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  • SQL SERVER – SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective – TechEd 2012 India

    - by pinaldave
    TechEd India 2012 is just around the corner and I will be presenting there in two different sessions. On the very first day of this event, my presentation will be all about SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective. The dictionary tells us that a “misconception” means a view or opinion that is incorrect and is based on faulty thinking or understanding. In SQL Server, there are so many misconceptions. In fact, when I hear some of these misconceptions, I feel like fainting at that very moment! Seriously, at one time, I came across the scenario where instead of using INSERT INTO…SELECT, the developer used CURSOR believing that cursor is faster (duh!). Here is the link the blog post related to this. Pinal and Vinod in 2009 I have been presenting in TechEd India for last three years. This is my fourth opportunity to present a technical session on SQL Server. Just like the previous years, I decided to present something different. Here is a novelty of this year: I will be presenting this session with Vinod Kumar. Vinod Kumar and I have a great synergy when we work together. So far, we have written one SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers book and 2 video courses: (1) SQL Server Questions and Answers (2) SQL Server Performance: Indexing Basics. Pinal and Vinod in 2011 When we sat together and started building an outline for this course, we had many options in mind for this tango session. However, we have decided that we will make this session as lively as possible while keeping it natural at the same time. We know our flow and we know our conversation highlight, but we do not know what exactly each of us is going to present. We have decided to challenge each other on stage and push each other’s knowledge to the verge. We promise that the session will be entertaining with lots of SQL Server trivia, tips and tricks. Here are the challenges that I’ll take on: I will puzzle Vinod with my difficult questions I will present such misconception that Vinod will have no resolution for it. I need your help.  Will you help me stump Vinod? If yes, come and attend our session and join me to prove that together we are superior (a friendly brain clash, but we must win!). SQL Server enthusiasts and SQL Server fans are going to have gala time at #TechEdIn as we have a very solid lineup of the speaker and extremely interesting sessions at TechEdIn. Read the complete blog post of Vinod. Session Details Title: SQL Server Misconceptions and Resolution – A Practical Perspective (Add to Calendar) Abstract: “Earth is flat”! – An ancient common misconception, which has been proven incorrect as we progressed in modern times. In this session we will see various database misconceptions prevailing and their resolution with the aid of the demos. In this unique session audience will be part of the conversation and resolution. Date and Time: March 21, 2012, 15:15 to 16:15 Location: Hotel Lalit Ashok - Kumara Krupa High Grounds, Bengaluru – 560001, Karnataka, India. Add to Calendar Please submit your questions in the comments area and I will be for sure discussing them during my session. If I pick your question to discuss during my session, here is your gift I commit right now – SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers Book. Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.sqlauthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Interview Questions and Answers, SQL Performance, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: TechEd, TechEdIn

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  • SEO: Nested List vs List, Split Over Divs vs Definition List

    - by Jon P
    From an SEO perspective which, if any, is better: Option 1: Nested lists with h2 tags <ul id="mainpoints"> <li><h2>Powerful Analysis</h2> <ul> <li>Charting and indicators</li> <li>Daily trading signals</li> <li>Company health checks</li> </ul> </li> <li><h2>World Market Data</h2> <ul> [List Items removed for brevity] </ul> </li> <li><h2>Daily Market Data</h2> <ul> [List Items removed for brevity] </ul> </li> </ul> Option 2: Divs with h2 and lists <div id="mainpoints"> <div> <h2>Powerful Analysis</h2> <ul> <li>Charting and indicators</li> <li>Daily trading signals</li> <li>Company health checks</li> </ul> </div> <div> <h2>World Market Data</h2> <ul> [List Items removed for brevity] </ul> </div> <div> <h2>Daily Market Data</h2> <ul> [List Items removed for brevity] </ul> </div> </div> Option 3: Definition List <dl id="mainpoints"> <dt>Powerful Analysis</dt> <dd>- Charting and indicators</dd> <dd>- Daily trading signals</dd> <dd>- Company health checks</dd> <dt>World Market Data</dt> [List Items removed for brevity] <dt>Daily Market Data</dt> [List Items removed for brevity] </dl> My instincts tell me that semanticaly the pure list options (1 & 3) are the best and that h2 may be more SEO friendly (1 & 2) which would point to option 1 as being the best option. I do love the lean makeup of the definition list but will I take an SEO hit by losing the h2 tags? Before anyone asks, h2 is not valid markup in a dt tag. Are my instincts right with a nested list being the way to go?

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  • How do I fix my resolution after Directx install through Steam?

    - by Justin
    I'm a bit long-winded so see bottom for quick version and specs. Friendly Hello: Hello all on these askUbuntu pages, I just recently built my own computer and decided to switch to Ubuntu for the extra coolness. I've been learning a lot through all this, and mostly been trying to figure out issues on my own (read: Google searches). However, I couldn't seem to find others with this problem so I've come here for help. Detailed Recount: So I just used WINE and WINETRICKS to install Steam. All went well and it worked. Then I went to trying a game out. I remembered that Orcs Must Die! worked from http://www.steamgamesonlinux.com/ so I tried that out. After selecting to download it, that's when the problem occurred. The screen suddenly zoomed in!!! I think it's the resolution right? Half the screen is cut off and I can't see parts of the right side of windows. My theory is that this is due to Direct X being installed through Steam, as Steam automatically installed it as I chose to download the game. It didn't even ask me to install Direct X or not ): It all happened so fast. This all being said, the game works fine! It looks a little strange, as if the resolution was off, but it plays just fine. What I did so far: Restarted my computer. Didn't work -_- Researched Steam installing DirectX on Ubuntu then messing up resolution and couldn't really find anything. Researched uninstalling DirectX from Ubuntu but only found uninstalling DirectX after having been installed with Wine, not through Steam. Got mad and ate my feelings. Tried "xrandr -s 0" but it didn't do anything. Ran xrandr alone and terminal showed this: Screen 0: minimum 8 x 8, current 640 x 480, maximum 16384 x 16384 DVI-I-0 connected 640x480+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm 640x480 59.9*+ 320x240 120.1 DVI-I-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) HDMI-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DVI-D-0 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) DP-1 disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) About now I was mad so I played Odin's Sphere then took a nap. Back to it! I entered the following: xrandr --output DVI-I-0 --mode 1024x768 But I was met with this message: xrandr: cannot find mode 1024x768 I get the same messages for 800x600, 1400x1050, and seemingly any other combination of numbers. I then tried Going into System Settings then Displays, then playing around in there. My Resolution is set to 640x480 and there are no other options for me to choose from. Rotation has Normal, Clockwise, Counter Clockwise, and 180 Degrees. It's set to Normal and I haven't messed with that. Launcher Placement has Unknown and All Displays as its two options. It's set to Unknown, but moving it to All Displays doesn't seem to do anything. Finally, when I click Detect Displays, nothing seems to happen. Quick Version: Linux noob. Steam installed with Wine and Winetricks. Steam downloaded and installed game + DirectX. Resolution messed up now (I think; pretty sure), can't fix it, very annoying, no idea what's going on, halp! Specs: Ubuntu Version 12.04 Wine Version 1.4.1 Have not changed any settings in Wine Using Winetricks Graphics Card: http://www.gigabyte.com/products/pro...px?pid=4361#sp Drivers: Proprietary (Installing those were a LOT of fun) Also let it be known that I have a DVI to VGA cord running from my Graphics card to my monitor. If any more information is needed I am ready to report. Thank You: Thanks a lot for your help and all the work you do to support noob ubuntuers like me (:

