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  • Why Standards Only Get You So Far

    - by Tim Murphy
    Over the years I have been exposed to a number of standards.  EDI was the first.  More recently it has been the CIECA standard for Insurance and now the embattled document standards of Open XML and ODF. Standards actually came up at the last CAG meeting.  The debate was over how effective they really are.  Even back in the late 80’s to early 90’s people found they had to customize these standards to get any work done.  I even had one vendor about a year ago tell me that they really weren’t standards, they were more of a guideline. The problem is that standards are created either by committee or by companies trying to sell a product.  They never fit all situations.  This is why most of them leave extension points in their definition.  Of course if you use those extension points everyone has to have custom code to know how to consume the new product. Standards increase reliability but they stifle innovation and slow the time to market cycle of products.  In this age of ever shortening windows of opportunity that could mean that a company could lose its competitive advantage. I believe that standards are not only good, but essential.  I also believe that they are not a silver bullet.  People who turn competing standards into a type of holy war are really missing the point.  I think we should make the best standards we can, whether that is for a product so that customers can use API, or by committee so that they cross products.  But they also need to be as feature rich and flexible as possible.  They can’t be just the lowest common denominator since this type of standard will be broken the day it is published.  In the end though, it is the market will vote with their dollars. del.icio.us Tags: Office Open XML,ODF,Standards,EDI

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  • How did I get here? My route to Android, iPhone, Windows Phone 7, and interest in Mobile Devices

    - by Wallym
    I get asked all the time how/why I got interested in mobile and jumped on this fairly early.  I tend to give half answers because it wasn't just one thing that took me to mobile, but a whole host of separate ivents culminating in a specific event where I wasdoing market research in May/June 2008.  Let me throw out the events and the facts about me: I tend to like new, different, cool stuff.  I jumped on .NET early on.  I jumped on Ajax early on.  I don't jump on every new technology that comes down the road, I'm probably the only person on the planet that doesn't "get" MVC, though I acknowledge that a lot of people do and it solves a number of problems in the default settings of ASP.NET WebForms. I remember buying an early Windows CE device. It was interesting, but dang, this stylus thing sucks. After I lost my third stylus, i just gave up.  I got my first mobile phone in early 1999.  Reception was crappy, but I could see the value in being mobile. In 1999, I worked on a manufacturing systems project.  One piece of the projects was a set of handheld devices on the shop floor.  While the UI was a crappy DOS based, yes I said DOS as in Disk Operating System Version 6.22, I could see that the wireless world was a direction I wanted to be in. In 2000, Microsoft released the first public alpha of .NET.  Very cool stuff indeed.  One piece of the puzzle was a set of mobile controls for ASP.NET.  I build numerous test apps as well as mobile version using these mobile controls.  Now, the mobile UIs of the time were based on WML, which was crap. I could real all the analysis of mobile and read all about growth rates.  Now, you have to realize that growth rates can be impressive when dealing with small numbers, but I knew it was a comer. In our first book, I got talked out of mobile because of the line from the publisher "Wally, mobile doesn't sell." Blackberry was the dominant device of the mid 2000s.  Its users were referred to as "Crackberry addicts."  Unfortunately, the mobile development experience for native apps was crap and the web experience was fairly rough as well, but if they could get the ecosystem started, other phones and better blackberryies would come out.  I finally jumped into using a blackberry. Sometime around 2006, I heard "Wally, mobile doesn't sell" again.  Now, anyone that knows me knows that someone saying something like this to me means I'll keep trying it. The phones of the mid 2000s were moving to be more graphical, but there were too many that had this idea that they had to use a stylus.  Stylus suck.  They get lost too easily. I worked on a project in 2007 and 2008 for a startup trying to answer the question of "What is there to do where I am at?"  For some reason, they wanted to be tied to PCs.  As it became obvious that they were having problems, their investor asked us to do some market research and to figure out what the marketplace did want.  One of the important things that I figured out was the we lived in a mobile world and if you had a mobile app, it need to be on a mobile device, not tied to a desktop/laptop/netbook device.  If there was any single event, this was it - I was doing some market research and sat and talked to people in a bar/restaurant in Atlanta called "The Grove" on Lavista.  The consensus of the people that I talked to was that they wanted their data where ever they were at, laptop, pc, mobile, whereever. In 2007, Apple released the iPhone.  Wow, what an impressive device, even with all the problems of a 1st generation device.  I bought an iPod Touch 1st generation to understand touch better, one of the best decisions I ever made. I decided in late 2008, to make a move into cloud, for a number of reasons.  I was working on an example app.  In April, 2009, one of my friends at Microsoft said "don't mention my name with this, but you need an iPhone front end for this app."  How do you get on the iPhone.  Well, there are a number of ways including: ObjectiveC.  Its hard to teach an old dog new tricks, and this dog knows .NET, not ObjectiveC. HTML, web, javascript optimized interface.  yeah, this is possible. PhoneGap.  Now, this is interesting, take an html interface and get it to run on the iPhone, Android, Blackberry, and other platforms.  I thought that this way made the most sense for me until......... MonoTouch.  In May/June 2009, Novell announced a way for .NET/c# developers to write apps for the iPhone.  This is the way that made the most sense to me. Titanium by Appcelerator.  This is similar in concept to PhoneGap.  I haven't played with this much but do want to learn more about it. In July, 2009, I emailed one of my contacts at Wrox to see if they would be interested in a short MonoTouch ebook in their Wrox Blox format.  I fully expected another  response along the lines of "Wally, mobile doesn't sell."  The response I got was "Wally, iPhone is H O T, get started immediately, can you have this to me before Labor Day."  Not quite the response I expected.  Thankfully, we didn't make the Labor Day, first draft date. I kept pushing back because I had a feeling that things were not going to be quite as polished and feature rich as necessary.  After all, Novell doesn't have the resouces of Microsoft's developer division. The ebook shipped on November 30, 2009. On about December, 15, 2009, my editor emailed and said "Your ebook is selling really well, lets do a full book and it by March 1 so get started."  Thankfully, guys like Craig Dunn and Chris Hardy were interested along with Martin and Ror joinged us later on. I bought my wife an iPhone 3Gs in early 2010 to go along with all my iPod Touch devices. I tried to pretend in 2010 that I wasn't that interested in mobile and still had interest in the desktop technologies.  I love the technologies and continue to use them today, but that isn't where my interest is right now.  I'm just about all mobile all the time with my energies.  Our book shipped in the beginning of July, 2010 right in the middle of the Apple FUD.I've been looking at Mobile Web as a way around the AppStores and Apple FUD problems of 2010. With all the Apple self FUD, we became interested in Android.I went up to Dino Esposito at DevConnections in Las Vegas at introduced myself. I've always tried to keep up with what Dino has been doing. I was shocked, he wanted to meet me.  We must have talked for 1.5 hours. It was way more time than I deserved. If you get a chance, go and introduce yourself to Dino. He's a great guy. Microsoft released Windows Phone 7 in the Fall of 2010.  I'm not doing development on that platform at this time.  I think they have a very interesting user interface.  The devices are being positively reviewed.  For my purposes, the devices are limited at this point in time.  We'll see what 2011 brings as far as updates to the operating system.  I need multitasking/background processing and html5 in the browser. Add that as well as acceptance in the marketplace and I'll be more interested in the device. Obviosuly, I'm now working on a MonoDroid book . I own Android and iPhone/iOS devices.  I am currently working on some startup ideas and am exploring as much in that area as I can. For 2011, I'm planning on speaking at Android Developer's Conference (AnDevCon) and Mobile Connections.  I'm really excited about this. I have a couple of magazine articles coming out in 2011 on Android and iPhone development with the Mono technologies.is Mono "The Answer"? What's "The Question?" I think it will work for me.  It might work for you, it might not.  it depends on your situation.  Its the current horse that I am riding. I might find a better horse tomorrow. So, that's how I got here.  I'm in love with mobile.  Mobile native apps on the device as well as mobile web.  I'm into all this cool stuff.  Where are you at?

