();     }       // traditionally iterative form     public static int GetTargetPosition2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         int count = 0;           foreach (var i in list)         {             if(i == target)             {                 break;             }               ++count;         }           return count;     }   Once again, the LINQ expression is much shorter, easier to read, and should be easier to maintain over time, reducing the cost of technical debt.  So I ran these through the same test data:                       List<T> On 100,000 Iterations     Method      Size     Total (ms)  Per Iteration (ms)  % Slower     TakeWhile   10       41          0.00041             128%     Iteration   10       18          0.00018             -     TakeWhile   100      171         0.00171             88%     Iteration   100      91          0.00091             -     TakeWhile   1000     1604        0.01604             94%     Iteration   1000     825         0.00825             -     TakeWhile   10,000   15765       0.15765             92%     Iteration   10,000   8204        0.08204             -     TakeWhile   100,000  156950      1.5695              92%     Iteration   100,000  81635       0.81635             -     Wow!  I expected some overhead due to the state machines iterators produce, but 90% slower?  That seems a little heavy to me.  So then I thought, well, what if TakeWhile() is not the right tool for the job?  The problem is TakeWhile returns each item for processing using yield return, whereas our for-loop really doesn't care about the item beyond using it as a stop condition to evaluate. So what if that back and forth with the iterator state machine is the problem?  Well, we can quickly create an (albeit ugly) lambda that uses the Any() along with a count in a closure (if a LINQ guru knows a better way PLEASE let me know!), after all , this is more consistent with what we're trying to do, we're trying to find the first occurence of an item and halt once we find it, we just happen to be counting on the way.  This mostly matches Any().       // a new method that uses linq but evaluates the count in a closure.     public static int TakeWhileViaLinq2(IEnumerable<int> list, int target)     {         int count = 0;         list.Any(item =>             {                 if(item == target)                 {                     return true;                 }                   ++count;                 return false;             });         return count;     }     Now how does this one compare?                         List<T> On 100,000 Iterations     Method         Size     Total (ms)  Per Iteration (ms)  % Slower     TakeWhile      10       41          0.00041             128%     Any w/Closure  10       23          0.00023             28%     Iteration      10       18          0.00018             -     TakeWhile      100      171         0.00171             88%     Any w/Closure  100      116         0.00116             27%     Iteration      100      91          0.00091             -     TakeWhile      1000     1604        0.01604             94%     Any w/Closure  1000     1101        0.01101             33%     Iteration      1000     825         0.00825             -     TakeWhile      10,000   15765       0.15765             92%     Any w/Closure  10,000   10802       0.10802             32%     Iteration      10,000   8204        0.08204             -     TakeWhile      100,000  156950      1.5695              92%     Any w/Closure  100,000  108378      1.08378             33%     Iteration      100,000  81635       0.81635             -     Much better!  It seems that the overhead of TakeAny() returning each item and updating the state in the state machine is drastically reduced by using Any() since Any() iterates forward until it finds the value we're looking for -- for the task we're attempting to do.   So the lesson there is, make sure when you use a LINQ expression you're choosing the best expression for the job, because if you're doing more work than you really need, you'll have a slower algorithm.  But this is true of any choice of algorithm or collection in general.     Even with the Any() with the count in the closure it is still about 30% slower, but let's consider that angle carefully.  For a list of 100,000 items, it was the difference between 1.01 ms and 0.82 ms roughly in a List<T>.  That's really not that bad at all in the grand scheme of things.  Even running at 90% slower with TakeWhile(), for the vast majority of my projects, an extra millisecond to save potential errors in the long term and improve maintainability is a small price to pay.  And if your typical list is 1000 items or less we're talking only microseconds worth of difference.   It's like they say: 90% of your performance bottlenecks are in 2% of your code, so over-optimizing almost never pays off.  So personally, I'll take the LINQ expression wherever I can because they will be easier to read and maintain (thus reducing technical debt) and I can rely on Microsoft's development to have coded and unit tested those algorithm fully for me instead of relying on a developer to code the loop logic correctly.   If something's 90% slower, yes, it's worth keeping in mind, but it's really not until you start get magnitudes-of-order slower (10x, 100x, 1000x) that alarm bells should really go off.  And if I ever do need that last millisecond of performance?  Well then I'll optimize JUST THAT problem spot.  To me it's worth it for the readability, speed-to-market, and maintainability.

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  • Problem with WCF-SQL Adapter

    - by Paul Petrov
    When using WCF receive adapter with SQL binding in Polling mode please be aware of the following problem. Problem: At some regular but seemingly random intervals the application stops processing new requests, places a lock on the database and prevent other application from accessing it. Initially it looked like DTC issue, as it was distributed transaction that stalled most of the time. Symptoms: Orchestration instances in Dehydrated state, receive location not picking up new messages, exclusive locks on database tables, errors in DTC trace. Cause: Microsoft has confirmed that there is a bug in the WCF-SQL adapter. In the receive adapter binding configuration there's receiveTimeout property set to 10 minutes by default. If during this period data is not found in the table the adapter would start new thread and allocate more memory without releasing old resources. Thus if there's no new data in the table for a long time a new thread will be created in the host instance every 10 minutes until it reaches threshold (1000) and then there's no threads left for this host instance and it can't start/complete any tasks. Then this host instance won't be able to do anything. If other artifacts are hosted in the instance they will suffer consequences as well. Solution: - Set receiveTimeout to the maximum time 24.20:31:23.6470000. - Place WCF-SQL receive locations in separate host to provide its own thread pool and eliminate impact on other processes - Ensure WCF-SQL dedicated host instances are restarted at interval less or equal to receiveTimeout to flush threads and memory - Monitor performance counters Process/Thread Count/BTSNTSvc{n} for thread count trend and respond to alert if it grows by restarting host instance If you use WCF-SQL Adapter in the Notification mode then make sure to remove sqlAdapterInboundTransactionBehavior otherwise this location will exhibit the same issue. In this case though, setting receiveTimeout doesn't help and new thread will be created at default intervals (10 min) ignoring maximum setting.

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  • Conditional styles and templates with RadGridView for Silverlight and WPF

    Im happy to announce that with our upcoming Q1 2010 Service Pack 1 (middle of April) you will be able to apply conditionally styles and templates for RadGridView easily using DataTemplateSelectors and StyleSelectors for both Silverlight and WPF: You can test the new functionally with our upcoming latest internal build this Friday and in the meantime here is an example: XAML <Grid x:Name="LayoutRoot"> <Grid.Resources> <local:MyStyleSelector x:Key="styleSelector" /> <local:MyDataTemplateSelector x:Key="templateSelector" /> </Grid.Resources> <telerik:RadGridView AutoGenerateColumns="False" ItemsSource="{Binding}" RowStyleSelector="{StaticResource styleSelector}"> <telerik:RadGridView.Columns> <telerik:GridViewDataColumn DataMemberBinding="{Binding ID}" CellTemplateSelector="{StaticResource templateSelector}" /> </telerik:RadGridView.Columns> </telerik:RadGridView></Grid>     C# public class MyStyleSelector : StyleSelector{ public override ...Did you know that DotNetSlackers also publishes .net articles written by top known .net Authors? We already have over 80 articles in several categories including Silverlight. Take a look: here.