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 26, 2011 -- #1036

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this all-submittal Issue: XamlNinja, Kevin Dockx, Steve Wortham, Andrea Boschin, Mick Norman, Colin Eberhardt, and Rudi Grobler(-2-, -3-, -4-, -5-). Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Getting an invalid cross-thread exception in Silverlight?" Kevin Dockx WP7: "WP7 Contrib – the last messenger" XamlNinja ISO: "How many files are too many files for isolated storage?" Mick Norman Shoutouts: Telerik announced a free WP7 Webinars series that you probably don't want to miss: Join Us for the Special Free Windows Phone 7 Webinars Series. Guest lecturers - Shawn Wildermuth and Mark Arteaga From SilverlightCream.com: WP7 Contrib – the last messenger XamlNinja has a great post up extending Laurent's IMessenger to deal with a tricky issue of trying to fire a message from one VM to another even if the 2nd VM isn't alive yet... oh, and this is in WP7Contrib, so go grab it! Getting an invalid cross-thread exception in Silverlight? Kevin Dockx has a solution to a problem we've all had... the 'invalid cross-thread exception' ... and the solution is even for those of us trying to do this in a VM... cool and easy solution, Kevin! Mastering Storyboards One Mistake at a Time Steve Wortham is back with a tutorial with a great title :) ... check out the progression from one success to another in this picture/title viewer ... don't miss the very end where he has the control rolled up into a CaptionedImageHyperlink, and a link to download it! Windows Phone 7 - Part #2: Your First Application Andrea Boschin has part 2 of his SilverlightShow WP7 series up. Lots of good intro material here on the manifest file and app.xaml ... he even gets into the ApplicationBar, phone orientation, and the Metro theme. How many files are too many files for isolated storage? Mick Norman alerted me to his blog early this morning, and this is his latest post... interesting tests of how many files are too many for ISO on your WP7... and I have to admit... he's stuffing a boatload of them out there in these tests! ... great info Mick! and thanks for the links. A Navigator Control For Visiblox Time Series Charts Colin Eberhardt's latest post is about creating an interactive navigator for large time series datasets in Visiblox charts.... check the images at the top of the post, and it'll be obvious :) ... very cool stuff. MVVM Frameworks with WP7 support Rudi Grobler has been very busy and if you check the dates, these posts are all in a day or two! This first highlights two contenders for MVVM on WP7: Caliburn and MVVMLight... both well-supported... quick intro to each followed by good links out to the author's sites Reading barcodes from your WP7 device Rudi Grobler also has a cool post up on reading barcodes with your WP7... he's using the ZXing Barcode Scanning Library, and makes quick work of the job. Taking Sterling for a Test-Drive Rudi Grobler has a quick intro to Sterlink, Jeremy Likness' ISO database for Silverlight up... quickly taking care of writing and reading back data. SQLite on WP7 After his discussion of Sterling, Rudi Grobler is now demonstrating the use of SQLite that has been ported to WP7. Check out his demo code... looks pretty easy to use. Hacking the WP7 Camera (The basics) Rudi Grobler's latest post is on getting direct access to the camera on WP7... be sure to do all the downloads and check out the external links he has. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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  • asynchrony is viral

    - by Daniel Moth
    It is becoming hard to write code today without introducing some form of asynchrony and, if you are using .NET (e.g. for Windows Phone 8 or Windows Store apps), that means sooner or later you have to await something and mark your method as async. My most recent examples included introducing speech recognition in my Translator By Moth phone app where I had to await mySpeechRecognizerUI.RecognizeWithUIAsync() and when moving that code base to a Windows Store project just to show a MessageBox I had to await myMessageDialog.ShowAsync(). Any time you need to invoke an asynchronous method in your code, you have a choice to make: kick off the operation but don’t wait for it to complete (otherwise known as fire-and-forget), synchronously wait for it to complete (which will entail blocking, which can be bad, especially on a UI thread), or asynchronously wait for it to complete before continuing on with the rest of the method’s work. In most cases, you want the latter, and the await keyword makes that trivial to implement.  When you use the magical await keyword in front of an API call, then you typically have to make additional changes to your code: This await usage is within a method of course, and now you have to annotate that method with async. Furthermore, you have to change the return type of the method you just annotated so it returns a Task (if it previously returned void), or Task<myOldReturnType> (if it previously returned myOldReturnType). Note that if it returns void, in some cases you could cheat and stop there. Furthermore, any method that called this method you just annotated with async will now also be invoking an asynchronous operation, so you have to make that change in the body of the caller method to introduce the await keyword before the call to the method. …you guessed it, you now have to change this caller method to be annotated with async and have its return types tweaked... …and it goes on virally… At some point you reach the root of your user code, e.g. a GUI event handler, and whoever calls that void method can already deal with the fact that you marked it as async and the viral introduction of the keywords stops there… This is all wonderful progress and a very powerful mechanism, and I just wish someone had written a refactoring tool to take care of this… anyone? I mentioned earlier that you have a choice when invoking an asynchronous operation. If the first time you encounter this you wish to localize the impact of all these changes and essentially try to turn the asynchronous behavior into synchronous by blocking - don't! For reasons why you don't want to do that, read Toub's excellent blog post (and check out the rest of his blog with gems on async programming starting with the Async FAQ). Just embrace the pattern knowing that when you use one instance of an await, you'll propagate the change all the way to the root user code method, e.g. typically an event handler. Related aside: I just finished re-writing my MessageBox wrapper class for Phone projects, including making it work in Windows Store projects, and it does expect you to use it with an await :-). I'll share that in an upcoming post for those of you that have the same need… Comments about this post by Daniel Moth welcome at the original blog.

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  • Keepin’ It Simple with StorageTek SL150

    - by Kristin Rose
    Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Are your customers archive and data protection environments getting out of hand?  Are they looking for a little simplicity in their lives? How about some scalability? Or are they looking for a way to save on capital and operational expenses? If you answered yes to any of these, then  Oracle's new StorageTek SL150 Modular Tape Library is the product for you. It beats the competition in terms of simplicity, scalability and savings, and provides some seriously wallet friendly revenue opportunities for you. If the long-term service annuities on the SL150 aren’t convincing enough, then the resale margins, rebates and follow-on revenue from modular upgrades will be!  The SL150 simplifies StorageTek’s tape portfolio by replacing three products with one scalable solution that  provides an entry point for repeat business within accounts. The SL150 expands your potential storage customer base to smaller companies with low cost, simple upgrades and streamlined management that help alleviate key customer pain points. With the SL150, your customers will be able to simplify growth of their archive and data protection environments with small entry configurations and 10x growth, something that would require multiple box swaps across up to three product categories with competitive products. With the SL150, Oracle can help you provide greater customer satisfaction with  Simplicity, Scalability and Savings! We know you’re probably wondering how you can get started and sell this new and magnificent product… Well, look no further because the only thing you need to do is complete the SL150 Guided Learning Paths (GLPs). For some extra insight, watch the video below on the new StorageTek SL150 modular tape library, and don’t forget to ‘tweet’ this post, and share it on Facebook to spread the good news! Normal 0 false false false EN-US X-NONE X-NONE MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-priority:99; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:11.0pt; font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} Wishing you Simplicity, Scalability and Savings, The OPN Communications Team

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  • Changing the action of a hyperlink in a Silverlight RichTextArea

    - by Marc Schluper
    The title of this post could also have been "Move over Hyperlink, here comes Actionlink" or "Creating interactive text in Silverlight." But alas, there can be only one. Hyperlinks are very useful. However, they are also limited because their action is fixed: browse to a URL. This may have been adequate at the start of the Internet, but nowadays, in web applications, the one thing we do not want to happen is a complete change of context. In applications we typically like a hyperlink selection to initiate an action that updates a part of the screen. For instance, if my application has a map displayed with some text next to it, the map would react to a selection of a hyperlink in the text, e.g. by zooming in on a location and displaying additional locational information in a popup. In this way, the text becomes interactive text. It is quite common that one company creates and maintains websites for many client companies. To keep maintenance cost low, it is important that the content of these websites can be updated by the client companies themselves, without the need to involve a software engineer. To accommodate this scenario, we want the author of the interactive text to configure all hyperlinks (without writing any code). In a Silverlight RichTextArea, the default action of a Hyperlink is the same as a traditional hyperlink, but it can be changed: if the Command property has a value then upon a click event this command is called with the value of the CommandParameter as parameter. How can we let the author of the text specify a command for each hyperlink in the text, and how can we let an application react properly to a hyperlink selection event? We are talking about any command here. Obviously, the application would recognize only a specific set of commands, with well defined parameters, but the approach we take here is generic in the sense that it pertains to the RichTextArea and any command. So what do we require? We wish that: As a text author, I can configure the action of a hyperlink in a (rich) text without writing code; As a text author, I can persist the action of a hyperlink with the text; As a reader of persisted text, I can click a hyperlink and the configured action will happen; As an application developer, I can configure a control to use my application specific commands. In an excellent introduction to the RichTextArea, John Papa shows (among other things) how to persist a text created using this control. To meet our requirements, we can create a subclass of RichTextArea that uses John's code and allows plugging in two command specific components: one to prompt for a command definition, and one to execute the command. Since both of these plugins are application specific, our RichTextArea subclass should not assume anything about them except their interface. public interface IDefineCommand { void Prompt(string content, // the link content Action<string, object> callback); // the method called to convey the link definition } public interface IPerformCommand : ICommand {} The IDefineCommand plugin receives the content of the link (the text visible to the reader) and displays some kind of control that allows the author to define the link. When that's done, this (possibly changed) content string is conveyed back to the RichTextArea, together with an object that defines the command to execute when the link is clicked by the reader of the published text. The IPerformCommand plugin simply implements System.Windows.Input.ICommand. Let's use MEF to load the proper plugins. In the example solution there is a project that contains rudimentary implementations of these. The IDefineCommand plugin simply prompts for a command string (cf. a command line or query string), and the IPerformCommand plugin displays a MessageBox showing this command string. An actual application using this extended RichTextArea would have its own set of commands, each having their own parameters, and hence would provide more user friendly application specific plugins. Nonetheless, in any case a command can be persisted as a string and hence the two interfaces defined above suffice. For a Visual Studio 2010 solution, see my article on The Code Project.