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  • How Can I Install LibreOffice Base?

    - by Rob
    Useful info: I have tried running sudo dpkg --configure -a and sudo apt-get install -f with no result. I am running Kubuntu 11.10 (the updater is far too unreliable to ever be trusted with performing a version upgrade) The rest of LibreOffice seems to work fine (apart from an annoying bug where tooltips are shown as black text on black background...) I have need to use LibreOffice Base to complete a mail merge document. However, I noticed it's not installed. When I go to install it however... rob@hydrogen:~$ sudo apt-get install libreoffice-base [sudo] password for rob: Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: The following packages have unmet dependencies. libreoffice-base : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-base-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-java-common (>= 1:3.4.4~) but it is not going to be installed Suggests: libmyodbc but it is not going to be installed or odbc-postgresql but it is not going to be installed or libsqliteodbc but it is not going to be installed or tdsodbc but it is not going to be installed or mdbtools but it is not going to be installed Suggests: libreoffice-gcj but it is not installable Suggests: libreoffice-report-builder but it is not going to be installed E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. I'm bemused as to which packages it seems to think I have held. As far as I'm aware, Kubuntu doesn't give you the option to hold packages... So, how do I get out of this dependency hell?

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  • #1 O’Reilly eBook for 2010

    - by Jan Goyvaerts
    The year-end issue of O’Reilly’s author newsletter discussed the trends O’Reilly has been seeing the past few years, and their predictions for 2011. The key trend is that digital is now more than ever poised to take over print: Our digitally distributed products have grown from 18.36% of our publishing mix in 2009 to 28.09% of our mix in 2010. What is more impressive is that our digitally distributed products have produced more than double the revenue that has been lost with the decline of print. I think this is important because some say that digital cannibalizes print products. Our data indicates the contrary, as print is declining much more slowly than digital is growing. I think we may be seeing developers purchasing a print book, and then purchasing the electronic editions to search and copying code from, as the incremental cost for digital is more than reasonable. My own book seems to be leading this trend. Thanks to everyone who purchased it! And the five bestselling O’Reilly ebook products for 2010: 1) Regular Expressions Cookbook, 2) jQuery Cookbook, 3) Learning Python, 4) HTML5: Up and Running, and 5) JavaScript Cookbook. I think it’s interesting that the top five ebooks are code-intensive books. They’re great products for search and code reuse. It’s also interesting that none of the top 5 ebooks made the top 5 of print books.

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  • Day of Windows Phone 7 at Orlando Code Camp 2010

    - by Nikita Polyakov
    Orlando is coming up fast behind Tampa and South Florida Code Camps. This year, even more so. Check out the schedule and register: http://www.orlandocodecamp.com/  What: All day geek fest focusing on code and not marketing fluff. When: Saturday, March, 27, 2010 All day (registration opens at 7:00am) Where: Seminole State College - Sanford\Lake Mary Campus - 100 Weldon Boulevard Sanford, FL 32773 Cost: Free! A good fellow community leader Will Strohl has a great blog post on What to Expect from Orlando Code Camp 2010 Also, believe it or now there will be a first ever MSDN Webcast: Simulcast Event: Orlando Code Camp where you can watch a select few sessions from home, if you become ill or have another reasonable excuse or just un-realistically far away. Needless to say this is not even close to being there and watching the rest of the sessions, as you don’t get to choose what is shown. But, let’s get back to the topic - there is a full day of Windows Phone 7 Developer topics. I am speaking at 2 sessions: 8:30 AM Prototyping with SketchFlow SketchFlow is a new feature in Expression Blend 3 that enables rapid prototyping of web sites and applications. SketchFlow helps designers, developers, information architects and account managers sketch, wireframe and prototype user experiences and user interfaces. [yes, I will show a some WP7 related SketchFlow towards the end] 9:45 AM Intro to Windows Phone 7 This session will be discussing and showing the new WP7 OS and how new methods of navigation work. This is relevant to understand before you start building your first app. One of the sessions later in the day will be a Install Fest and one will be a code-along, so bring your laptop, if you want. You will find Kevin Wolf, Bill Reiss and I to ask questions at the panel at the end of the day. I will be hanging out all day at the Mobile track and as always during lunch and after dinner. Final topic descriptions and order of presentations is being finalized.

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  • Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    If you’re looking for some simple hardware monitoring tools that don’t clutter up your screen real estate but are right in front of you when you need them, Taskbar Meters sit unobtrusively right on the Windows taskbar. Open source, lightweight, and portable Taskbar Meters is actually a set of three applications. There is one for monitoring memory use, one for CPU use, and one for disk activity. Using the application is as simple as running the specific app for the monitoring you want (we have all three running in the screenshot here) and adjusting the sliders to set the update frequency and the percent utilization at which the meters turn from green, to yellow, to red. If you’re testing software loads and benchmarking Taskbar Meters doesn’t offer the kind of fine-tooth-comb view into system performance that you’ll need but for casual “What’s going on with my machine?” monitoring, it’s unobtrusive and effective. Taskbar Meters is an open source set of portable applications, Windows 7 only. Taskbar Meters [Codeplex] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Macs Don’t Make You Creative! So Why Do Artists Really Love Apple? MacX DVD Ripper Pro is Free for How-To Geek Readers (Time Limited!) HTG Explains: What’s a Solid State Drive and What Do I Need to Know? How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Lakeside Sunset in the Mountains [Wallpaper] Taskbar Meters Turn Your Taskbar into a System Resource Monitor Create Shortcuts for Your Favorite or Most Used Folders in Ubuntu Create Custom Sized Thumbnail Images with Simple Image Resizer [Cross-Platform] Etch a Circuit Board using a Simple Homemade Mixture Sync Blocker Stops iTunes from Automatically Syncing

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  • How To Disable Loading Of Images In Chrome, Firefox and IE

    - by Gopinath
    Many of us find the necessity to disable loading images in web browsers for various reasons. May be when we are at work place, we don’t our boss to notice flashy browser window or we are connected to low bandwidth connections like GPRS which works faster without images. What ever may be the reason, here are the tips to disable images in Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer web browsers. Google Chrome – Disable Loading Images To disable loading of images in Google Chrome 1. Click on Tools Icon and choose Options menu item 2. In Google Chrome Options dialog window, switch to the tab Under the hood and click on the button Content Settings 3. Select Images from the list of options available in the left panel and choose the option Do not show any images 4. Close dialog windows and you are done. Firefox – Disable Loading Images To disable loading of images in Firefox 1. Open Firefox 2. Go to Tools -> Options 3. Switch to Content tab 4. Uncheck the option Load images automatically Internet Explorer – Disable Loading Images To disable loading of images in Internet Explorer 1. Launch Internet Explorer 2. Go to Tools -> Internet Options 3. Switch to Advanced tab 4. Uncheck the option Show pictures under Multimedia category cc image credit: flickr/indoloony This article titled,How To Disable Loading Of Images In Chrome, Firefox and IE, was originally published at Tech Dreams. Grab our rss feed or fan us on Facebook to get updates from us.