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  • More Fun With Math

    - by PointsToShare
    More Fun with Math   The runaway student – three different ways of solving one problem Here is a problem I read in a Russian site: A student is running away. He is moving at 1 mph. Pursuing him are a lion, a tiger and his math teacher. The lion is 40 miles behind and moving at 6 mph. The tiger is 28 miles behind and moving at 4 mph. His math teacher is 30 miles behind and moving at 5 mph. Who will catch him first? Analysis Obviously we have a set of three problems. They are all basically the same, but the details are different. The problems are of the same class. Here is a little excursion into computer science. One of the things we strive to do is to create solutions for classes of problems rather than individual problems. In your daily routine, you call it re-usability. Not all classes of problems have such solutions. If a class has a general (re-usable) solution, it is called computable. Otherwise it is unsolvable. Within unsolvable classes, we may still solve individual (some but not all) problems, albeit with different approaches to each. Luckily the vast majority of our daily problems are computable, and the 3 problems of our runaway student belong to a computable class. So, let’s solve for the catch-up time by the math teacher, after all she is the most frightening. She might even make the poor runaway solve this very problem – perish the thought! Method 1 – numerical analysis. At 30 miles and 5 mph, it’ll take her 6 hours to come to where the student was to begin with. But by then the student has advanced by 6 miles. 6 miles require 6/5 hours, but by then the student advanced by another 6/5 of a mile as well. And so on and so forth. So what are we to do? One way is to write code and iterate it until we have solved it. But this is an infinite process so we’ll end up with an infinite loop. So what to do? We’ll use the principles of numerical analysis. Any calculator – your computer included – has a limited number of digits. A double floating point number is good for about 14 digits. Nothing can be computed at a greater accuracy than that. This means that we will not iterate ad infinidum, but rather to the point where 2 consecutive iterations yield the same result. When we do financial computations, we don’t even have to go that far. We stop at the 10th of a penny.  It behooves us here to stop at a 10th of a second (100 milliseconds) and this will how we will avoid an infinite loop. Interestingly this alludes to the Zeno paradoxes of motion – in particular “Achilles and the Tortoise”. Zeno says exactly the same. To catch the tortoise, Achilles must always first come to where the tortoise was, but the tortoise keeps moving – hence Achilles will never catch the tortoise and our math teacher (or lion, or tiger) will never catch the student, or the policeman the thief. Here is my resolution to the paradox. The distance and time in each step are smaller and smaller, so the student will be caught. The only thing that is infinite is the iterative solution. The race is a convergent geometric process so the steps are diminishing, but each step in the solution takes the same amount of effort and time so with an infinite number of steps, we’ll spend an eternity solving it.  This BTW is an original thought that I have never seen before. But I digress. Let’s simply write the code to solve the problem. To make sure that it runs everywhere, I’ll do it in JavaScript. function LongCatchUpTime(D, PV, FV) // D is Distance; PV is Pursuers Velocity; FV is Fugitive’ Velocity {     var t = 0;     var T = 0;     var d = parseFloat(D);     var pv = parseFloat (PV);     var fv = parseFloat (FV);     t = d / pv;     while (t > 0.000001) //a 10th of a second is 1/36,000 of an hour, I used 1/100,000     {         T = T + t;         d = t * fv;         t = d / pv;     }     return T;     } By and large, the higher the Pursuer’s velocity relative to the fugitive, the faster the calculation. Solving this with the 10th of a second limit yields: 7.499999232000001 Method 2 – Geometric Series. Each step in the iteration above is smaller than the next. As you saw, we stopped iterating when the last step was small enough, small enough not to really matter.  When we have a sequence of numbers in which the ratio of each number to its predecessor is fixed we call the sequence geometric. When we are looking at the sum of sequence, we call the sequence of sums series.  Now let’s look at our student and teacher. The teacher runs 5 times faster than the student, so with each iteration the distance between them shrinks to a fifth of what it was before. This is a fixed ratio so we deal with a geometric series.  We normally designate this ratio as q and when q is less than 1 (0 < q < 1) the sum of  + … +  is  – 1) / (q – 1). When q is less than 1, it is easier to use ) / (1 - q). Now, the steps are 6 hours then 6/5 hours then 6/5*5 and so on, so q = 1/5. And the whole series is multiplied by 6. Also because q is less than 1 , 1/  diminishes to 0. So the sum is just  / (1 - q). or 1/ (1 – 1/5) = 1 / (4/5) = 5/4. This times 6 yields 7.5 hours. We can now continue with some algebra and take it back to a simpler formula. This is arduous and I am not going to do it here. Instead let’s do some simpler algebra. Method 3 – Simple Algebra. If the time to capture the fugitive is T and the fugitive travels at 1 mph, then by the time the pursuer catches him he travelled additional T miles. Time is distance divided by speed, so…. (D + T)/V = T  thus D + T = VT  and D = VT – T = (V – 1)T  and T = D/(V – 1) This “strangely” coincides with the solution we just got from the geometric sequence. This is simpler ad faster. Here is the corresponding code. function ShortCatchUpTime(D, PV, FV) {     var d = parseFloat(D);     var pv = parseFloat (PV);     var fv = parseFloat (FV);     return d / (pv - fv); } The code above, for both the iterative solution and the algebraic solution are actually for a larger class of problems.  In our original problem the student’s velocity (speed) is 1 mph. In the code it may be anything as long as it is less than the pursuer’s velocity. As long as PV > FV, the pursuer will catch up. Here is the really general formula: T = D / (PV – FV) Finally, let’s run the program for each of the pursuers.  It could not be worse. I know he’d rather be eaten alive than suffering through yet another math lesson. See the code run? Select  “Catch Up Time” in www.mgsltns.com/games.htm The host is running on Unix, so the link is case sensitive. That’s All Folks

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  • Win a Free Copy of Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook