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  • WCF REST Service Activation Errors when AspNetCompatibility is enabled

    - by Rick Strahl
    I’m struggling with an interesting problem with WCF REST since last night and I haven’t been able to track this down. I have a WCF REST Service set up and when accessing the .SVC file it crashes with a version mismatch for System.ServiceModel: Server Error in '/AspNetClient' Application. Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.Source Error: An unhandled exception was generated during the execution of the current web request. Information regarding the origin and location of the exception can be identified using the exception stack trace below. Stack Trace: [TypeLoadException: Could not load type 'System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler' from assembly 'System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089'.] System.RuntimeTypeHandle.GetTypeByName(String name, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMarkHandle stackMark, Boolean loadTypeFromPartialName, ObjectHandleOnStack type) +0 System.RuntimeTypeHandle.GetTypeByName(String name, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark, Boolean loadTypeFromPartialName) +95 System.RuntimeType.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase, Boolean reflectionOnly, StackCrawlMark& stackMark) +54 System.Type.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase) +65 System.Web.Compilation.BuildManager.GetType(String typeName, Boolean throwOnError, Boolean ignoreCase) +69 System.Web.Configuration.HandlerFactoryCache.GetTypeWithAssert(String type) +38 System.Web.Configuration.HandlerFactoryCache.GetHandlerType(String type) +13 System.Web.Configuration.HandlerFactoryCache..ctor(String type) +19 System.Web.HttpApplication.GetFactory(String type) +81 System.Web.MaterializeHandlerExecutionStep.System.Web.HttpApplication.IExecutionStep.Execute() +223 System.Web.HttpApplication.ExecuteStep(IExecutionStep step, Boolean& completedSynchronously) +184 Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:4.0.30319; ASP.NET Version:4.0.30319.1 What’s really odd about this is that it crashes only if it runs inside of IIS (it works fine in Cassini) and only if ASP.NET Compatibility is enabled in web.config:<serviceHostingEnvironment aspNetCompatibilityEnabled="true" multipleSiteBindingsEnabled="true" /> Arrrgh!!!!! After some experimenting and some help from Glenn Block and his team mates I was able to track down the problem in ApplicationHost.config. Specifically the problem was that there were multiple *.svc mappings in the ApplicationHost.Config file and the older 2.0 runtime specific versions weren’t marked for the proper runtime. Because these handlers show up at the top of the list they execute first resulting in assembly load errors for the wrong version assembly. To fix this problem I ended up making a couple changes in applicationhost.config. On the machine level root’s Handler mappings I had an entry that looked like this:<add name="svc-Integrated" path="*.svc" verb="*" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" preCondition="integratedMode" /> and it needs to be changed to this:<add name="svc-Integrated" path="*.svc" verb="*" type="System.ServiceModel.Activation.HttpHandler, System.ServiceModel, Version=3.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b77a5c561934e089" preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv2.0" />Notice the explicit runtime version assignment in the preCondition attribute which is key to keep ASP.NET 4.0 from executing that handler. The key here is that the runtime version needs to be set explicitly so that the various *.svc handlers don’t fire only in the order defined which in case of a .NET 4.0 app with the original setting would result in an incompatible version of System.ComponentModel to load.What was really hard to track this down is that even when looking in the debugger when launching the Web app, the AppDomain assembly loads showed System.ServiceModel V4.0 starting up just fine. Apparently the ASP.NET runtime load occurs at a different point and that’s when things break.So how did this break? According to the Microsoft folks it’s some older tools that got installed that change the default service handlers. There’s a blog entry that points at this problem with more detail:http://blogs.iis.net/webtopics/archive/2010/04/28/system-typeloadexception-for-system-servicemodel-activation-httpmodule-in-asp-net-4.aspxNote that I tried running aspnet_regiis and that did not fix the problem for me. I had to manually change the entries in applicationhost.config.   © Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in AJAX   ASP.NET  WCF  

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  • Backing up my Windows Home Server to the Cloud&hellip;

    - by eddraper
    Ok, here’s my scenario: Windows Home Server with a little over 3TB of storage.  This includes many years of our home network’s PC backups, music, videos, etcetera. I’d like to get a backup off-site, and the existing APIs and apps such as CloudBerry Labs WHS Backup service are making it easy.  Now, all it’s down to is vendor and the cost of the actual storage.   So,  I thought I’d take a lazy Saturday morning and do some research on this and get the ball rolling.  What I discovered stunned me…   First off, the pricing for just about everything was loaded with complexity.  I learned that it wasn’t just about storage… it was about network usage, requests, sites, replication, and on and on. I really don’t see this as rocket science.  I have a disk image.  I want to put it in the cloud.  I’m not going to be be using it but once daily for incremental backups.  Sounds like a common scenario.  Yes, if “things get real” and my server goes down, I will need to bring down a lot of data and utilize a fair amount of vendor infrastructure.  However, this may never happen.  Offsite storage is an insurance policy.   The complexity of the cost structures, perhaps by design, create an environment where it’s incredibly hard to model bottom line costs and compare vendor all-up pricing.  As it is a “lazy Saturday morning,” I’m not in the mood for such antics and I decide to shirk the endeavor entirely.  Thus, I decided to simply fire up calc.exe and do some a simple arithmetic model based on price per GB.  I shuddered at the results.  Certainly something was wrong… did I misplace a decimal point?  Then I discovered CloudBerry’s own calculator.   Nope, I hadn’t misplaced those decimals after all.  Check it out (pricing based on 3174 GB):   Amazon S3 $398.00 per month $4761 per year Azure $396.75 per month $4761 per year Google $380.88 per month $4570.56 per year   Conclusion: Rampant crack smoking at vendors.  Seriously.  Out. Of. Their. Minds. Now, to Amazon’s credit, vision, and outright common sense, they had one offering which directly addresses my scenario:   Amazon Glacier $31.74 per month $380.88 per year   hmmm… It’s on the table.  Let’s see what it would cost to just buy some drives, an enclosure and cart them over to a friend’s house.   2 x 2TB Drives from NewEgg.com $199.99   Enclosure $39.99     $239.98   Carting data to back and forth to friend’s within walking distance pain   Leave drive unplugged at friend’s $0 for electricity   Possible data loss No way I can come and go every day.     I think I’ll think on this a bit more…

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  • Is Microsoft&rsquo;s Cloud Bet Placed on the Ground?

    - by andrewbrust
    Today at the Unversity of Washington, Steve Ballmer gave a speech on Microsoft’s cloud strategy.  Significantly, Azure was only briefly mentioned and was not shown.  Instead, Ballmer spoke about what he called the five “dimensions” of the cloud, and used that as the basis for an almost philosophical discussion.  Ballmer opined on how the cloud should be distinguished from the Internet.as well as what the cloud will and should enable.  Ballmer worked hard to portray the cloud not as a challenger to Windows and PCs (as Google would certainly suggest it is) but  really as just the latest peripheral that adds value to PCs and devices. At one point during his speech, Ballmer said “We start with Windows at Microsoft.  It’s the most popular smart device on the planet.  And our design center for the future of Windows is to make it one of those smarter devices that the cloud really wants.”  I’m not sure I agree with Ballmer’s ambition here, but I must admit he’s taken the “software + services” concept and expanded on it in more consumer-friendly fashion. There were demos too.  For example, Blaise Aguera y Arcas reprised his Bing Maps demo from the TED conference held last month.  And Simon Atwell showed how Microsoft has teamed with Sky TV in the UK to turn Xbox into something that looks uncannily like Windows Media Center.  Specifically, an Xbox console app called Sky Player provides full access to Sky’s on-demand programming but also live TV access to an array of networks carried on its home TV service, complete with an on-screen programming guide.  Windows Phone 7 Series was shown quickly and Ballmer told us that while Windows Mobile/Phone 6.5 and earlier were designed for voice and legacy functionality, Windows Phone 7 Series is designed for the cloud. Over and over during Ballmer’s talk (and those of his guest demo presenters), the message was clear: Microsoft believes that client (“smart”) devices, and not mere HTML terminals, are the technologies to best deliver on the promise of the cloud.  The message was that PCs running Windows, game consoles and smart phones  whose native interfaces are Internet-connected offer the most effective way to utilize cloud capabilities.  Even the Bing Maps demo conveyed this message, because the advanced technology shown in the demo uses Silverlight (and thus the PCs computing power), and not AJAX (which relies only upon the browser’s native scripting and rendering capabilities) to produce the impressive interface shown to the audience. Microsoft’s new slogan, with respect to the cloud, is “we’re all in.”  Just as a Texas Hold ‘em player bets his entire stash of chips when he goes all in, so too is Microsoft “betting the company” on the cloud.  But it would seem that Microsoft’s bet isn’t on the cloud in a pure sense, and is instead on the power of the cloud to fuel new growth in PCs and other client devices, Microsoft’s traditional comfort zone.  Is that a bet or a hedge?  If the latter, is Microsoft truly all in?  I don’t really know.  I think many people would say this is a sucker’s bet.  But others would say it’s suckers who bet against Microsoft.  No matter what, the burden is on Microsoft to prove this contrarian view of the cloud is a sensible one.  To do that, they’ll need to deliver on cloud-connected device innovation.  And to do that, the whole company will need to feel that victory is crucial.  Time will tell.  And I expect to present progress reports in future posts.

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  • Is there a low carbon future for the retail industry?

