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  • Android Google-Shopping API force closes while parsing

    - by Sam Jackson
    I'm trying to send a request to the Google-Shopping API with the following static method which I think is working: public static String GET_TITLE(String url) throws JSONException { InputStream is = null; String result = ""; JSONObject jArray = null; // http post try { HttpClient httpclient = new DefaultHttpClient(); HttpPost httppost = new HttpPost(url); HttpResponse response = httpclient.execute(httppost); HttpEntity entity = response.getEntity(); is = entity.getContent(); } catch(Exception e) { Log.e("log_tag", "Error in http connection "+e.toString()); } The URL I'm passing is this BTW: https://www.googleapis.com/shopping/search/v1/public/products/country=US&q=shirts&alt=json &rankBy=relevancy&key=AIzaSyDRKgGmJrdG6pV6DIg2m-nmIbXydxvpjww Next I try to parse this response (where I think the problem comes in) in the same method: try { jArray = new JSONObject(result); } catch(JSONException e){ Log.e("log_tag", "Error parsing data "+e.toString()); } JSONObject itemObject = jArray.getJSONObject("items"); JSONObject productObject = itemObject.getJSONObject("product"); String attributeGoogleId = productObject.getString("googleId"); String attributeProviderId = productObject.getString("providerId"); String attributeTitle = productObject.getString("title");*/ String attributePrice = productObject.getString("price"); JSONObject popupObject = productObject.getJSONObject("popup"); return attributeTitle; } This has been so frustrating, I know it should be simple but everywhere I look I just can't quite get it to work, I'm not exactly sure what the error is since I'm testing it on my HTC Desire because my emulator gives an 'invalid command-line parameter' error when starting, but that's a different issue, anyway, thanks in advance! EDIT: The first one makes it look like there's a problem with the URL, should I change it and see if it makes a difference? 04-01 12:09:05.142: ERROR/log_tag(24968): Error in http connection java.net.UnknownHostException: www.googleapis.com 04-01 12:09:05.142: ERROR/log_tag(24968): Error converting result java.lang.NullPointerException 04-01 12:09:05.142: ERROR/log_tag(24968): Error parsing data org.json.JSONException: End of input at character 0 of 04-01 12:09:05.142: DEBUG/AndroidRuntime(24968): Shutting down VM 04-01 12:09:05.142: WARN/dalvikvm(24968): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x400259f8) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): java.lang.RuntimeException: Failure delivering result ResultInfo{who=null, request=0, result=-1, data=Intent { act=com.google.zxing.client.android.SCAN flg=0x80000 (has extras) }} to activity {com.spectrum.stock/com.spectrum.stock.CaptureActivity}: java.lang.NullPointerException 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.deliverResults(ActivityThread.java:3734) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.handleSendResult(ActivityThread.java:3776) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.access$2800(ActivityThread.java:135) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread$H.handleMessage(ActivityThread.java:2166) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:99) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:144) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:4937) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:521) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:868) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:626) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.spectrum.stock.JSONResponse.GET_TITLE(JSONResponse.java:61) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at com.spectrum.stock.CaptureActivity.onActivityResult(CaptureActivity.java:78) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.Activity.dispatchActivityResult(Activity.java:3931) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): at android.app.ActivityThread.deliverResults(ActivityThread.java:3730) 04-01 12:09:05.152: ERROR/AndroidRuntime(24968): ... 11 more 04-01 12:09:05.162: WARN/ActivityManager(96): Force finishing activity com.spectrum.stock/.CaptureActivity

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  • How do I get through proxy server environments for non-standard services?

    - by Ripred
    I'm not real hip on exactly what role(s) today's proxy servers can play and I'm learning so go easy on me :-) I have a client/server system I have written using a homegrown protocol and need to enhance the client side to negotiate its way out of a proxy environment. I have an existing client and server system written in C and C++ for the speed and a small amount of MFC in the client to handle the user interface. I have written both the server and client side of the system on Windows (the people I work for are mainly web developers using Windows everything - not a choice) sticking to Berkeley Sockets as it were via wsock32 for efficiency. The clients connect to the server through a nonstandard port (even though using port 80 is an option to get out of some environments but the protocol that goes over it isn't HTTP). The TCP connection(s) stay open for the duration of the clients participation in real time conferences. Our customer base is expanding to all kinds of networked environments. I have been able to solve a lot of problems by adding the ability to connect securely over port 443 and using secure sockets which allows the protocol to pass through a lot environments since the internal packets can't be sniffed. But more and more of our customers are behind a proxy server environment and my direct connections don't make it through. My old school understanding of proxy servers is that they act as a proxy for external HTML content over HTTP, possibly locally caching popular material for faster local access, and also allowing their IT staff to blacklist certain destination sites. Customer are complaining that my software doesn't recognize and easily navigate its way through their proxy environments but I'm finding it difficult to decide what my "best fit" solution should be. My software doesn't tear down the connection after each client request, and on top of that packets can come from either side at any time, basically your typical custom client/server system for a specific niche. My first reaction is "why can't they just add my servers addresses to their white list" but if there is a programmatic way I can get through without requiring their IT staff to help it is politically better and arguably a better solution anyway. Plus maybe I'm still not understanding the role and purpose of what proxy servers and environments have grown to be these days. My first attempt at a solution was to use WinInet with its various proxy capabilities to establish a connection over port 80 to my non-standard protocol server (which knows enough to recognize and answer a simple HTTP-looking GET request and answer it with a simple HTTP response page to get around some environments that employ initial packet sniffing (DPI)). I retrieved the actual SOCKET handle behind WinInet's HINTERNET request object and had hoped to use that in place of my software's existing SOCKET connection and hopefully not need to change much more on the client side. It initially seemed to be my solution but on further inspection it seems that the OS gets first-chance at the received data on this socket since when I get notified of events via the standard select(...) statement on the socket and query the size of the data available via ioctlsocket the call succeeds but returns 0 bytes available, the reads don't work and it goes downhill from there. Can someone tell me of a client-side library (commercial is fine) will let me get past these proxy server environments with as little user and IT staff help as possible? From what I read it has grown past SOCKS and I figure someone has to have solved this problem before me. Thanks for reading my long-winded question, Ripred

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  • Test of procedure is fine but when called from a menu gives uninitialized errors. C

    - by Delfic
    The language is portuguese, but I think you get the picture. My main calls only the menu function (the function in comment is the test which works). In the menu i introduce the option 1 which calls the same function. But there's something wrong. If i test it solely on the input: (1/1)x^2 //it reads the polinomyal (2/1) //reads the rational and returns 4 (you can guess what it does, calculates the value of an instace of x over a rational) My polinomyals are linear linked lists with a coeficient (rational) and a degree (int) int main () { menu_interactivo (); // instanciacao (); return 0; } void menu_interactivo(void) { int i; do{ printf("1. Instanciacao de um polinomio com um escalar\n"); printf("2. Multiplicacao de um polinomio por um escalar\n"); printf("3. Soma de dois polinomios\n"); printf("4. Multiplicacao de dois polinomios\n"); printf("5. Divisao de dois polinomios\n"); printf("0. Sair\n"); scanf ("%d", &i); switch (i) { case 0: exit(0); break; case 1: instanciacao (); break; case 2: multiplicacao_esc (); break; case 3: somar_pol (); break; case 4: multiplicacao_pol (); break; case 5: divisao_pol (); break; default:printf("O numero introduzido nao e valido!\n"); } } while (i != 0); } When i call it with the menu, with the same input, it does not stop reading the polinomyal (I know this because it does not ask me for the rational as on the other example) I've run it with valgrind --track-origins=yes returning the following: ==17482== Memcheck, a memory error detector ==17482== Copyright (C) 2002-2009, and GNU GPL'd, by Julian Seward et al. ==17482== Using Valgrind-3.5.0 and LibVEX; rerun with -h for copyright info ==17482== Command: ./teste ==17482== 1. Instanciacao de um polinomio com um escalar 2. Multiplicacao de um polinomio por um escalar 3. Soma de dois polinomios 4. Multiplicacao de dois polinomios 5. Divisao de dois polinomios 0. Sair 1 Introduza um polinomio na forma (n0/d0)x^e0 + (n1/d1)x^e1 + ... + (nk/dk)^ek, com ei > e(i+1): (1/1)x^2 ==17482== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s) ==17482== at 0x401126: simplifica_f (fraccoes.c:53) ==17482== by 0x4010CB: le_f (fraccoes.c:30) ==17482== by 0x400CDA: le_pol (polinomios.c:156) ==17482== by 0x400817: instanciacao (t4.c:14) ==17482== by 0x40098C: menu_interactivo (t4.c:68) ==17482== by 0x4009BF: main (t4.c:86) ==17482== Uninitialised value was created by a stack allocation ==17482== at 0x401048: le_f (fraccoes.c:19) ==17482== ==17482== Conditional jump or move depends on uninitialised value(s) ==17482== at 0x400D03: le_pol (polinomios.c:163) ==17482== by 0x400817: instanciacao (t4.c:14) ==17482== by 0x40098C: menu_interactivo (t4.c:68) ==17482== by 0x4009BF: main (t4.c:86) ==17482== Uninitialised value was created by a stack allocation ==17482== at 0x401048: le_f (fraccoes.c:19) ==17482== I will now give you the functions which are called void le_pol (pol *p) { fraccao f; int e; char c; printf ("Introduza um polinomio na forma (n0/d0)x^e0 + (n1/d1)x^e1 + ... + (nk/dk)^ek,\n"); printf("com ei > e(i+1):\n"); *p = NULL; do { le_f (&f); getchar(); getchar(); scanf ("%d", &e); if (f.n != 0) *p = add (*p, f, e); c = getchar (); if (c != '\n') { getchar(); getchar(); } } while (c != '\n'); } void instanciacao (void) { pol p1; fraccao f; le_pol (&p1); printf ("Insira uma fraccao na forma (n/d):\n"); le_f (&f); escreve_f(inst_esc_pol(p1, f)); } void le_f (fraccao *f) { int n, d; getchar (); scanf ("%d", &n); getchar (); scanf ("%d", &d); getchar (); assert (d != 0); *f = simplifica_f(cria_f(n, d)); } simplifica_f simplifies a rational and cria_f creates a rationa given the numerator and the denominator Can someone help me please? Thanks in advance. If you want me to provide some tests, just post it. See ya.

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  • clojure.algo.monad strange m-plus behaviour with parser-m - why is second m-plus evaluated?

    - by Mark Fisher
    I'm getting unexpected behaviour in some monads I'm writing. I've created a parser-m monad with (def parser-m (state-t maybe-m)) which is pretty much the example given everywhere (here, here and here) I'm using m-plus to act a kind of fall-through query mechanism, in my case, it first reads values from a cache (database), if that returns nil, the next method is to read from "live" (a REST call). However, the second value in the m-plus list is always called, even though its value is disgarded (if the cache hit was good) and the final return is that of the first monadic function. Here's a cutdown version of the issue i'm seeing, and some solutions I found, but I don't know why. My questions are: Is this expected behaviour or a bug in m-plus? i.e. will the 2nd method in a m-plus list always be evaluated if the first item returns a value? Minor in comparison to the above, but if i remove the call _ (fetch-state) from checker, when i evaluate that method, it prints out the messages for the functions the m-plus is calling (when i don't think it should). Is this also a bug? Here's a cut-down version of the code in question highlighting the problem. It simply checks key/value pairs passed in are same as the initial state values, and updates the state to mark what it actually ran. (ns monods.monad-test (:require [clojure.algo.monads :refer :all])) (def parser-m (state-t maybe-m)) (defn check-k-v [k v] (println "calling with k,v:" k v) (domonad parser-m [kv (fetch-val k) _ (do (println "k v kv (= kv v)" k v kv (= kv v)) (m-result 0)) :when (= kv v) _ (do (println "passed") (m-result 0)) _ (update-val :ran #(conj % (str "[" k " = " v "]"))) ] [k v])) (defn filler [] (println "filler called") (domonad parser-m [_ (fetch-state) _ (do (println "filling") (m-result 0)) :when nil] nil)) (def checker (domonad parser-m [_ (fetch-state) result (m-plus ;; (filler) ;; intitially commented out deliberately (check-k-v :a 1) (check-k-v :b 2) (check-k-v :c 3))] result)) (checker {:a 1 :b 2 :c 3 :ran []}) When I run this as is, the output is: > (checker {:a 1 :b 2 :c 3 :ran []}) calling with k,v: :a 1 calling with k,v: :b 2 calling with k,v: :c 3 k v kv (= kv v) :a 1 1 true passed k v kv (= kv v) :b 2 2 true passed [[:a 1] {:a 1, :b 2, :c 3, :ran ["[:a = 1]"]}] I don't expect the line k v kv (= kv v) :b 2 2 true to show at all. The first function to m-plus (as seen in the final output) is what is returned from it. Now, I've found if I pass a filler into m-plus that does nothing (i.e. uncomment the (filler) line) then the output is correct, the :b value isn't evaluated. If I don't have the filler method, and make the first method test fail (i.e. change it to (check-k-v :a 2) then again everything is good, I don't get a call to check :c, only a and b are tested. From my understanding of what the state-t maybe-m transformation is giving me, then the m-plus function should look like: (defn m-plus [left right] (fn [state] (if-let [result (left state)] result (right state)))) which would mean that right isn't called unless left returns nil/false. I'd be interested to know if my understanding is correct or not, and why I have to put the filler method in to stop the extra evaluation (whose effects I don't want to happen). Apologies for the long winded post!

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  • wxPthon problems with Wrapping StaticText

    - by Scott B
    Hello. I am having an issue with wxPython. A simplified version of the code is posted below (white space, comments, etc removed to reduce size - but the general format to my program is kept roughly the same). When I run the script, the static text correctly wraps as it should, but the other items in the panel do not move down (they act as if the statictext is only one line and thus not everything is visible). If I manually resize the window/frame, even just a tiny amount, everything gets corrected and displays as it is should. I took screen shots to show this behavior, but I just created this account and thus don't have the required 10 reputation points to be allowed to post pictures. Why does it not display correctly to begin with? I've tried all sorts of combination's of GetParent().Refresh() or Update() and GetTopLevelParent().Update() or Refresh(). I've tried everything I can think of but cannot get it to display correctly without manually resizing the frame/window. Once re-sized, it works exactly as I want it to. Information: Windows XP Python 2.5.2 wxPython 2.8.11.0 (msw-unicode) Any suggestions? Thanks! Code: #! /usr/bin/python import wx class StaticWrapText(wx.PyControl): def __init__(self, parent, id=wx.ID_ANY, label='', pos=wx.DefaultPosition, size=wx.DefaultSize, style=wx.NO_BORDER, validator=wx.DefaultValidator, name='StaticWrapText'): wx.PyControl.__init__(self, parent, id, pos, size, style, validator, name) self.statictext = wx.StaticText(self, wx.ID_ANY, label, style=style) self.wraplabel = label #self.wrap() def wrap(self): self.Freeze() self.statictext.SetLabel(self.wraplabel) self.statictext.Wrap(self.GetSize().width) self.Thaw() def DoGetBestSize(self): self.wrap() #print self.statictext.GetSize() self.SetSize(self.statictext.GetSize()) return self.GetSize() class TestPanel(wx.Panel): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): # Init the base class wx.Panel.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) self.createControls() def createControls(self): # --- Panel2 ------------------------------------------------------------- self.Panel2 = wx.Panel(self, -1) msg1 = 'Below is a List of Files to be Processed' staticBox = wx.StaticBox(self.Panel2, label=msg1) Panel2_box1_v1 = wx.StaticBoxSizer(staticBox, wx.VERTICAL) Panel2_box2_h1 = wx.BoxSizer(wx.HORIZONTAL) Panel2_box3_v1 = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) self.wxL_Inputs = wx.ListBox(self.Panel2, wx.ID_ANY, style=wx.LB_EXTENDED) sz = dict(size=(120,-1)) wxB_AddFile = wx.Button(self.Panel2, label='Add File', **sz) wxB_DeleteFile = wx.Button(self.Panel2, label='Delete Selected', **sz) wxB_ClearFiles = wx.Button(self.Panel2, label='Clear All', **sz) Panel2_box3_v1.Add(wxB_AddFile, 0, wx.TOP, 0) Panel2_box3_v1.Add(wxB_DeleteFile, 0, wx.TOP, 0) Panel2_box3_v1.Add(wxB_ClearFiles, 0, wx.TOP, 0) Panel2_box2_h1.Add(self.wxL_Inputs, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) Panel2_box2_h1.Add(Panel2_box3_v1, 0, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) msg = 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' msg += 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' msg += 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' msg += 'This is a long line of text used to test the autowrapping ' msg += 'static text message. ' staticMsg = StaticWrapText(self.Panel2, label=msg) Panel2_box1_v1.Add(staticMsg, 0, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) Panel2_box1_v1.Add(Panel2_box2_h1, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 0) self.Panel2.SetSizer(Panel2_box1_v1) # --- Combine Everything ------------------------------------------------- final_vbox = wx.BoxSizer(wx.VERTICAL) final_vbox.Add(self.Panel2, 1, wx.ALL|wx.EXPAND, 2) self.SetSizerAndFit(final_vbox) class TestFrame(wx.Frame): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): # Init the base class wx.Frame.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) panel = TestPanel(self) self.SetClientSize(wx.Size(500,500)) self.Center() class wxFileCleanupApp(wx.App): def __init__(self, *args, **kwargs): # Init the base class wx.App.__init__(self, *args, **kwargs) def OnInit(self): # Create the frame, center it, and show it frame = TestFrame(None, title='Test Frame') frame.Show() return True if __name__ == '__main__': app = wxFileCleanupApp() app.MainLoop() EDIT: See my post below for a solution that works!