    - by Ricardo Peres
    Win A free copy of the 'Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbook', just by commenting! For the contest, Packt Publishing has two eBook copies of Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbookto be given away to two lucky winners. How you can win: To win your copy of this book, all you need to do is come up with a comment below highlighting the reason "why you would like to win this book”. Duration of the contest & selection of winners: The contest is valid for 7 days (until November 26), and is open to everyone. Winners will be selected on the basis of their comment posted. Windows Presentation Foundation 4.5 Cookbookis written by Pavel Yosifovich, the CTO of CodeValue (http://www.codevalue.net), a software development, consulting, and training company, based in Israel. This book is written in an easy-to-read style, with a strong emphasis on real-world, practical examples. Step-by-step explanations are provided for performing important tasks. This book is the best guide for C# developer who is looking forward to increase understanding and knowledge of WPF. Using this book, readers will learn to build complex and flexible user interfaces using XAML, perform lengthy operations asynchronously while keeping the UI responsive, get well-versed with WPF features such as data binding, layout, resources, templates, and styles and also customize a control’s template to alter appearance but preserve behavior. In the next days I will post my review on this book. In the meantime, here’s the table of contents: Preface Chapter 1: Foundations Chapter 2: Resources Chapter 3: Layout and Panels Chapter 4: Using Standard Controls Chapter 5: Application and Windows Chapter 6: Data Binding Chapter 7: Commands and MVVM Chapter 8: Styles, Triggers, and Control Templates Chapter 9: Graphics and Animation Chapter 10: Custom Elements Chapter 11: Threading Index I’m waiting for your comments!

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  • Advanced Continuous Delivery to Azure from TFS, Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great

    - by jasont
    The folks over on the TFS / Visual Studio team have been working hard at releasing a steady stream of new features for their new hosted Team Foundation Service in the cloud. One of the most significant features released was simple continuous delivery of your solution into your Azure deployments. The original announcement from Brian Harry can be found here. Team Foundation Service is a great platform for .Net developers who are used to working with TFS on-premises. I’ve been using it since it became available at the //BUILD conference in 2011, and when I recently came to work at Stackify, it was one of the first changes I made. Managing work items is much easier than the tool we were using previously, although there are some limitations (more on that in another blog post). However, when continuous deployment was made available, it blew my mind. It was the killer feature I didn’t know I needed. Not to say that I wasn’t previously an advocate for continuous delivery; just that it was always a pain to set up and configure. Having it hosted - and a one-click setup – well, that’s just the best thing since sliced bread. It made perfect sense: my source code is in the cloud, and my deployment is in the cloud. Great! I can queue up a build from my iPad or phone and just let it go! I quickly tore through the quick setup and saw it all work… sort of. This will be the first in a three part series on how to take the building block of Team Foundation Service continuous delivery and build a CD model that will actually work for any team deploying something more advanced than a “Hello World” example. Part 1: Good Enough Is Not Great Part 2: A Model That Works: Branching and Multiple Deployment Environments Part 3: Other Considerations: SQL, Custom Tasks, Etc Good Enough Is Not Great There. I’ve said it. I certainly hope no one on the TFS team is offended, but it’s the truth. Let’s take a look under the hood and understand how it works, and then why it’s not enough to handle real world CD as-is. How it works. (note that I’ve skipped a couple of steps; I already have my accounts set up and something deployed to Azure) The first step is to establish some oAuth magic between your Azure management portal and your TFS Instance. You do this via the management portal. Once it’s done, you have a new build process template in your TFS instance. (Image lifted from the documentation) From here, you’ll get the usual prompts for security, allowing access, etc. But you’ll also get to pick which Solution in your source control to build. Here’s what the bulk of the build definition looks like. All I’ve had to do is add in the solution to build (notice that mine is from a specific branch – Release – more on that later) and I’ve changed the configuration. I trigger the build, and voila! I have an Azure deployment a few minutes later. The beauty of this is that it’s all in the cloud and I’m not waiting for my machine to compile and upload the package. (I also had to enable the build definition first – by default it is created in disabled state, probably a good thing since it will trigger on every.single.checkin by default.) I get to see a history of deployments from the Azure portal, and can link into TFS to see the associated changesets and work items. You’ll notice also that this build definition also automatically put my code in the Staging slot of my Azure deployment – more on this soon. For now, I can VIP swap and be in production. (P.S. I hate VIP swap and “production” and “staging” in Azure. More on that later too.) That’s it. That’s the default out-of-box experience. Easy, right? But it’s full of room for improvement, so let’s get into that….   The Problems Nothing is perfect (except my code – it’s always perfect), and neither is Continuous Deployment without a bit of work to help it fit your dev team’s process. So what are the issues? Issue 1: Staging vs QA vs Prod vs whatever other environments your team may have. This, for me, is the big hairy one. Remember how this automatically deployed to staging rather than prod for us? There are a couple of issues with this model: If I want to deliver to prod, it requires intervention on my part after deployment (via a VIP swap). If I truly want to promote between environments (i.e. Nightly Build –> Stable QA –> Production) I likely have configuration changes between each environment such as database connection strings and this process (and the VIP swap) doesn’t account for this. Yet. Issue 2: Branching and delivering on every check-in. As I mentioned above, I have set this up to target a specific branch – Release – of my code. For the purposes of this example, I have adopted the “basic” branching strategy as defined by the ALM Rangers. This basically establishes a “Main” trunk where you branch off Dev and Release branches. Granted, the Release branch is usually the only thing you will deploy to production, but you certainly don’t want to roll to production automatically when you merge to the Release branch and check-in (unless you like the thrill of it, and in that case, I like your style, cowboy….). Rather, you have nightly build and QA environments, or if you’ve adopted the feature-branch model you have environments for those. Those are the environments you want to continuously deploy to. But that takes us back to Issue 1: we currently have a 1:1 solution to Azure deployment target. Issue 3: SQL and other custom tasks. Let’s be honest and address the elephant in the room: I need to get some sleep because I see an elephant in the room. But seriously, I can’t think of an application I have touched in the last 10 years that doesn’t need to consider SQL changes when deploying code and upgrading an environment. Microsoft seems perfectly content to ignore this elephant for now: yes, they’ve added Data Tier Applications. But let’s be honest with ourselves again: no one really uses it, and it’s not suitable for anything more complex than a Hello World sample project database. Why? Because it doesn’t fit well into a great source control story. Developers make stored procedure and table changes all day long while coding complex applications, and if someone forgets to go update the DACPAC before the automated deployment, you have a broken build until it’s completed. Developers – not just DBAs – also like to work with SQL in SQL tools, not in Visual Studio. I’m really picking on SQL because that’s generally the biggest concern that I hear. But we need to account for any custom tasks as well in the build process.   The Solutions… ? We’ve taken a look at how this all works, and addressed the shortcomings. In my next post (which I promise will be very, very soon), I will detail how I’ve overcome these shortcomings and used this foundation to create a mature, flexible model for deploying my app – any version, any time, to any environment.