    - by user801960
    Recently Oracle published a report in conjunction with The Future Laboratory and a global panel of experts to highlight the issue of energy use in modern industry and the serious need to reduce carbon emissions radically by 2050.  Emissions must be cut by 80-95% below the levels in 1990 – but what can the retail industry do to keep up with this? There are three key aspects to the retail industry where carbon emissions can be cut:  manufacturing, transport and IT.  Manufacturing Naturally, manufacturing is going to be a big area where businesses across all industries will be forced to make considerable savings in carbon emissions as well as other forms of pollution.  Many retailers of all sizes will use third party factories and will have little control over specific environmental impacts from the factory, but retailers can reduce environmental impact at the factories by managing orders more efficiently – better planning for stock requirements means economies of scale both in terms of finance and the environment. The John Lewis Partnership has made detailed commitments to reducing manufacturing and packaging waste on both its own-brand products and products it sources from third party suppliers. It aims to divert 95 percent of its operational waste from landfill by 2013, which is a huge logistics challenge.  The John Lewis Partnership’s website provides a large amount of information on its responsibilities towards the environment. Transport Similarly to manufacturing, tightening up on logistical planning for stock distribution will make savings on carbon emissions from haulage.  More accurate supply and demand analysis will mean less stock re-allocation after initial distribution, and better warehouse management will mean more efficient stock distribution.  UK grocery retailer Morrisons has introduced double-decked trailers to its haulage fleet and adjusted distribution logistics accordingly to reduce the number of kilometers travelled by the fleet.  Morrisons measures route planning efficiency in terms of cases moved per kilometre and has, over the last two years, increased the number of cases per kilometre by 12.7%.  See Morrisons Corporate Responsibility report for more information. IT IT infrastructure is often initially overlooked by businesses when considering environmental efficiency.  Datacentres and web servers often need to run 24/7 to handle both consumer orders and internal logistics, and this both requires a lot of energy and puts out a lot of heat.  Many businesses are lowering environmental impact by reducing IT system fragmentation in their offices, while an increasing number of businesses are outsourcing their datacenters to cloud-based services.  Using centralised datacenters reduces the power usage at smaller offices, while using cloud based services means the datacenters can be based in a more environmentally friendly location.  For example, Facebook is opening a massive datacentre in Sweden – close to the Arctic Circle – to reduce the need for artificial cooling methods.  In addition, moving to a cloud-based solution makes IT services more easily scaleable, reducing redundant IT systems that would still use energy.  In store, the UK’s Carbon Trust reports that on average, lighting accounts for 25% of a retailer’s electricity costs, and for grocery retailers, up to 50% of their electricity bill comes from refrigeration units.  On a smaller scale, retailers can invest in greener technologies in store and in their offices.  The report concludes that widely shared objectives of energy security, reduced emissions and continued economic growth are dependent on the development of a smart grid capable of delivering energy efficiency and demand response, as well as integrating renewable and variable sources of energy. The report is available to download from http://emeapressoffice.oracle.com/imagelibrary/detail.aspx?MediaDetailsID=1766I’d be interested to hear your thoughts on the report.   

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  • ASP.NET Routing not working on IIS 7.0

    - by Rick Strahl
    I ran into a nasty little problem today when deploying an application using ASP.NET 4.0 Routing to my live server. The application and its Routing were working just fine on my dev machine (Windows 7 and IIS 7.5), but when I deployed (Windows 2008 R1 and IIS 7.0) Routing would just not work. Every time I hit a routed url IIS would just throw up a 404 error: This is an IIS error, not an ASP.NET error so this doesn’t actually come from ASP.NET’s routing engine but from IIS’s handling of expressionless URLs. Note that it’s clearly falling through all the way to the StaticFile handler which is the last handler to fire in the typical IIS handler list. In other words IIS is trying to parse the extension less URL and not firing it into ASP.NET but failing. As I mentioned on my local machine this all worked fine and to make sure local and live setups match I re-copied my Web.config, double checked handler mappings in IIS and re-copied the actual application assemblies to the server. It all looked exactly matched. However no workey on the server with IIS 7.0!!! Finally, totally by chance, I remembered the runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests attribute flag on the modules key in web.config and set it to true: <system.webServer> <modules runAllManagedModulesForAllRequests="true"> <add name="ScriptCompressionModule" type="Westwind.Web.ScriptCompressionModule,Westwind.Web" /> </modules> </system.webServer> And lo and behold, Routing started working on the live server and IIS 7.0! This seems really obvious now of course, but the really tricky thing about this is that on IIS 7.5 this key is not necessary. So on my Windows 7 machine ASP.NET Routing was working just fine without the key set. However on IIS 7.0 on my live server the same missing setting was not working. On IIS 7.0 this key must be present or Routing will not work. Oddly on IIS 7.5 it appears that you can’t even turn off the behavior – setting runtAllManagedModuleForAllRequests="false" had no effect at all and Routing continued to work just fine even with the flag set to false, which is NOT what I would have expected. Kind of disappointing too that Windows Server 2008 (R1) can’t be upgraded to IIS 7.5. It sure seems like that should have been possible since the OS server core changes in R2 are pretty minor. For the future I really hope Microsoft will allow updating IIS versions without tying them explicitly to the OS. It looks like that with the release of IIS Express Microsoft has taken some steps to untie some of those tight OS links from IIS. Let’s hope that’s the case for the future – it sure is nice to run the same IIS version on dev and live boxes, but upgrading live servers is too big a deal to do just because an updated OS release came out. Moral of the story – never assume that your dev setup will work as is on the live setup. It took me forever to figure this out because I assumed that because my web.config on the local machine was fine and working and I copied all relevant web.config data to the server it can’t be the configuration settings. I was looking everywhere but in the .config file forever before getting desperate and remembering the flag when I accidentally checked the intellisense settings in the modules key. Never assume anything. The other moral is: Try to keep your dev machine and server OS’s in sync whenever possible. Maybe it’s time to upgrade to Windows Server 2008 R2 after all. More info on Extensionless URLs in IIS Want to find out more exactly on how extensionless Urls work on IIS 7? The check out  How ASP.NET MVC Routing Works and its Impact on the Performance of Static Requests which goes into great detail on the complexities of the process. Thanks to Jeff Graves for pointing me at this article – a great linked reference for this topic!© Rick Strahl, West Wind Technologies, 2005-2011Posted in IIS7  Windows  

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  • New January 2013 Release of the Ajax Control Toolkit

    - by Stephen.Walther
    I am super excited to announce the January 2013 release of the Ajax Control Toolkit! I have one word to describe this release and that word is “Charts” – we’ve added lots of great new chart controls to the Ajax Control Toolkit. You can download the new release directly from http://AjaxControlToolkit.CodePlex.com – or, just fire the following command from the Visual Studio Library Package Manager Console Window (NuGet): Install-Package AjaxControlToolkit You also can view the new chart controls by visiting the “live” Ajax Control Toolkit Sample Site. 5 New Ajax Control Toolkit Chart Controls The Ajax Control Toolkit contains five new chart controls: the AreaChart, BarChart, BubbleChart, LineChart, and PieChart controls. Here is a sample of each of the controls: AreaChart: BarChart: BubbleChart: LineChart: PieChart: We realize that people love to customize the appearance of their charts so all of the chart controls include properties such as color properties. The chart controls render the chart on the browser using SVG. The chart controls are compatible with any browser which supports SVG including Internet Explorer 9 and new and recent versions of Google Chrome, Mozilla Firefox, and Apple Safari. (If you attempt to display a chart on a browser which does not support SVG then you won’t get an error – you just won’t get anything). Updates to the HTML Sanitizer If you are using the HtmlEditorExtender on a public-facing website then it is really important that you enable the HTML Sanitizer to prevent Cross-Site Scripting (XSS) attacks. The HtmlEditorExtender uses the HTML Sanitizer by default. The HTML Sanitizer strips out any suspicious content (like JavaScript code and CSS expressions) from the HTML submitted with the HtmlEditorExtender. We followed the recommendations of OWASP and ha.ckers.org to identify suspicious content. We updated the HTML Sanitizer with this release to protect against new types of XSS attacks. The HTML Sanitizer now has over 220 unit tests. The Ajax Control Toolkit team would like to thank Gil Cohen who helped us identify and block additional XSS attacks. Change in Ajax Control Toolkit Version Format We ran out of numbers. The Ajax Control Toolkit was first released way back in 2006. In previous releases, the version of the Ajax Control Toolkit followed the format: Release Year + Date. So, the previous release was 60919 where 6 represented the 6th release year and 0919 represent September 19. Unfortunately, the AssembyVersion attribute uses a UInt16 data type which has a maximum size of 65,534. The number 70123 is bigger than 65,534 so we had to change our version format with this release. Fortunately, the AssemblyVersion attribute actually accepts four UInt16 numbers so we used another one. This release of the Ajax Control Toolkit is officially version 7.0123. This new version format should work for another 65,000 years. And yes, I realize that 7.0123 is less than 60,919, but we ran out of numbers. Summary I hope that you find the chart controls included with this latest release of the Ajax Control Toolkit useful. Let me know if you use them in applications that you build. And, let me know if you run into any issues using the new chart controls. Next month, back to improving the File Upload control – more exciting stuff.