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  • Is it possible to reference a linkbotton outside an update panel as the update trigger?

    - by Selase
    I have a page based on a master page and as such i can only see the content place holders i used in the master page showing up in the aspx pages based on the master page. the source code shown below: <%@ Page Title="" Language="C#" MasterPageFile="~/Site.Master" AutoEventWireup="true" CodeBehind="CaseAdmin.aspx.cs" Inherits="Prototype4.CaseAdmin" %> <%@PreviousPageType VirtualPath="~/Account/Login.aspx"%> <asp:Content ID="Content1" ContentPlaceHolderID="HeadContent" runat="server"> </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="CaseRightNews" ContentPlaceHolderID="RightNewsItem" runat="server"> </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="CaseLeftNav" ContentPlaceHolderID="LeftNavigation" runat="server"> <div style="margin-top:20px; margin-bottom:20px;"> <p class="actionButton"> <asp:LinkButton ID="OpenCaseLinkButton" runat="server" onclick="OpenCaseLinkButton_Click">Open Case</asp:LinkButton> </p> <p class="actionButton"><asp:LinkButton ID="RegisterExhibitLinkButton" runat="server" onclick="RegisterExhibitLinkButton_Click">Register Exhibit</asp:LinkButton> </p> </div> </asp:Content> <asp:Content ID="CaseMainContnt" ContentPlaceHolderID="MainContent" runat="server"> <asp:ScriptManager ID="ScriptManager" runat="server" /> <asp:UpdatePanel ID="CaseMainCntntUpdatePanel" UpdateMode="Conditional" runat="server"> <Triggers> <asp:AsyncPostBackTrigger ControlID="" eventname="Click"/> </Triggers> <ContentTemplate> <%--Some text here to inform user to click on the open case botton to display open case form--%> </ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel> <asp:UpdatePanel runat="server" id="UpdatePanel1" updatemode="Conditional"> <Triggers> <asp:AsyncPostBackTrigger ControlID="" eventname="Click"/> </Triggers> <ContentTemplate> <%--some text here to inform users to click on the add exhibit botton to display add exhibit form--%> </ContentTemplate> </asp:UpdatePanel> </asp:Content> the section of the entire page i wish to change upon update is the (this is the main content of the page). for this reason i placed the updatepanel inside the content place holder since it cant be sitting outside and not wrapped in a content place holder. However, the buttons that i wish to apply the trigger that fires the update to, are in another content place holder(). How can i possibly get those buttons to act as the trigger while changing only what appears in the main content area. Plus, i tried getting the updatepanel to work just so i could see if it does the update well but it turned out really bad. i added some linkbottons in the content template area and used them as the triggers for testing reasons. i tested and the changes took over the entire page in contrast to just appearing in the content area. I actually just wanted to load a form that is created in another asp. page into the main content area... I seriously need help with this... Every little help, detail and information is dearly appreciated... thanks so much in advance

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  • Agile: User Stories for Machine Learning Project?

    - by benjismith
    I've just finished up with a prototype implementation of a supervised learning algorithm, automatically assigning categorical tags to all the items in our company database (roughly 5 million items). The results look good, and I've been given the go-ahead to plan the production implementation project. I've done this kind of work before, so I know how the functional components of the software. I need a collection of web crawlers to fetch data. I need to extract features from the crawled documents. Those documents need to be segregated into a "training set" and a "classification set", and feature-vectors need to be extracted from each document. Those feature vectors are self-organized into clusters, and the clusters are passed through a series of rebalancing operations. Etc etc etc etc. So I put together a plan, with about 30 unique development/deployment tasks, each with time estimates. The first stage of development -- ignoring some advanced features that we'd like to have in the long-term, but aren't high enough priority to make it into the development schedule yet -- is slated for about two months worth of work. (Keep in mind that I already have a working prototype, so the final implementation is significantly simpler than if the project was starting from scratch.) My manager said the plan looked good to him, but he asked if I could reorganize the tasks into user stories, for a few reasons: (1) our project management software is totally organized around user stories; (2) all of our scheduling is based on fitting entire user stories into sprints, rather than individually scheduling tasks; (3) other teams -- like the web developers -- have made great use of agile methodologies, and they've benefited from modelling all the software features as user stories. So I created a user story at the top level of the project: As a user of the system, I want to search for items by category, so that I can easily find the most relevant items within a huge, complex database. Or maybe a better top-level story for this feature would be: As a content editor, I want to automatically create categorical designations for the items in our database, so that customers can easily find high-value data within our huge, complex database. But that's not the real problem. The tricky part, for me, is figuring out how to create subordinate user stories for the rest of the machine learning architecture. Case in point... I know that the algorithm requires two major architectural subdivisions: (A) training, and (B) classification. And I know that the training portion of the architecture requires construction of a cluster-space. All the Agile Development literature I've read seems to indicate that a user story should be the "smallest possible implementation that provides any business value". And that makes a lot of sense when designing a piece of end-user software. Start small, and then incrementally add value when users demand additional functionality. But a cluster-space, in and of itself, provides zero business value. Nor does a crawler, or a feature-extractor. There's no business value (not for the end-user, or for any of the roles internal to the company) in a partial system. A trained cluster-space is only possible with the crawler and feature extractor, and only relevant if we also develop an accompanying classifier. I suppose it would be possible to create user stories where the subordinate components of the system act as the users in the stories: As a supervised-learning cluster-space construction routine, I want to consume data from a feature extractor, so that I can exist. But that seems really weird. What benefit does it provide me as the developer (or our users, or any other stakeholders, for that matter) to model my user stories like that? Although the main story can be easily divided along architectural-component boundaries (crawler, trainer, classifier, etc), I can't think of any useful decomposition from a user's perspective. What do you guys think? How do you plan Agile user stories for sophisticated, indivisible, non-user-facing components?

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  • Can't get Jacobi algorithm to work in Objective-C

    - by Chris Long
    Hi, For some reason, I can't get this program to work. I've had other CS majors look at it and they can't figure it out either. This program performs the Jacobi algorithm (you can see step-by-step instructions and a MATLAB implementation here). BTW, it's different from the Wikipedia article of the same name. Since NSArray is one-dimensional, I added a method that makes it act like a two-dimensional C array. After running the Jacobi algorithm many times, the diagonal entries in the NSArray (i[0][0], i[1][1], etc.) are supposed to get bigger and the others approach 0. For some reason though, they all increase exponentially. For instance, i[2][4] should equal 0.0000009, not 9999999, while i[2][2] should be big. Thanks in advance, Chris NSArray+Matrix.m @implementation NSArray (Matrix) @dynamic offValue, transposed; - (double)offValue { double sum = 0.0; for ( MatrixItem *item in self ) if ( item.nonDiagonal ) sum += pow( item.value, 2.0 ); return sum; } - (NSMutableArray *)transposed { NSMutableArray *transpose = [[[NSMutableArray alloc] init] autorelease]; int i, j; for ( i = 0; i < 5; i++ ) { for ( j = 0; j < 5; j++ ) { [transpose addObject:[self objectAtRow:j andColumn:i]]; } } return transpose; } - (id)objectAtRow:(NSUInteger)row andColumn:(NSUInteger)column { NSUInteger index = 5 * row + column; return [self objectAtIndex:index]; } - (NSMutableArray *)multiplyWithMatrix:(NSArray *)array { NSMutableArray *result = [[NSMutableArray alloc] init]; int i = 0, j = 0, k = 0; double value; for ( i = 0; i < 5; i++ ) { value = 0.0; for ( j = 0; j < 5; j++ ) { for ( k = 0; k < 5; k++ ) { MatrixItem *firstItem = [self objectAtRow:i andColumn:k]; MatrixItem *secondItem = [array objectAtRow:k andColumn:j]; value += firstItem.value * secondItem.value; } MatrixItem *item = [[MatrixItem alloc] initWithValue:value]; item.row = i; item.column = j; [result addObject:item]; } } return result; } @end Jacobi_AlgorithmAppDelegate.m // ... - (void)jacobiAlgorithmWithEntry:(MatrixItem *)entry { MatrixItem *b11 = [matrix objectAtRow:entry.row andColumn:entry.row]; MatrixItem *b22 = [matrix objectAtRow:entry.column andColumn:entry.column]; double muPlus = ( b22.value + b11.value ) / 2.0; muPlus += sqrt( pow((b22.value - b11.value), 2.0) + 4.0 * pow(entry.value, 2.0) ); Vector *u1 = [[[Vector alloc] initWithX:(-1.0 * entry.value) andY:(b11.value - muPlus)] autorelease]; [u1 normalize]; Vector *u2 = [[[Vector alloc] initWithX:-u1.y andY:u1.x] autorelease]; NSMutableArray *g = [[[NSMutableArray alloc] init] autorelease]; for ( int i = 0; i <= 24; i++ ) { MatrixItem *item = [[[MatrixItem alloc] init] autorelease]; if ( i == 6*entry.row ) item.value = u1.x; else if ( i == 6*entry.column ) item.value = u2.y; else if ( i == ( 5*entry.row + entry.column ) || i == ( 5*entry.column + entry.row ) ) item.value = u1.y; else if ( i % 6 == 0 ) item.value = 1.0; else item.value = 0.0; [g addObject:item]; } NSMutableArray *firstResult = [[g.transposed multiplyWithMatrix:matrix] autorelease]; matrix = [firstResult multiplyWithMatrix:g]; } // ...

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  • When I try to redefine a variable, I get an index out of bounds error

    - by user2770254
    I'm building a program to act as a calculator with memory, so you can give variables and their values. Whenever I'm trying to redefine a variable, a = 5, to a = 6, I get an index out of bounds error. public static void main(String args[]) { LinkedHashMap<String,Integer> map = new LinkedHashMap<String,Integer>(); Scanner scan = new Scanner(System.in); ArrayList<Integer> values = new ArrayList<>(); ArrayList<String> variables = new ArrayList<>(); while(scan.hasNextLine()) { String line = scan.nextLine(); String[] tokens = line.split(" "); if(!Character.isDigit(tokens[0].charAt(0)) && !line.equals("clear") && !line.equals("var")) { int value = 0; for(int i=0; i<tokens.length; i++) { if(tokens.length==3) { value = Integer.parseInt(tokens[2]); System.out.printf("%5d\n",value); if(map.containsKey(tokens[0])) { values.set(values.indexOf(tokens[0]), value); variables.set(variables.indexOf(tokens[0]), tokens[0]); } else { values.add(value); } break; } else if(tokens[i].charAt(0) == '+') { value = addition(tokens, value); System.out.printf("%5d\n",value); variables.add(tokens[0]); if(map.containsKey(tokens[0])) { values.set(values.indexOf(tokens[0]), value); variables.set(variables.indexOf(tokens[0]), tokens[0]); } else { values.add(value); } break; } else if(i==tokens.length-1 && tokens.length != 3) { System.out.println("No operation"); break; } } map.put(tokens[0], value); } if(Character.isDigit(tokens[0].charAt(0))) { int value = 0; if(tokens.length==1) { System.out.printf("%5s\n", tokens[0]); } else { value = addition(tokens, value); System.out.printf("%5d\n", value); } } if(line.equals("clear")) { clear(map); } if(line.equals("var")) { variableList(variables, values); } } } public static int addition(String[] a, int b) { for(String item : a) { if(Character.isDigit(item.charAt(0))) { int add = Integer.parseInt(item); b = b + add; } } return b; } public static void clear(LinkedHashMap<String,Integer> b) { b.clear(); } public static void variableList(ArrayList<String> a, ArrayList<Integer> b) { for(int i=0; i<a.size(); i++) { System.out.printf("%5s: %d\n", a.get(i), b.get(i)); } } I included the whole code because I'm not sure where the error is arising from.

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  • Update transaction in SQL Server 2008 R2 from ASP.Net not working

    - by Amarus
    Hello! Even though I've been a stalker here for ages, this is the first post I'm making. Hopefully, it won't end here and more optimistically future posts might actually be me trying to give a hand to someone else, I do owe this community that much and more. Now, what I'm trying to do is simple and most probably the reason behind it not working is my own stupidity. However, I'm stumped here. I'm working on an ASP.Net website that interacts with an SQL Server 2008 R2 database. So far everything has been going okay but updating a row (or more) just won't work. I even tried copying and pasting code from this site and others but it's always the same thing. In short: No exception or errors are shown when the update command executes (it even gives the correct count of affected rows) but no changes are actually made on the database. Here's a simplified version of my code (the original had more commands and tons of parameters each, but even when it's like this it doesn't work): protected void btSubmit_Click(object sender, EventArgs e) { using (SqlConnection connection = new SqlConnection(System.Configuration.ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["ApplicationServices"].ConnectionString)) { string commandString = "UPDATE [impoundLotAlpha].[dbo].[Vehicle]" + "SET [VehicleMake] = @VehicleMake" + " WHERE [ComplaintID] = @ComplaintID"; using (SqlCommand command = new SqlCommand(commandString, connection)) { SqlTransaction transaction = null; try { command.Connection.Open(); transaction = connection.BeginTransaction(IsolationLevel.Serializable); command.Transaction = transaction; SqlParameter complaintID = new SqlParameter("@complaintID", SqlDbType.Int); complaintID.Value = HttpContext.Current.Request.QueryString["complaintID"]; command.Parameters.Add(complaintID); SqlParameter VehicleMake = new SqlParameter("@VehicleMake", SqlDbType.VarChar, 20); VehicleMake.Value = tbVehicleMake.Text; command.Parameters.Add(VehicleMake); command.ExecuteNonQuery(); transaction.Commit(); } catch { transaction.Rollback(); throw; } finally { connection.Close(); } } } } I've tried this with the "SqlTransaction" stuff and without it and nothing changes. Also, since I'm doing multiple updates at once, I want to have them act as a single transaction. I've found that it can be either done like this or by use of the classes included in the System.Transactions namespace (CommittableTransaction, TransactionScope...). I tried all I could find but didn't get any different results. The connection string in web.config is as follows: <connectionStrings> <add name="ApplicationServices" connectionString="Data Source=localhost;Initial Catalog=ImpoundLotAlpha;Integrated Security=True" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient"/> </connectionStrings> So, tldr; version: What is the mistake that I did with that record update attempt? (Figured it out, check below if you're having a similar issue.) What is the best method to gather multiple update commands as a single transaction? Thanks in advance for any kind of help and/or suggestions! Edit: It seems that I was lacking some sleep yesterday cause this time it only took me 5 minutes to figure out my mistake. Apparently the update was working properly but I failed to notice that the textbox values were being overwritten in Page_Load. For some reason I had this part commented: if (IsPostBack) return; The second part of the question still stands. But should I post this as an answer to my own question or keep it like this?

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  • why is my intent not useful?

    - by user1634887
    This is my first to ask here. I write the code for a Broadcast A start another Broadcast B. But the Broadcast B didn't get the intent's value. Broadcast A:get the sms contain message and start B public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) { Object[] pdus=(Object[])intent.getExtras().get("pdus"); for(Object pdu:pdus) { byte[] date=(byte[])pdu; SmsMessage message=SmsMessage.createFromPdu(date); String sender=message.getOriginatingAddress(); String body=message.getMessageBody(); if(sender.equals(AppUtil.herPhone)&&body.regionMatches(0, AppUtil.herSmsText, 0, 18)) { Toast.makeText(context, body, Toast.LENGTH_LONG).show(); String [] bodyArray=body.split(" "); String longitude=bodyArray[1]; String latitude=bodyArray[2]; **Intent uiIntent=new Intent(); Bundle bundle=new Bundle(); bundle.putString("longitude", longitude); bundle.putString("latitude", latitude); uiIntent.putExtras(bundle); uiIntent.setAction("android.janmac.location"); context.sendBroadcast(uiIntent);** abortBroadcast(); } } } Boardcast B: it nest in an Activity. register: button.setOnClickListener(new OnClickListener() { @Override public void onClick(View v) { AppUtil.SendMessage(MainActivity.this); uiReceiver=new UIReceiver(); IntentFilter filter=new IntentFilter(); filter.addAction("android.janmac.location"); registerReceiver(uiReceiver, filter); } }); extend: private class UIReceiver extends BroadcastReceiver { @Override public void onReceive(Context context, Intent intent) { Log.v("location","uireceiver????!"); **Bundle bundle=new Bundle(); bundle=intent.getExtras(); herLongitude=Double.valueOf(bundle.getString("longitude")); herLatitude=Double.valueOf(bundle.getString("latitude"));** } } but the bundle couldn't get any values. here is log: 08-30 11:17:40.494: D/AndroidRuntime(2359): Shutting down VM 08-30 11:17:40.514: W/dalvikvm(2359): threadid=1: thread exiting with uncaught exception (group=0x40018560) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): FATAL EXCEPTION: main 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): java.lang.RuntimeException: Error receiving broadcast Intent { act=android.janmac.location (has extras) } in com.example.locationclient.MainActivity$UIReceiver@40513690 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at android.app.LoadedApk$ReceiverDispatcher$Args.run(LoadedApk.java:722) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at android.os.Handler.handleCallback(Handler.java:587) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at android.os.Handler.dispatchMessage(Handler.java:92) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at android.os.Looper.loop(Looper.java:130) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at android.app.ActivityThread.main(ActivityThread.java:3835) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invokeNative(Native Method) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at java.lang.reflect.Method.invoke(Method.java:507) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit$MethodAndArgsCaller.run(ZygoteInit.java:864) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at com.android.internal.os.ZygoteInit.main(ZygoteInit.java:622) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at dalvik.system.NativeStart.main(Native Method) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): Caused by: java.lang.NumberFormatException 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at org.apache.harmony.luni.util.FloatingPointParser.parseDblImpl(Native Method) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at org.apache.harmony.luni.util.FloatingPointParser.parseDouble(FloatingPointParser.java:283) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at java.lang.Double.parseDouble(Double.java:318) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at java.lang.Double.valueOf(Double.java:356) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at com.example.locationclient.MainActivity$UIReceiver.onReceive(MainActivity.java:231) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): at android.app.LoadedApk$ReceiverDispatcher$Args.run(LoadedApk.java:709) 08-30 11:17:40.544: E/AndroidRuntime(2359): ... 9 more enter code here