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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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  • Organizing Business and Presentation entities

    - by simoneL
    Background I am developing a WPF project. This is the basic structure: User Interface (WPF Project); Interfaces (class library, contains all the interfaces and the entities used by the application; Modules (every module contains the logic of a specific argument, e.g. File Management, and can eventually contains Wpf User Controls). In the WPF Controls, to facilitate the binding operations I have created a BaseViewModel class which contains a Raise method that automates the binding mechanism (for further details, I used a technique similar to that one described in this article). The problem Understand which is the best way to separate Presentation form from the Business form in the entities classes. The case In the Interfaces project I have, for instance, the class User public class User { public virtual string Name { get; set; } // Other properties } In one of the modules I need to use the User class and to bind its properties to the User Interface controls. To do so I have to use a custom implementation of the get and set keywords. At first point, I thought to create a class in the Module called, for instance, ClientUser and override the properties that I need: public class ClientUser : User { private string name; public override string Name { get { return name; } set { Raise(out name, value); } } // Other properties } The problem is the Raise method, which is declared in the BaseViewModel class, but due to C# single inheritance constraint, I can't inherit from both classes. Which is the right way to implement this architecture?

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  • Per-vertex animation with VBOs: VBO per character or VBO per animation?

    - by charstar
    Goal To leverage the richness of well vetted animation tools such as Blender to do the heavy lifting for a small but rich set of animations. I am aware of additive pose blending like that from Naughty Dog and similar techniques but I would prefer to expend a little RAM/VRAM to avoid implementing a thesis-ready pose solver. I would also like to avoid implementing a key-frame + interpolation curve solver (reinventing Blender vertex groups and IPOs), if possible. Scenario Meshes are animated using either skeletons (skinned animation) or some form of morph targets (i.e. per-vertex key frames). However, in either case, the animations are known in full at load-time, that is, there is no physics, IK solving, or any other form of in-game pose solving. The number of character actions (animations) will be limited but rich (hand-animated). There may be multiple characters using a each mesh and its animations simultaneously in-game (they will likely be at different frames of the same animation at the same time). Assume color and texture coordinate buffers are static. Current Considerations Much like a non-shader-powered pose solver, create a VBO for each character and copy vertex and normal data to each VBO on each frame (VBO in STREAMING). Create one VBO for each animation where each frame (interleaved vertex and normal data) is concatenated onto the VBO. Then each character simply has a buffer pointer offset based on its current animation frame (e.g. pointer offset = (numVertices+numNormals)*frameNumber). (VBO in STATIC) Known Trade-Offs In 1 above: Each VBO would be small but there would be many VBOs and therefore lots of buffer binding and vertex copying each frame. Both client and pipeline intensive. In 2 above: There would be few VBOs therefore insignificant buffer binding and no vertex data getting jammed down the pipe each frame, but each VBO would be quite large. Are there any pitfalls to number 2 (aside from finite memory)? I've found a lot of information on what you can do, but no real best practices. Are there other considerations or methods that I am missing?

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  • The SSIS tuning tip that everyone misses

    - by Rob Farley
    I know that everyone misses this, because I’m yet to find someone who doesn’t have a bit of an epiphany when I describe this. When tuning Data Flows in SQL Server Integration Services, people see the Data Flow as moving from the Source to the Destination, passing through a number of transformations. What people don’t consider is the Source, getting the data out of a database. Remember, the source of data for your Data Flow is not your Source Component. It’s wherever the data is, within your database, probably on a disk somewhere. You need to tune your query to optimise it for SSIS, and this is what most people fail to do. I’m not suggesting that people don’t tune their queries – there’s plenty of information out there about making sure that your queries run as fast as possible. But for SSIS, it’s not about how fast your query runs. Let me say that again, but in bolder text: The speed of an SSIS Source is not about how fast your query runs. If your query is used in a Source component for SSIS, the thing that matters is how fast it starts returning data. In particular, those first 10,000 rows to populate that first buffer, ready to pass down the rest of the transformations on its way to the Destination. Let’s look at a very simple query as an example, using the AdventureWorks database: We’re picking the different Weight values out of the Product table, and it’s doing this by scanning the table and doing a Sort. It’s a Distinct Sort, which means that the duplicates are discarded. It'll be no surprise to see that the data produced is sorted. Obvious, I know, but I'm making a comparison to what I'll do later. Before I explain the problem here, let me jump back into the SSIS world... If you’ve investigated how to tune an SSIS flow, then you’ll know that some SSIS Data Flow Transformations are known to be Blocking, some are Partially Blocking, and some are simply Row transformations. Take the SSIS Sort transformation, for example. I’m using a larger data set for this, because my small list of Weights won’t demonstrate it well enough. Seven buffers of data came out of the source, but none of them could be pushed past the Sort operator, just in case the last buffer contained the data that would be sorted into the first buffer. This is a blocking operation. Back in the land of T-SQL, we consider our Distinct Sort operator. It’s also blocking. It won’t let data through until it’s seen all of it. If you weren’t okay with blocking operations in SSIS, why would you be happy with them in an execution plan? The source of your data is not your OLE DB Source. Remember this. The source of your data is the NCIX/CIX/Heap from which it’s being pulled. Picture it like this... the data flowing from the Clustered Index, through the Distinct Sort operator, into the SELECT operator, where a series of SSIS Buffers are populated, flowing (as they get full) down through the SSIS transformations. Alright, I know that I’m taking some liberties here, because the two queries aren’t the same, but consider the visual. The data is flowing from your disk and through your execution plan before it reaches SSIS, so you could easily find that a blocking operation in your plan is just as painful as a blocking operation in your SSIS Data Flow. Luckily, T-SQL gives us a brilliant query hint to help avoid this. OPTION (FAST 10000) This hint means that it will choose a query which will optimise for the first 10,000 rows – the default SSIS buffer size. And the effect can be quite significant. First let’s consider a simple example, then we’ll look at a larger one. Consider our weights. We don’t have 10,000, so I’m going to use OPTION (FAST 1) instead. You’ll notice that the query is more expensive, using a Flow Distinct operator instead of the Distinct Sort. This operator is consuming 84% of the query, instead of the 59% we saw from the Distinct Sort. But the first row could be returned quicker – a Flow Distinct operator is non-blocking. The data here isn’t sorted, of course. It’s in the same order that it came out of the index, just with duplicates removed. As soon as a Flow Distinct sees a value that it hasn’t come across before, it pushes it out to the operator on its left. It still has to maintain the list of what it’s seen so far, but by handling it one row at a time, it can push rows through quicker. Overall, it’s a lot more work than the Distinct Sort, but if the priority is the first few rows, then perhaps that’s exactly what we want. The Query Optimizer seems to do this by optimising the query as if there were only one row coming through: This 1 row estimation is caused by the Query Optimizer imagining the SELECT operation saying “Give me one row” first, and this message being passed all the way along. The request might not make it all the way back to the source, but in my simple example, it does. I hope this simple example has helped you understand the significance of the blocking operator. Now I’m going to show you an example on a much larger data set. This data was fetching about 780,000 rows, and these are the Estimated Plans. The data needed to be Sorted, to support further SSIS operations that needed that. First, without the hint. ...and now with OPTION (FAST 10000): A very different plan, I’m sure you’ll agree. In case you’re curious, those arrows in the top one are 780,000 rows in size. In the second, they’re estimated to be 10,000, although the Actual figures end up being 780,000. The top one definitely runs faster. It finished several times faster than the second one. With the amount of data being considered, these numbers were in minutes. Look at the second one – it’s doing Nested Loops, across 780,000 rows! That’s not generally recommended at all. That’s “Go and make yourself a coffee” time. In this case, it was about six or seven minutes. The faster one finished in about a minute. But in SSIS-land, things are different. The particular data flow that was consuming this data was significant. It was being pumped into a Script Component to process each row based on previous rows, creating about a dozen different flows. The data flow would take roughly ten minutes to run – ten minutes from when the data first appeared. The query that completes faster – chosen by the Query Optimizer with no hints, based on accurate statistics (rather than pretending the numbers are smaller) – would take a minute to start getting the data into SSIS, at which point the ten-minute flow would start, taking eleven minutes to complete. The query that took longer – chosen by the Query Optimizer pretending it only wanted the first 10,000 rows – would take only ten seconds to fill the first buffer. Despite the fact that it might have taken the database another six or seven minutes to get the data out, SSIS didn’t care. Every time it wanted the next buffer of data, it was already available, and the whole process finished in about ten minutes and ten seconds. When debugging SSIS, you run the package, and sit there waiting to see the Debug information start appearing. You look for the numbers on the data flow, and seeing operators going Yellow and Green. Without the hint, I’d sit there for a minute. With the hint, just ten seconds. You can imagine which one I preferred. By adding this hint, it felt like a magic wand had been waved across the query, to make it run several times faster. It wasn’t the case at all – but it felt like it to SSIS.