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  • Speed up SQL Server queries with PREFETCH

    - by Akshay Deep Lamba
    Problem The SAN data volume has a throughput capacity of 400MB/sec; however my query is still running slow and it is waiting on I/O (PAGEIOLATCH_SH). Windows Performance Monitor shows data volume speed of 4MB/sec. Where is the problem and how can I find the problem? Solution This is another summary of a great article published by R. Meyyappan at www.sqlworkshops.com.  In my opinion, this is the first article that highlights and explains with working examples how PREFETCH determines the performance of a Nested Loop join.  First of all, I just want to recall that Prefetch is a mechanism with which SQL Server can fire up many I/O requests in parallel for a Nested Loop join. When SQL Server executes a Nested Loop join, it may or may not enable Prefetch accordingly to the number of rows in the outer table. If the number of rows in the outer table is greater than 25 then SQL will enable and use Prefetch to speed up query performance, but it will not if it is less than 25 rows. In this section we are going to see different scenarios where prefetch is automatically enabled or disabled. These examples only use two tables RegionalOrder and Orders.  If you want to create the sample tables and sample data, please visit this site www.sqlworkshops.com. The breakdown of the data in the RegionalOrders table is shown below and the Orders table contains about 6 million rows. In this first example, I am creating a stored procedure against two tables and then execute the stored procedure.  Before running the stored proceudre, I am going to include the actual execution plan. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Create procedure that pulls orders based on City --Do not forget to include the actual execution plan CREATE PROC RegionalOrdersProc @City CHAR(20) AS BEGIN DECLARE @OrderID INT, @OrderDetails CHAR(200) SELECT @OrderID = o.OrderID, @OrderDetails = o.OrderDetails       FROM RegionalOrders ao INNER JOIN Orders o ON (o.OrderID = ao.OrderID)       WHERE City = @City END GO SET STATISTICS time ON GO --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute the procedure with parameter SmallCity1 EXEC RegionalOrdersProc 'SmallCity1' GO After running the stored procedure, if we right click on the Clustered Index Scan and click Properties we can see the Estimated Numbers of Rows is 24.    If we right click on Nested Loops and click Properties we do not see Prefetch, because it is disabled. This behavior was expected, because the number of rows containing the value ‘SmallCity1’ in the outer table is less than 25.   Now, if I run the same procedure with parameter ‘BigCity’ will Prefetch be enabled? --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --Execute the procedure with parameter BigCity --We are using cached plan EXEC RegionalOrdersProc 'BigCity' GO As we can see from the below screenshot, prefetch is not enabled and the query takes around 7 seconds to execute. This is because the query used the cached plan from ‘SmallCity1’ that had prefetch disabled. Please note that even if we have 999 rows for ‘BigCity’ the Estimated Numbers of Rows is still 24.   Finally, let’s clear the procedure cache to trigger a new optimization and execute the procedure again. DBCC freeproccache GO EXEC RegionalOrdersProc 'BigCity' GO This time, our procedure runs under a second, Prefetch is enabled and the Estimated Number of Rows is 999.   The RegionalOrdersProc can be optimized by using the below example where we are using an optimizer hint. I have also shown some other hints that could be used as well. --Example provided by www.sqlworkshops.com --You can fix the issue by using any of the following --hints --Create procedure that pulls orders based on City DROP PROC RegionalOrdersProc GO CREATE PROC RegionalOrdersProc @City CHAR(20) AS BEGIN DECLARE @OrderID INT, @OrderDetails CHAR(200) SELECT @OrderID = o.OrderID, @OrderDetails = o.OrderDetails       FROM RegionalOrders ao INNER JOIN Orders o ON (o.OrderID = ao.OrderID)       WHERE City = @City       --Hinting optimizer to use SmallCity2 for estimation       OPTION (optimize FOR (@City = 'SmallCity2'))       --Hinting optimizer to estimate for the currnet parameters       --option (recompile)       --Hinting optimize not to use histogram rather       --density for estimation (average of all 3 cities)       --option (optimize for (@City UNKNOWN))       --option (optimize for UNKNOWN) END GO Conclusion, this tip was mainly aimed at illustrating how Prefetch can speed up query execution and how the different number of rows can trigger this.

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  • New Release of Oracle EPM (Enterprise Performance Management)

    - by Theresa Hickman
    I'm a huge fan of Hyperion products and consider Hyperion to be one of the best acquisitions Oracle has made in terms of applications. So I am really excited to talk about their latest release, Release 11.1.2 of the Oracle EPM System. This is EPM's largest release in 2 years, and it's jam-packed with new modules and features. In terms of brand new products, there are three: 1. Public Sector Planning and Budgeting meets the needs of public sector agencies, higher education, governments, etc. that have complex budget requirements. It supports position or employee-based budgeting and integrates with MS Office and your ERP ledgers to perform commitment control. 2. Hyperion Financial Close Management is a complete financial close solution that orchestrates the entire close process from subledgers and general ledger to financial reporting and disclosure submissions. And of course, it is integrated with GL systems and consolidation systems. I saw a demo of this and it looked pretty slick. They have this unified close calendar that looks like a regular calendar that gives each person participating in the close process a task list. It comes with a Gantt chart that shows the relationships and dependencies among closing tasks. There are dashboards to allow you to track the close progress and completion of tasks as well as perform trend analysis and see how much time is being spent on different activities in the close process. This gives you visibility that you never had before to understand where the bottlenecks are and where improvements could be made. I think what I liked best about this product was that it provides a central place for all participants to communicate their progress. When I worked as an Accountant, we used ad hoc tools, such as spreadsheets, Word documents, emails, and phone calls during the close process. I like the idea of having a central system to track the overall progress as well as automate the entire financial close process. Who knows, maybe Accountants won't have to revolve their lives around the month end close anymore with a tool like this. Those periodic fire drills can become predictable, well managed processes. 3. Disclosure Management is an out-of-the-box, pre-packaged XBRL solution to meet statutory reporting requirements. This product is really going to help companies improve the timeliness of producing financial reports. Reports can be authored using MS Word and Excel and then XBRL instance documents can be produced with its embedded XBRL tags. It even supports footnotes and disclosures of non-financial information. With a product like this, companies no longer have to outsource their XBRL filing; they can bring it back in house to save costs and time. In terms of other enhancements, they have ERP Integrator that provides integration and drill downs from Hyperion products to source systems, such as Oracle E-Business Suite, PeopleSoft, and SAP. No other vendor offers this level of integration. There's also a new product that links Oracle Essbase directly to Hyperion Financial Management for internal financial reporting, and new integrations between Hyperion Financial Management and Oracle's GRC products. They also improved the usability of Oracle Hyperion Planning. They made it much easier for end users to use the system via the web or via MS Excel when submitting plans and budgets. It is also integrated with intelligent approval workflows that are data-driven, user-configurable, and scenario-specific to efficiently streamline the budgeting process. Here's the press release from April 7, 2010. Here's the pre-recorded web cast where you can see the demos. Just register and watch the hour long presentation. And finally, here's the newsletter

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  • Write TSQL, win a Kindle.

    - by Fatherjack
    So recently Red Gate launched sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com and showed the world how to embed your own scripts harmoniously in a third party tool to get the details that you want about your SQL Server performance. The site has a way to submit your own metrics and take a copy of the ones that other people have submitted to build a library of code to keep track of key metrics of your servers performance. There have been several submissions already but they have now launched a competition to provide an incentive for you to get creative and show us what you can do with a bit of TSQL and the SQL Monitor framework*. What’s it worth? Well, if you are one of the 3 winners then you get to choose either a Kindle Fire or $199. How do you win? Simply write the T-SQL for a SQL Monitor custom metric and the relevant description and introduction for it and submit it via  sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com before 14th Sept 2012 and then sit back and wait while the judges review your code and your aims in writing the metric. Who are the judges and how will they judge the metrics? There are two judges for this competition, Steve Jones (Microsoft SQL Server MVP, co-founder of SQLServerCentral.com, author, blogger etc) and Jonathan Allen (um, yeah, Steve has done all the good stuff, I’m here by good fortune). We will be looking to rate the metrics on each of 3 criteria: how the metric can help with performance tuning SQL Server. how having the metric running enables DBA’s to meet best practice. how interesting /original the idea for the metric is. Our combined decision will be final etc etc **  What happens to my metric? Any metrics submitted to the competition will be automatically entered into the site library and become available for sharing once the competition is over. You’ll get full credit for metrics you submit regardless of the competition results. You can enter as many metrics as you like. How long does it take? Honestly? Once you have the T-SQL sorted then so long as you can type your name and your email address you are done : http://sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com/share-a-metric/ What can I monitor? If you really really want a Kindle or $199 (and let’s face it, who doesn’t? ) and are momentarily stuck for inspiration, take a look at these example custom metrics that have been written by Stuart Ainsworth, Fabiano Amorim, TJay Belt, Louis Davidson, Grant Fritchey, Brad McGehee and me  to start the library off. There are some great pieces of TSQL in those metrics gathering important stats about how SQL Server is performing.   * – framework may not be the best word here but I was under pressure and couldnt think of a better one. If you prefer try ‘engine’, or ‘application’? I don’t know, pick something that makes sense to you. ** – for the full (legal) version of the rules check the details on sqlmonitormetrics.red-gate.com or send us an email if you want any point clarified. Disclaimer – Jonathan is a Friend of Red Gate and as such, whenever they are discussed, will have a generally positive disposition towards Red Gate tools. Other tools are often available and you should always try others before you come back and buy the Red Gate ones. All code in this blog is provided “as is” and no guarantee, warranty or accuracy is applicable or inferred, run the code on a test server and be sure to understand it before you run it on a server that means a lot to you or your manager.