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  • Mapping UrlEncoded POST Values in ASP.NET Web API

    - by Rick Strahl
    If there's one thing that's a bit unexpected in ASP.NET Web API, it's the limited support for mapping url encoded POST data values to simple parameters of ApiController methods. When I first looked at this I thought I was doing something wrong, because it seems mighty odd that you can bind query string values to parameters by name, but can't bind POST values to parameters in the same way. To demonstrate here's a simple example. If you have a Web API method like this:[HttpGet] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(string username, string password) { …} and then hit with a URL like this: http://localhost:88/samples/authenticate?Username=ricks&Password=sekrit it works just fine. The query string values are mapped to the username and password parameters of our API method. But if you now change the method to work with [HttpPost] instead like this:[HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(string username, string password) { …} and hit it with a POST HTTP Request like this: POST http://localhost:88/samples/authenticate HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:88 Accept: text/html,application/xhtml+xml,application/xml;q=0.9,*/*;q=0.8 Content-type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded Content-Length: 30 Username=ricks&Password=sekrit you'll find that while the request works, it doesn't actually receive the two string parameters. The username and password parameters are null and so the method is definitely going to fail. When I mentioned this over Twitter a few days ago I got a lot of responses back of why I'd want to do this in the first place - after all HTML Form submissions are the domain of MVC and not WebAPI which is a valid point. However, the more common use case is using POST Variables with AJAX calls. The following is quite common for passing simple values:$.post(url,{ Username: "Rick", Password: "sekrit" },function(result) {…}); but alas that doesn't work. How ASP.NET Web API handles Content Bodies Web API supports parsing content data in a variety of ways, but it does not deal with multiple posted content values. In effect you can only post a single content value to a Web API Action method. That one parameter can be very complex and you can bind it in a variety of ways, but ultimately you're tied to a single POST content value in your parameter definition. While it's possible to support multiple parameters on a POST/PUT operation, only one parameter can be mapped to the actual content - the rest have to be mapped to route values or the query string. Web API treats the whole request body as one big chunk of data that is sent to a Media Type Formatter that's responsible for de-serializing the content into whatever value the method requires. The restriction comes from async nature of Web API where the request data is read only once inside of the formatter that retrieves and deserializes it. Because it's read once, checking for content (like individual POST variables) first is not possible. However, Web API does provide a couple of ways to access the form POST data: Model Binding - object property mapping to bind POST values FormDataCollection - collection of POST keys/values ModelBinding POST Values - Binding POST data to Object Properties The recommended way to handle POST values in Web API is to use Model Binding, which maps individual urlencoded POST values to properties of a model object provided as the parameter. Model binding requires a single object as input to be bound to the POST data, with each POST key that matches a property name (including nested properties like Address.Street) being mapped and updated including automatic type conversion of simple types. This is a very nice feature - and a familiar one from MVC - that makes it very easy to have model objects mapped directly from inbound data. The obvious drawback with Model Binding is that you need a model for it to work: You have to provide a strongly typed object that can receive the data and this object has to map the inbound data. To rewrite the example above to use ModelBinding I have to create a class maps the properties that I need as parameters:public class LoginData { public string Username { get; set; } public string Password { get; set; } } and then accept the data like this in the API method:[HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(LoginData login) { string username = login.Username; string password = login.Password; … } This works fine mapping the POST values to the properties of the login object. As a side benefit of this method definition, the method now also allows posting of JSON or XML to the same endpoint. If I change my request to send JSON like this: POST http://localhost:88/samples/authenticate HTTP/1.1 Host: localhost:88 Accept: application/jsonContent-type: application/json Content-Length: 40 {"Username":"ricks","Password":"sekrit"} it works as well and transparently, courtesy of the nice Content Negotiation features of Web API. There's nothing wrong with using Model binding and in fact it's a common practice to use (view) model object for inputs coming back from the client and mapping them into these models. But it can be  kind of a hassle if you have AJAX applications with a ton of backend hits, especially if many methods are very atomic and focused and don't effectively require a model or view. Not always do you have to pass structured data, but sometimes there are just a couple of simple response values that need to be sent back. If all you need is to pass a couple operational parameters, creating a view model object just for parameter purposes seems like overkill. Maybe you can use the query string instead (if that makes sense), but if you can't then you can often end up with a plethora of 'message objects' that serve no further  purpose than to make Model Binding work. Note that you can accept multiple parameters with ModelBinding so the following would still work:[HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(LoginData login, string loginDomain) but only the object will be bound to POST data. As long as loginDomain comes from the querystring or route data this will work. Collecting POST values with FormDataCollection Another more dynamic approach to handle POST values is to collect POST data into a FormDataCollection. FormDataCollection is a very basic key/value collection (like FormCollection in MVC and Request.Form in ASP.NET in general) and then read the values out individually by querying each. [HttpPost] public HttpResponseMessage Authenticate(FormDataCollection form) { var username = form.Get("Username"); var password = form.Get("Password"); …} The downside to this approach is that it's not strongly typed, you have to handle type conversions on non-string parameters, and it gets a bit more complicated to test such as setup as you have to seed a FormDataCollection with data. On the other hand it's flexible and easy to use and especially with string parameters is easy to deal with. It's also dynamic, so if the client sends you a variety of combinations of values on which you make operating decisions, this is much easier to work with than a strongly typed object that would have to account for all possible values up front. The downside is that the code looks old school and isn't as self-documenting as a parameter list or object parameter would be. Nevertheless it's totally functionality and a viable choice for collecting POST values. What about [FromBody]? Web API also has a [FromBody] attribute that can be assigned to parameters. If you have multiple parameters on a Web API method signature you can use [FromBody] to specify which one will be parsed from the POST content. Unfortunately it's not terribly useful as it only returns content in raw format and requires a totally non-standard format ("=content") to specify your content. For more info in how FromBody works and several related issues to how POST data is mapped, you can check out Mike Stalls post: How WebAPI does Parameter Binding Not really sure where the Web API team thought [FromBody] would really be a good fit other than a down and dirty way to send a full string buffer. Extending Web API to make multiple POST Vars work? Don't think so Clearly there's no native support for multiple POST variables being mapped to parameters, which is a bit of a bummer. I know in my own work on one project my customer actually found this to be a real sticking point in their AJAX backend work, and we ended up not using Web API and using MVC JSON features instead. That's kind of sad because Web API is supposed to be the proper solution for AJAX backends. With all of ASP.NET Web API's extensibility you'd think there would be some way to build this functionality on our own, but after spending a bit of time digging and asking some of the experts from the team and Web API community I didn't hear anything that even suggests that this is possible. From what I could find I'd say it's not possible primarily because Web API's Routing engine does not account for the POST variable mapping. This means [HttpPost] methods with url encoded POST buffers are not mapped to the parameters of the endpoint, and so the routes would never even trigger a request that could be intercepted. Once the routing doesn't work there's not much that can be done. If somebody has an idea how this could be accomplished I would love to hear about it. Do we really need multi-value POST mapping? I think that that POST value mapping is a feature that one would expect of any API tool to have. If you look at common APIs out there like Flicker and Google Maps etc. they all work with POST data. POST data is very prominent much more so than JSON inputs and so supporting as many options that enable would seem to be crucial. All that aside, Web API does provide very nice features with Model Binding that allows you to capture many POST variables easily enough, and logistically this will let you build whatever you need with POST data of all shapes as long as you map objects. But having to have an object for every operation that receives a data input is going to take its toll in heavy AJAX applications, with a lot of types created that do nothing more than act as parameter containers. I also think that POST variable mapping is an expected behavior and Web APIs non-support will likely result in many, many questions like this one: How do I bind a simple POST value in ASP.NET WebAPI RC? with no clear answer to this question. I hope for V.next of WebAPI Microsoft will consider this a feature that's worth adding. Related Articles Passing multiple POST parameters to Web API Controller Methods Mike Stall's post: How Web API does Parameter Binding Where does ASP.NET Web API Fit?© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2012Posted in Web Api   Tweet !function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];if(!d.getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js.src="//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs"); (function() { var po = document.createElement('script'); po.type = 'text/javascript'; po.async = true; po.src = 'https://apis.google.com/js/plusone.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(po, s); })();

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  • Entity Association Mapping with Code First Part 1 : Mapping Complex Types

    - by mortezam
    Last week the CTP5 build of the new Entity Framework Code First has been released by data team at Microsoft. Entity Framework Code-First provides a pretty powerful code-centric way to work with the databases. When it comes to associations, it brings ultimate flexibility. I’m a big fan of the EF Code First approach and am planning to explain association mapping with code first in a series of blog posts and this one is dedicated to Complex Types. If you are new to Code First approach, you can find a great walkthrough here. In order to build a solid foundation for our discussion, we will start by learning about some of the core concepts around the relationship mapping.   What is Mapping?Mapping is the act of determining how objects and their relationships are persisted in permanent data storage, in our case, relational databases. What is Relationship mapping?A mapping that describes how to persist a relationship (association, aggregation, or composition) between two or more objects. Types of RelationshipsThere are two categories of object relationships that we need to be concerned with when mapping associations. The first category is based on multiplicity and it includes three types: One-to-one relationships: This is a relationship where the maximums of each of its multiplicities is one. One-to-many relationships: Also known as a many-to-one relationship, this occurs when the maximum of one multiplicity is one and the other is greater than one. Many-to-many relationships: This is a relationship where the maximum of both multiplicities is greater than one. The second category is based on directionality and it contains two types: Uni-directional relationships: when an object knows about the object(s) it is related to but the other object(s) do not know of the original object. To put this in EF terminology, when a navigation property exists only on one of the association ends and not on the both. Bi-directional relationships: When the objects on both end of the relationship know of each other (i.e. a navigation property defined on both ends). How Object Relationships Are Implemented in POCO domain models?When the multiplicity is one (e.g. 0..1 or 1) the relationship is implemented by defining a navigation property that reference the other object (e.g. an Address property on User class). When the multiplicity is many (e.g. 0..*, 1..*) the relationship is implemented via an ICollection of the type of other object. How Relational Database Relationships Are Implemented? Relationships in relational databases are maintained through the use of Foreign Keys. A foreign key is a data attribute(s) that appears in one table and must be the primary key or other candidate key in another table. With a one-to-one relationship the foreign key needs to be implemented by one of the tables. To implement a one-to-many relationship we implement a foreign key from the “one table” to the “many table”. We could also choose to implement a one-to-many relationship via an associative table (aka Join table), effectively making it a many-to-many relationship. Introducing the ModelNow, let's review the model that we are going to use in order to implement Complex Type with Code First. It's a simple object model which consist of two classes: User and Address. Each user could have one billing address. The Address information of a User is modeled as a separate class as you can see in the UML model below: In object-modeling terms, this association is a kind of aggregation—a part-of relationship. Aggregation is a strong form of association; it has some additional semantics with regard to the lifecycle of objects. In this case, we have an even stronger form, composition, where the lifecycle of the part is fully dependent upon the lifecycle of the whole. Fine-grained domain models The motivation behind this design was to achieve Fine-grained domain models. In crude terms, fine-grained means “more classes than tables”. For example, a user may have both a billing address and a home address. In the database, you may have a single User table with the columns BillingStreet, BillingCity, and BillingPostalCode along with HomeStreet, HomeCity, and HomePostalCode. There are good reasons to use this somewhat denormalized relational model (performance, for one). In our object model, we can use the same approach, representing the two addresses as six string-valued properties of the User class. But it’s much better to model this using an Address class, where User has the BillingAddress and HomeAddress properties. This object model achieves improved cohesion and greater code reuse and is more understandable. Complex Types: Splitting a Table Across Multiple Types Back to our model, there is no difference between this composition and other weaker styles of association when it comes to the actual C# implementation. But in the context of ORM, there is a big difference: A composed class is often a candidate Complex Type. But C# has no concept of composition—a class or property can’t be marked as a composition. The only difference is the object identifier: a complex type has no individual identity (i.e. no AddressId defined on Address class) which make sense because when it comes to the database everything is going to be saved into one single table. How to implement a Complex Types with Code First Code First has a concept of Complex Type Discovery that works based on a set of Conventions. The convention is that if Code First discovers a class where a primary key cannot be inferred, and no primary key is registered through Data Annotations or the fluent API, then the type will be automatically registered as a complex type. Complex type detection also requires that the type does not have properties that reference entity types (i.e. all the properties must be scalar types) and is not referenced from a collection property on another type. Here is the implementation: public class User{    public int UserId { get; set; }    public string FirstName { get; set; }    public string LastName { get; set; }    public string Username { get; set; }    public Address Address { get; set; }} public class Address {     public string Street { get; set; }     public string City { get; set; }            public string PostalCode { get; set; }        }public class EntityMappingContext : DbContext {     public DbSet<User> Users { get; set; }        } With code first, this is all of the code we need to write to create a complex type, we do not need to configure any additional database schema mapping information through Data Annotations or the fluent API. Database SchemaThe mapping result for this object model is as follows: Limitations of this mappingThere are two important limitations to classes mapped as Complex Types: Shared references is not possible: The Address Complex Type doesn’t have its own database identity (primary key) and so can’t be referred to by any object other than the containing instance of User (e.g. a Shipping class that also needs to reference the same User Address). No elegant way to represent a null reference There is no elegant way to represent a null reference to an Address. When reading from database, EF Code First always initialize Address object even if values in all mapped columns of the complex type are null. This means that if you store a complex type object with all null property values, EF Code First returns a initialized complex type when the owning entity object is retrieved from the database. SummaryIn this post we learned about fine-grained domain models which complex type is just one example of it. Fine-grained is fully supported by EF Code First and is known as the most important requirement for a rich domain model. Complex type is usually the simplest way to represent one-to-one relationships and because the lifecycle is almost always dependent in such a case, it’s either an aggregation or a composition in UML. In the next posts we will revisit the same domain model and will learn about other ways to map a one-to-one association that does not have the limitations of the complex types. References ADO.NET team blog Mapping Objects to Relational Databases Java Persistence with Hibernate

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  • Adventures in MVVM &ndash; My ViewModel Base