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  • Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

    - by jasont
    If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are:   Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots!   So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify.   Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct.   IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more.   Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

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  • EJB Persist On Master Child Relationship

    - by deepak.siddappa(at)oracle.com
    Let us take scenario where in users wants to persist master child relationship. Here will have two tables dept, emp (using Scott Schema) which are having master child relation.Model Diagram: Here in the above model diagram, Dept is the Master table and Emp is child table and Dept is related to emp by one to n relationship. Lets assume we need to make new entries in emp table using EJB persist method. Create a Emp form manually dropping the fields, where deptno will be dropped as Single Selection -> ADF Select One Choice (which is a foreign key in emp table) from deptFindAll DC. Make sure to bind all field variables in backing bean.Employee Form:Once the Emp form created, If the persistEmp() method is used to commit the record this will persist all the Emp fields into emp table except deptno, because the deptno will be passed as a Object reference in persistEmp method  (Its foreign key reference). So directly deptno can't be passed to the persistEmp method instead deptno should be explicitly set to the emp object, then the persist will save the deptno to the emp table.Below solution is one way of work around to achieve this scenario -Create a method in sessionBean for adding emp records and expose this method in DataControl.     For Ex: Here in the below code 'em" is a EntityManager.            private EntityManager em - will be member variable in sessionEJBBeanpublic void addEmpRecord(String ename, String job, BigDecimal deptno) { Emp emp = new Emp(); emp.setEname(ename); emp.setJob(job); //setting the deptno explicitly Dept dept = new Dept(); dept.setDeptno(deptno); //passing the dept object emp.setDept(dept); //persist the emp object data to Emp table em.persist(emp); }From DataControl palette Drop addEmpRecord as Method ADF button, In Edit action binding window enter the parameter values which are binded in backing bean.     For Ex:     If the name deptno textfield is binded with "deptno" variable in backing bean, then El Expression Builder pass value as "#{backingbean.deptno.value}"Binding:

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  • Writing custom Message Formatter for SOAP basicHttpBinding