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  • SQLAuthority News – History of the Database – 5 Years of Blogging at SQLAuthority

    - by pinaldave
    Don’t miss the Contest:Participate in 5th Anniversary Contest   Today is this blog’s birthday, and I want to do a fun, informative blog post. Five years ago this day I started this blog. Intention – my personal web blog. I wrote this blog for me and still today whatever I learn I share here. I don’t want to wander too far off topic, though, so I will write about two of my favorite things – history and databases.  And what better way to cover these two topics than to talk about the history of databases. If you want to be technical, databases as we know them today only date back to the late 1960’s and early 1970’s, when computers began to keep records and store memories.  But the idea of memory storage didn’t just appear 40 years ago – there was a history behind wanting to keep these records. In fact, the written word originated as a way to keep records – ancient man didn’t decide they suddenly wanted to read novels, they needed a way to keep track of the harvest, of their flocks, and of the tributes paid to the local lord.  And that is how writing and the database began.  You could consider the cave paintings from 17,0000 years ago at Lascaux, France, or the clay token from the ancient Sumerians in 8,000 BC to be the first instances of record keeping – and thus databases. If you prefer, you can consider the advent of written language to be the first database.  Many historians believe the first written language appeared in the 37th century BC, with Egyptian hieroglyphics. The ancient Sumerians, not to be outdone, also created their own written language within a few hundred years. Databases could be more closely described as collections of information, in which case the Sumerians win the prize for the first archive.  A collection of 20,000 stone tablets was unearthed in 1964 near the modern day city Tell Mardikh, in Syria.  This ancient database is from 2,500 BC, and appears to be a sort of law library where apprentice-scribes copied important documents.  Further archaeological digs hope to uncover the palace library, and thus an even larger database. Of course, the most famous ancient database would have to be the Royal Library of Alexandria, the great collection of records and wisdom in ancient Egypt.  It was created by Ptolemy I, and existed from 300 BC through 30 AD, when Julius Caesar effectively erased the hard drives when he accidentally set fire to it.  As any programmer knows who has forgotten to hit “save” or has experienced a sudden power outage, thousands of hours of work was lost in a single instant. Databases existed in very similar conditions up until recently.  Cuneiform tablets gave way to papyrus, which led to vellum, and eventually modern paper and the printing press.  Someday the databases we rely on so much today will become another chapter in the history of record keeping.  Who knows what the databases of tomorrow will look like! Reference:  Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: About Me, Database, Pinal Dave, PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, SQLServer, T SQL, Technology

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  • Having fun with Reflection

    - by Nick Harrison
    I was once asked in a technical interview what I could tell them about Reflection.   My response, while a little tongue in cheek was that "I can tell you it is one of my favorite topics to talk about" I did get a laugh out of that and it was a great ice breaker.    Reflection may not be the answer for everything, but it often can be, or maybe even should be.     I have posted in the past about my favorite CopyTo method.   It can come in several forms and is often very useful.   I explain it further and expand on the basic idea here  The basic idea is to allow reflection to loop through the properties of two objects and synchronize the ones that are in common.   I love this approach for data binding and passing data across the layers in an application. Recently I have been working on a project leveraging Data Transfer Objects to pass data through WCF calls.   We won't go into how the architecture got this way, but in essence there is a partial duplicate inheritance hierarchy where there is a related Domain Object for each Data Transfer Object.     The matching objects do not share a common ancestor or common interface but they will have the same properties in common.    By passing the problems with this approach, let's talk about how Reflection and our friendly CopyTo could make the most of this bad situation without having to change too much. One of the problems is keeping the two sets of objects in synch.   For this particular project, the DO has all of the functionality and the DTO is used to simply transfer data back and forth.    Both sets of object have parallel hierarchies with the same properties being defined at the corresponding levels.   So we end with BaseDO,  BaseDTO, GenericDO, GenericDTO, ProcessAreaDO,  ProcessAreaDTO, SpecializedProcessAreaDO, SpecializedProcessAreaDTO, TableDo, TableDto. and so on. Without using Reflection and a CopyTo function, tremendous care and effort must be made to keep the corresponding objects in synch.    New properties can be added at any level in the inheritance and must be kept in synch at all subsequent layers.    For this project we have come up with a clever approach of calling a base GetDo or UpdateDto making sure that the same method at each level of inheritance is called.    Each level is responsible for updating the properties at that level. This is a lot of work and not keeping it in synch can create all manner of problems some of which are very difficult to track down.    The other problem is the type of code that this methods tend to wind up with. You end up with code like this: Transferable dto = new Transferable(); base.GetDto(dto); dto.OfficeCode = GetDtoNullSafe(officeCode); dto.AccessIndicator = GetDtoNullSafe(accessIndicator); dto.CaseStatus = GetDtoNullSafe(caseStatus); dto.CaseStatusReason = GetDtoNullSafe(caseStatusReason); dto.LevelOfService = GetDtoNullSafe(levelOfService); dto.ReferralComments = referralComments; dto.Designation = GetDtoNullSafe(designation); dto.IsGoodCauseClaimed = GetDtoNullSafe(isGoodCauseClaimed); dto.GoodCauseClaimDate = goodCauseClaimDate;       One obvious problem is that this is tedious code.   It is error prone code.    Adding helper functions like GetDtoNullSafe help out immensely, but there is still an easier way. We can bypass the tedious code, by pass the complex inheritance tricks, and reduce all of this to a single method in the base class. TransferObject dto = new TransferObject(); CopyTo (this, dto); return dto; In the case of this one project, such a change eliminated the need for 20% of the total code base and a whole class of unit test cases that made sure that all of the properties were in synch. The impact of such a change also needs to include the on going time savings and the improvements in quality that can arise from them.    Developers who are not worried about keeping the properties in synch across mirrored object hierarchies are freed to worry about more important things like implementing business requirements.

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  • SQL SERVER – Why Do We Need Data Quality Services – Importance and Significance of Data Quality Services (DQS)

    - by pinaldave
    Databases are awesome.  I’m sure my readers know my opinion about this – I have made SQL Server my life’s work after all!  I love technology and all things computer-related.  Of course, even with my love for technology, I have to admit that it has its limits.  For example, it takes a human brain to notice that data has been input incorrectly.  Computer “brains” might be faster than humans, but human brains are still better at pattern recognition.  For example, a human brain will notice that “300” is a ridiculous age for a human to be, but to a computer it is just a number.  A human will also notice similarities between “P. Dave” and “Pinal Dave,” but this would stump most computers. In a database, these sorts of anomalies are incredibly important.  Databases are often used by multiple people who rely on this data to be true and accurate, so data quality is key.  That is why the improved SQL Server features Master Data Management talks about Data Quality Services.  This service has the ability to recognize and flag anomalies like out of range numbers and similarities between data.  This allows a human brain with its pattern recognition abilities to double-check and ensure that P. Dave is the same as Pinal Dave. A nice feature of Data Quality Services is that once you set the rules for the program to follow, it will not only keep your data organized in the future, but go to the past and “fix up” any data that has already been entered.  It also allows you do combine data from multiple places and it will apply these rules across the board, so that you don’t have any weird issues that crop up when trying to fit a round peg into a square hole. There are two parts of Data Quality Services that help you accomplish all these neat things.  The first part is DQL Server, which you can think of as the hardware component of the system.  It is installed on the side of (it needs to install separately after SQL Server is installed) SQL Server and runs quietly in the background, performing all its cleanup services. DQS Client is the user interface that you can interact with to set the rules and check over your data.  There are three main aspects of Client: knowledge base management, data quality projects and administration.  Knowledge base management is the part of the system that allows you to set the rules, or program the “knowledge base,” so that your database is clean and consistent. Data Quality projects are what run in the background and clean up the data that is already present.  The administration allows you to check out what DQS Client is doing, change rules, and generally oversee the entire process.  The whole process is user-friendly and a pleasure to use.  I highly recommend implementing Data Quality Services in your database. Here are few of my blog posts which are related to Data Quality Services and I encourage you to try this out. SQL SERVER – Installing Data Quality Services (DQS) on SQL Server 2012 SQL SERVER – Step by Step Guide to Beginning Data Quality Services in SQL Server 2012 – Introduction to DQS SQL SERVER – DQS Error – Cannot connect to server – A .NET Framework error occurred during execution of user-defined routine or aggregate “SetDataQualitySessions” – SetDataQualitySessionPhaseTwo SQL SERVER – Configuring Interactive Cleansing Suggestion Min Score for Suggestions in Data Quality Services (DQS) – Sensitivity of Suggestion SQL SERVER – Unable to DELETE Project in Data Quality Projects (DQS) Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: PostADay, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Query, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology Tagged: Data Quality Services, DQS

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  • How to future-proof my touch-enabled web application?