    - by Brian Genisio's House Of Bilz
    More Adventures in MVVM First, I’d like to say: THIS IS NOT A NEW MVVM FRAMEWORK. I tend to believe that MVVM support code should be specific to the system you are building and the developers working on it.  I have yet to find an MVVM framework that does everything I want it to without doing too much.  Don’t get me wrong… there are some good frameworks out there.  I just like to pick and choose things that make sense for me.  I’d also like to add that some of these features only work in WPF.  As of Silveright 4, they don’t support binding to dynamic properties, so some of the capabilities are lost. That being said, I want to share my ViewModel base class with the world.  I have had several conversations with people about the problems I have solved using this ViewModel base.  A while back, I posted an article about some experiments with a “Rails Inspired ViewModel”.  What followed from those ideas was a ViewModel base class that I take with me and use in my projects.  It has a lot of features, all designed to reduce the friction in writing view models. I have put the code out on Codeplex under the project: ViewModelSupport. Finally, this article focuses on the ViewModel and only glosses over the View and the Model.  Without all three, you don’t have MVVM.  But this base class is for the ViewModel, so that is what I am focusing on. Features: Automatic Command Plumbing Property Change Notification Strongly Typed Property Getter/Setters Dynamic Properties Default Property values Derived Properties Automatic Method Execution Command CanExecute Change Notification Design-Time Detection What about Silverlight? Automatic Command Plumbing This feature takes the plumbing out of creating commands.  The common pattern for commands in a ViewModel is to have an Execute method as well as an optional CanExecute method.  To plumb that together, you create an ICommand Property, and set it in the constructor like so: Before public class AutomaticCommandViewModel { public AutomaticCommandViewModel() { MyCommand = new DelegateCommand(Execute_MyCommand, CanExecute_MyCommand); } public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } public DelegateCommand MyCommand { get; private set; } } With the base class, this plumbing is automatic and the property (MyCommand of type ICommand) is created for you.  The base class uses the convention that methods be prefixed with Execute_ and CanExecute_ in order to be plumbed into commands with the property name after the prefix.  You are left to be expressive with your behavior without the plumbing.  If you are wondering how CanExecuteChanged is raised, see the later section “Command CanExecute Change Notification”. After public class AutomaticCommandViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MyCommand() { // Do something } public bool CanExecute_MyCommand() { // Are we in a state to do something? return true; } }   Property Change Notification One thing that always kills me when implementing ViewModels is how to make properties that notify when they change (via the INotifyPropertyChanged interface).  There have been many attempts to make this more automatic.  My base class includes one option.  There are others, but I feel like this works best for me. The common pattern (without my base class) is to create a private backing store for the variable and specify a getter that returns the private field.  The setter will set the private field and fire an event that notifies the change, only if the value has changed. Before public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : INotifyPropertyChanged { private string text; public string Text { get { return text; } set { if(text != value) { text = value; RaisePropertyChanged("Text"); } } } protected void RaisePropertyChanged(string propertyName) { var handlers = PropertyChanged; if(handlers != null) handlers(this, new PropertyChangedEventArgs(propertyName)); } public event PropertyChangedEventHandler PropertyChanged; } This way of defining properties is error-prone and tedious.  Too much plumbing.  My base class eliminates much of that plumbing with the same functionality: After public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get<string>("Text"); } set { Set("Text", value);} } }   Strongly Typed Property Getters/Setters It turns out that we can do better than that.  We are using a strongly typed language where the use of “Magic Strings” is often frowned upon.  Lets make the names in the getters and setters strongly typed: A refinement public class PropertyHelpersViewModel : ViewModelBase { public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text); } set { Set(() => Text, value); } } }   Dynamic Properties In C# 4.0, we have the ability to program statically OR dynamically.  This base class lets us leverage the powerful dynamic capabilities in our ecosystem. (This is how the automatic commands are implemented, BTW)  By calling Set(“Foo”, 1), you have now created a dynamic property called Foo.  It can be bound against like any static property.  The opportunities are endless.  One great way to exploit this behavior is if you have a customizable view engine with templates that bind to properties defined by the user.  The base class just needs to create the dynamic properties at runtime from information in the model, and the custom template can bind even though the static properties do not exist. All dynamic properties still benefit from the notifiable capabilities that static properties do. For any nay-sayers out there that don’t like using the dynamic features of C#, just remember this: the act of binding the View to a ViewModel is dynamic already.  Why not exploit it?  Get over it :) Just declare the property dynamically public class DynamicPropertyViewModel : ViewModelBase { public DynamicPropertyViewModel() { Set("Foo", "Bar"); } } Then reference it normally <TextBlock Text="{Binding Foo}" />   Default Property Values The Get() method also allows for default properties to be set.  Don’t set them in the constructor.  Set them in the property and keep the related code together: public string Text { get { return Get(() => Text, "This is the default value"); } set { Set(() => Text, value);} }   Derived Properties This is something I blogged about a while back in more detail.  This feature came from the chaining of property notifications when one property affects the results of another, like this: Before public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); RaisePropertyChanged("Percentage"); RaisePropertyChanged("Output"); } } public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } } The problem is: The setter for Score has to be responsible for notifying the world that Percentage and Output have also changed.  This, to me, is backwards.    It certainly violates the “Single Responsibility Principle.” I have been bitten in the rear more than once by problems created from code like this.  What we really want to do is invert the dependency.  Let the Percentage property declare that it changes when the Score Property changes. After public class DependantPropertiesViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public int Percentage { get { return (int)(100 * Score); } } [DependsUpon("Percentage")] public string Output { get { return "You scored " + Percentage + "%."; } } }   Automatic Method Execution This one is extremely similar to the previous, but it deals with method execution as opposed to property.  When you want to execute a method triggered by property changes, let the method declare the dependency instead of the other way around. Before public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); WhenScoreChanges(); } } public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } } After public class DependantMethodsViewModel : ViewModelBase { public double Score { get { return Get(() => Score); } set { Set(() => Score, value); } } [DependsUpon("Score")] public void WhenScoreChanges() { // Handle this case } }   Command CanExecute Change Notification Back to Commands.  One of the responsibilities of commands that implement ICommand – it must fire an event declaring that CanExecute() needs to be re-evaluated.  I wanted to wait until we got past a few concepts before explaining this behavior.  You can use the same mechanism here to fire off the change.  In the CanExecute_ method, declare the property that it depends upon.  When that property changes, the command will fire a CanExecuteChanged event, telling the View to re-evaluate the state of the command.  The View will make appropriate adjustments, like disabling the button. DependsUpon works on CanExecute methods as well public class CanExecuteViewModel : ViewModelBase { public void Execute_MakeLower() { Output = Input.ToLower(); } [DependsUpon("Input")] public bool CanExecute_MakeLower() { return !string.IsNullOrWhiteSpace(Input); } public string Input { get { return Get(() => Input); } set { Set(() => Input, value);} } public string Output { get { return Get(() => Output); } set { Set(() => Output, value); } } }   Design-Time Detection If you want to add design-time data to your ViewModel, the base class has a property that lets you ask if you are in the designer.  You can then set some default values that let your designer see what things might look like in runtime. Use the IsInDesignMode property public DependantPropertiesViewModel() { if(IsInDesignMode) { Score = .5; } }   What About Silverlight? Some of the features in this base class only work in WPF.  As of version 4, Silverlight does not support binding to dynamic properties.  This, in my opinion, is a HUGE limitation.  Not only does it keep you from using many of the features in this ViewModel, it also keeps you from binding to ViewModels designed in IronRuby.  Does this mean that the base class will not work in Silverlight?  No.  Many of the features outlined in this article WILL work.  All of the property abstractions are functional, as long as you refer to them statically in the View.  This, of course, means that the automatic command hook-up doesn’t work in Silverlight.  You need to plumb it to a static property in order for the Silverlight View to bind to it.  Can I has a dynamic property in SL5?     Good to go? So, that concludes the feature explanation of my ViewModel base class.  Feel free to take it, fork it, whatever.  It is hosted on CodePlex.  When I find other useful additions, I will add them to the public repository.  I use this base class every day.  It is mature, and well tested.  If, however, you find any problems with it, please let me know!  Also, feel free to suggest patches to me via the CodePlex site.  :)

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  • Messing with the Team

    - by Robert May
    Good Product Owners will help the team be the best that they can be.  Bad product owners will mess with the team and won’t care about the team.  If you’re a product owner, seek to do good and avoid bad behavior at all costs.  Remember, this is for YOUR benefit and you have much power given to you.  Use that power wisely. Scope Creep The product owner has several tools at his disposal to inject scope into an iteration.  First, the product owner can use defects to inject scope.  To do this, they’ll tell the team what functionality that they want to see in a feature.  Then, after the feature is developed, the Product Owner will decide that they don’t really like how the functionality behaves.  To change it, rather than creating a new story, they’ll add a defect.  The functionality is correct, as designed, but the Product Owner doesn’t like it.  By creating the defect, the Product Owner destroys the trust that the team has of the product owner.  They may not be able to count the story, because the Product Owner changed the story in the iteration, and the team then ends up looking like they have low velocity for something over which they have no control.  This is bad.  One way to deal with this is to add “Product Owner Time” to the iteration.  This will slow the velocity, but then the ScrumMaster can tell stake holders that this time is strictly in place to deal with bad behavior of the Product Owner. Another mechanism often used to inject Scope is the concept of directed development.  Outside of planning, stand-ups, or any other meeting, the Product Owner will take a developer aside and ask them to complete a task for them.  This is bad!  The team should be allocating all of their time to development.  If the Product Owner asks for a favor, then time that would normally be used for development will be used for a pet project of the Product Owner and the team will not get credit for this work.  Selfish product owners do this, and I typically see people who were “managers” do this behavior.  Authoritarian command and control development environments also see this happen.  The best thing that can happen is for the team member to report the issue to the ScrumMaster and the ScrumMaster to get very aggressive with management and the Product Owner to try and stop the behavior.  This may result in the ScrumMaster being fired, but if the behavior continues, Scrum is doomed.  This problem is especially bad in cases where the team member’s direct supervisor is the Product Owner.  I don’t recommend that the Product Owner or ScrumMaster have a direct report relationship with team members, since team members need the ability to say no.  To work around this issue, team members need to say no.  If that fails, team members need to add extra time to the iteration to deal with the scope creep injection and accept the lower velocity. As discussed above, another mechanism for injecting scope is by changing acceptance tests after the work is complete.  This is similar to adding defects to change scope and is bad.  To get around, add time for Product Owner uncertainty to the iteration and make sure that stakeholders are aware of the need to add this time because of the Product Owner. Refusing to Prioritize Refusing to prioritize causes chaos for the team.  From the team’s perspective, things that are not important will be worked on while things that the team knows are vital will be ignored.  A poor Product Owner will often pick the stories for the iteration on a whim.  This leads to the team working on many different aspects of the product and results in a lower velocity, since each iteration the team must switch context to the new area of development. The team will also experience confusion about priorities.  In one iteration, Feature X was the highest priority and had to be done.  Then, the following iteration, even though parts of Feature X still need to be completed, no stories to address them will be in the iteration.  However, three iterations later, Feature X will again become high priority. This will cause the team to not trust the Product Owner, and eventually, they’ll stop caring about the features they implement.  They won’t know what is important, so to insulate themselves from the ever changing chaos, they’ll become apathetic to all features.  Team members are some of the most creative people in a company.  By losing their engagement, the company is going to have a substandard product because the passion for the product won’t be in the team. Other signs that the Product Owner refuses to prioritize is that no one outside of the product owner will be consulted on priorities.  Additionally, the product, release, and iteration backlogs will be weak or non-existent. Dealing with this issue is not easy.  This really isn’t something the team can fix, short of taking over the role of Product Owner themselves.  An appeal to the stake holders might work, but only if the Product Owner isn’t a “manager” themselves.  The ScrumMaster needs to protect the team and do what they can to either get the Product Owner to prioritize or have the Product Owner replaced. Managing the Team A Product Owner that is also the “boss” of team members is a Scrum team that is waiting to fail.  If your boss tells you to do something, failing to do that something can cause you to be fired.  The team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner NO.  If the product owner introduces scope creep, the team has a responsibility to tell the Product Owner no.  If the Product Owner tries to get the team to commit to more than they can accomplish in an iteration, the team needs the ability to tell the Product Owner no. If the Product Owner is your boss and determines your pay increases, you’re probably not going to ever tell them no, and Scrum will likely fail.  The team can’t do much in this situation. Another aspect of “managing the team” that often happens is the Product Owner tries to tell the team how to develop the stories that are in the iteration.  This is one reason why I recommend that Product Owners are NOT technical people.  That way, the team can come up with the tasks that are needed to accomplish the stories and the Product Owner won’t know better.  If the Product Owner is technical, the ScrumMaster will need to take great care to protect the team from the ScrumMaster changing how the team thinks they need to implement the stories. Product Owners can also try to manage the team by their body language.  If the team says a task is going to take 6 hours to complete, and the Product Owner disagrees, they will use some kind of sour body language to indicate this disagreement.  In weak teams, this may cause the team to revise their estimate down, which will result in them taking longer than estimated and may result in them missing the iteration.  The ScrumMaster will need to make sure that the Product Owner doesn’t send such messages and that the team ignores them and estimates what they REALLY think it will take to complete the tasks.  Forcing the team to deal with such items in the retrospective can be helpful. Absenteeism The team is completely dependent upon the Product Owner to develop features for the customer.  The Product Owner IS the voice of the customer and without them, the team will lack direction.  Being the Product Owner is a full time job!  If the Product Owner cannot dedicate daily time with the team, a different product owner should be found. The Product Owner needs to attend every stand-up, planning meeting, showcase, and retrospective that the team has.  The team also must be able to have instant communication with the product owner.  They must not be required to schedule meetings to speak with their product owner.  The team must be the highest priority task that the Product Owner has. The best way to work around an absent Product Owner is to appoint a new Product Owner in the team.  This person will be responsible for making the decisions that the Product Owner should be making and to act as the liaison to the absent Product Owner.  If the delegate Product Owner doesn’t have authority to make decisions for the team, Scrum will fail.  If the Product Owner is absent, the ScrumMaster should seek to have that Product Owner replaced by someone who has the time and ability to be a real Product Owner. Making it Personal Too often Product Owners will become convinced that their ideas are the ones that matter and that anyone who disagrees is making a personal attack on them.  Remember that Product Owners will inherently be at odds with many people, simply because they have the need to prioritize.  Others will frequently question prioritization because they only see part of the picture that Product Owners face. Product Owners must have a thick skin and think egos.  If they don’t, they tend to make things personal, which causes them to become emotional and causes them to take actions that can destroy the trust that team members have in the Product Owner. If a Product Owner is making things person, the best thing that team members can do is reassure them that its not personal, but be firm about doing what is best for the Company and for the users.  The ScrumMaster should also spend significant time coaching the Product Owner on how to not react emotionally and how to accept criticism without becoming defensive. Conclusion I’m sure there are other ways that a Product Owner can mess with the team, but these are the most common that I’ve seen.  I would encourage all Product Owners to seek to be a good Product Owner.  If you find yourself behaving in any of the bad product owner ways, change your behavior today!  Your team will thank you. Remember, being Product Owner is very difficult!  Product Owner is one of the most difficult roles in Scrum.  However, it can also be one of the most rewarding roles in Scrum, since Product Owners literally see their ideas brought to life on the computer screen.  Product Owners need to be very patient, even in the face of criticism and need to be willing to make tough decisions on priority, but then not become offended when others disagree with those decisions.  Companies should spend the time needed to find the right product owners for their teams.  Doing so will only help the company to write better software. Technorati Tags: Scrum,Product Owner

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  • Advantages of SQL Backup Pro

    - by Grant Fritchey
    Getting backups of your databases in place is a fundamental issue for protection of the business. Yes, I said business, not data, not databases, but business. Because of a lack of good, tested, backups, companies have gone completely out of business or suffered traumatic financial loss. That’s just a simple fact (outlined with a few examples here). So you want to get backups right. That’s a big part of why we make Red Gate SQL Backup Pro work the way it does. Yes, you could just use native backups, but you’ll be missing a few advantages that we provide over and above what you get out of the box from Microsoft. Let’s talk about them. Guidance If you’re a hard-core DBA with 20+ years of experience on every version of SQL Server and several other data platforms besides, you may already know what you need in order to get a set of tested backups in place. But, if you’re not, maybe a little help would be a good thing. To set up backups for your servers, we supply a wizard that will step you through the entire process. It will also act to guide you down good paths. For example, if your databases are in Full Recovery, you should set up transaction log backups to run on a regular basis. When you choose a transaction log backup from the Backup Type you’ll see that only those databases that are in Full Recovery will be listed: This makes it very easy to be sure you have a log backup set up for all the databases you should and none of the databases where you won’t be able to. There are other examples of guidance throughout the product. If you have the responsibility of managing backups but very little knowledge or time, we can help you out. Throughout the software you’ll notice little green question marks. You can see two in the screen above and more in each of the screens in other topics below this one. Clicking on these will open a window with additional information about the topic in question which should help to guide you through some of the tougher decisions you may have to make while setting up your backup jobs. Here’s an example: Backup Copies As a part of the wizard you can choose to make a copy of your backup on your network. This process runs as part of the Red Gate SQL Backup engine. It will copy your backup, after completing the backup so it doesn’t cause any additional blocking or resource use within the backup process, to the network location you define. Creating a copy acts as a mechanism of protection for your backups. You can then backup that copy or do other things with it, all without affecting the original backup file. This requires either an additional backup or additional scripting to get it done within the native Microsoft backup engine. Offsite Storage Red Gate offers you the ability to immediately copy your backup to the cloud as a further, off-site, protection of your backups. It’s a service we provide and expose through the Backup wizard. Your backup will complete first, just like with the network backup copy, then an asynchronous process will copy that backup to cloud storage. Again, this is built right into the wizard or even the command line calls to SQL Backup, so it’s part a single process within your system. With native backup you would need to write additional scripts, possibly outside of T-SQL, to make this happen. Before you can use this with your backups you’ll need to do a little setup, but it’s built right into the product to get this done. You’ll be directed to the web site for our hosted storage where you can set up an account. Compression If you have SQL Server 2008 Enterprise, or you’re on SQL Server 2008R2 or greater and you have a Standard or Enterprise license, then you have backup compression. It’s built right in and works well. But, if you need even more compression then you might want to consider Red Gate SQL Backup Pro. We offer four levels of compression within the product. This means you can get a little compression faster, or you can just sacrifice some CPU time and get even more compression. You decide. For just a simple example I backed up AdventureWorks2012 using both methods of compression. The resulting file from native was 53mb. Our file was 33mb. That’s a file that is smaller by 38%, not a small number when we start talking gigabytes. We even provide guidance here to help you determine which level of compression would be right for you and your system: So for this test, if you wanted maximum compression with minimum CPU use you’d probably want to go with Level 2 which gets you almost as much compression as Level 3 but will use fewer resources. And that compression is still better than the native one by 10%. Restore Testing Backups are vital. But, a backup is just a file until you restore it. How do you know that you can restore that backup? Of course, you’ll use CHECKSUM to validate that what was read from disk during the backup process is what gets written to the backup file. You’ll also use VERIFYONLY to check that the backup header and the checksums on the backup file are valid. But, this doesn’t do a complete test of the backup. The only complete test is a restore. So, what you really need is a process that tests your backups. This is something you’ll have to schedule separately from your backups, but we provide a couple of mechanisms to help you out here. First, when you create a backup schedule, all done through our wizard which gives you as much guidance as you get when running backups, you get the option of creating a reminder to create a job to test your restores. You can enable this or disable it as you choose when creating your scheduled backups. Once you’re ready to schedule test restores for your databases, we have a wizard for this as well. After you choose the databases and restores you want to test, all configurable for automation, you get to decide if you’re going to restore to a specified copy or to the original database: If you’re doing your tests on a new server (probably the best choice) you can just overwrite the original database if it’s there. If not, you may want to create a new database each time you test your restores. Another part of validating your backups is ensuring that they can pass consistency checks. So we have DBCC built right into the process. You can even decide how you want DBCC run, which error messages to include, limit or add to the checks being run. With this you could offload some DBCC checks from your production system so that you only run the physical checks on your production box, but run the full check on this backup. That makes backup testing not just a general safety process, but a performance enhancer as well: Finally, assuming the tests pass, you can delete the database, leave it in place, or delete it regardless of the tests passing. All this is automated and scheduled through the SQL Agent job on your servers. Running your databases through this process will ensure that you don’t just have backups, but that you have tested backups. Single Point of Management If you have more than one server to maintain, getting backups setup could be a tedious process. But, with Red Gate SQL Backup Pro you can connect to multiple servers and then manage all your databases and all your servers backups from a single location. You’ll be able to see what is scheduled, what has run successfully and what has failed, all from a single interface without having to connect to different servers. Log Shipping Wizard If you want to set up log shipping as part of a disaster recovery process, it can frequently be a pain to get configured correctly. We supply a wizard that will walk you through every step of the process including setting up alerts so you’ll know should your log shipping fail. Summary You want to get your backups right. As outlined above, Red Gate SQL Backup Pro will absolutely help you there. We supply a number of processes and functionalities above and beyond what you get with SQL Server native. Plus, with our guidance, hints and reminders, you will get your backups set up in a way that protects your business.