    - by Lijo
    I have a WSDL published by our service development team. It is using SOAP and basicHttpBinding. I can add the service reference to the project using Add Service Reference option in Visual Studio. I need to develop the WCF client. I need to use custom Message Formatter (for mapping between Messages and CLR types). Can you please show how to write the custom Message Formatter (in C# )for the following wsdl? Note: I am planning to use custom Message Formatter due to an issue mentioned in http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12316884/header-namespace-mismatch-issue WSDL <definitions xmlns:import0="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1" xmlns:import2="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:messages:v1" xmlns:xsd="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:import1="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:headerdata:v1" xmlns:tns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:wsdl:v1" xmlns:soap="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap/" xmlns:soap12="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/soap12/" name="RestauarntService" targetNamespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:wsdl:v1" xmlns="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <types> <xsd:schema> <xsd:import schemaLocation="RestaurantData.xsd" namespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="RestaurantHeaderData.xsd" namespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:headerdata:v1" /> <xsd:import schemaLocation="RestaurantMessages.xsd" namespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:messages:v1" /> </xsd:schema> </types> <message name="getRestaurantsIn"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="parameters" element="import2:getRestaurants" /> </message> <message name="getRestaurantsOut"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="parameters" element="import2:getRestaurantsResponse" /> </message> <message name="lijosCustomFaultMessage"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="fault" element="import2:customFault" /> </message> <message name="userCredentialsIn"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="parameters" element="import1:userCredentials" /> </message> <message name="addRestaurantIn"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="parameters" element="import2:addRestaurant" /> </message> <message name="addRestaurantInHeader1"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="parameters" element="import1:userCredentials" /> </message> <message name="customFaultIn"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <part name="parameters" element="import2:customFault" /> </message> <portType name="RestauarntServiceInterface"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <operation name="getRestaurants"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <input message="tns:getRestaurantsIn" /> <output message="tns:getRestaurantsOut" /> <fault name="lijosCustomFaultMessage" message="tns:lijosCustomFaultMessage" /> </operation> <operation name="userCredentials"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <input message="tns:userCredentialsIn" /> </operation> <operation name="addRestaurant"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <input message="tns:addRestaurantIn" /> </operation> <operation name="customFault"> <wsdl:documentation xmlns:wsdl="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/wsdl/" /> <input message="tns:customFaultIn" /> </operation> </portType> <binding name="BasicHttpBinding_RestauarntServiceInterface" type="tns:RestauarntServiceInterface"> <soap:binding transport="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/http" /> <operation name="getRestaurants"> <soap:operation soapAction="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:wsdl:v1:getRestaurantsIn" style="document" /> <input> <soap:body use="literal" /> </input> <output> <soap:body use="literal" /> </output> <fault name="lijosCustomFaultMessage"> <soap:fault use="literal" name="lijosCustomFaultMessage" namespace="" /> </fault> </operation> <operation name="userCredentials"> <soap:operation soapAction="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:wsdl:v1:userCredentialsIn" style="document" /> <input> <soap:body use="literal" /> </input> </operation> <operation name="addRestaurant"> <soap:operation soapAction="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:wsdl:v1:addRestaurantIn" style="document" /> <input> <soap:body use="literal" /> <soap:header message="tns:addRestaurantInHeader1" part="parameters" use="literal" /> </input> </operation> <operation name="customFault"> <soap:operation soapAction="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:wsdl:v1:customFaultIn" style="document" /> <input> <soap:body use="literal" /> </input> </operation> </binding> <service name="RestauarntServicePort"> <port name="RestauarntServicePort" binding="tns:BasicHttpBinding_RestauarntServiceInterface"> <soap:address location="http://localhost/RestauarntService" /> </port> </service> </definitions>?? RestaurantData.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <xs:schema id="RestaurantData" targetNamespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1" xmlns:mstns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:complexType name="restaurantInfo"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="restaurantID" type="xs:int" /> <xs:element name="name" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element name="address" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element name="city" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element name="state" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element name="zip" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element name="openFrom" type="xs:time" /> <xs:element name="openTo" type="xs:time" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="restaurantsList"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="restaurant" type="restaurantInfo" maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> <xs:complexType name="customFault"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="errorCode" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element name="message" type="xs:string"/> <xs:element maxOccurs="unbounded" minOccurs="0" name="messages" type="xs:string" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:schema> RestaurantHeaderData.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <xs:schema id="RestaurantHeaderData" targetNamespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:headerdata:v1" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:headerdata:v1" xmlns:mstns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:headerdata:v1" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema"> <xs:complexType name="credentials"> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="username" type="xs:string" /> <xs:element name="password" type="xs:string" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> <xs:element name="userCredentials" type="credentials"> </xs:element> </xs:schema> ? RestaurantMessages.xsd <?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8" ?> <xs:schema id="RestaurantMessages" targetNamespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:messages:v1" elementFormDefault="qualified" xmlns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:messages:v1" xmlns:mstns="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:messages:v1" xmlns:xs="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema" xmlns:import="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1"> <xs:import id="RestaurantData" schemaLocation="RestaurantData.xsd" namespace="urn:thinktecture-com:demos:restaurantservice:data:v1"> </xs:import> <xs:element name="getRestaurants"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="zip" type="xs:string" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> <xs:element name="getRestaurantsResponse"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="restaurants" type="import:restaurantsList" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> <xs:element name="addRestaurant"> <xs:complexType> <xs:sequence> <xs:element name="restaurant" type="import:restaurantInfo" /> </xs:sequence> </xs:complexType> </xs:element> <xs:element name="customFault" type="import:customFault" /> </xs:schema>

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  • 14540059 - UPDATE FOR BI PUBLISHER ENTERPRISE 11.1.1.6.0 AUGUST

    - by Tim Dexter
    Its been a while, I know :( I have posts in the pipe just gotta smoke em out! The latest update for BIP 11.1.1.6 was released last week. A bunch of defects have been addressed as you can see below.  13473493 - XMLP TRANSLATION ISSUE OF MILLION (ENG) TO MILLIONES (SPANISH) 13521951 - BIP UPGRADE FROM 10G TO 11.1.1.5.0 IS NOT SUCCESSFULL FOR TIAA-CREF  12542914 - ACC: REPORT VIEWER STRUCTURE HAS ERRORS - NO IFRAME AND NO LANG ATTRIBUTE  13562801 - XML TAG DISPLAY SHOULD DEFAULT TO 'FOLLOW THE DATA 13568043 - BIP QUERY FAILING VALIDATION DUE TO 'COALESCE' KEYWORD 13592901 - THE REPORT IS THROWING AN SQL ERROR THAT REFERENCES CHECKING FOR NULL VALUES 13836696 - BI PUBLISHER REPORT NOT GENERATED WHEN A TEXT FIELD START WITH "E.<SPACE>"  13879206 - DM MIGRATION ISSUES 13888939 - DM: LOV SEARCH CAUSING DB CONNECTION LEAK 13904225 - XSLX ERROR DUE TO URL LINK AND USE OF LIST 13930795 - RTF TEMPLATE GIVING DIFFERENT RESULTS IN DIFFERENT  13942064 - XDOEXCEPTION THROWN WHEN RUNNING PEOPLESOFT TEMPLATES AND XML FILE 13981523 - BI PUBLISHER ON 64-BIT WINDOWS CAN'T CONNECT TO MS ANALYSIS SERVICES CUBE 14039229 - BIP 11.1.1.5.0 REPORTS ARE NOT WORKING ON BIP 11.1.1.6.0  14055793 - BIP 11.1.1.6.0: DATE TYPE INPUT PARAMTER IS NOT DISPLAYING THE CORRECT VALUE USI  14059851 - UNABLE TO GRANT PRIVILEGES TO ROLE: DOMAIN USERS; THE ROLE DOES NOT EXIST 14109967 - LARGE OUTPUT CAUSES OUT OF MEMORY DUE TO LEFT OVER DEBUG CODE 14163973 - ISSUES USING DATA MODEL EDITOR IN BIP 11.1.1.6  14167915 - ORG.XML.SAX.SAXEXCEPTION: DATE FORMAT CANNOT BE NULL  14240045 - EDITING SCHEDULED REPORTS DOES NOT REFLECT VALID VALUES FOR UPGRADED SCHEDULES 14304427 - SEARCH DIALOG NOT BINDING PARAMETER VALUE - INVALID PARAMETER BINDING(S). 14338158 - PASSWORD FIELD SHOULD NOT BE DISPLAYED FOR FMW SECURITY MODEL 14393825 - OBIEE11G: LARGE NUMBER OF OBIPS SESSIONS CREATED WHEN USING SSO AND BI PUB 14558377 - CONT. BUG 14240045:EDITING SCHEDULES IN BI PUBLISHER IS DEFAULTING TO 'ALL' This patch is just for BI Publisher standalone installs. For those of you using BIP within the wider BIEE suite there is the 11.1.1.6.2 BP1 patchset. More details on that here.