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  • Spolskism or Twitterism: A Doctor writes...

    - by Phil Factor
    "I never realized I had a problem. I just 'twittered' because it was a social thing to do. All my mates were doing it. It made me feel good to have 'followers'; it bolstered my self-esteem. Of course, you don't think of the long-term effects on your work and on the way you think. There's no denying that it impairs your judgment…" Yes, this story is typical. Hundreds of people are waking up to the long term effects of twittering, and seeking help. Dave, who wishes to remain anonymous, told our reporter… "I started using Twitter at work. Just a few minutes now and then, throughout the day. A lot of my colleagues were doing it and I thought 'Well, that's cool; it must be part of what I should be doing at work'. Soon, I was avidly reading every twitter that came my way, and counting the minutes between my own twitters. I tried to kid myself that it was all about professional development and getting other people to help you with work-related problems, but in truth I had become addicted to the buzz of the social network. The worse thing was that it made me seem busy even when I was really just frittering my time away. Inevitably, I started to get behind with my real work." Experts have identified the syndrome and given it a name: 'Twitterism', sometimes referred to as 'Spolskism', after the person who first drew attention to the pernicious damage to well-being that the practice caused, and who had the courage to take the pledge of rejecting it. According to one expert… "The occasional Twitter does little harm to the participant, and can be an adaptive way of dealing with stress. Unfortunately, it rarely stops there. The addictive qualities of the practice have put a strain on the caring professions who are faced with a flood of people making that first bold step to seeking help". Dave is one of those now seeking help for his addiction… "I had lost touch with reality. Even though I twittered my work colleagues constantly, I found I actually spoke to them less and less. Even when out socializing, I would frequently disengage from the conversation, in order to twitter. I stopped blogging. I stopped responding to emails; the only way to reach me was through the world of Twitter. Unfortunately, my denial about the harm that twittering was doing to me, my friends, and my work-colleagues was so strong that I truly couldn't see that I had a problem." Like other addictions, the help and support of others who are 'taking the cure' is important. There is a common bond between those who have 'been through hell and back' and are once more able to experience the joys of actually conversing and socializing, rather than the false comfort of solitary 'twittering'. Complete abstinence is essential to the cure. Most of those who risk even an occasional twitter face a headlong slide back into 'binge' twittering. Tom, another twitterer who has managed to kick the habit explains… "My twittering addiction now seems more like a bad dream. You get to work, and switch on the PC. You say to yourself, just open up the browser, just for a minute, just to see what people are saying on Twitter. The next thing you know, half the day has gone by. The worst thing is that when you're addicted, you get good at covering up the habit; I spent so much time looking at the screen and typing on the keyboard, people just assumed I was working hard.I know that I must never forget what it was like then, and what it's like now that I've kicked the habit. I now have more time for productive work and a real social life." Like many addictions, Spolskism has its most detrimental effects on family, friends and workmates, rather than the addict. So often nowadays, we hear the sad stories of Twitter-Widows; tales of long lonely evenings spent whilst their partners are engrossed in their twittering into their 'mobiles' or indulging in their solitary spolskistic habits in privacy, under cover of 'having to do work at home'. Workmates suffer too, when the addicts even take their laptops or mobiles into meetings in order to 'twitter' with their fellow obsessives, even stooping to complain to their followers how boring the meeting is. No; The best advice is to leave twittering to the birds. You know it makes sense.

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  • Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio Ultimate 2010-Part 2