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  • Auto-Suggest via &lsquo;Trie&rsquo; (Pre-fix Tree)

    - by Strenium
    Auto-Suggest (Auto-Complete) “thing” has been around for a few years. Here’s my little snippet on the subject. For one of my projects, I had to deal with a non-trivial set of items to be pulled via auto-suggest used by multiple concurrent users. Simple, dumb iteration through a list in local cache or back-end access didn’t quite cut it. Enter a nifty little structure, perfectly suited for storing and matching verbal data: “Trie” (http://tinyurl.com/db56g) also known as a Pre-fix Tree: “Unlike a binary search tree, no node in the tree stores the key associated with that node; instead, its position in the tree defines the key with which it is associated. All the descendants of a node have a common prefix of the string associated with that node, and the root is associated with the empty string. Values are normally not associated with every node, only with leaves and some inner nodes that correspond to keys of interest.” This is a very scalable, performing structure. Though, as usual, something ‘fast’ comes at a cost of ‘size’; fortunately RAM is more plentiful today so I can live with that. I won’t bore you with the detailed algorithmic performance here - Google can do a better job of such. So, here’s C# implementation of all this. Let’s start with individual node: Trie Node /// <summary> /// Contains datum of a single trie node. /// </summary> public class AutoSuggestTrieNode {     public char Value { get; set; }       /// <summary>     /// Gets a value indicating whether this instance is leaf node.     /// </summary>     /// <value>     ///     <c>true</c> if this instance is leaf node; otherwise, a prefix node <c>false</c>.     /// </value>     public bool IsLeafNode { get; private set; }       public List<AutoSuggestTrieNode> DescendantNodes { get; private set; }         /// <summary>     /// Initializes a new instance of the <see cref="AutoSuggestTrieNode"/> class.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="value">The phonetic value.</param>     /// <param name="isLeafNode">if set to <c>true</c> [is leaf node].</param>     public AutoSuggestTrieNode(char value = ' ', bool isLeafNode = false)     {         Value = value;         IsLeafNode = isLeafNode;           DescendantNodes = new List<AutoSuggestTrieNode>();     }       /// <summary>     /// Gets the descendants of the pre-fix node, if any.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="descendantValue">The descendant value.</param>     /// <returns></returns>     public AutoSuggestTrieNode GetDescendant(char descendantValue)     {         return DescendantNodes.FirstOrDefault(descendant => descendant.Value == descendantValue);     } }   Quite self-explanatory, imho. A node is either a “Pre-fix” or a “Leaf” node. “Leaf” contains the full “word”, while the “Pre-fix” nodes act as indices used for matching the results.   Ok, now the Trie: Trie Structure /// <summary> /// Contains structure and functionality of an AutoSuggest Trie (Pre-fix Tree) /// </summary> public class AutoSuggestTrie {     private readonly AutoSuggestTrieNode _root = new AutoSuggestTrieNode();       /// <summary>     /// Adds the word to the trie by breaking it up to pre-fix nodes + leaf node.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="word">Phonetic value.</param>     public void AddWord(string word)     {         var currentNode = _root;         word = word.Trim().ToLower();           for (int i = 0; i < word.Length; i++)         {             var child = currentNode.GetDescendant(word[i]);               if (child == null) /* this character hasn't yet been indexed in the trie */             {                 var newNode = new AutoSuggestTrieNode(word[i], word.Count() - 1 == i);                   currentNode.DescendantNodes.Add(newNode);                 currentNode = newNode;             }             else                 currentNode = child; /* this character is already indexed, move down the trie */         }     }         /// <summary>     /// Gets the suggested matches.     /// </summary>     /// <param name="word">The phonetic search value.</param>     /// <returns></returns>     public List<string> GetSuggestedMatches(string word)     {         var currentNode = _root;         word = word.Trim().ToLower();           var indexedNodesValues = new StringBuilder();         var resultBag = new ConcurrentBag<string>();           for (int i = 0; i < word.Trim().Length; i++)  /* traverse the trie collecting closest indexed parent (parent can't be leaf, obviously) */         {             var child = currentNode.GetDescendant(word[i]);               if (child == null || word.Count() - 1 == i)                 break; /* done looking, the rest of the characters aren't indexed in the trie */               indexedNodesValues.Append(word[i]);             currentNode = child;         }           Action<AutoSuggestTrieNode, string> collectAllMatches = null;         collectAllMatches = (node, aggregatedValue) => /* traverse the trie collecting matching leafNodes (i.e. "full words") */             {                 if (node.IsLeafNode) /* full word */                     resultBag.Add(aggregatedValue); /* thread-safe write */                   Parallel.ForEach(node.DescendantNodes, descendandNode => /* asynchronous recursive traversal */                 {                     collectAllMatches(descendandNode, String.Format("{0}{1}", aggregatedValue, descendandNode.Value));                 });             };           collectAllMatches(currentNode, indexedNodesValues.ToString());           return resultBag.OrderBy(o => o).ToList();     }         /// <summary>     /// Gets the total words (leafs) in the trie. Recursive traversal.     /// </summary>     public int TotalWords     {         get         {             int runningCount = 0;               Action<AutoSuggestTrieNode> traverseAllDecendants = null;             traverseAllDecendants = n => { runningCount += n.DescendantNodes.Count(o => o.IsLeafNode); n.DescendantNodes.ForEach(traverseAllDecendants); };             traverseAllDecendants(this._root);               return runningCount;         }     } }   Matching operations and Inserts involve traversing the nodes before the right “spot” is found. Inserts need be synchronous since ordering of data matters here. However, matching can be done in parallel traversal using recursion (line 64). Here’s sample usage:   [TestMethod] public void AutoSuggestTest() {     var autoSuggestCache = new AutoSuggestTrie();       var testInput = @"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Integer nec odio. Praesent libero.                 Sed cursus ante dapibus diam. Sed nisi. Nulla quis sem at nibh elementum imperdiet. Duis sagittis ipsum. Praesent mauris.                 Fusce nec tellus sed augue semper porta. Mauris massa. Vestibulum lacinia arcu eget nulla. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad                 litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Curabitur sodales ligula in libero. Sed dignissim lacinia nunc.                 Curabitur tortor. Pellentesque nibh. Aenean quam. In scelerisque sem at dolor. Maecenas mattis. Sed convallis tristique sem.                 Proin ut ligula vel nunc egestas porttitor. Morbi lectus risus, iaculis vel, suscipit quis, luctus non, massa. Fusce ac                 turpis quis ligula lacinia aliquet. Mauris ipsum. Nulla metus metus, ullamcorper vel, tincidunt sed, euismod in, nibh. Quisque                 volutpat condimentum velit. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Nam                 nec ante. Sed lacinia, urna non tincidunt mattis, tortor neque adipiscing diam, a cursus ipsum ante quis turpis. Nulla                 facilisi. Ut fringilla. Suspendisse potenti. Nunc feugiat mi a tellus consequat imperdiet. Vestibulum sapien. Proin quam. Etiam                 ultrices. Suspendisse in justo eu magna luctus suscipit. Sed lectus. Integer euismod lacus luctus magna. Quisque cursus, metus                 vitae pharetra auctor, sem massa mattis sem, at interdum magna augue eget diam. Vestibulum ante ipsum primis in faucibus orci                 luctus et ultrices posuere cubilia Curae; Morbi lacinia molestie dui. Praesent blandit dolor. Sed non quam. In vel mi sit amet                 augue congue elementum. Morbi in ipsum sit amet pede facilisis laoreet. Donec lacus nunc, viverra nec.";       testInput.Split(' ').ToList().ForEach(word => autoSuggestCache.AddWord(word));       var testMatches = autoSuggestCache.GetSuggestedMatches("le"); }   ..and the result: That’s it!

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  • Demystifying Silverlight Dependency Properties

    - by dwahlin
    I have the opportunity to teach a lot of people about Silverlight (amongst other technologies) and one of the topics that definitely confuses people initially is the concept of dependency properties. I confess that when I first heard about them my initial thought was “Why do we need a specialized type of property?” While you can certainly use standard CLR properties in Silverlight applications, Silverlight relies heavily on dependency properties for just about everything it does behind the scenes. In fact, dependency properties are an essential part of the data binding, template, style and animation functionality available in Silverlight. They simply back standard CLR properties. In this post I wanted to put together a (hopefully) simple explanation of dependency properties and why you should care about them if you’re currently working with Silverlight or looking to move to it.   What are Dependency Properties? XAML provides a great way to define layout controls, user input controls, shapes, colors and data binding expressions in a declarative manner. There’s a lot that goes on behind the scenes in order to make XAML work and an important part of that magic is the use of dependency properties. If you want to bind data to a property, style it, animate it or transform it in XAML then the property involved has to be a dependency property to work properly. If you’ve ever positioned a control in a Canvas using Canvas.Left or placed a control in a specific Grid row using Grid.Row then you’ve used an attached property which is a specialized type of dependency property. Dependency properties play a key role in XAML and the overall Silverlight framework. Any property that you bind, style, template, animate or transform must be a dependency property in Silverlight applications. You can programmatically bind values to controls and work with standard CLR properties, but if you want to use the built-in binding expressions available in XAML (one of my favorite features) or the Binding class available through code then dependency properties are a necessity. Dependency properties aren’t needed in every situation, but if you want to customize your application very much you’ll eventually end up needing them. For example, if you create a custom user control and want to expose a property that consumers can use to change the background color, you have to define it as a dependency property if you want bindings, styles and other features to be available for use. Now that the overall purpose of dependency properties has been discussed let’s take a look at how you can create them. Creating Dependency Properties When .NET first came out you had to write backing fields for each property that you defined as shown next: Brush _ScheduleBackground; public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return _ScheduleBackground; } set { _ScheduleBackground = value; } } Although .NET 2.0 added auto-implemented properties (for example: public Brush ScheduleBackground { get; set; }) where the compiler would automatically generate the backing field used by get and set blocks, the concept is still the same as shown in the above code; a property acts as a wrapper around a field. Silverlight dependency properties replace the _ScheduleBackground field shown in the previous code and act as the backing store for a standard CLR property. The following code shows an example of defining a dependency property named ScheduleBackgroundProperty: public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), null);   Looking through the code the first thing that may stand out is that the definition for ScheduleBackgroundProperty is marked as static and readonly and that the property appears to be of type DependencyProperty. This is a standard pattern that you’ll use when working with dependency properties. You’ll also notice that the property explicitly adds the word “Property” to the name which is another standard you’ll see followed. In addition to defining the property, the code also makes a call to the static DependencyProperty.Register method and passes the name of the property to register (ScheduleBackground in this case) as a string. The type of the property, the type of the class that owns the property and a null value (more on the null value later) are also passed. In this example a class named Scheduler acts as the owner. The code handles registering the property as a dependency property with the call to Register(), but there’s a little more work that has to be done to allow a value to be assigned to and retrieved from the dependency property. The following code shows the complete code that you’ll typically use when creating a dependency property. You can find code snippets that greatly simplify the process of creating dependency properties out on the web. The MVVM Light download available from http://mvvmlight.codeplex.com comes with built-in dependency properties snippets as well. public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), null); public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return (Brush)GetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty); } set { SetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty, value); } } The standard CLR property code shown above should look familiar since it simply wraps the dependency property. However, you’ll notice that the get and set blocks call GetValue and SetValue methods respectively to perform the appropriate operation on the dependency property. GetValue and SetValue are members of the DependencyObject class which is another key component of the Silverlight framework. Silverlight controls and classes (TextBox, UserControl, CompositeTransform, DataGrid, etc.) ultimately derive from DependencyObject in their inheritance hierarchy so that they can support dependency properties. Dependency properties defined in Silverlight controls and other classes tend to follow the pattern of registering the property by calling Register() and then wrapping the dependency property in a standard CLR property (as shown above). They have a standard property that wraps a registered dependency property and allows a value to be assigned and retrieved. If you need to expose a new property on a custom control that supports data binding expressions in XAML then you’ll follow this same pattern. Dependency properties are extremely useful once you understand why they’re needed and how they’re defined. Detecting Changes and Setting Defaults When working with dependency properties there will be times when you want to assign a default value or detect when a property changes so that you can keep the user interface in-sync with the property value. Silverlight’s DependencyProperty.Register() method provides a fourth parameter that accepts a PropertyMetadata object instance. PropertyMetadata can be used to hook a callback method to a dependency property. The callback method is called when the property value changes. PropertyMetadata can also be used to assign a default value to the dependency property. By assigning a value of null for the final parameter passed to Register() you’re telling the property that you don’t care about any changes and don’t have a default value to apply. Here are the different constructor overloads available on the PropertyMetadata class: PropertyMetadata Constructor Overload Description PropertyMetadata(Object) Used to assign a default value to a dependency property. PropertyMetadata(PropertyChangedCallback) Used to assign a property changed callback method. PropertyMetadata(Object, PropertyChangedCalback) Used to assign a default property value and a property changed callback.   There are many situations where you need to know when a dependency property changes or where you want to apply a default. Performing either task is easily accomplished by creating a new instance of the PropertyMetadata class and passing the appropriate values to its constructor. The following code shows an enhanced version of the initial dependency property code shown earlier that demonstrates these concepts: public Brush ScheduleBackground { get { return (Brush)GetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty); } set { SetValue(ScheduleBackgroundProperty, value); } } public static readonly DependencyProperty ScheduleBackgroundProperty = DependencyProperty.Register("ScheduleBackground", typeof(Brush), typeof(Scheduler), new PropertyMetadata(new SolidColorBrush(Colors.LightGray), ScheduleBackgroundChanged)); private static void ScheduleBackgroundChanged(DependencyObject d, DependencyPropertyChangedEventArgs e) { var scheduler = d as Scheduler; scheduler.Background = e.NewValue as Brush; } The code wires ScheduleBackgroundProperty to a property change callback method named ScheduleBackgroundChanged. What’s interesting is that this callback method is static (as is the dependency property) so it gets passed the instance of the object that owns the property that has changed (otherwise we wouldn’t be able to get to the object instance). In this example the dependency object is cast to a Scheduler object and its Background property is assigned to the new value of the dependency property. The code also handles assigning a default value of LightGray to the dependency property by creating a new instance of a SolidColorBrush. To Sum Up In this post you’ve seen the role of dependency properties and how they can be defined in code. They play a big role in XAML and the overall Silverlight framework. You can think of dependency properties as being replacements for fields that you’d normally use with standard CLR properties. In addition to a discussion on how dependency properties are created, you also saw how to use the PropertyMetadata class to define default dependency property values and hook a dependency property to a callback method. The most important thing to understand with dependency properties (especially if you’re new to Silverlight) is that they’re needed if you want a property to support data binding, animations, transformations and styles properly. Any time you create a property on a custom control or user control that has these types of requirements you’ll want to pick a dependency property over of a standard CLR property with a backing field. There’s more that can be covered with dependency properties including a related property called an attached property….more to come.