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  • How-to read data from selected tree node

    - by Frank Nimphius
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} By default, the SelectionListener property of an ADF bound tree points to the makeCurrent method of the FacesCtrlHierBinding class in ADF to synchronize the current row in the ADF binding layer with the selected tree node. To customize the selection behavior, or just to read the selected node value in Java, you override the default configuration with an EL string pointing to a managed bean method property. In the following I show how you change the selection listener while preserving the default ADF selection behavior. To change the SelectionListener, select the tree component in the Structure Window and open the Oracle JDeveloper Property Inspector. From the context menu, select the Edit option to create a new listener method in a new or an existing managed bean. Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} For this example, I created a new managed bean. On tree node select, the managed bean code prints the selected tree node value(s) import java.util.List; import javax.el.ELContext; import javax.el.ExpressionFactory; import javax.el.MethodExpression; import javax.faces.application.Application; import javax.faces.context.FacesContext; import java.util.Iterator; import oracle.adf.view.rich.component.rich.data.RichTree; import oracle.jbo.Row; import oracle.jbo.uicli.binding.JUCtrlHierBinding; import oracle.jbo.uicli.binding.JUCtrlHierNodeBinding; import org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.event.SelectionEvent; import org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.model.CollectionModel; import org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.model.RowKeySet; import org.apache.myfaces.trinidad.model.TreeModel; public class TreeSampleBean { public TreeSampleBean() {} public void onTreeSelect(SelectionEvent selectionEvent) { //original selection listener set by ADF //#{bindings.allDepartments.treeModel.makeCurrent} String adfSelectionListener = "#{bindings.allDepartments.treeModel.makeCurrent}";   //make sure the default selection listener functionality is //preserved. you don't need to do this for multi select trees //as the ADF binding only supports single current row selection     /* START PRESERVER DEFAULT ADF SELECT BEHAVIOR */ FacesContext fctx = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance(); Application application = fctx.getApplication(); ELContext elCtx = fctx.getELContext(); ExpressionFactory exprFactory = application.getExpressionFactory();   MethodExpression me = null;   me = exprFactory.createMethodExpression(elCtx, adfSelectionListener,                                           Object.class, newClass[]{SelectionEvent.class});   me.invoke(elCtx, new Object[] { selectionEvent });     /* END PRESERVER DEFAULT ADF SELECT BEHAVIOR */   RichTree tree = (RichTree)selectionEvent.getSource(); TreeModel model = (TreeModel)tree.getValue();  //get selected nodes RowKeySet rowKeySet = selectionEvent.getAddedSet();   Iterator rksIterator = rowKeySet.iterator();   //for single select configurations,this only is called once   while (rksIterator.hasNext()) {     List key = (List)rksIterator.next();     JUCtrlHierBinding treeBinding = null;     CollectionModel collectionModel = (CollectionModel)tree.getValue();     treeBinding = (JUCtrlHierBinding)collectionModel.getWrappedData();     JUCtrlHierNodeBinding nodeBinding = null;     nodeBinding = treeBinding.findNodeByKeyPath(key);     Row rw = nodeBinding.getRow();     //print first row attribute. Note that in a tree you have to     //determine the node type if you want to select node attributes     //by name and not index      String rowType = rw.getStructureDef().getDefName();       if(rowType.equalsIgnoreCase("DepartmentsView")){      System.out.println("This row is a department: " +                          rw.getAttribute("DepartmentId"));     }     else if(rowType.equalsIgnoreCase("EmployeesView")){      System.out.println("This row is an employee: " +                          rw.getAttribute("EmployeeId"));     }        else{       System.out.println("Huh????");     }     // ... do more useful stuff here   } } -------------------- Download JDeveloper 11.1.2.1 Sample Workspace

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  • MySQL Connector/Net 6.8.1 beta has been released

    - by Roberto Garcia
    Dear MySQL users, MySQL Connector/Net 6.8.1, a new version of the all-managed .NET driver for MySQL has been released. This is a beta release for 6.8.x and it's not recommended for production environments. It is appropriate for use with MySQL server versions 5.0-5.6 It is now available in source and binary form from http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads and mirror sites (note that not all mirror sites may be up to date at this point-if you can't find this version on some mirror, please try again later or choose another download site.) The 6.8.1 version of MySQL Connector/Net has support for Entity Framework 6.0 and includes: - Changed EF migration history table to use a single column as primary key.- Removed installer validation when MySql for Visual Studio is installed.- Added idempotent script for Entity Framework 6 migrations.- Fix for WI #824, Connector/NET writes wrong version for binding redirects.- Fix for WI #825, Connector/NET 6.8.1 writes wrong namespace for binding redirects. The release is available to download at http://dev.mysql.com/downloads/connector/net/#downloads Documentation ------------------------------------- You can view current Connector/Net documentation at http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/connector-net.html You can find our team blog at http://blogs.oracle.com/MySQLOnWindows You can also post questions on our forums at http://forums.mysql.com/ Enjoy and thanks for the support! Connector/NET Team

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  • How I Work: Staying Productive Whilst Traveling