    - by Tarun Arora
    Welcome back, in part 1 of Load and Web Performance Testing using Visual Studio 2010 I talked about why Performance Testing the application is important, the test tools available in Visual Studio Ultimate 2010 and various test rig topologies. In this blog post I’ll get into the details of web performance & load tests as well as why it’s important to follow a goal based pattern while performance testing your application. Tools => Options => Test Tools Have you visited the treasures of Visual Studio Menu bar tools => Options => Test Tools lately? The options to enable disable prompts on creating, editing, deleting or running manual/automated tests can be controller from here. The default test project language and default test types created on a new test project creation could be selected/unselected from here. Ever wondered how you can change the default limit of 25 test results, this can again be changed from here. If you record a lot of Web Tests and wish for the web test recorder to start with “that” URL populated, well this again can be specified from here. If you haven’t so far, I would urge you to spend 2 minutes in the test tools options.   Test Menu => Ready Steady Test Action! The Test tools are under the Test Menu in Visual Studio, apart from being able to create a new Test and Test List you can also load an existing vsmdi file. You can also manage your test controllers from here. A solution can have one or more test setting files, but there can only be one active test settings file at any time. Again, this selection can be done from here.  You can open the various test windows from under the windows option from the test menu. If you open the Test view window you will see that you have the option to group the tests by work items, project, test type, etc. You can set these properties by right clicking a test in the test list and choosing properties from the context menu.    So, what is a vsmdi file? vsmdi stands for Visual Studio Test Metadata File. Placed under the Solution Items this file keeps track of the list of unit tests in your solution. If you open the vsmdi file as an xml file you will see a series of Test Links nested with in the list Test List tags along with the Run Configuration tag. When in visual studio you run tests, the IDE looks at the vsmdi file to see what tests need to be run. You also have the option of using the vsmdi file in your team builds to specify which tests need to run as part of the build. Refer here for a walkthrough from a fellow blogger on how to use the vsmdi file in the team builds. Web Performance Test – The Truth! In Visual Studio 2010 “Web Tests” have been renamed to “Web Performance Tests”. Apart from renaming this test type there have been several improvements to this test type in visual studio 2010. I am very active on the MSDN Visual Studio And Load Testing forum and a frequent question from many users is “Do Web Tests support Pages that run JavaScript?” I will start with a little bit of background before answering this question. Web Performance Tests operate at the HTTP Layer, but why? To enable you to generate high loads with a relatively low amount of hardware, Web performance tests are driven at the protocol layer rather than instantiating a browser.The most common source of confusion is that users do not realize Web Performance Tests work at the HTTP layer. The tool adds to that misconception. After all, you record in IE, and when running a Web test you can select which browser to use, and then the result viewer shows the results in a browser window. So that means the tests run through the browser, right? NO! The Web test engine works at the HTTP layer, and does not instantiate a browser. What does that mean? In the diagram below, you can see there are no browsers running when the engine is sending and receiving requests. Does that mean I can’t test pages that use Java script? The best example for java script generating HTTP traffic is AJAX calls. The most common example of browser plugins are Silverlight or Flash. The Web test recorder will record HTTP traffic from AJAX calls and from most (but not all) browser plugins. This means you will still be able to web performance test pages that use java script or plugin and play back the results but the playback engine will not show the java script or plug in results in the ‘browser control’. If you want to test the page behaviour as a result of the java script or plug in consider using Coded UI Tests. This page looks like it failed, when in fact it succeeded! Looking closely at the response, and subsequent requests, it is clear the operation succeeded. As stated above, the reason why the browser control is pasting this message is because java script has been disabled in this control. So, to reiterate, the web performance test recorder: - Sends and receives data at the HTTP layer. - Does NOT run a browser. - Does NOT run java script. - Does NOT host ActiveX controls or plugins. There is a great series of blog posts from Ed Glas, i would highly recommend his blog to any one performing Load/Performance testing through Visual Studio. Demo – Web Performance Test [Demo] - Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Test Settings and Configuration   [Demo]–Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Web Performance Test   In this short video I try and answer the following questions, Why is performance Testing important? How does Visual Studio Help you performance Test your applications? How do i record a web performance test? How do make a web performance test data driven, transaction driven, loop driven, convert to code, add validations? Best practices for recording Web Performance Tests. I have a web performance test, what next? Creating the Web Performance Test was the first step towards load testing your application. Now that we have the base test we can test the page behaviour when N-users access the page. Have you ever had the head of business call you and mention that the marketing team has done a fantastic job and are expecting increased traffic on the web site, can the website survive the weekend with that additional load? This is the perfect opportunity to capacity test your application to see how your website holds up under various levels of load, you can work the results backwards to see how much hardware you may need to scale up your application to survive the weekend. Apart from that it is always a good idea to have some benchmarks around how the application performs under light loads for short duration, under heavy load for long duration and soak test the application run a constant load for a very week or two to record the effects of constant load for really long durations, this is a great way of identifying how your application handles the default IIS application pool reset which by default is configured to once every 25 hours. These bench marks will act as the perfect yard stick to measure performance gains when you start making improvements. BUT there are some best practices! => Goal Based Load Testing Approach Since the subject is vast and there are a lot of things to measure and analyse, … it is very easy to get distracted from the real goal!  You can optimize your application once you know where the pain points are. There is no point performing a load test of 5000 users if your intranet application will only have a 100 simultaneous users, it is important to keep focussed on the real goals of the project. So the idea is to have a user story around your load testing scenarios and test realistically. So it is recommended that you follow the below outline, It is an Iterative process, refine your objectives, identify the key scenarios, what is the expected workload, key metrics you want to report, record the web performance tests, simulate load and analyse results. Is your application already deployed in Production? This is great! You can analyse the IIS Logs to understand the user behaviour… But what are IIS LOGS? The IIS logs allow you to record events for each application and Web site on the Web server. You can create separate logs for each of your applications and Web sites. Logging information in IIS goes beyond the scope of the event logging or performance monitoring features provided by Windows. The IIS logs can include information, such as who has visited your site, what the visitor viewed, and when the information was last viewed. You can use the IIS logs to identify any attempts to gain unauthorized access to your Web server. How to configure IIS LOGS? For those Ninjas who already have IIS Logs configured (by the way its on by default) and need a way to analyse the IIS Logs, can use the Windows IIS Utility – Log Parser. Log Parser is a very powerful tool that provides a generic SQL-like language on top of many types of data like IIS Logs, Event Viewer entries, XML files, CSV files, File System and others; and it allows you to export the result of the queries to many output formats such as CSV, XML, SQL Server, Charts and others; and it works well with IIS 5, 6, 7 and 7.5. Frequently used Log Parser queries. Demo – Load Test [Demo]–Visual Studio Ultimate 2010: Load Testing   In this short video I try and answer the following questions, - Types of Performance Testing? - Perform Goal driven Load Testing, analyse Test Run Result and Generate a report? Recap A quick recap of what we have covered so far,     Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post, in part III of this blog series I’ll be getting into the details of Test Result Analysis, Test Result Drill through, Test Report Generation, Test Run Comparison, and the Asp.net Profiler. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. See you on in Part III   Share this post : CodeProject

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  • ANTS Memory Profiler 8 released!

    - by Ben Emmett
    I’m excited to say that we’ve just released ANTS Memory Profiler 8! The big news is support for profiling .NET’s usage of unmanaged memory. There are two main parts to this. Firstly you can see a breakdown of unmanaged memory usage by module. This lets you see at a high level where unmanaged memory is being used – for example in the image below, it’s being used by a PDF generation library. Separately, when looking at a list of .NET classes, you can see how much unmanaged memory those classes are responsible for holding on to. You can also see that information for individual instances of those classes. Some clues you might need this: You’re using system objects or 3rd party components which deal with unmanaged memory under the hood (this includes things like the GDI+ functions used for working with bitmaps) Your application still relies on some legacy Delphi / C++ / etc code from left over from the days before your company moved over to using .NET You’ve used a previous version of ANTS Memory Profiler, and have ever seen a pie chart that looks something like this: You’ll also notice that the startup process has been entirely redesigned, bringing it in line with ANTS Performance Profiler 8, which was released earlier in the year. This makes it faster to start profiling and to run repeat profiling sessions, lets you profile using any browser instead of Internet Explorer, and also provides a host of stability improvements, particularly when launching websites in IIS. Download the new version (there’s a free trial), and as always I’d love to know what you think – just email [email protected]. Cheers! Ben

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  • Month in Geek: February 2011 Edition

    - by Asian Angel
    Now that February has come to a close it is time to look back at our top articles for the month. So sit back, relax, and get ready for some great reading. Note: Articles are listed as #10 through #1. Are You Using Facebook with an Encrypted Session Yet? If you’re geeky and keep up with all the tech news, you probably already know that Facebook added an SSL feature, but for everybody else: You can make your Facebook profile more secure by turning this option on, and here’s how to do it. Latest Features How-To Geek ETC Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 DriveSafe.ly Reads Your Text Messages Aloud The Likability of Angry Birds [Infographic] Dim an Overly Bright Alarm Clock with a Binder Divider Preliminary List of Keyboard Shortcuts for Unity Now Available Bring a Touch of the Wild West to Your Desktop with the Rango Theme for Windows 7 Manage Your Favorite Social Accounts in Chrome and Iron with Seesmic

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  • T-Mobile releases an App to unlock mobile devices

    - by Gopinath
    T-Mobile is in no mood to stop innovating and outsmarting its rival wireless network providers in USA. Its been talk of the wireless community and rightly deserves the space for its push to make wireless providers more consumer friendly in USA. Just couple of days after US Government passed a law that made unlocking smartphones legal in USA, T-Mobile released an Android App to make unlocking smartphone as easy as few taps. The app aptly named Device Unlock is available in Android Play Store and at the moment it can unlock only Samsung Galaxy Avant smartphones. The app lets you either temporarily unlock your smartphone for 30 days(very helpful for those who travel and wants to use their phone with other carriers) or send a request to T-Mobile to permanently unlock the device for ever. When user tries to unlock the device, the App verifies the user account to make sure that the account complies with T-Mobile rules. If the rule check passes, the app automatically unlocks the phone. The process is very simple and T-Mobile users are going to love this; the other carrier users would envy to have such a simple process to unlock smartphones. Though this app is available for just Android Play Store and works only Samsung Galaxy Avant smartphone, it looks T-Mobile is testing out this feature on small set of users first to learn and improve unlocking process. Hope to see this app able unlock all T-Mobile devices soon.