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  • Not All “Viruses” Are Viruses: 10 Malware Terms Explained

    - by Chris Hoffman
    Most people seem to call every type of malware a “virus”, but that isn’t technically accurate. You’ve probably heard of many more terms beyond virus: malware, worm, Trojan, rootkit, keylogger, spyware, and more. But what do all these terms mean? These terms aren’t just used by geeks. They make their way into even mainstream news stories about the latest web security problems and tech scares. Understanding them will help you understand the dangers your\ hear about. Malware The word “malware” is short for “malicious software.” Many people use the word “virus” to indicate any type of harmful software, but a virus is actually just a specific type of malware. The word “malware” encompasses all harmful software, including all the ones listed below. Virus Let’s start with viruses. A virus is a type of malware that copies itself by infecting other files,  just as viruses in the real world infect biological cells and use those biological cells to reproduce copies of themselves. A virus can do many different things — watch in the background and steal your passwords, display advertisements, or just crash your computer — but the key thing that makes it a virus is how it spreads. When you run a virus, it will infect programs on your computer. When you run the program on another computer, the virus will infect programs on that computer, and so on. For example, a virus might infect program files on a USB stick. When the programs on that USB stick are run on another computer, the virus runs on the other computer and infects more program files. The virus will continue to spread in this way. Worm A worm is similar to a virus, but it spreads a different way. Rather than infecting files and relying on human activity to move those files around and run them on different systems, a worm spreads over computer networks on its own accord. For example, the Blaster and Sasser worms spread very quickly in the days of Windows XP because Windows XP did not come properly secured and exposed system services to the Internet. The worm accessed these system services over the Internet, exploited a vulnerability, and infected the computer. The worm then used the new infected computer to continue replicating itself. Such worms are less common now that Windows is properly firewalled by default, but worms can also spread in other ways — for example, by mass-emailing themselves to every email address in an effected user’s address book. Like a virus, a worm can do any number of other harmful things once it infects a computer. The key thing that makes it a worm is simply how it spreads copies of itself. Trojan (or Trojan Horse) A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is a type of malware that disguises itself as a legitimate file. When you download and run the program, the Trojan horse will run in the background, allowing third-parties to access your computer. Trojans can do this for any number of reasons — to monitor activity on your computer, to join your computer to a botnet. Trojans may also be used to open the floodgates and download many other types of malware onto your computer. The key thing that makes this type of malware a Trojan is how it arrives. It pretends to be a useful program and, when run, it hides in the background and gives malicious people access to your computer. It isn’t obsessed with copying itself into other files or spreading over the network, as viruses and worms are. For example, a piece of pirated software on an unscrupulous website may actually contain a Trojan. Spyware Spyware is a type of malicious software that spies on you without your knowledge. It collects a variety of different types of data, depending on the piece of spyware. Different types of malware can function as spyware — there may be malicious spyware included in Trojans that spies on your keystrokes to steal financial data, for example. More “legitimate” spyware may be bundled along with free software and simply monitor your web browsing habits, uploading this data to advertising servers so the software’s creator can make money from selling their knowledge of your activities. Adware Adware often comes along with spyware. It’s any type of software that displays advertising on your computer. Programs that display advertisements inside the program itself aren’t generally classified as malware. The kind of “adware” that’s particularly malicious is the kind that abuses its access to your system to display ads when it shouldn’t. For example, a piece of harmful adware may cause pop-up advertisements to appear on your computer when you’re not doing anything else. Or, adware may inject additional advertising into other web pages as you browse the web. Adware is often combined with spyware — a piece of malware may monitor your browsing habits and use them to serve you more targeted ads. Adware is more “socially acceptable” than other types of malware on Windows and you may see adware bundled with legitimate programs. For example, some people consider the Ask Toolbar included with Oracle’s Java software adware. Keylogger A keylogger is a type of malware that runs in the background, recording every key stroke you make. These keystrokes can include usernames, passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive data. The keylogger then, most likely, uploads these keystrokes to a malicious server, where it can be analyzed and people can pick out the useful passwords and credit card numbers. Other types of malware can act as keyloggers. A virus, worm, or Trojan may function as a keylogger, for example. Keyloggers may also be installed for monitoring purposes by businesses or even jealous spouses. Botnet, Bot A botnet is a large network of computers that are under the botnet creator’s control. Each computer functions as a “bot” because it’s infected with a specific piece of malware. Once the bot software infects the computer, ir will connect to some sort of control server and wait for instructions from the botnet’s creator. For example, a botnet may be used to initiate a DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. Every computer in the botnet will be told to bombard a specific website or server with requests at once, and such millions or requests can cause a server to become unresponsive or crash. Botnet creators may sell access to their botnets, allowing other malicious individuals to use large botnets to do their dirty work. Rootkit A rootkit is a type of malware designed to burrow deep into your computer, avoiding detection by security programs and users. For example, a rootkit might load before most of Windows, burying itself deep into the system and modifying system functions so that security programs can’t detect it. A rootkit might hide itself completely, preventing itself from showing up in the Windows task manager. The key thing that makes a type of malware a rootkit is that it’s stealthy and focused on hiding itself once it arrives. Ransomware Ransomware is a fairly new type of malware. It holds your computer or files hostage and demands a ransom payment. Some ransomware may simply pop up a box asking for money before you can continue using your computer. Such prompts are easily defeated with antivirus software. More harmful malware like CryptoLocker literally encrypts your files and demands a payment before you can access them. Such types of malware are dangerous, especially if you don’t have backups. Most malware these days is produced for profit, and ransomware is a good example of that. Ransomware doesn’t want to crash your computer and delete your files just to cause you trouble. It wants to take something hostage and get a quick payment from you. So why is it called “antivirus software,” anyway? Well, most people continue to consider the word “virus” synonymous with malware as a whole. Antivirus software doesn’t just protect against viruses, but against all types of malware. It may be more accurately referred to as “antimalware” or “security” software. Image Credit: Marcelo Alves on Flickr, Tama Leaver on Flickr, Szilard Mihaly on Flickr     

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  • When Your Boss Doesn't Want you to Succeed

    - by Phil Factor
    You're working hard to get an application finished. You are programming long into the evenings sometimes, and eating sandwiches at your desk instead of taking a lunch break. Then one day you glance up at the IT manager, serene in his mysterious round of meetings, and think 'Does he actually care whether this project succeeds or not?'. The question may seem absurd. Of course the project must succeed. The truth, as always, is often far more complex. Your manager may even be doing his best to make sure you don't succeed. Why? There have always been rich pickings for the unscrupulous in IT.  In extreme cases, where administrators struggle with scarcely-comprehended technical issues, huge sums of money can be lost and gained without any perceptible results. In a very few cases can fraud be proven: most of the time, the intricacies of the 'game' are such that one can do little more than harbor suspicion.  Where does over-enthusiastic salesmanship end and fraud begin? The Business of Information Technology provides rich opportunities for White-collar crime. The poor developer has his, or her, hands full with the task of wrestling with the sheer complexity of building an application. He, or she, has no time for following the complexities of the chicanery of the management that is directing affairs.  Most likely, the developers wouldn't even suspect that their company management had ulterior motives. I'll illustrate what I mean with an entirely fictional, hypothetical, example. The Opportunist and the Aged Charities often do good, unexciting work that is funded by the income from a bequest that dates back maybe hundreds of years.  In our example, it isn't exciting work, for it involves the welfare of elderly people who have fallen on hard times.  Volunteers visit, giving a smile and a chat, and check that they are all right, but are able to spend a little money on their discretion to ameliorate any pressing needs for these old folk.  The money is made to work very hard and the charity averts a great deal of suffering and eases the burden on the state. Daisy hears the garden gate creak as Mrs Rainer comes up the path. She looks forward to her twice-weekly visit from the nice lady from the trust. She always asked ‘is everything all right, Love’. Cheeky but nice. She likes her cheery manner. She seems interested in hearing her memories, and talking about her far-away family. She helps her with those chores in the house that she couldn’t manage and once even paid to fill the back-shed with coke, the other year. Nice, Mrs. Rainer is, she thought as she goes to open the door. The trustees are getting on in years themselves, and worry about the long-term future of the charity: is it relevant to modern society? Is it likely to attract a new generation of workers to take it on. They are instantly attracted by the arrival to the board of a smartly dressed University lecturer with the ear of the present Government. Alain 'Stalin' Jones is earnest, persuasive and energetic. The trustees welcome him to the board and quickly forgive his humorless political-correctness. He talks of 'diversity', 'relevance', 'social change', 'equality' and 'communities', but his eye is on that huge bequest. Alain first came to notice as a Trotskyite union official, who insinuated himself into one of the duller Trades Unions and turned it, through his passionate leadership, into a radical, headline-grabbing organization.  Middle age, and the rise of European federal socialism, had brought him quiet prosperity and charcoal suits, an ear in the current government, and a wide influence as a member of various Quangos (government bodies staffed by well-paid unelected courtiers).  He was employed as a 'consultant' by several organizations that relied on government contracts. After gaining the confidence of the trustees, and showing a surprising knowledge of mundane processes and the regulatory framework of charities, Alain launches his plan.  The trust will expand their work by means of a bold IT initiative that will coordinate the interventions of several 'caring agencies', and provide  emergency cover, a special Website so anxious relatives can see how their elderly charges are doing, and a vastly more efficient way of coordinating the work of the volunteer carers. It will also provide a special-purpose site that gives 'social networking' facilities, rather like Facebook, to the few elderly folk on the lists with access to the internet. The trustees perk up. Their own experience of the internet is restricted to the occasional scanning of railway timetables, but they can see that it is 'relevant'. In his next report to the other trustees, Alain proudly announces that all this glamorous and exciting technology can be paid for by a grant from the government. He admits darkly that he has influence. True to his word, the government promises a grant of a size that is an order of magnitude greater than any budget that the trustees had ever handled. There was the understandable proviso that the company that would actually do the IT work would have to be one of the government's preferred suppliers and the work would need to be tendered under EU competition rules. The only company that tenders, a multinational IT company with a long track record of government work, quotes ten million pounds for the work. A trustee questions the figure as it seems enormous for the reasonably trivial internet facilities being built, but the IT Salesmen dazzle them with presentations and three-letter acronyms until they subside into quiescent acceptance. After all, they can’t stay locked in the Twentieth century practices can they? The work is put in hand with a large project team, in a splendid glass building near west London. The trustees see rooms of programmers working diligently at screens, and who talk with enthusiasm of the project. Paul, the project manager, looked through his resource schedule with growing unease. His initial excitement at being given his first major project hadn’t lasted. He’d been allocated a lackluster team of developers whose skills didn’t seem right, and he was allowed only a couple of contractors to make good the deficit. Strangely, the presentation he’d given to his management, where he’d saved time and resources with a OTS solution to a great deal of the development work, and a sound conservative architecture, hadn’t gone down nearly as big as he’d hoped. He almost got the feeling they wanted a more radical and ambitious solution. The project starts slipping its dates. The costs build rapidly. There are certain uncomfortable extra charges that appear, such as the £600-a-day charge by the 'Business Manager' appointed to act as a point of liaison between the charity and the IT Company.  When he appeared, his face permanently split by a 'Mr Sincerity' smile, they'd thought he was provided at the cost of the IT Company. Derek, the DBA, didn’t have to go to the server room quite some much as he did: but It got him away from the poisonous despair of the development group. Wave after wave of events had conspired to delay the project.  Why the management had imposed hideous extra bureaucracy to cover ISO 9000 and 9001:2008 accreditation just as the project was struggling to get back on-schedule was  beyond belief.  Then  the Business manager was coming back with endless changes in scope, sorrowing saying that the Trustees were very insistent, though hopelessly out in touch with the reality of technical challenges. Suddenly, the costs mount to the point of consuming the government grant in its entirety. The project remains tantalizingly just out of reach. Alain Jones gives an emotional rallying speech at the trustees review meeting, urging them not to lose their nerve. Sadly, the trustees dip into the accumulated capital of the trust, the seed-corn of all their revenues, in order to save the IT project. A few months later it is all over. The IT project is never delivered, even though it had seemed so incredibly close.  With the trust's capital all gone, the activities it funded have to be terminated and the trust becomes just a shell. There aren't even the funds to mount a legal challenge against the IT company, even had the trust's solicitor advised such a foolish thing. Alain leaves as suddenly as he had arrived, only to pop up a few months later, bronzed and rested, at another charity. The IT workers who were permanent employees are dispersed to other projects, and the contractors leave to other contracts. Within months the entire project is but a vague memory. One or two developers remain  puzzled that their managers had been so obstructive when they should have welcomed progress toward completion of the project, but they put it down to incompetence and testosterone. Few suspected that they were actively preventing the project from getting finished. The relationships between the IT consultancy, and the government of the day are intricate, and made more complex by the Private Finance initiatives and political patronage.  The losers in this case were the taxpayers, and the beneficiaries of the trust, and, perhaps the soul of the original benefactor of the trust, whose bid to give his name some immortality had been scuppered by smooth-talking white-collar political apparatniks.  Even now, nobody is certain whether a crime was ever committed. The perfect heist, I guess. Where’s the victim? "I hear that Daisy’s cottage is up for sale. She’s had to go into a care home.  She didn’t want to at all, but then there is nobody to keep an eye on her since she had that minor stroke a while back.  A charity used to help out. The ‘social’ don’t have the funding, evidently for community care. Yes, her old cat was put down. There was a good clearout, and now the house is all scrubbed and cleared ready for sale. The skip was full of old photos and letters, memories. No room in her new ‘home’."

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  • In Which We Demystify A Few Docupresentment Settings And Learn the Ethos of the Author

    - by Andy Little
    It's no secret that Docupresentment (part of the Oracle Documaker suite) is powerful tool for integrating on-demand and interactive applications for publishing with the Oracle Documaker framework.  It's also no secret there are are many details with respect to the configuration of Docupresentment that can elude even the most erudite of of techies.  To be sure, Docupresentment will work for you right out of the box, and in most cases will suit your needs without toying with a configuration file.  But, where's the adventure in that?   With this inaugural post to That's The Way, I'm going to introduce myself, and what my aim is with this blog.  If you didn't figure it out already by checking out my profile, my name is Andy and I've been with Oracle (nee Skywire Software nee Docucorp nee Formmaker) since the formative years of 1998.  Strangely, it doesn't seem that long ago, but it's certainly a lifetime in the age of technology.  I recall running a BBS from my parent's basement on a 1200 baud modem, and the trepidation and sweaty-palmed excitement of upgrading to the power and speed of 2400 baud!  Fine, I'll admit that perhaps I'm inflating the experience a bit, but I was kid!  This is the stuff of War Games and King's Quest I and the demise of TI-99 4/A.  Exciting times.  So fast-forward a bit and I'm 12 years into a career in the world of document automation and publishing working for the best (IMHO) software company on the planet.  With That's The Way I hope to shed a little light and peek under the covers of some of the more interesting aspects of implementations involving the tech space within the Oracle Insurance Global Business Unit (IGBU), which includes Oracle Documaker, Rating & Underwriting, and Policy Administration to name a few.  I may delve off course a bit, and you'll likely get a dose of humor (at least in my mind) but I hope you'll glean at least a tidbit of usefulness with each post.  Feel free to comment as I'm a fairly conversant guy and happy to talk -- it's stopping the talking that's the hard part... So, back to our regularly-scheduled post, already in progress.  By this time you've visited Oracle's E-Delivery site and acquired your properly-licensed version of Oracle Documaker.  Wait -- you didn't find it?  Understandable -- navigating the voluminous download library within Oracle can be a daunting task.  It's pretty simple once you’ve done it a few times.  Login to the e-delivery site, and accept the license terms and restrictions.  Then, you’ll be able to select the Oracle Insurance Applications product pack and your appropriate platform. Click Go and you’ll see a list of applicable products, and you’ll click on Oracle Documaker Media Pack (as I went to press with this article the version is 11.4): Finally, click the Download button next to Docupresentment (again, version at press time is 2.2 p5). This should give you a ZIP file that contains the installation packages for the Docupresentment Server and Client, cryptically named IDSServer22P05W32.exe and IDSClient22P05W32.exe. At this time, I’d like to take a little detour and explain that the world of Oracle, like most technical companies, is rife with acronyms.  One of the reasons Skywire Software was a appealing to Oracle was our use of many acronyms, including the occasional use of multiple acronyms with the same meaning.  I apologize in advance and will try to point these out along the way.  Here’s your first sticky note to go along with that: IDS = Internet Document Server = Docupresentment Once you’ve completed the installation, you’ll have a shiny new Docupresentment server and client, and if you installed the default location it will be living in c:\docserv. Unix users, I’m one of you!  You’ll find it by default in  ~/docupresentment/docserv.  Forging onward with the meat of this post is learning about some special configuration options.  By now you’ve read the documentation included with the download (specifically ids_book.pdf) which goes into some detail of the rubric of the configuration file and in fact there’s even a handy utility that provides an interface to the configuration file (see Running IDSConfig in the documentation).  But who wants to deal with a configuration utility when we have the tools and technology to edit the file <gasp> by hand! I shall now proceed with the standard Information Technology Under the Hood Disclaimer: Please remember to back up any files before you make changes.  I am not responsible for any havoc you may wreak! Go to your installation directory, and locate your docserv.xml file.  Open it in your favorite XML editor.  I happen to be fond of Notepad++ with the XML Tools plugin.  Almost immediately you will behold the splendor of the configuration file.  Just take a moment and let that sink in.  Ok – moving on.  If you reviewed the documentation you know that inside the root <configuration> node there are multiple <section> nodes, each containing a specific group of settings.  Let’s take a look at <section name=”DocumentServer”>: There are a few entries I’d like to discuss.  First, <entry name=”StartCommand”>. This should be pretty self-explanatory; it’s the name of the executable that’s run when you fire up Docupresentment.  Immediately following that is <entry name=”StartArguments”> and as you might imagine these are the arguments passed to the executable.  A few things to point out: The –Dids.configuration=docserv.xml parameter specifies the name of your configuration file. The –Dlogging.configuration=logconf.xml parameter specifies the name of your logging configuration file (this uses log4j so bone up on that before you delve here). The -Djava.endorsed.dirs=lib/endorsed parameter specifies the path where 3rd party Java libraries can be located for use with Docupresentment.  More on that in another post. The <entry name=”Instances”> allows you to specify the number of instances of Docupresentment that will be started.  By default this is two, and generally two instances per CPU is adequate, however you will always need to perform load testing to determine the sweet spot based on your hardware and types of transactions.  You may have many, many more instances than 2. Time for a sidebar on instances.  An instance is nothing more than a separate process of Docupresentment.  The Docupresentment service that you fire up with docserver.bat or docserver.sh actually starts a watchdog process, which is then responsible for starting up the actual Docupresentment processes.  Each of these act independently from one another, so if one crashes, it does not affect any others.  In the case of a crashed process, the watchdog will start up another instance so the number of configured instances are always running.  Bottom line: instance = Docupresentment process. And now, finally, to the settings which gave me pause on an not-too-long-ago implementation!  Docupresentment includes a feature that watches configuration files (such as docserv.xml and logconf.xml) and will automatically restart its instances to load the changes.  You can configure the time that Docupresentment waits to check these files using the setting <entry name=”FileWatchTimeMillis”>.  By default the number is 12000ms, or 12 seconds.  You can save yourself a few CPU cycles by extending this time, or by disabling  the check altogether by setting the value to 0.  This may or may not be appropriate for your environment; if you have 100% uptime requirements then you probably don’t want to bring down an entire set of processes just to accept a new configuration value, so it’s best to leave this somewhere between 12 seconds to a few minutes.  Another point to keep in mind: if you are using Documaker real-time processing under Docupresentment the Master Resource Library (MRL) files and INI options are cached, and if you need to affect a change, you’ll have to “restart” Docupresentment.  Touching the docserv.xml file is an easy way to do this (other methods including using the RSS request, but that’s another post). The next item up: <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”>.  You may already know that the Docupresentment system can generate many temporary files based on certain request types that are processed through the system.  What you may not know is how those files are cleaned up.  There are many rules in Docupresentment that cause the creation of temporary files.  When these files are created, Docupresentment writes an entry into a properties file called the file cache.  This file contains the name, creation date, and expiration time of each temporary file created by each instance of Docupresentment.  Periodically Docupresentment will check the file cache to determine if there are files that are past the expiration time, not unlike that block of cheese festering away in the back of my refrigerator.  However, unlike my ‘fridge cleaning tendencies, Docupresentment is quick to remove files that are past their expiration time.  You, my friend, have the power to control how often Docupresentment inspects the file cache.  Simply set the value for <entry name=”FilePurgeTimeSeconds”> to the number of seconds appropriate for your requirements and you’re set.  Note that file purging happens on a separate thread from normal request processing, so this shouldn’t interfere with response times unless the CPU happens to be really taxed at the point of cache processing.  Finally, after all of this, we get to the final setting I’m going to address in this post: <entry name=”FilePurgeList”>.  The default is “filecache.properties”.  This establishes the root name for the Docupresentment file cache that I mentioned previously.  Docupresentment creates a separate cache file for each instance based on this setting.  If you have two instances, you’ll see two files created: filecache.properties.1 and filecache.properties.2.  Feel free to open these up and check them out. I hope you’ve enjoyed this first foray into the configuration file of Docupresentment.  If you did enjoy it, feel free to drop a comment, I welcome feedback.  If you have ideas for other posts you’d like to see, please do let me know.  You can reach me at [email protected]. ‘Til next time! ###