    - by Rice Flour Cookies
    I recently went out and purchased a touch-screen monitor with the intention of learning how to program touch-enabled web applications. I had reviewed the MDN documentation about touch events, as well as the W3C specification. To get started, I wrote a very short test page with two event handlers: one for the mousedown event and one for the touchstart event. I fired up the web page in IE and touched the document and found that only the mousedown event fired. I saw the same behavior with Firefox, only to find out later that Firefox can be set to enable the touchstart event using about:config. When touch events are enabled, the touchstart event fires, but not mousedown. Chrome was even stranger: it fired both events when I touched the document: touchstart and mousedown, in that order. Only on my Android phone does it appear to be the case that only the touchstart event fires when I touch the document. I did a a Google search and ended up on two interesting pages. First, I found the page on CanIUse for touch events: http://caniuse.com/#feat=touch Can I Use clearly indicates that IE does not support touch events as of this writing, and Firefox only supports touch events if they are manually enabled. Furthermore, all four browsers I mentioned treat the touch in a completely different way. It boils down to this: IE: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch disabled: simulated mouse click Firefox with touch enabled: touch event Chrome: touch event and simulated mouse click Android: touch event What is more frustrating is that Google also found a Microsoft page called RethinkIE. RethinkIE brags about touch support in IE; as a matter of fact, one of their slogans is "Touch the Web". It links to a number of touch-based application. I followed some of these links, and as best I can tell, it's just like CanIUse described; no proper touch support; just simulated mouse clicks. The MDN (https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Touch) and W3C (http://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/) documentation describe a far richer interface; an interface that doesn't just simulate mouse clicks, but keeps track of multiple touches at once, the contact area, rotation, and force of each touch, and unique identifiers for each touch so that they can be tracked individually. I don't see how simulated mouse clicks can ever touch the above described functionality, which, once again, is part of the W3C specification, although it is listed as "non-normative", meaning that a browser can claim to be standards-compliant without implementing it. (Why bother making it part of the standard, then?) What motivated my research is that I've written an HTML5 application that doesn't work on Android because Android doesn't fire mouse events. I'm now afraid to try to implement touch for my application because the browsers all behave so differently. I imagine that at some time in the future, the browsers might start handling touch similarly, but how can I tell how they might be handled in the future short of writing code to handle the behavior of each individual browser? Is it possible to write code today that will work with touch-enabled browsers for years to come? If so, how?

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  • Unit Testing DateTime – The Crazy Way

    - by João Angelo
    We all know that the process of unit testing code that depends on DateTime, particularly the current time provided through the static properties (Now, UtcNow and Today), it’s a PITA. If you go ask how to unit test DateTime.Now on stackoverflow I’ll bet that you’ll get two kind of answers: Encapsulate the current time in your own interface and use a standard mocking framework; Pull out the big guns like Typemock Isolator, JustMock or Microsoft Moles/Fakes and mock the static property directly. Now each alternative has is pros and cons and I would have to say that I glean more to the second approach because the first adds a layer of abstraction just for the sake of testability. However, the second approach depends on commercial tools that not every shop wants to buy or in the not so friendly Microsoft Moles. (Sidenote: Moles is now named Fakes and it will ship with VS 2012) This tends to leave people without an acceptable and simple solution so after reading another of these types of questions in SO I came up with yet another alternative, one based on the first alternative that I presented here but tries really hard to not get in your way with yet another layer of abstraction. So, without further dues, I present you, the Tardis. The Tardis is single section of conditionally compiled code that overrides the meaning of the DateTime expression inside a single class. You still get the normal coding experience of using DateTime all over the place, but in a DEBUG compilation your tests will be able to mock every static method or property of the DateTime class. An example follows, while the full Tardis code can be downloaded from GitHub: using System; using NSubstitute; using NUnit.Framework; using Tardis; public class Example { public Example() : this(string.Empty) { } public Example(string title) { #if DEBUG this.DateTime = DateTimeProvider.Default; this.Initialize(title); } internal IDateTimeProvider DateTime { get; set; } internal Example(string title, IDateTimeProvider provider) { this.DateTime = provider; #endif this.Initialize(title); } private void Initialize(string title) { this.Title = title; this.CreatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow; } private string title; public string Title { get { return this.title; } set { this.title = value; this.UpdatedAt = DateTime.UtcNow; } } public DateTime CreatedAt { get; private set; } public DateTime UpdatedAt { get; private set; } } public class TExample { public void T001() { // Arrange var tardis = Substitute.For<IDateTimeProvider>(); tardis.UtcNow.Returns(new DateTime(2000, 1, 1, 6, 6, 6)); // Act var sut = new Example("Title", tardis); // Assert Assert.That(sut.CreatedAt, Is.EqualTo(tardis.UtcNow)); } public void T002() { // Arrange var tardis = Substitute.For<IDateTimeProvider>(); var sut = new Example("Title", tardis); tardis.UtcNow.Returns(new DateTime(2000, 1, 1, 6, 6, 6)); // Act sut.Title = "Updated"; // Assert Assert.That(sut.UpdatedAt, Is.EqualTo(tardis.UtcNow)); } } This approach is also suitable for other similar classes with commonly used static methods or properties like the ConfigurationManager class.

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  • December 3 is Stephanie Choyer Day

    - by rickramsey
    I don't answer Stephanie Choyer's email just so I can enjoy her French accent when she calls. "Reek! Reek! Why do joo not answer my eemails?" Without the French, life on Earth would be so much poorer. No, they don't bring to the party any motorcycles that grow chest on your hair, and the Citroen is such a frightening study in Automobile design that I don't dare climb inside one. But they have French architecture. French sidewalks. French villages. The French Alps. Grenoble. French cheese. French wine. And that glorious French accent. If I were French, I'd spend all my time enjoying being French. Which makes the work that Stephanie does day in and day with our hard-edged technologies and stubborn technologists so admirable. Oracle Solaris 11 Resources for Sysadmins and Developers The page in the link above represents the work of many people, but it was Steph who rounded them up. And it wasn't easy. I know, because I ran and hid from her on many, many occasions. But she was tireless. "Reek. Reek. Why have you not published Glynn's article? Pleeeease, you must!" Remember when tech companies gave you a simple choice? You could either read the 27,000 pages of documentation or a double-sided data sheet. Which will it be, pal? Then they started writing white papers. 74 pages of excellent prose did a beautiful job of explaining why the technology was fantastic, but never told you how to use it. Well, have you taken a look at these? How-To Technical Articles for System Admins and Developers Now you can get wicked excited about a cool technique described in a 74-page white paper, and find a technical article that shows you exactly how to use it. The wicked smart marketing folks on the Oracle Solaris team wrote them, but it was Steph who bribed them with a Cabernet or beat them over the head with a baguette until all that work was finished and posted on OTN. There are songs about French wine, but not about French vintners. There are songs about French cities, but not about French bricklayers. About French sidewalks, but not about the French policemen who keep them safe. As far as I know, there are no songs about OTN, but if there were, they would probably neglect to mention Steph. Which is why today, Dec 3rd, we celebrate Stephanie Choyer Day. We dedicate this day to our relentless, hardworking, tireless, patient and friendly French colleague with the delightful accent. If I knew how to speak French, I'd say "Thanks for all you do" in French. But I don't speak French. And I don't trust online translations. I'd probably wind up saying "My left foot yearns for curdled milk." So here it is in plain old English: Thank you, Stephanie. psssst! about that documentation and those white papers ... In case you haven't noticed, the Oracle Solaris doc team has done some pretty cool things with the Solaris docs. And those white papers are interesting reading, well worth setting aside some time. Because with Solaris, as you know, it's not just about getting by with a rudimentary grasp of the basics. It's about the amazing stuff savvy sysadmins and developers can do when they really understand it. Find them here: White Papers Documentation And don't forget training! - Rick Website Newsletter Facebook Twitter

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  • Page output caching for dynamic web applications