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  • /usr/lib/cups/backend/hp has failed with an HP LaserJet p3005

    - by edtechdev
    Ever since 10.04, I can't print to an HP laserjet p3005. I'm even using an entirely different computer now with a fresh install of 10.10. I've tried with and without the latest hplip. Recently, sometimes I can get it to print a few things, but eventually it always fails (usually when printing a pdf from the document viewer (also doesn't work with adobe pdf reader)). Sometimes it fails so bad the printer gives an error saying it needs to be turned off and on again. I can't seem to find a fix anywhere, I've googled all over the past year and tried every fix I could find. It does say that the /usr/lib/cups/backend/hp has failed. It also doesn't make a difference if I create the printer using hp-setup or ubuntu's own printing control panel. I delete and re-create the printer, no difference eventually. I use the default printer settings or custom settings, no difference. I can print perfectly find to a networked printer at home - an HP officejet 6310. It seems to be networked HP printers at work that I can't print to anymore (except occasionally right after re-installing the printer driver). What's the recommended way to install HP printer drivers and reset or clean out everything from before. Or where are the right logs to read or debug commands to do to find out what may be the real cause of the printing problems?

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  • Welcome Relief

    - by michael.seback
    Government organizations are experiencing unprecedented demand for social services. The current economy continues to put immense stress on social service organizations. Increased need for food assistance, employment security, housing aid and other critical services is keeping agencies busier than ever. ... The Kansas Department of Labor (KDOL) uses Oracle's social services solution in its employment security program. KDOL has used Siebel Customer Relationship Management (CRM) for nearly a decade, and recently purchased Oracle Policy Automation to improve its services even further. KDOL implemented Siebel CRM in 2002, and has expanded its use of it over the years. The agency started with Siebel CRM in the call center and later moved it into case management. Siebel CRM has been a strong foundation for KDOL in the face of rising demand for unemployment benefits, numerous labor-related law changes, and an evolving IT environment. ... The result has been better service for constituents. "It's really enabled our staff to be more effective in serving clients," said Hubka. That's a trend the department plans to continue. "We're 100 percent down the path of Siebel, in terms of what we're doing in the future," Hubka added. "Their vision is very much in line with what we're planning on doing ourselves." ... Community Services is the leading agency responsible for the safety and well-being of children and young people within Australia's New South Wales (NSW) Government. Already a longtime Oracle Case Management user, Community Services recently implemented Oracle Policy Automation to ensure accurate, consistent decisions in the management of child safety. "Oracle Policy Automation has helped to provide a vehicle for the consistent application of the Government's 'Keep Them Safe' child protection action plan," said Kerry Holling, CIO for Community Services. "We believe this approach is a world-first in the structured decisionmaking space for child protection and we believe our department is setting an example that other child protection agencies will replicate." ... Read the full case study here.

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  • SSIS Prehistory video

    - by jamiet
    I’m currently wasting spending my Easter bank holiday putting together my presentation SSIS Dataflow Performance Tuning for the upcoming SQL Bits conference in London and in doing so I’m researching some old material about how the dataflow actually works. Boring as it is I’ve gotten easily sidelined and have chanced upon an old video on Channel 9 entitled Euan Garden - Tour of SQL Server Team (part I). Euan is a former member of the SQL Server team and in this series of videos he walks the halls of the SQL Server building on Microsoft’s Redmond campus talking to some of the various protagonists and in this one he happens upon the SQL Server Integration Services team. The video was shot in 2004 so this is a fascinating (to me anyway) glimpse into the development of SSIS from before it was ever shipped and if you’re a geek like me you’ll really enjoy this behind-the-scenes look into how and why the product was architected. The video is also notable for the presence of the cameraman – none other than the now-rather-more-famous-than-he-was-then Robert Scoble. See it at http://channel9.msdn.com/posts/TheChannel9Team/Euan-Garden-Tour-of-SQL-Server-Team-part-I/ Enjoy! @Jamiet Share this post: email it! | bookmark it! | digg it! | reddit! | kick it! | live it!

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  • Glowing Chess Set Combines LEDs, Chess, and DIY Electronics Fun

    - by ETC
    Anyone who says that the centuries old game of Chess cannot be improved upon has obviously never played with a glowing chess board. Today we take a look at a cheap glass chess set modded to glow from within. Instructables user Tetranitrate had a glass chess set he scored on-the-cheap and had always wanted to illuminate it in some way. He ruled out illuminating the board itself (no good way to keep track of the piece colors) and putting a battery in each piece (too big of a pain, over complicates the design). His final solution, the one seen in the photo here, was to build a wood and copper board, run a low voltage across the surface of the chess board, and affix a conductive copper ring to the bottom of each chess piece to power the LED embedded inside. In this manner the pieces would glow on the board and then go dark as soon as they were removed from play. Hit up the link below for additional details on the build and instructions on building your own. LED Chess Set [Instructables] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How to Get Amazing Color from Photos in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Learn To Adjust Contrast Like a Pro in Photoshop, GIMP, and Paint.NET Have You Ever Wondered How Your Operating System Got Its Name? Should You Delete Windows 7 Service Pack Backup Files to Save Space? What Can Super Mario Teach Us About Graphics Technology? Windows 7 Service Pack 1 is Released: But Should You Install It? Save Files Directly from Your Browser to the Cloud in Chrome and Iron The Steve Jobs Chronicles – Charlie and the Apple Factory [Video] Google Chrome Updates; Faster, Cleaner Menus, Encrypted Password Syncing, and More Glowing Chess Set Combines LEDs, Chess, and DIY Electronics Fun Peaceful Alpine River on a Sunny Day [Wallpaper] Fast Society Creates Mini and Mobile Temporary Social Networks

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  • Booby Traps and Locked-in Kids: An Interview with a Safecracker