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  • Metro: Namespaces and Modules

    - by Stephen.Walther
    The goal of this blog entry is to describe how you can use the Windows JavaScript (WinJS) library to create namespaces. In particular, you learn how to use the WinJS.Namespace.define() and WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() methods. You also learn how to hide private methods by using the module pattern. Why Do We Need Namespaces? Before we do anything else, we should start by answering the question: Why do we need namespaces? What function do they serve? Do they just add needless complexity to our Metro applications? After all, plenty of JavaScript libraries do just fine without introducing support for namespaces. For example, jQuery has no support for namespaces and jQuery is the most popular JavaScript library in the universe. If jQuery can do without namespaces, why do we need to worry about namespaces at all? Namespaces perform two functions in a programming language. First, namespaces prevent naming collisions. In other words, namespaces enable you to create more than one object with the same name without conflict. For example, imagine that two companies – company A and company B – both want to make a JavaScript shopping cart control and both companies want to name the control ShoppingCart. By creating a CompanyA namespace and CompanyB namespace, both companies can create a ShoppingCart control: a CompanyA.ShoppingCart and a CompanyB.ShoppingCart control. The second function of a namespace is organization. Namespaces are used to group related functionality even when the functionality is defined in different physical files. For example, I know that all of the methods in the WinJS library related to working with classes can be found in the WinJS.Class namespace. Namespaces make it easier to understand the functionality available in a library. If you are building a simple JavaScript application then you won’t have much reason to care about namespaces. If you need to use multiple libraries written by different people then namespaces become very important. Using WinJS.Namespace.define() In the WinJS library, the most basic method of creating a namespace is to use the WinJS.Namespace.define() method. This method enables you to declare a namespace (of arbitrary depth). The WinJS.Namespace.define() method has the following parameters: · name – A string representing the name of the new namespace. You can add nested namespace by using dot notation · members – An optional collection of objects to add to the new namespace For example, the following code sample declares two new namespaces named CompanyA and CompanyB.Controls. Both namespaces contain a ShoppingCart object which has a checkout() method: // Create CompanyA namespace with ShoppingCart WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA"); CompanyA.ShoppingCart = { checkout: function (){ return "Checking out from A"; } }; // Create CompanyB.Controls namespace with ShoppingCart WinJS.Namespace.define( "CompanyB.Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function(){ return "Checking out from B"; } } } ); // Call CompanyA ShoppingCart checkout method console.log(CompanyA.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out from A" // Call CompanyB.Controls checkout method console.log(CompanyB.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out from B" In the code above, the CompanyA namespace is created by calling WinJS.Namespace.define(“CompanyA”). Next, the ShoppingCart is added to this namespace. The namespace is defined and an object is added to the namespace in separate lines of code. A different approach is taken in the case of the CompanyB.Controls namespace. The namespace is created and the ShoppingCart object is added to the namespace with the following single line of code: WinJS.Namespace.define( "CompanyB.Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function(){ return "Checking out from B"; } } } ); Notice that CompanyB.Controls is a nested namespace. The top level namespace CompanyB contains the namespace Controls. You can declare a nested namespace using dot notation and the WinJS library handles the details of creating one namespace within the other. After the namespaces have been defined, you can use either of the two shopping cart controls. You call CompanyA.ShoppingCart.checkout() or you can call CompanyB.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout(). Using WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() The WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() method is similar to the WinJS.Namespace.define() method. Both methods enable you to define a new namespace. The difference is that the defineWithParent() method enables you to add a new namespace to an existing namespace. The WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() method has the following parameters: · parentNamespace – An object which represents a parent namespace · name – A string representing the new namespace to add to the parent namespace · members – An optional collection of objects to add to the new namespace The following code sample demonstrates how you can create a root namespace named CompanyA and add a Controls child namespace to the CompanyA parent namespace: WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA"); WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent(CompanyA, "Controls", { ShoppingCart: { checkout: function () { return "Checking out"; } } } ); console.log(CompanyA.Controls.ShoppingCart.checkout()); // Writes "Checking out" One significant advantage of using the defineWithParent() method over the define() method is the defineWithParent() method is strongly-typed. In other words, you use an object to represent the base namespace instead of a string. If you misspell the name of the object (CompnyA) then you get a runtime error. Using the Module Pattern When you are building a JavaScript library, you want to be able to create both public and private methods. Some methods, the public methods, are intended to be used by consumers of your JavaScript library. The public methods act as your library’s public API. Other methods, the private methods, are not intended for public consumption. Instead, these methods are internal methods required to get the library to function. You don’t want people calling these internal methods because you might need to change them in the future. JavaScript does not support access modifiers. You can’t mark an object or method as public or private. Anyone gets to call any method and anyone gets to interact with any object. The only mechanism for encapsulating (hiding) methods and objects in JavaScript is to take advantage of functions. In JavaScript, a function determines variable scope. A JavaScript variable either has global scope – it is available everywhere – or it has function scope – it is available only within a function. If you want to hide an object or method then you need to place it within a function. For example, the following code contains a function named doSomething() which contains a nested function named doSomethingElse(): function doSomething() { console.log("doSomething"); function doSomethingElse() { console.log("doSomethingElse"); } } doSomething(); // Writes "doSomething" doSomethingElse(); // Throws ReferenceError You can call doSomethingElse() only within the doSomething() function. The doSomethingElse() function is encapsulated in the doSomething() function. The WinJS library takes advantage of function encapsulation to hide all of its internal methods. All of the WinJS methods are defined within self-executing anonymous functions. Everything is hidden by default. Public methods are exposed by explicitly adding the public methods to namespaces defined in the global scope. Imagine, for example, that I want a small library of utility methods. I want to create a method for calculating sales tax and a method for calculating the expected ship date of a product. The following library encapsulates the implementation of my library in a self-executing anonymous function: (function (global) { // Public method which calculates tax function calculateTax(price) { return calculateFederalTax(price) + calculateStateTax(price); } // Private method for calculating state tax function calculateStateTax(price) { return price * 0.08; } // Private method for calculating federal tax function calculateFederalTax(price) { return price * 0.02; } // Public method which returns the expected ship date function calculateShipDate(currentDate) { currentDate.setDate(currentDate.getDate() + 4); return currentDate; } // Export public methods WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA.Utilities", { calculateTax: calculateTax, calculateShipDate: calculateShipDate } ); })(this); // Show expected ship date var shipDate = CompanyA.Utilities.calculateShipDate(new Date()); console.log(shipDate); // Show price + tax var price = 12.33; var tax = CompanyA.Utilities.calculateTax(price); console.log(price + tax); In the code above, the self-executing anonymous function contains four functions: calculateTax(), calculateStateTax(), calculateFederalTax(), and calculateShipDate(). The following statement is used to expose only the calcuateTax() and the calculateShipDate() functions: // Export public methods WinJS.Namespace.define("CompanyA.Utilities", { calculateTax: calculateTax, calculateShipDate: calculateShipDate } ); Because the calculateTax() and calcuateShipDate() functions are added to the CompanyA.Utilities namespace, you can call these two methods outside of the self-executing function. These are the public methods of your library which form the public API. The calculateStateTax() and calculateFederalTax() methods, on the other hand, are forever hidden within the black hole of the self-executing function. These methods are encapsulated and can never be called outside of scope of the self-executing function. These are the internal methods of your library. Summary The goal of this blog entry was to describe why and how you use namespaces with the WinJS library. You learned how to define namespaces using both the WinJS.Namespace.define() and WinJS.Namespace.defineWithParent() methods. We also discussed how to hide private members and expose public members using the module pattern.

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 25, 2010

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Thursday, March 25, 2010New ProjectsAccessibilityChecker: Accessibility Checker is custom feature developed to check accessibility requirements in a SharePoint PortalAnne Epstein - Personal Repository: Project Description This project contains multiple samples with various snippets and projects from blog posts, user group talks, and conference se...BatterySaver: BatterySaver is a simple application, in C#, that allows laptop users to perform actions based on battery notification events (switching from batte...dtxJson: C# coded JSON (JavaScript Object Notation) parser.eCamp: eCamp is a modular and extensible electronic camp management application. Written in C# and WPF, it follows many of the latest technology trends su...epdevplatform: epdevplatformERP: Environment Colaborative Resources ProjectFaceLight - Simple Silverlight Face Detection: FaceLight is a simple facial recognition method that can be used with Silverlight 's webcam. It searches for a certain sized skin color region in a...Forum PAF - The Open Source .Net Forum - From Viet Nam - By Thomas John (jntpaf): The Open Source .Net Forum - From Viet Nam ------------------------- Các phần mềm cần thiết để chạy Forum PAF: 1. .Net Framework 2.0 (trở lên) 2....Gawam Savel - Sistema de Avaliação Eletrônica: Projeto de TCC ...Html5 Helpers and tools for Asp.Net MVC: Html5 Helper aims to provide a generic helper context to produce HTML5 content in ASP.NET MVCIfeanyi Echeruo's WPF Recipes: WPF Recipes C# code samples showing how to solve some non-trivial problems in WPFITM 495 - iPhone App: school project iphone appKnowledge Exchange: Stack Overflow Inspired Knowledge ExchangeMailCheck: Mail检查程序。NetBoard: NetBoard is a lightweight system designed to act as the Blackboard in a micro-blackboard architecture for use within an OO system - even when withi...RodBass.com: RodBass.comsemanticrest: This is a vision of semantics mashups for rest web services.StatSpaceUI: StatSpaceUITFS Merge Tool: A small tool for merging changesets between TFS branches.The Interface To End All Interfaces: We interfaced everything, so that you can implement anything...Tim - Open Source Projects And Samples: Open source projects / Samples for http://tim.bellette.netWindows XNA: A place for those who enjoy there XNA Game Studio programing on Windows. For a place to share XNA Game Studio games for Windows in English. I'm loo...XAML Code Snippets addin for Visual Studio 2010: Provides support for adding XAML code snippets in the Visual Studio 2010 code editor for XAML in WPF and Silverlight projects.New ReleasesAnyWorks: AnyWorks1.2Bin: AnyWorks1.2AnyWorks: AnyWorks1.2Src: AnyWorks1.2AppFabric Caching Admin Tool: AppFabric Caching Admin Tool 1.0: System Requirements:.NET 4.0 RC AppFabric Caching Beta2 Test On:Win 7 (64x) Note: Must run as Administrator !!!ASP.NET Wiki Control: Release 1.1: - Modified text and varchar columns to nvarchar for unicode support. - Modified path info logic to disable its use if the page's raw url currently...B&W Port Scanner: Black`n`White Port Scanner 2.0: Fast Cross-Platform Port Scanner with Vulnerability Detection Tools. 3 vulnerability detection tools are included in this version: - Detection of ...BatterySaver: 0.1: Initial Release This is the initial release of the application. The application is very much beta with lots of changes upcoming. Known Issues The...BatterySaver: 0.2: Changes+ Add support for enabling and disabling devices (6)Compare .NET Objects: Version 1.2.0.0: New Features: Compare Generic Classes that Implement IList Indexers Compare Datasets Compare DataTables Compare DataRows Consider IList and...Controlled Vocabulary: 1.0.0.3: System Requirements Outlook 2007 / 2010 .Net Framework 3.5 Installation 1. Close Outlook (Use Task Manager to ensure no running instances in the b...crudwork is a library of reuseable classes for developing .NET applications: crudwork 2.2.0.2: minor changes. new guid for msi and new strongly named guidDigitallyCreated Utilities: DigitallyCreated Utilities v1.0.0: This release is the v1.0.0 version of DigitallyCreated Utilities. Binary Distribution The binary distribution contains the following: Compiled bin...DirectQ: Release 1.8.2: Adds several bugfixes and improved functionality. This release supersedes 1.8.1 which will be shortly removed. A very big THANK YOU to everyone w...DotNetNuke® Community Edition: 05.03.01: Major Highlights Issue fixed issue with the email notifications where the From and To addresses were swapped. Issue fixed with signature ch...Encrypted Notes: Encrypted Notes 1.5: This is the latest version of Encrypted Notes (1.5). It has an installer - it will create a directory 'CPascoe' in My Documents. Once you have ext...EnhSim: Release v1.9.8.1: Release v1.9.8.1Adding in the Glyph of Flame Shock changes in 3.3.3FlickrNet API Library: 3.0 Beta: A brand new version of the FlickrNet library, exposing 100% of the Flickr API's methods, along with streamlined class and method names. All classe...Forum PAF - The Open Source .Net Forum - From Viet Nam - By Thomas John (jntpaf): Forum PAF - The Open Source .Net Forum: A, Các phần mềm cần thiết để chạy Forum PAF: 1. .Net Framework 2.0 (trở lên) 2. Ajax Extension 1.0 (trở lên) 3. Sql Server 2005 (Sql Server Expr...HydroDesktop - CUAHSI Hydrologic Information System Desktop Application: HydroDesktop 0.7.3735 Alpha Installer: This is the testing release of the HydroDesktop 0.7 alpha version. Features supported in this version include: Search for data and download of Hydr...MDownloader: MDownloader-0.15.9.56953: Fixed Uploading.com links detection.MiniTwitter: 1.10: MiniTwitter 1.10 更新内容 追加 未読管理時に未読数をタブに表示する機能を実装 サイレントモードを実装(通知領域アイコンを右クリックして出るメニューから切り替え) 修正 「お気に入りワードを含む項目だけ表示する」オプションが機能していなかった問題を修正NoteExpress User Tools (NEUT) - Do it by ourselves!: NoteExpress User Tools 1.9.1: 测试版本:NoteExpress 2.5.0.1147 #修正一个改动的bugOneCMS: OneCMS 2.6: OneCMS 2.6 is finally here! Along with various bug fixes 2.6 also brings with it many new features such as the videos module, plugins system, and m...Quantity System Framework: Quantity System Calculator 1.1.9.93: Experience the new edition of the quantity system with text support and function treated as values now you can multiply functions and divide funct...Selection Maker: Selection Maker 1.4: some minor bugs fixed. icon added for running and uninstalling the application.sPATCH: sPatcher v0.8a: + Disabled patchers proxy settings to increase connection speed sPatch - Server Example *Contains a sample Patch that "downgrades" PWI 1.4.2 Clien...VSTT 2008 Quick Reference Guide: VS Performance Testing Quick Reference V2.0: Visual Studio Performance Testing Quick Reference Guide (Version 2.0)WeatherBar: WeatherBar 2.0: WeatherBar 2.0 Changelog: Introduced application settings. Modified UI. Ability to switch between Fahrenheit and Celsius (application-wide). ...WillStrohl.LightboxGallery Module for DotNetNuke: WillStrohl.LightboxGallery v1.02.01: This version of the Lightbox Gallery Module adds the following features: Upgraded the Autocomplete jQuery plugin Fixed an IE8 error that was occu...Windows XNA: Base Defense Alpha 0.339: Alpha 0.338 had a really bad bug that made the game crash, that is what I get for coding after 3am... I also made some AI for the Raptor. So now it...WPF Dynamic Data Display: Silverlight DynamicDataDisplay v0.2 - Spring 2010: Silverlight version of WPF DynamicDataDisplay charting library The version 0.2 shows a greater performance comparing with version 0.1 while having...Most Popular ProjectsMetaSharpRawrWBFS ManagerASP.NET Ajax LibrarySilverlight ToolkitMicrosoft SQL Server Product Samples: DatabaseAJAX Control ToolkitLiveUpload to FacebookWindows Presentation Foundation (WPF)ASP.NETMost Active ProjectsRawrjQuery Library for SharePoint Web ServicesFarseer Physics EngineBlogEngine.NETFacebook Developer ToolkitNB_Store - Free DotNetNuke Ecommerce Catalog ModulePHPExcelTable2ClassFluent Ribbon Control SuiteLINQ to Twitter

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  • New Bundling and Minification Support (ASP.NET 4.5 Series)