    - by Mike Ellis
    I am currently working on a web application where the user steps (forward or back) through a series of pages with "Next" and "Previous" buttons, entering data until they reach a page with the "Finish" button. Until finished, all data is stored in Session state, then sent to the mainframe database via web services at the end of the process. Some of the pages display data from previous pages in order to collect additional information. These pages can never be cached because they are different for every user. For pages that don't display this dynamic data, they can be cached, but only the first time they load. After that, the data that was previously entered needs to be displayed. This requires Page_Load to fire, which means the page can't be cached at that point. A couple of weeks ago, I knew almost nothing about implementing page caching. Now I still don't know much, but I know a little bit, and here is the solution that I developed with the help of others on my team and a lot of reading and trial-and-error. We have a base page class defined from which all pages inherit. In this class I have defined a method that sets the caching settings programmatically. For pages that can be cached, they call this base page method in their Page_Load event within a if(!IsPostBack) block, which ensures that only the page itself gets cached, not the data on the page. if(!IsPostBack) {     ...     SetCacheSettings();     ... } protected void SetCacheSettings() {     Response.Cache.AddValidationCallback(new HttpCacheValidateHandler(Validate), null);     Response.Cache.SetExpires(DateTime.Now.AddHours(1));     Response.Cache.SetSlidingExpiration(true);     Response.Cache.SetValidUntilExpires(true);     Response.Cache.SetCacheability(HttpCacheability.ServerAndNoCache); } The AddValidationCallback sets up an HttpCacheValidateHandler method called Validate which runs logic when a cached page is requested. The Validate method signature is standard for this method type. public static void Validate(HttpContext context, Object data, ref HttpValidationStatus status) {     string visited = context.Request.QueryString["v"];     if (visited != null && "1".Equals(visited))     {         status = HttpValidationStatus.IgnoreThisRequest; //force a page load     }     else     {         status = HttpValidationStatus.Valid; //load from cache     } } I am using the HttpValidationStatus values IgnoreThisRequest or Valid which forces the Page_Load event method to run or allows the page to load from cache, respectively. Which one is set depends on the value in the querystring. The value in the querystring is set up on each page in the "Next" and "Previous" button click event methods based on whether the page that the button click is taking the user to has any data on it or not. bool hasData = HasPageBeenVisited(url); if (hasData) {     url += VISITED; } Response.Redirect(url); The HasPageBeenVisited method determines whether the destination page has any data on it by checking one of its required data fields. (I won't include it here because it is very system-dependent.) VISITED is a string constant containing "?v=1" and gets appended to the url if the destination page has been visited. The reason this logic is within the "Next" and "Previous" button click event methods is because 1) the Validate method is static which doesn't allow it to access non-static data such as the data fields for a particular page, and 2) at the time at which the Validate method runs, either the data has not yet been deserialized from Session state or is not available (different AppDomain?) because anytime I accessed the Session state information from the Validate method, it was always empty.

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  • Windows Workflow Foundation (WF) and things I were more intuitive

    - by pjohnson
    I've started using Windows Workflow Foundation, and so far ran into a few things that aren't incredibly obvious. Microsoft did a good job of providing a ton of samples, which is handy because you need them to get anywhere with WF. The docs are thin, so I've been bouncing between samples and downloadable labs to figure out how to implement various activities in a workflow. Code separation or not? You can create a workflow and activity in Visual Studio with or without code separation, i.e. just a .cs "Component" style object with a Designer.cs file, or a .xoml XML markup file with code behind (beside?) it. Absence any obvious advantage to one or the other, I used code separation for workflows and any complex custom activities, and without code separation for custom activities that just inherit from the Activity class and thus don't have anything special in the designer. So far, so good. Service - In the WF world, this is simply a class that talks to the workflow about things outside the workflow, not to be confused with how the term "service" is used in every other context I've seen in the Windows and .NET world, i.e. an executable that waits for events or requests from a client and services them (Windows service, web service, WCF service, etc.). ListenActivity - Such a great concept, yet so unintuitive. It seems you need at least two branches (EventDrivenActivity instances), one for your positive condition and one for a timeout. The positive condition has a HandleExternalEventActivity, and the timeout has a DelayActivity followed by however you want to handle the delay, e.g. a ThrowActivity. The timeout is simple enough; wiring up the HandleExternalEventActivity is where things get fun. You need to create a service (see above), and an interface for that service (this seems more complex than should be necessary--why not have activities just wire to a service directly?). And you need to create a custom EventArgs class that inherits from ExternalDataEventArgs--you can't create an ExternalDataEventArgs event handler directly, even if you don't need to add any more information to the event args, despite ExternalDataEventArgs not being marked as an abstract class, nor a compiler error nor warning nor any other indication that you're doing something wrong, until you run it and find that it always times out and get to check every place mentioned here to see why. Your interface and service need an event that consumes your custom EventArgs class, and a method to fire that event. You need to call that method from somewhere. Then you get to hope that you did everything just right, or that you can step through code in the debugger before your Delay timeout expires. Yes, it's as much fun as it sounds. TransactionScopeActivity - I had the bright idea of putting one in as a placeholder, then filling in the database updates later. That caused this error: The workflow hosting environment does not have a persistence service as required by an operation on the workflow instance "[GUID]". ...which is about as helpful as "Object reference not set to an instance of an object" and even more fun to debug. Google led me to this Microsoft Forums hit, and from there I figured out it didn't like that the activity had no children. Again, a Validator on TransactionScopeActivity would have pointed this out to me at design time, rather than handing me a nearly useless error at runtime. Easily enough, I disabled the activity and that fixed it. I still see huge potential in my work where WF could make things easier and more flexible, but there are some seriously rough edges at the moment. Maybe I'm just spoiled by how much easier and more intuitive development elsewhere in the .NET Framework is.

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  • Silverlight Cream for January 08, 2011 -- #1023

    - by Dave Campbell
    In this Heavy and yet incomplete Issue: Mike Wolf, Walter Ferrari, Colin Eberhardt, Mathew Charles, Don Burnett, Senthil Kumar, cherylws, Rob Miles, Derik Whittaker, Thomas Martinsen(-2-), Jason Ginchereau, Vishal Nayan, and WindowsPhoneGeek. Above the Fold: Silverlight: "Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight)" Colin Eberhardt WP7: "Windows Phone Blue Book Pdf" Rob Miles Sharepoint/Silverlight: "Discover Sharepoint with Silverlight - Part 1" Walter Ferrari Shoutouts: Dave Isbitski has announced a WP7 Firestarter, check for your local MS office: Announcing the “Light up your Silverlight Applications for Windows 7 Firestarter” From SilverlightCream.com: Leveraging Silverlight in the USA TODAY Windows 7-Based Slate App Mike Wolf has a post up about Cynergy's release of the new USA TODAY software for Windows 7 Slate devices, and gives a great rundown of all the resources, and how specific Silverlight features were used... tons of outstanding external links here! Discover Sharepoint with Silverlight - Part 1 Walter Ferrari has tutorial up at SilverlightShow... looks like the first in a series on Silverlight and Sharepoint... lots of low-level info about the internals and using them. Automatically Showing ToolTips on a Trimmed TextBlock (Silverlight) Colin Eberhardt has a really cool AutoTooltip attached behavior that gives a tooltip of the actual text if text is trimmed ... and has an active demo on the post... very cool. RIA Services Output Caching Mathew Charles digs into a RIA feature that hasn't gotten any blog love: output caching, describing all the ins and outs of improving the performance of your app using caching. Emailing your Files to Box.net Cloud Storage with WP7 Don Burnett details out everything you need to do to get Box.Net and your WP7 setup to talk to each other. Shortcuts keys for Developing on Windows Phone 7 Emulator Senthil Kumar has some good WP7 posts up ... this one is a cheatsheet list of Function-key assignements for the WP7 emulator... another sidebar listint Windows Phone 7 Design Guidelines – Cheat Sheet cherylws has a great Guideline list/Cheat Sheet up for reference while building a WP7 app... this is a great reference... I'm adding it to the Right-hand sidebar of WynApse.com Windows Phone Blue Book Pdf Rob Miles has added another book and color to his collection of both -- Windows Phone Programming in C#, also known as the Windows Phone Blue Book... get a copy from the links he gives, and check out his other free books as well. Navigating to an external URL using the HyperlinkButton Derik Whittaker has a post up discussing the woes (and error messages) of trying to navigate to an external URL with the Hyperlink button in WP7, plus his MVVM-friendly solution that you can download. Set Source on Image from code in Silverlight Thomas Martinsen has a couple posts up... first is this quick one on the code required to set an image source. Show UI element based on authentication Thomas Martinsen's latest is one on a BoolToVisibilityConverter allowing a boolean indicator of Authentication to be used to control the visibility of a button (in the sample) WP7 ReorderListBox improvements: rearrange animations and more Jason Ginchereau has updated his ReorderListBox from last week to add some animations (fading/sliding) during the rearrangement. Navigation in Silverlight Without Using Navigation Framework Vishal Nayan has a post that attracted my attention... Navigation by manipulating RootVisual content... I've been knee-deep in similar code in Prism this week (and why my blogging is off) ... Creating a WP7 Custom Control in 7 Steps WindowsPhoneGeek creates a simple custom control for WP7 before your very eyes in his latest post, focusing on the minimum requirements necessary for writing a Custom Control. Stay in the 'Light! Twitter SilverlightNews | Twitter WynApse | WynApse.com | Tagged Posts | SilverlightCream Join me @ SilverlightCream | Phoenix Silverlight User Group Technorati Tags: Silverlight    Silverlight 3    Silverlight 4    Windows Phone MIX10

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