    - by Jason Fitzpatrick
    While most of our articles focus on security of the digital sort, this interview with a professional safecracker is an interesting look the physical side of securing your goods. As part of their Interviews with People Who Have Interesting or Unusual Jobs series over at McSweeney’s, they interviewed Ken Doyle, a professional a locksmithing and safecracking veteran with 30 years of industry experience. The interview is both entertaining and an interesting read. One of the more unusual aspects of safecracking he highlights: Q: Do you ever look inside? A: I NEVER look. It’s none of my business. Involving yourself in people’s private affairs can lead to being subpoenaed in a lawsuit or criminal trial. Besides, I’d prefer not knowing about a client’s drug stash, personal porn, or belly button lint collection. When I’m done I gather my tools and walk to the truck to write my invoice. Sometimes I’m out of the room before they open it. I don’t want to be nearby if there is a booby trap. Q: Why would there be a booby trap? A: The safe owner intentionally uses trip mechanisms, explosives or tear gas devices to “deter” unauthorized entry into his safe. It’s pretty stupid because I have yet to see any signs warning a would-be culprit about the danger. HTG Explains: Why Linux Doesn’t Need Defragmenting How to Convert News Feeds to Ebooks with Calibre How To Customize Your Wallpaper with Google Image Searches, RSS Feeds, and More

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  • MSCC: Purpose and benefits of Version Control Systems (VCS)

    Unfortunately, there was no monthly meetup during May. Which means that it was even more important and interesting to go forward with a great topic for this month. Earlier this year I already spoke to Nayar Joolfoo about doing a presentation on version control systems (VCS), and he gladly agreed since then. It was just about finding the right date for the action. Furthermore, it was also a great coincidence that Avinash Meetoo announced on social media networks that Knowledge 7 is about to have a new training on "Effective git" - which correlates to a book title Avinash is currently working on - all the best with your approach on this and reach out to our MSCC craftsmen for recessions. Once again a big Thank you to Orange Ebene Accelerator on providing the venue for us, and the MSCC members involved on securing the time slot for our event. Unfortunately, it's kind of tough to get an early confirmation for our meetups these days. I'll keep you posted on that one as there are some interesting and exciting options coming up soon. Okay, let's talk about the meeting and version control systems again. As usual, I'm going to put my first impression of the meetup: "Absolutely great topic, questions and discussions on version control systems, like git or VSO. I was also highly pleased by the number of first timers and female IT geeks. Hopefully, we will be able to keep this trend for future get-togethers." And I really have to emphasise the amount of fresh blood coming to our gathering. Also, during the initial phase it was surprising to see that exactly those first-timers, most of them students at various campuses here on the island, had absolutely no idea about version control systems. More about further down... Reactions of other attendees If I counted correctly, we had a total of 17 attendees this month, and I'd like to give you feedback from some of them: "Inspiring. Helped me understand more about GIT." -- Sean on event comments "Joined the meetup today with literally no idea what is a version control system. I have several reasons why I should be starting to use VCS as from NOW in my projects. Thanks Nayar, Jochen and other participants :)" -- Yudish on event comments "Was present today and I'm very satisfied.I was not aware if there was a such tool like git available. Thanks to those who contributed for this meetup.It was great. Learned a lot from this meetup!!" -- Leonardo on event comments "Seriously, I can see how it’s going to ease my task and help me save time. Gone are the issues with files backups.  And since I’ll be doing my dissertation this year, using Git would help me a lot for my backups and I’m grateful to Nayar for the great explanation." -- Swan-Iyah on MSCC meetup : Version Controls Hopefully, I'll be able to get some other sources - personal blogs preferred - on our meeting. Geeks, thank you so much for those encouraging comments. It's really great to experience that we, all members of the MSCC, are doing the right thing to get more IT information out, and to help each other to improve and evolve in our professional careers. Our agenda of the day Honestly, we had a bumpy start... First, I was battling a little bit with the movable room divider in order to maximize the space. I mean, we had 24 RSVPs and usually there might additional people coming along. Then, for what ever reason, we were facing power outages - actually twice in short periods. Not too good for the projector after all, but hey it went smooth for the rest of the time being. And last but not least... our first speaker Nayar got stuck somewhere on the road. ;-) Anyway, not a real show-stopper and we used the time until Nayar's arrival to introduce ourselves a little bit. It is always important for me to get to know the "newbies" a little bit, and as a result we had lots of students of university - first year, second year and recent graduates - among them. Surprisingly, none of them was ever in contact with version control systems at all. I mean, this is a shocking discovery! Similar to the ability of touch-typing I'd say that being able to use (and master) any kind of version control system is compulsory in any job in the IT industry. Seriously, I'm wondering what is being taught during the classes on the campus. All of them have to work on semester assessments or final projects, even in small teams of 2-4 people. That's the perfect occasion to get started with VCS. Already in this phase, we had great input from more experienced VCS users, like Sean, Avinash and myself. git - a modern approach to VCS - Nayar What a tour! Nayar gave us the full round of git from start to finish, even touching some more advanced techniques. First, he started to explain about the importance of version control systems as an essential tool for software developers, even working alone on a project, and the ability to have a kind of "time machine" that allows you to inspect and revert to a previous version of source code at any time. Then he showed how easy it is to install git on an Ubuntu based system but also mentioned that git is literally available for any operating system, like Windows, Mac OS X and of course other Linux distributions. Next, he showed us how to set the initial configuration values of user name and email address which simplifies the daily usage of the git client while working with your repositories. Then he initialised and added a new repository for some local development of a blogging software. All commands were done using the command line interface (CLI) so that they can be repeated on any system as reference. The syntax and the procedure is always the same, and Nayar clearly mentioned this to the attendees. Now, having a git repository in place it was about time to work on some "important" changes on the blogging software - just for the sake of demonstrating the ease of use and power of git. One interesting question came very early: "How many commands do we have to learn? It looks quite difficult at the moment" - Well, rest assured that during daily development circles you will need less than 10 git commands on a regular base: git add, commit, push, pull, checkout, and merge And Nayar demo'd all of them. Much to the delight of everyone he also showed gitk which is the git repository browser. It's an UI tool to display changes in a repository or a selected set of commits. This includes visualizing the commit graph, showing information related to each commit, and the files in the trees of each revision. Using gitk to display and browse information of a local git repository And last but not least, we took advantage of the internet connectivity and reached out to various online portals offering git hosting for free. Nayar showed us how to push the local repository into a remote system on github. Showing the web-based git browser and history handling, and then also explained and demo'd on how to connect to existing online repositories in order to get access to either your own source code or other people's open source projects. Next to github, we also spoke about bitbucket and gitlab as potential online platforms for your projects. Have a look at the conditions and details about their free service packages and what you can get additionally as a paying customer. Usually, you already get a lot of services for up to five users for free but there might be other important aspects that might have an impact on your decision. Anyways, moving git-based repositories between systems is a piece of cake, and changing online platforms is possible at any stage of your development. Visual Studio Online (VSO) - Jochen Well, Nayar literally covered all elements of working with git during his session, including the use of external online platforms. So, what would be the advantage of talking about Visual Studio Online (VSO)? First of all, VSO is "just another" online platform for hosting and managing git repositories on remote systems, equivalent to github, bitbucket, or any other web site. At the moment (of writing), Microsoft also provides a free package of up to five users / developers on a git repository but there is more in that package. Of course, it is related to software development on the Windows systems and the bonds are tightened towards the use of Visual Studio but out of experience you are absolutely not restricted to that. Connecting a Linux or Mac OS X machine with a git client or an integrated development environment (IDE) like Eclipse or Xcode works as smooth as expected. So, why should one opt in for VSO? Well, one of the main aspects that I would like to mention here is that VSO integrates the Application Life Cycle Methodology (ALM) of Microsoft in their platform. Meaning that you get agile project management with Backlogs, Sprints, Burn-down charts as well as the ability to track tasks, bug reports and work items next to collaborative team chats. It's the whole package of agile development you'll get. And, something I mentioned briefly during the begin of our meeting, VSO gives you the possibility of an automated continuous integrated (CI) process which builds and can run tests of your source code after each commit of changes. Having a proper CI strategy is also part of the Clean Code Developer practices - on Level Green actually -, and not only simplifies your life as a software developer but also reduces the sources of potential errors. Seamless integration and automated deployment between Microsoft Azure Web Sites and git repository But my favourite feature is the seamless continuous deployment to Microsoft Azure. Especially, while working on web projects it's absolutely astounishing that as soon as you commit your chances it just takes a couple of seconds until your modifications are deployed and available on your Azure-hosted web sites. Upcoming Events and networking Due to the adjusted times, everybody was kind of hungry and we didn't follow up on networking or upcoming events - very unfortunate to my opinion and this will have an impact on future planning of our meetups. Because I rather would like to see more conversations during and at the end of our meetings than everyone just packing their laptops, bags and accessories and rush off to grab some food. I was hoping to get some information regarding this year's Code Challenge - supposedly to be organised during July? Maybe someone could leave a comment on that - but I couldn't get any updates. Well, I'll keep digging... In case that you would like to get more into git and how to use it effectively, please check out Knowledge 7's upcoming course on "Effective git". Thanks Avinash for your vital input into today's conversation and I'm looking forward to get a grip on your book title very soon. My resume of the day Do not work in IT without any kind of version control system! Seriously, without a VCS in place you're doing it wrong. It's like driving a car without seat belts attached or riding your bike without safety helmet. You don't do that! End of discussion. ;-) Nowadays, having access to free (as in cost) tools to install on your machine and numerous online platforms to host your source code for free for up to five users it's a no-brainer to get yourself familiar with VCS. Today's sessions gave a good overview on how to start using git and how to connect to various remote services like github or VSO.