    - by ScottGu
    This is the sixth in a series of blog posts I'm doing on ASP.NET 4.5. The next release of .NET and Visual Studio include a ton of great new features and capabilities.  With ASP.NET 4.5 you'll see a bunch of really nice improvements with both Web Forms and MVC - as well as in the core ASP.NET base foundation that both are built upon. Today’s post covers some of the work we are doing to add built-in support for bundling and minification into ASP.NET - which makes it easy to improve the performance of applications.  This feature can be used by all ASP.NET applications, including both ASP.NET MVC and ASP.NET Web Forms solutions. Basics of Bundling and Minification As more and more people use mobile devices to surf the web, it is becoming increasingly important that the websites and apps we build perform well with them. We’ve all tried loading sites on our smartphones – only to eventually give up in frustration as it loads slowly over a slow cellular network.  If your site/app loads slowly like that, you are likely losing potential customers because of bad performance.  Even with powerful desktop machines, the load time of your site and perceived performance can make an enormous customer perception. Most websites today are made up of multiple JavaScript and CSS files to separate the concerns and keep the code base tight. While this is a good practice from a coding point of view, it often has some unfortunate consequences for the overall performance of the website.  Multiple JavaScript and CSS files require multiple HTTP requests from a browser – which in turn can slow down the performance load time.  Simple Example Below I’ve opened a local website in IE9 and recorded the network traffic using IE’s built-in F12 developer tools. As shown below, the website consists of 5 CSS and 4 JavaScript files which the browser has to download. Each file is currently requested separately by the browser and returned by the server, and the process can take a significant amount of time proportional to the number of files in question. Bundling ASP.NET is adding a feature that makes it easy to “bundle” or “combine” multiple CSS and JavaScript files into fewer HTTP requests. This causes the browser to request a lot fewer files and in turn reduces the time it takes to fetch them.   Below is an updated version of the above sample that takes advantage of this new bundling functionality (making only one request for the JavaScript and one request for the CSS): The browser now has to send fewer requests to the server. The content of the individual files have been bundled/combined into the same response, but the content of the files remains the same - so the overall file size is exactly the same as before the bundling.   But notice how even on a local dev machine (where the network latency between the browser and server is minimal), the act of bundling the CSS and JavaScript files together still manages to reduce the overall page load time by almost 20%.  Over a slow network the performance improvement would be even better. Minification The next release of ASP.NET is also adding a new feature that makes it easy to reduce or “minify” the download size of the content as well.  This is a process that removes whitespace, comments and other unneeded characters from both CSS and JavaScript. The result is smaller files, which will download and load in a browser faster.  The graph below shows the performance gain we are seeing when both bundling and minification are used together: Even on my local dev box (where the network latency is minimal), we now have a 40% performance improvement from where we originally started.  On slow networks (and especially with international customers), the gains would be even more significant. Using Bundling and Minification inside ASP.NET The upcoming release of ASP.NET makes it really easy to take advantage of bundling and minification within projects and see performance gains like in the scenario above. The way it does this allows you to avoid having to run custom tools as part of your build process –  instead ASP.NET has added runtime support to perform the bundling/minification for you dynamically (caching the results to make sure perf is great).  This enables a really clean development experience and makes it super easy to start to take advantage of these new features. Let’s assume that we have a simple project that has 4 JavaScript files and 6 CSS files: Bundling and Minifying the .css files Let’s say you wanted to reference all of the stylesheets in the “Styles” folder above on a page.  Today you’d have to add multiple CSS references to get all of them – which would translate into 6 separate HTTP requests: The new bundling/minification feature now allows you to instead bundle and minify all of the .css files in the Styles folder – simply by sending a URL request to the folder (in this case “styles”) with an appended “/css” path after it.  For example:    This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .css files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the CSS content to the browser.  You don’t need to run any tools or pre-processor to get this behavior.  This enables you to cleanly separate your CSS into separate logical .css files and maintain a very clean development experience – while not taking a performance hit at runtime for doing so.  The Visual Studio designer will also honor the new bundling/minification logic as well – so you’ll still get a WYSWIYG designer experience inside VS as well. Bundling and Minifying the JavaScript files Like the CSS approach above, if we wanted to bundle and minify all of our JavaScript into a single response we could send a URL request to the folder (in this case “scripts”) with an appended “/js” path after it:   This will cause ASP.NET to scan the directory, bundle and minify the .js files within it, and send back a single HTTP response with all of the JavaScript content to the browser.  Again – no custom tools or builds steps were required in order to get this behavior.  And it works with all browsers. Ordering of Files within a Bundle By default, when files are bundled by ASP.NET they are sorted alphabetically first, just like they are shown in Solution Explorer. Then they are automatically shifted around so that known libraries and their custom extensions such as jQuery, MooTools and Dojo are loaded before anything else. So the default order for the merged bundling of the Scripts folder as shown above will be: Jquery-1.6.2.js Jquery-ui.js Jquery.tools.js a.js By default, CSS files are also sorted alphabetically and then shifted around so that reset.css and normalize.css (if they are there) will go before any other file. So the default sorting of the bundling of the Styles folder as shown above will be: reset.css content.css forms.css globals.css menu.css styles.css The sorting is fully customizable, though, and can easily be changed to accommodate most use cases and any common naming pattern you prefer.  The goal with the out of the box experience, though, is to have smart defaults that you can just use and be successful with. Any number of directories/sub-directories supported In the example above we just had a single “Scripts” and “Styles” folder for our application.  This works for some application types (e.g. single page applications).  Often, though, you’ll want to have multiple CSS/JS bundles within your application – for example: a “common” bundle that has core JS and CSS files that all pages use, and then page specific or section specific files that are not used globally. You can use the bundling/minification support across any number of directories or sub-directories in your project – this makes it easy to structure your code so as to maximize the bunding/minification benefits.  Each directory by default can be accessed as a separate URL addressable bundle.  Bundling/Minification Extensibility ASP.NET’s bundling and minification support is built with extensibility in mind and every part of the process can be extended or replaced. Custom Rules In addition to enabling the out of the box - directory-based - bundling approach, ASP.NET also supports the ability to register custom bundles using a new programmatic API we are exposing.  The below code demonstrates how you can register a “customscript” bundle using code within an application’s Global.asax class.  The API allows you to add/remove/filter files that go into the bundle on a very granular level:     The above custom bundle can then be referenced anywhere within the application using the below <script> reference:     Custom Processing You can also override the default CSS and JavaScript bundles to support your own custom processing of the bundled files (for example: custom minification rules, support for Saas, LESS or Coffeescript syntax, etc). In the example below we are indicating that we want to replace the built-in minification transforms with a custom MyJsTransform and MyCssTransform class. They both subclass the CSS and JavaScript minifier respectively and can add extra functionality:     The end result of this extensibility is that you can plug-into the bundling/minification logic at a deep level and do some pretty cool things with it. 2 Minute Video of Bundling and Minification in Action Mads Kristensen has a great 90 second video that shows off using the new Bundling and Minification feature.  You can watch the 90 second video here. Summary The new bundling and minification support within the next release of ASP.NET will make it easier to build fast web applications.  It is really easy to use, and doesn’t require major changes to your existing dev workflow.  It is also supports a rich extensibility API that enables you to customize it however you want. You can easily take advantage of this new support within ASP.NET MVC, ASP.NET Web Forms and ASP.NET Web Pages based applications. Hope this helps, Scott P.S. In addition to blogging, I use Twitter to-do quick posts and share links. My Twitter handle is: @scottgu

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  • CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012

    CodePlex Daily Summary for Saturday, May 12, 2012Popular ReleasesKanboxAPI: KanboxAPI beta: ????? Token Info List DownloadMedia Companion: Media Companion 3.502b: It has been a slow week, but this release addresses a couple of recent bugs: Movies Multi-part Movies - Existing .nfo files that differed in name from the first part, were missed and scraped again. Trailers - MC attempted to scrape info for existing trailers. TV Shows Show Scraping - shows available only in the non-default language would not show up in the main browser. The correct language can now be selected using the TV Show Selector for a single show. General Will no longer prompt for ...NewLife XCode ??????: XCode v8.5.2012.0508、XCoder v4.7.2012.0320: X????: 1,????For .Net 4.0?? XCoder????: 1,???????,????X????,?????? XCode????: 1,Insert/Update/Delete???????????????,???SQL???? 2,IEntityOperate?????? 3,????????IEntityTree 4,????????????????? 5,?????????? 6,??????????????dycom: v1.0: DYCom ????????:Silverlight, Windows phone 7.5.NETMF_for_STM32: Beta 1 Release: First public beta release.Google Book Downloader: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0: Google Books Downloader Lite 1.0Python Tools for Visual Studio: 1.5 Alpha: We’re pleased to announce the release of Python Tools for Visual Studio 1.5 Alpha. Python Tools for Visual Studio (PTVS) is an open-source plug-in for Visual Studio which supports programming with the Python language. PTVS supports a broad range of features including: • Supports Cpython, IronPython, Jython and Pypy • Python editor with advanced member, signature intellisense and refactoring • Code navigation: “Find all refs”, goto definition, and object browser • Local and remote debugging...JayData - The cross-platform HTML5 data-management library for JavaScript: JayData 1.0 RC1 Refresh 1: JayData 1.0.0 RC1 Refresh 1 JayData is a unified data access API to webSQL, indexedDB, OData, Facebook and YQL. Overview The major feature of this release is related to OData provider, FunctionImport is now generally supported. Now you can consume OData service operations (WebMethods). We extended the JaySvcUtil to generate the necessary metadata. We included many fixes, such as the Visual Studio 2010 IntelliSense optimalization (RC1 was optimized only to VS11). It's recommended to upgrade...AD Gallery: AD Gallery 1.2.7: NewsFixed a bug which caused the current thumbnail not to be highlighted Added a hook to take complete control over how descriptions are handled, take a look under Documentation for more info Added removeAllImages()51Degrees.mobi - Mobile Device Detection and Redirection: 2.1.4.8: One Click Install from NuGet Data ChangesIncludes 42 new browser properties in both the Lite and Premium data sets. Premium Data includes many new devices including Nokia Lumia 900, BlackBerry 9220 and HTC One, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 range and Samsung Galaxy S III. Lite data includes devices released in January 2012. Changes to Version 2.1.4.81. The IsFirstTime method of the RedirectModule will now return the same value when called multiple times for the same request. This was prevent...Mugen Injection: Mugen Injection ver 2.2 (WinRT supported): Added NamedParameterAttribute, OptionalParameterAttribute. Added behaviors ICycleDependencyBehavior, IResolveUnregisteredTypeBehavior. Added WinRT support. Added support for NET 4.5. Added support for MVC 4.NShape - .Net Diagramming Framework for Industrial Applications: NShape 2.0.1: Changes in 2.0.1:Bugfixes: IRepository.Insert(Shape shape) and IRepository.Insert(IEnumerable<Shape> shapes) no longer insert shape connections. Several context menu items did display although the required permission was not granted Display did not reset the visible and active layers when changing the diagram NullReferenceException when pressing Del key and no shape was selected Changed Behavior: LayerCollection.Find("") no longer throws an exception. Improvements: Display does not rese...AcDown????? - Anime&Comic Downloader: AcDown????? v3.11.6: ?? ●AcDown??????????、??、??????,????1M,????,????,?????????????????????????。???????????Acfun、????(Bilibili)、??、??、YouTube、??、???、??????、SF????、????????????。??????AcPlay?????,??????、????????????????。 ● AcDown???????????????????????????,???,???????????????????。 ● AcDown???????C#??,????.NET Framework 2.0??。?????"Acfun?????"。 ????32??64? Windows XP/Vista/7/8 ????????????? ??:????????Windows XP???,?????????.NET Framework 2.0???(x86),?????"?????????"??? ??????????????,??????????: ??"AcDo...sb0t: sb0t 4.64: New commands added: #scribble <url> #adminscribble on #adminscribble offDocument.Editor: 2012.4: Whats new for Document.Editor 2012.4: Improved Template support Improved Options Dialog Minor Bug Fix's, improvements and speed upsJson.NET: Json.NET 4.5 Release 5: New feature - Added ItemIsReference, ItemReferenceLoopHandling, ItemTypeNameHandling, ItemConverterType to JsonPropertyAttribute New feature - Added ItemRequired to JsonObjectAttribute New feature - Added Path to JsonWriterException Change - Improved deserializer call stack memory usage Change - Moved the PDB files out of the NuGet package into a symbols package Fix - Fixed infinite loop from an input error when reading an array and error handling is enabled Fix - Fixed base objec...BlackJumboDog: Ver5.6.1: 2012.05.07 Ver5.6.1 (1)????????????????(Ver5.6.0??)??? (2)HTTP?????SSL????????????(Ver5.6.0??)??? (3)HTTP?????2G??????????????????????????? (4)HTP???? ?????????ExtAspNet: ExtAspNet v3.1.5: ExtAspNet - ?? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???,????? AJAX ?????????? ExtAspNet ????? ExtJS ??? ASP.NET 2.0 ???,????? AJAX ??????????。 ExtAspNet ??????? JavaScript,?? CSS,?? UpdatePanel,?? ViewState,?? WebServices ???????。 ??????: IE 7.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 3.0, Opera 10.5, Safari 3.0+ ????:Apache License 2.0 (Apache) ??:http://extasp.net/ ??:http://bbs.extasp.net/ ??:http://extaspnet.codeplex.com/ ??:http://sanshi.cnblogs.com/ ????: +2012-05-06 v3.1.5 -????????:grid/grid_twogrid.aspx。 +?...SharpDevelop: SharpDevelop 4.2: Please see http://community.sharpdevelop.net/forums/t/15772.aspx for the release announcement.Desktop Google Reader: 1.4.4: Taskbar icon overlay (number of unread items) can now be switched off in preferences (Windows Vista / 7 only) Maximize button now can be toggled to be fullscreen (as befor) or only normal maximize (taskbar stays visible) in preferences List of feeds is now sorted by alphabetNew Projects3D Scene Editor: A generic 3d level editor built using XNA to speed up designing and building game levels.Attribute Based Cache using Unity Interception: Unity interception handler attribute for Caching which allows to apply boiler plate caching pattern to classes, and class members directly, without configuring them in the application configuration file. Configure your choice of Cache Provider (ObjectCache, Azure included) in the Unity IoC Container and apply the attribute to the method which you want to cache AutoCompleteBox for WinRT: None yetBAC2 Bachelor's Thesis Source Code: The source code of my Bachelor's ThesisBAMabase: It's a bamabase.BBSProject: BBSProjectBrain 2 - Game Engine: Brain 2 is a Game Engine that runs on multiple platforms.cobra-winldtp: Cobra - Windows version of Linux Desktop Testing Project (WinLDTP) - http://ldtp.freedesktop.org LDTP is a GUI test automation tool works on both Windows and Linux platform Windows GUI test automation tool written in C# and test scripts can be written in Python for now. Ruby API will be added soon.CS322: C# Programski jezikDoxBotPlugin: The DoxBotPlugin is a Plug-In for Ice-Chat9 that allows a user to use Icechat9 as both a normal IRC client and to switch on bot mode in certain channels to have DoxBotPlugin act on their behalf.dycom: DYCom??(DY Communication)???????????,?????????????????.????????????????. ??????????????????????,?????????????????。Eyes Protector: PL: Program pomagajacy w ochronie oczu przed przemeczeniem zwiazanym ze zbyt dluga praca przy komputerze. EN: ---kshell: ????Linux??????Lumia: This is Lumia project.MacroDoc: MacroDoc is an engine written in C# for composing documents from reusable pieces of structure and content.Mssql: This is Sql Server project.NETMF_for_STM32: This is the Codeplex project for NETMF for STM32 (F4 Edition). Ocular - a free, open source WYSIWYG editor for HTML: Ocular is a free C# WYSIWYG HTML editor, similar to Adobe Dreamweaver. We are always looking for contributors, so please help us!PeopleCredit: Prototype web service to maintain all employee credits.Project Server workflow: This workflow creates the project site for Basic project plan EPT when workflow task is approved.(This is the correction done over the Branching workflow provided with Project Server 2010 SDK). Workflow task is created using PSWApprovalTask Content type in Project Server Workflow Task List. Quick Reminder: PL: Program pomagajacy zapisac szybkie przypomnienia podczas pracy przy komputerze. EN: ---Random Projects: My random projects...Recommendation Engine Demo: How does the Amazon recommendation works? This is about visualizing the item to item collaborations filtering mechanism using a item-to-item matrix table. The item-to-item matrix, the vectors and the calculated data values are displayed. There are n different items and the item recommendation can display up to m items. There are implemented different item-to-item neighborhood functions. A simple max count of seen neighbor items, the Cosine Similarity and the Jaccard Index. A t...SaveSeaTurtle: Sea TurtleSharpGpx: SharpGpx implements an object model for reading and writing GPX (GPS eXchange Format).SlimDo: SlimDo is a scripting language coded in C#Spring: This is Spring.Net projectSQL Server Quick Tools Pack: SQL Server Quick Tools Pack for your sql server SuLD framework: Supported Link Discovery framework (SuLD) is a tool to discover links to multiple Linked Data datasets. Finding is supported by various features like synonym module or autocomplete.TQuery.Net: .Net??????WAAP - World of warcraft Auction house Analysis Project: A project in which we try to analyse prices and auctioneers on the various World of Warcraft Auction housesxhttp.net: The Xhttp.Net framework is a dotnet implementation of the Extended Hypertext Transfer Protocol (http://www.xhttp.org), with simple service integration, full arguments support including Base64 and DateTime, single and multiple asynchronous requests, data streaming, remote API creation from XHTTP service schemas, and a runtime plugin architecture.

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