    - by BuckWoody
    I travel a lot. Not like some folks that are gone every week, mind you, although in the last month I’ve been to: Cambridge, UK; Anchorage, AK; San Jose, CA; Copenhagen, DK, Boston, MA; and I’m currently en-route to Anaheim, CA.  While this many places in a month is a bit unusual for me, I would say I travel frequently. I’ve travelled most of my 28+ years in IT, and at one time was a consultant traveling weekly.   With that much time away from my primary work location, I have to find ways to stay productive. Some might say “just rest – take a nap!” – but I’m not able to do that. For one thing, I’m a very light sleeper and I’ve never slept on a plane - even a 30+ hour trip to New Zealand in Business Class - so that just isn’t option. I also am not always in the plane, of course. There’s the hotel, the taxi/bus/train, the airport and then all that over again when I arrive. Since my regular jobs have many demands, I have to get work done.   Note: No, I’m not always focused on work. I need downtime just like everyone else. Sometimes I just think, watch a movie or listen to tunes – and I give myself permission to do that anytime – sometimes the whole trip. I have too fewheartbeats left in life to only focus on work – it’s just not that important, and neither am I. Some of these tasks are letters to friends and family, or other personal things. What I’m talking about here is a plan, not some task list I have to follow. When I get to the location I’m traveling to, I always build in as much time as I can to ensure I enjoy those sights and the people I’m with. I would find traveling to be a waste if not for that.   The Unrealistic Expectation As I would evaluate the trip I was taking – say a 6-8 hour flight – I would expect to get 10-12 hours of work done. After all, there’s the time at the airport, the taxi and so on, and then of course the time in the air with all of the room, power, internet and everything else I needed to get my work done. I would pile up tasks at home, pack my bags, and head happily to the magical land of the TSA.   Right. On return from the trip, I had accomplished little, had more e-mails and other work that had piled up, and I was tired, hungry, and unorganized. This had to change. So, I decided to do three things: Segment my work Set realistic expectations Plan accordingly  Segmenting By Available Resources The first task was to decide what kind of work I could do in each location – if any. I found that I was dependent on a few things to get work done, such as power, the Internet, and a place to sit down. Before I fly, I take some time at home to get all of the work I’d like to accomplish while away segmented into these areas, and print that out on paper, which goes in my suit-coat pocket along with a mechanical pencil. I print my tickets, and I’m all set for the adventure ahead. Then I simply do each kind of work whenever I’m in that situation. No power There are certain times when I don’t have power available. But not only that, I might not even be able to use most of my electronics. So I now schedule as many phone calls as I can for the taxi/bus/train ride and the airports as I can. I have a paper notebook (Moleskine, of course) and a pencil and I print out any notes or numbers I need prior to the trip. Once I’m airborne or at the airport, I work on my laptop. I check and respond to e-mails, create slides, write code, do architecture, whatever I can.  If I can’t use any electronics, or once the power runs out, I schedule time for reading. I can read at the airport or anywhere, actually, even in-flight or any other transport. I “read with a pencil”, meaning I take a lot of notes, which I liketo put in OneNote, but since in most cases I don’t have power, I use the Moleskine to do that. Speaking of which, sometimes as I’m thinking I come up with new topics, ideas, blog posts, or things to teach in my classes. Once again I take out the notebook and write it down. All of these notes get a check-mark when I get back to the office and transfer the writing to OneNote. I’ve tried those “smart pens” and so on to automate this, but it just never works out. Pencil and paper are just fine. As I mentioned, sometime I just need to think. I’ll do nothing, and let my mind wander, thinking of nothing in particular, or some math problem or science question I’m interested in. My only issue with this is that I communicate tothink, and I don’t want to drive people crazy by being that guy that won’t shut up, so I think in a different way. Power, but no Internet or Phone If I have power but no Internet or phone, I focus on the laptop and the tablet as before, and I also recharge my other gadgets. Power, Internet, Phone and a Place to Work At first I thought that when I arrived at the hotel or event I could get the same amount of work done that I do at the office. Not so. There’s simply too many distractions, things you need, or other issues that allow this. Of course, Ican work on any device, read, think, write or whatever, but I am simply not as productive as I am in my home office. So I plan for about 25-50% as much work getting done in this environment as I think I could really do. I’ve done some measurements, and this holds out to be true almost every time. The key is that I re-set my expectations (and my co-worker’s expectations as well) that this is the case. I use the Out-Of-Office notices to let people know that I’m just not going to be 100% at this time – it’s hard for everyone, but it’s more honest and realistic, and I’d rather they know that – and that I realize that – than to let them think I’m totally available. Because I’m not – I’m traveling. I don’t tend to put too much detail, because after all I don’t necessarily want to let people know when I’m not home :) but I do think it’s important to let people that depend on my know that I’ll get back with them later. I hope this helps you think through your own methodology of staying productive when you travel. Or perhaps you just go offline, and don’t worry about any of this – good for you! That’s completely valid as well.   (Oh, and yes, I wrote this at 35K feet, on Alaska Airlines on a trip. :)  Practice what you preach, Buck.)

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  • Introduction to Oracle ADF

    - by Arda Eralp
    The Oracle Application Development Framework (Oracle ADF) is an end-to-end application framework that builds on Java Platform, Enterprise Edition (Java EE) standards and open-source technologies. You can use Oracle ADF to implement enterprise solutions that search, display, create, modify, and validate data using web, wireless, desktop, or web services interfaces. Because of its declarative nature, Oracle ADF simplifies and accelerates development by allowing users to focus on the logic of application creation rather than coding details. Used in tandem, Oracle JDeveloper 11g and Oracle ADF give you an environment that covers the full development lifecycle from design to deployment, with drag-and-drop data binding, visual UI design, and team development features built in. In line with community best practices, applications you build using the Fusion web technology stack achieve a clean separation of business logic, page navigation, and user interface by adhering to a model-view-controller architecture. MVC architecture: The model layer represents the data values related to the current page The view layer contains the UI pages used to view or modify that data The controller layer processes user input and determines page navigation The business service layer handles data access and encapsulates business logic Each ADF module fits in the Fusion web application architecture. The core module in the framework is ADF Model, a data binding facility. The ADF Model layer enables a unified approach to bind any user interface to any business service, without the need to write code. The other modules that make up a Fusion web application technology stack are: ADF Business Components, which simplifies building business services. ADF Faces rich client, which offers a rich library of AJAX-enabled UI components for web applications built with JavaServer Faces (JSF). ADF Controller, which integrates JSF with ADF Model. The ADF Controller extends the standard JSF controller by providing additional functionality, such as reusable task flows that pass control not only between JSF pages, but also between other activities, for instance method calls or other task flows.

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  • Per-vertex animation with VBOs: Stream each frame or use index offset per frame?

    - by charstar
    Scenario Meshes are animated using either skeletons (skinned animation) or some form of morph targets (i.e. per-vertex key frames). However, in either case, the animations are known in full at load-time, that is, there is no physics, IK solving, or any other form of in-game pose solving. The number of character actions (animations) will be limited but rich (hand-animated). There may be multiple characters using a each mesh and its animations simultaneously in-game (they will be at different poses/keyframes at the same time). Assume color and texture coordinate buffers are static. Goal To leverage the richness of well vetted animation tools such as Blender to do the heavy lifting for a small but rich set of animations. I am aware of additive pose blending like that from Naughty Dog and similar techniques but I would prefer to expend a little RAM/VRAM to avoid implementing a thesis-ready pose solver. I would also like to avoid implementing a key-frame + interpolation curve solver (reinventing Blender vertex groups and IPOs). Current Considerations Much like a non-shader-powered pose solver, create a VBO for each character and copy vertex and normal data to each VBO on each frame (VBO in STREAMING). Create one VBO for each animation where each frame (interleaved vertex and normal data) is concatenated onto the VBO. Then each character simply has a buffer pointer offset based on its current animation frame (e.g. pointer offset = (numVertices+numNormals)*frameNumber). (VBO in STATIC) Known Trade-Offs In 1 above: Each VBO would be small but there would be many VBOs and therefore lots of buffer binding and vertex copying each frame. Both client and pipeline intensive. In 2 above: There would be few VBOs therefore insignificant buffer binding and no vertex data getting jammed down the pipe each frame, but each VBO would be quite large. Are there any pitfalls to number 2 (aside from finite memory)? Are there other methods that I am missing?

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