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  • JavaOne pictures and Community Commentary on JCP Awards

    - by heathervc
    We posted some pictures from JCP related events at JavaOne 2012 on the JCP Facebook page today.  The 2012 JCP Program Award winners and some of the nominees responded to the community recognition of their achievements during some of the JCP events last week.     “Our job on the EC is to balance the need of innovation – so we don’t standardize too early, or too late. We try to find that sweet spot that makes innovation and standardization work together, and not against each other.”- Ben Evans, CEO of jClarity and Executive Committee (EC) representative of the London Java Community, 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Winner“SouJava has been evangelizing the Java platform, promoting the Java ecosystem in Brazil, and contributing to JSRs for several years. It’s very gratifying to have our work recognized, on behalf of many developers and Java User Groups around the world. This really is the work of a large group of people, represented by the few that can be here tonight.”- Michael Santos, representative of SouJava, 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Winner "In the last years Credit Suisse has contributed to the development of Java EE specifications through participation in many customer advisory boards, through statements of requirements for extensions to the core Java related products in use, and active participation in JSRs. Winning the JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Award 2012 is very encouraging for our engagement and also demonstrates the level of expertise and commitment to drive the evolution of Java. Victor Grazi is happy and honored to receive this award." - Susanne Cech Previtali, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Credit Suisse, accepting award for 2012 JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Winner "Managing a JSR is difficult. There are so many decisions to be made and so many good and varied opinions, you never really know if you have decided correctly. The key to success is transparency and collaboration. I am truly humbled by receiving this award, there are so many other active JSRs.” Victor added that going forward in the JCP EC, they would like to simplify and open the process of participation – being addressed in the JCP.Next initiative of the JCP EC. "We would also like to encourage the engagement of universities, professors and students – as an important part of the Java community. While innovation is the lifeblood of our community and industry, without strong standards and compatibility requirements, we all end up in a maze of technology where everything is slightly different and doesn’t quite work with everything else." Victo Grazi, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Credit Suisse, 2012 JCP Outstanding Spec Lead Winner“I am very pleased, of course, to accept this award, but the credit really should go to all of those who have participated in the work of the JCP, while pushing for changes in the way it operates.  JCP.Next represents three JSRs. The first two are done, but the final step, JSR 358, is the complicated one, and it will bring in the lawyers. Just to give you an idea of what we’re dealing with, it affects licensing, intellectual property, patents, implementations not based on the Reference Implementation (RI), the role of the RI, compatibility policy, possible changes to the Technical Compatibility Kit (TCK), transparency, where do individuals fit in, open source, and more.”- Patrick Curran, JCP Chair, Spec Lead on JCP.Next JSRs (JSR 348, JSR 355 and JSR 358), 2012 JCP Most Significant JSR Winner“I’m especially glad to see the JCP community recognize JCP.Next for its importance. The governance work it represents is KEY to moving the Java platform forward and the success of the technology.”- John Rizzo, Executive Committee (EC) representative of Aplix Corporation, JSR Expert Group Member “I am deeply honored to be nominated. I had the privilege to receive two awards on behalf of Expert Groups and Spec Leads two years ago. But this time, I am nominated personally, which values my own contribution to the JCP, and of course, participation in JSRs and the EC work. I’m a fan of Agile Principles and Values Working. Being an Agile Coach and Consultant, I use it for some of the biggest EC Member companies and projects. It fuels my ability to help the JCP become more agile, lean and transparent as part of the JCP.Next effort.” - Werner Keil, Individual Executive Committee (EC) Member, a 2012 JCP Member/Participant of the Year Nominee, JSR Expert Group Member“The JCP ever has been some kind of institution for me,” Markus said. “If in technical doubt, I go there, look for the specifications of the implementation I work with at the moment and verify what I had observed. Since the beginning of my Java journey more than 12 years back now, I always had a strong relationship with the JCP. Shaping the future of a technology by joining the JCP – giving feedback and contributing to the road ahead through individual JSRs – that brings you to a whole new level.”Calling himself, “the new kid on the block,” he explained that for years he was afraid to join the JCP and contribute. But in reality, “Every single one of the big names I meet from the different Expert Groups is a nice person. People you can actually work with,” he says. “And nobody blames you for things you don't know. As long as you are committed and bring what is worth the most: passion, experiences and the desire to make a difference.” - Markus Eisele, a 2012 JCP Member of the Year Nominee, JSR Expert Group MemberCongratulations again to all of the nominees and winners of the JCP Program Awards.  Next year, we will add another award for the group of JUG members (not an entire JUG) that makes the best contribution to the Adopt-a-JSR program.  Let us know if you have other suggestions or improvements.

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  • Data and Secularism

    - by kaleidoscope
    Ever since we’ve been using Data we’ve been religious. Religious about the way we represent it and equally religious about the way we access it. Be it plain old SQL, DAO, ADO, ADO.Net and I am just referring to religions in MSFT world. A peek outside and I’d need a separate book to list out the Data faiths. Various application areas in networked computing are converging under the HTTP umbrella with a plausible transition to purist HTTP and in turn REST fuelled by the Web2.0 storm. It was time the Data access faiths also gave up the religious silos wrapped around our long worshipped data publishing and access methods. OData is the secular solution we have at hand today. It is an open protocol for sharing data. It can be exposed via REST. It is Open as in the Microsoft Open Specification Promise. This allows virtually everyone to build Data Services for any runtime. OData is one of the key standards for Data publishing/subscribing on Microsoft Codename Dallas. For us .Netters OData data sources can be exposed/consumed via WCF Data Services and the process is very simple, elegant and intuitive. Applications exposing OData Services Sharepoint 2010 IBM Web Sphere Microsoft SQL Azure Windows Azure Table Storage SQL Server Reporting Services   Live OData Services Netflix Open Science Data Initiative Open Government Data Initiatives Northwind database exposed as OData Service and many others Some may prefer to call it commoditization of data, unification of data access strategies or any other sweet name. I for one will stick to my secular definition. :) Technorati Tags: Sarang,OData,MOSP

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  • BUILD 2013 Session&ndash;What&rsquo;s New In XAML

    - by Tim Murphy
    Originally posted on: http://geekswithblogs.net/tmurphy/archive/2013/06/27/build-2013-sessionndashwhatrsquos-new-in-xaml.aspx If ever there was a session that you felt like your head was going to explode, this one would do it.  Tim Heuer proceeded to try to fit as many of the changes and additions to XAML as he could in one hour. There were a number of improvements that struck me.  The first was the fact that we no longer need to put stack panels in the AppBar in order to add buttons.  This has been changed to a CommandBar which at the very least makes the markup read more cleanly.  Now if they would just bring this same improvement to Windows Phone we would be set. There was a lot of cheering at the beginning of his talk when he showed that there are now date time pickers.  I understand that it makes life easier, but I just couldn’t get that excited. The couple of features that did grab my attention being able to select a group of tags and then add an encapsulating tag such as a StackPanel around them and the fact that they have optimized XAML so that now runs on average 25% faster. I’d go crazy trying to list off all the improvements and new features so be sure to go and review the recording of the session. del.icio.us Tags: BUILD 2013,XAML,Windows 8.1

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  • Rescue overdue offshore projects and convince management to use automated tests

    - by oazabir
    I have published two articles on codeproject recently. One is a story where an offshore project was two months overdue, my friend who runs it was paying the team from his own pocket and he was drowning in ever increasing number of change requests and how we brainstormed together to come out of that situation. Tips and Tricks to rescue overdue projects Next one is about convincing management to go for automated test and give developers extra time per sprint, at the cost of reduced productivity for couple of sprints. It’s hard to negotiate this with even dev leads, let alone managers. Whenever you tell them - there’s going to be less features/bug fixes delivered for next 3 or 4 sprints because we want to automate the tests and reduce manual QA effort; everyone gets furious and kicks you out of the meeting. Especially in a startup where every sprint is jam packed with new features and priority bug fixes to satisfy various stakeholders, including the VCs, it’s very hard to communicate the benefits of automated tests across the board. Let me tell you of a story of one of my startups where I had the pleasure to argue on this and came out victorious. How to convince developers and management to use automated test instead of manual test If you like these, please vote for me!

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  • Change in Job Title and Responsibilities

    - by John Conwell
    I've spent the past 7 years focused primarily on code and database performance.  It's an area that I have a passion for, as well as a propensity.  But what I've found is that its very hard to change the culture of a development environment.  You can teach performance, you can encourage performance, you might see slight shift in how devs think about performance.  But without full management backing and support you wont get long lasting changes in the development culture.  And in the end, you are back to being the "Perf Guy", fixing performance design flaws, after the fact, one by one by one. Which is why last year I asked my boss to changed my title and responsibilities to more naturally align with the team I was working for.  So now I'm a Computing Research Engineer (vague, I know), researching in the field of Big Data analytics and visualization. I've found this change revitalizing and a lot of fun.  And given the nature of Big Data (its, um…big) the performance aspects are always ever present.

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  • So, "Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features"?

    - by Eduard Florinescu
    I saw the answer to this question: How does thinking on design patterns and OOP practices change in dynamic and weakly-typed languages? There it is a link to an article with an outspoken title: Are Design Patterns Missing Language Features. But where you can get snippets that seem very objective and factual and that can be verified from experience like: PaulGraham said "Peter Norvig found that 16 of the 23 patterns in Design Patterns were 'invisible or simpler' in Lisp." and a thing that confirms what I recently seen with people trying to simulate classes in javascript: Of course, nobody ever speaks of the "function" pattern, or the "class" pattern, or numerous other things that we take for granted because most languages provide them as built-in features. OTOH, programmers in a purely PrototypeOrientedLanguage? might well find it convenient to simulate classes with prototypes... I am taking into consideration also that design patterns are a communcation tool and because even with my limited experience participating in building applications I can see as an anti-pattern(ineffective and/or counterproductive) for example forcing a small PHP team to learn GoF patterns for small to medium intranet app, I am aware that scale, scope and purpose can determine what is effective and/or productive. I saw small commercial applications that mixed functional with OOP and still be maintainable, and I don't know if many would need for example in python to write a singleton but for me a simple module does the thing. patterns So are there studies or hands on experience shared that takes into consideration, all this, scale and scope of project, dynamics and size of the team, languages and technologies, so that you don't feel that a (difficult for some)design pattern is there just because there isn't a simpler way to do it or that it cannot be done by a language feature?

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  • What happened to Alan Cooper's Unified File Model?

    - by PAUL Mansour
    For a long time Alan Cooper (in the 3 versions of his book "About Face") has been promoting a "unified file model" to, among other things, dispense with what he calls the most idiotic message box ever invented - the one the pops up when hit the close button on an app or form saying "Do you want to discard your changes?" I like the idea and his arguments, but also have the knee-jerk reaction against it that most seasoned programmers and users have. While Cooper's book seems quite popular and respected, there is remarkably little discussion of this particular issue on the Web that I can find. Petter Hesselberg, the author of "Programming Industrial Strength Windows" mentions it but that seems about it. I have an opportunity to implement this in the (desktop) project I am working on, but face resistance by customers and co-workers, who are of course familiar with the MS Word and Excel way of doing things. I'm in a position to override their objections, but am not sure if I should. My questions are: Are there any good discussions of this that I have failed to find? Is anyone doing this in their apps? Is it a good idea that it is unfortunately not practical to implement until, say, Microsoft does it?

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